Sri Lanka marks war anniversary with many still missing

Agencies
May 18, 2019

Mullaittivu, May 18: Still reeling from the Easter terror attacks, Sri Lanka commemorates this weekend 10 years since the end of a bloody civil war that killed at least 100,000 people, from which the scars are still not healed.

Security was tight in the north of the island, home to Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, ahead of solemn ceremonies on Saturday.

Sri Lanka's government and top military brass were due to hold their own commemoration in Colombo on Sunday.

On May 18, 2009 government forces brought their no-holds-barred military offensive to an end at a lagoon in the northern coastal district of Mullaittivu with the killing of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the rebel Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka's then-president Mahinda Rajapakse declared an end to the 37-year separatist conflict -- marked by massacres, suicide bombings and assassinations -- between Tamil militants and the central government, which is dominated by the majority Sinhalese.

But for thousands of war widows and other victims on both sides, this marked the start of a new struggle: to find out the fate of their loved ones.

About 20,000 people are still missing, including 5,000 government troops.

Anandarasan Nagakanni, 61, is still searching for her son Arindavadas.

"He was last seen with the Sri Lankan army, and after that, we haven't seen him," she told AFP at a tiny makeshift office in Mullaittivu, where a notice board was covered with dozens of photos of missing people.

Nagaraja Sureshamma, 65, who lost one son and is still looking for the other, recalled the horrors of the final months and how civilians scrambled to escape indiscriminate attacks and shelling.

"We were all going together, but my son happened to go on a different route... Ever since, we have not been able to find him," Sureshamma said.

"If they are not alive, then they need to tell us that at least," said Mariasuresh Easwari, an activist trying to help find the missing.

"Did you murder them? Did you bury them? Tell us."

Sri Lankan forces have been accused of killing about 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the war, a charge successive governments have denied.

Several mass graves containing skeletal remains have been found in the past two decades, but only a handful of those buried have ever been formally identified.

Until recently, even remembering the war dead was considered subversive and annual memorial services by Tamils were trashed by government forces.

Government forces have set up memorials in the north for fallen security forces and bulldozed Tiger cemeteries, obliterating any sign of the rebels who at their zenith controlled a third of Sri Lanka.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a recent report that the new government's promised political reforms and accountability for wartime atrocities have failed to materialise.

"For many Sri Lankans living in the bitterly contested north and east, the war has never quite ended," it said.

Although the pain for many families remains, and many in the 2.5-million-strong Tamil community still feel disadvantaged, the end of the war did open a peaceful new chapter in which Sri Lanka's economy and tourism boomed.

But this peace was shattered on April 21 when Islamist suicide bombers targeted three churches and three luxury hotels, killing 258 people -- including 45 foreigners.

The attackers were homegrown extremists -- the Islamic State group also claimed credit -- and riots since saw dozens of homes, businesses and mosques of Sri Lanka's Muslim minority vandalised. One man was killed by a mob wielding swords.

According to the ICG, the Easter attacks "compounded the general anxiety, tearing again at the social fabric, unleashing further violence and complicating the road to sustainable peace".

Evoking memories of past dark times, a state of emergency has been in place since April 21 with the return of some wartime restrictions on free movement.

Sri Lanka's army chief Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake has said his troops will ensure that this year's commemoration goes ahead peacefully.

"As much as we mourn the soldiers who were killed in the war, (minority Tamil) civilians also have a right to commemorate their war dead," he said on Thursday.

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News Network
June 22,2020

Geneva, Jun 22: The global count of coronavirus cases has surpassed 8.7 million, with 183,020 new cases recorded on Sunday, the World Health Organisation said in its daily situation report.

Over the last 24 hours, 4,743 people died from COVID-19 worldwide, taking the death toll to 461,715 fatalities, according to the report.

The cumulative global toll of confirmed cases has now reached 8,708,008, as stated in the report.

The WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, shared that Europe accounts for 31 per cent of COVID-19 cases and 43 per cent of COVID-19 deaths globally.

Dr Kluge highlighted that several countries continue to face increasing disease incidence and that "preparing for the autumn is a priority now at the WHO Regional Office for Europe"

The United States continues to be worst affected by the contagion with the highest count of cases and fatalities -- 2.2 million and 118,895, respectively.

The novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic by WHO on March 11.

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Arab News
February 9,2020

London, Feb 9: A US court has rejected a Turkish attempt to dismiss civil cases brought by protesters who were violently attacked in Washington by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security officers.

The incident took place in May 2017 during a visit to the US by the Turkish president. About a dozen bodyguards beat-up a group demonstrating outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.

The attack, which was caught on video, left nine people injured and further strained US relations with Turkey.

While criminal charges against the security guards were dropped within a year, around the same time Turkey released a US pastor, the victims pressed ahead with a civil case.

On Thursday, a federal court denied Turkey’s request to have the two cases thrown out on the grounds that it should have sovereign immunity from legal proceedings.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the protesters had not posed a threat and were merely gathered on a sidewalk outside the residence at Sheridan Circle when Erdogan’s security burst through a police line and attacked them.

“The Turkish security forces did not have the discretion to violently physically attack the protesters, with the degree and nature of force which was used, when the protesters were standing, protesting on a public sidewalk,” she said. “And, Turkish security forces did not have the discretion to continue violently physically attacking the protesters after the protesters had fallen to the ground or otherwise attempted to flee.”

The judge said Turkey “has not met its burden of persuasion to show that it is immune from suit in these cases.”

The ruling was welcomed by the victims of the attack, which Erdogan stopped to watch as he made his way from his car to inside the residence.

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News Network
February 18,2020

Beijing, Feb 18: Police in China have arrested a prominent activist who had been a fugitive for weeks and criticised President Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus epidemic while in hiding, a rights group said Tuesday.

Anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong was arrested on Saturday after being on the run since December, according to Amnesty International.

China's ruling Communist Party has severely curtailed civil liberties since Xi took power in 2012, rounding up rights lawyers, labour activists and even Marxist students.

The death this month of a whistleblowing doctor who was reprimanded by police for raising the alarm about the deadly new virus before dying of it himself triggered rare calls for political reform and freedom of speech.

The "Chinese government's battle against the coronavirus has in no way diverted it from its ongoing general campaign to crush all dissenting voices," said Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty International, in an emailed statement.

Another source, who spoke to news agency on the condition of anonymity, said Xu had been arrested in the southern city of Guangzhou.

Guangzhou police did not respond to requests for comment.

Xu went into hiding after authorities broke up a December gathering of intellectuals discussing political reform in the eastern coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian province, prior to the coronavirus crisis.

Over a dozen lawyers and activists were detained or disappeared after the Xiamen gathering, according to rights groups -- and Xu's detention appears linked to his presence at the meeting, explained Poon.

But while on the run, Xu continued to post information on Twitter about rights issues.

On February 4 Xu released an article calling on Xi to step down and criticised his leadership across a range of issues including the US-China trade war, Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests and the coronavirus epidemic, which has now killed nearly 1,900 people.

"Medical supplies are tight, hospitals are filled with patients, and a large number of infected people have no way to be diagnosed," he wrote. "It's a mess."

"The coronavirus outbreak shows just how important values like freedom of expression and transparency are -- the exact values that Xu has long advocated," Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch, told news agency.

But the disappearance of Xu illustrates how the Chinese state "persists in its old ways" by "silencing its critics", she said.

Xu -- who founded a movement calling for greater transparency among high-ranking officials -- previously served a four-year prison sentence from 2013 to 2017 for organising an "illegal gathering".

"That he was a fugitive for so many days while continuing to speak out, that in itself was... a kind of challenge to (Chinese authorities)," said Hua Ze, a long-time friend of Xu who told AFP she lost contact with the Chinese activist on Saturday morning.

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