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COVER

CONTENTS

 EDITORIAL

COVER STORY

- Never Again To Ask Question: Where are You?

NEWS Features

FROM VICTIMS TO HEALERS
PSYCHO-MORAL SUPPORT TO
THE FAMILIES OF VICTIMS OF
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCE

The Brave
Women
Human Rights Defenders

The Ordinance Anticlimax and its Aftermath...

Expression of Pain
Wives of the Disappeared
Bare Their Hearts...

A Glow in the Dark:
The AFAD’s 11th Anniversary

Eleven years of trials and
triumphs towards a world
without desaparecidos

NEWS FEATURES

To See With The Heart
A Sharing 


The State of human Rights in the Philippines:
Wearing off the Facade 

Peru: A Milestone in the Struggle for Justice
Fugimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison
for crimes against humanity
 

A Reflection: Between the Devil
and the Deep Blue Sea


Sri Lanka: Human Rights Under Fire}

Report on the Lobby for the United Nations Convention For the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and Workshop of Women Human Rights Defenders

announcement
Helping the Families of the
Disappeared help themselves...

Solidarity Message


literary
Mothers of the Disappeared
 

 

NEWS FEATURE


Sri Lanka: Human Rights Under Fire

By Darwin Mendiola
 

The Ugly Side of War

Human rights violations, particularly the senseless killings and disappearances of innocent civilians are violent consequences of war. Since the Sri Lankan government has intensified its military offensives to wipe out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and to end the bloody 26-year struggle for an independent Tamil homeland, the repercussions of the war weigh heavily on civilians, mostly the Tamil population caught in between the warring sides. Both parties are showing little respect if not total disregard for human rights and non-compliance to humanitarian laws. In the recent round of fighting, it was shocking to learn that the Sri Lankan government is carefree in indiscriminately shelling heavy artillery into the LTTE-controlled areas in the northeast while the Tamil Tigers are using the civilian population as human shields and a source of forced recruitment for combatants.

What makes it even worse is that limited information is known in what is happening in the ground due to the government’s prohibition of the media and local and international human rights groups to monitor the situation and provide humanitarian assistance to the civilians trapped in the combat zone. However, the United Nations has reported that civilian casualties from January to March this year have reached nearly 10,000, with some 3,000 deaths and over 7,000 injuries - a conservative estimate of the actual figures.

But with the way this war is being waged by these two contending parties, whatever the outcome will be, the political crisis will certainly be far from over and human rights situation is expected to worsen in the days to come.


The Phantom Menace

War is a phantom menace. It never offers a viable means to settle a conflict, but instead, it germinates more violence. This is one lesson of history which Sri Lanka has to learn. Apparently, it is doomed to repeat its mistake.

After achieving its independence in 1948 from the British, the Sinhalese government introduced discriminatory policies against the Tamils which comprised 24% of the Sri Lankan population. The Tamils were not only humiliated but also reduced into second class citizens with the enforcement of unfair education laws, anti-Tamil employment regulations, and the making of the language of the Sinhalese majority, the Sinhala, as the country’s official language.

These forms of discrimination had ignited a fire for Tamil resistance, but their peaceful protests were met with state brutality and repression. More than three thousand Tamils were recorded killed in the so-called “Black July,” the anti-Tamil pogrom carried out by Sinhala mobs on 23 July 1983 that resulted in a Tamil diaspora. This started the full-scale armed conflict between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese-dominated government of Sri Lanka which claimed at least 70,000 deaths. In the year 2000, the Sri Lankan government was forced to enter into unilateral ceasefires with the LTTE due to the latter’s growing military strength and the heavy slump of the economy caused by the war. In February 2002, a Norwegian-mediated ceasefire agreement was reached by the warring parties which provided the LTTE an interim self-governing authority for Tamils in the northeast. But the Sri Lankan government failed to implement the provisions of the ceasefire agreement and as a result, the LTTE pulled out its participation in the peace negotiations in 2003. The Sri Lankan government responded by renewing its military operations in January last year, aimed at totally annihilating the LTTE and winning back its territory.
 

The Recurring Nightmares

The primary responsibility of any state is to maintain law and order in the country. The civil war is not only a proof that the Sri Lankan government is losing control of the situation but also of its incapability of stopping if not intentionally allowing the widespread and systematic occurrences of arbitrary arrest, torture, extra-judicial killings and disappearances of innocent civilians. Sri Lanka has the second highest number of disappearances reported to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID). The Human Rights Watch 2008 World Report says that more than 1,500 people were reported missing from 2005 to 2007, with more than 1,000 cases of enforced disappearances in 2006 alone.

These recurring nightmares have already left thousands of families desperately searching for their loved ones who have disappeared without a trace and have been taken by force at public places, security checkpoints, from their homes or even in the “welfare camps. “ Members of the state security forces, police and paramilitary groups are alleged to be behind these incidents. But despite growing complaints, the government has demonstrated an utter lack of interest to inquire and investigate. It even downplays the issue as mere black propaganda of Tamil Tigers. Though in some cases where the disappeared persons were later found in detention centers or in police custody, the government simply made the lame excuse of accusing them of being Tamil sympathizers.

Making people disappeared has become a convenient practice of the state to silence those who oppose them or who pose a threat to the powers-that-be. A Sri Lankan government  official was even quoted for saying that collateral damage is quite natural in times of war. This irresponsible statement conveys a dreadful message. Consequently, enforced disappearance is, once again, the order of the day and being carried out with total impunity.

But sad to say, the crime of enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka, just like in most Asian countries, is still not considered a distinct offense in the Penal Code. The government has, like many other Asian countries, not taken a decisive step to sign and ratify the UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance even if it was one of the states that supported the resolution of the then UN Commission on Human Rights for the establishment of the then UN Inter-Sessional Working Group to Elaborate a Draft Legally-Binding Normative Instrument for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

The judiciary, on the other hand, is made inutile by the Emergency Decrees that provide legitimacy to most of these incidents by allowing the immediate disposal of the bodies without inquiry. The National Human Rights Commission is in no better position to improve the situation due to the inherent flaws in its mandate. Moreover, it usually yields to political loyalty ascribed to the nature of its appointment. The recommendations of the previous Presidential Commissions of Inquiry into Disappearances of Persons were apparently thrown in the dustbin as no perpetrator is punished. Even the call for an international monitoring mission to look into the human rights situation has been strongly resisted by the Sri Lankan government, a fact that confirms its absence of political will to stop this scourge of human rights violations. As a concrete proof of these gross human rights violations by the Sri Lankan government, the latter was not renewed as a member the UN Human Rights Council during the Universal Periodic Review in 2008.

The Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who was once a human rights advocate when he was still a member of Parliament and in fact, part of those who first organized the Organization of Parents and Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD) in the early ‘90s, is ironically considered now as one of the world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances.


A Common Humanity

In the Philippines, the Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID), together with the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC), organized a press conference on 15 April 2009 in Quezon City to inform the public of the real situation in Sri Lanka and draw out an international response to address the situation. Mr. Ruki Fernando, a Sri Lankan human rights activist who is in self-exile because his name was included in the list of persons that the Sri Lankan authorities had blacklisted, presented before the media and civil society organizations a powerpoint about the on- oing civil war and its effects to the Sri Lankan population particularly the increasing human rights violations against the Tamils. He was touring the Asian region to appeal for an international support to end this violence.

Joining Mr. Fernando in the panel was Fr. Robert Reyes, a Filipino Catholic priest known for his activism and advocacy for human rights which earned for him the moniker, “The Running Priest” for jogging around the metropolis as a way to call the government’s as well as the public’s attention on the human rights and corruption issues plaguing the country. In the press conference, Fr. Reyes expressed his solidarity on the international campaign to call for an end of war in Sri Lanka. He believed that what is happening in Sri Lanka is no different from what is happening in the Philippines. He even joked that the two countries shared an ill-fate for having a government which is legally and morally mandated to promote and protect human rights but instead, have become the Number 1 violator. He was also saddened by the news that even the churches, both the Catholic Christians and the Buddhists are becoming an instrument of war by giving their prayers and blessings to combatants who are on their way to kill each other. He opined that evil is no business of the righteous and that a good deed is the only way to destroy wicked acts. For him, human rights and human dignity are what define our common humanity. It is therefore our  oral obligation to help our brothers and sisters in need and to stand against any forms of wrongdoing.
 

The Role of the AFAD

The day prior to the press conference, the support of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) was sought when Mr. Ruki Fernando visited its office. Requested possible forms of support are projection of the issue; renewing ties with organizations in Sri Lanka; mobilizing its Latin American partners to support the issue of Sri Lanka and whatever possible efforts the Federation may conduct in view of the fact that its mandate is to work on the issue of enforced disappearances.

The Federation, with all its capacity and considering its limitations, has to boldly respond to the appeal to the best that it could. After all, an organization in Sri Lanka was one of the founding members of the Federation. It is a country frequently visited by the Federation in the past years and whose family members of the disappeared literally begged for support. They brought with them photos of their disappeared loved ones and hoped that one day, all their tears will be wiped away.

Looking back, Sri Lankan families appealed for solidarity. The same families continue to search for truth and justice and in fact, there are more of these families in the present context of the country, whose deafening cry for solidarity, the Federation has to concretely respond.

The Federation has the moral responsibility to accept the challenge.
 

Darwin Mendiola is currently the Research and Documentation Officer of the AFAD. He has worked in various non-government organizations that engage the Philippine government in formulating and implementing policy reforms and institutional changes. Darwin is a former media liaison of the Laban ng Masa (Struggle of the Masses), a new Philippine Left Coalition under the leadership of ex-UP President, Dr. Francisco Nemenzo, Jr. As a former student leader in the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in the early 1990s, he remains an activist in his own right.
 


VOICE August  2009

 

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