From the Green Corner

This has got to be the moment of truth

By Viruddhapaakshikaya

My unseen friend, Paakshikaya must be a worried man. That is the conclusion I came to after reading his column in the pages of The Sunday Times last week and I don't blame him either.

After nearly five years in government, the moment of truth has arrived for the PA regime. That should have happened earlier, as far back as January 25 this year but they resorted to unabashed thuggery at Wayamba to prevent that.

Then a statistical miracle averted what would have been an electoral disaster at the elections to five provincial councils a few months ago. But now, the south is due for a vote, repeating the Wayamba tactics is difficult and the hierarchy of the PA knows they cannot delay the inevitable any longer.

This was reflected in the writings of my friend, Paakshikaya, last week. He (or she) refutes my claim that some of his government's key ministers should resign and wants me to discuss the southern polls and nothing else this week. I will indeed oblige you, my friend, but you are likely to regret that you ever made that suggestion and I shall explain why.

If only Paakshikaya had listened to his own Deputy Minister Mahinda Wijesekera, a former JVP student leader on a recent talk show on television, he would have seen the telltale signs of anxiety within his own camp.

Placed alongside UNP MP Vajira Abeywardena and JVPer Vimal Weerawansa, Mr. Wijesekera was an agitated man. But what was curious was his line of attack. His words to Vajira Abeywardena and the UNP were almost benevolent. But, when he was talking about the JVP he was spiteful and vituperative.

Tell me, Paakshikaya, doesn't that tell a story? Hasn't your President resorted to the same tactic while campaigning in the South? Yes, I agree she does utter some barbed remarks against Ranil Wickremesinghe every now and then but those are mere childish taunts compared to the attack on the JVP which she accused of being a terror group trying to raise its head again.

Is this also not reflected in the state media's handling of the arrest of a journalist of a Sinhala newspaper? I really do not know the truth regarding this journalist and that must be left to enforcement authorities and the courts of law to decide.

But when he was detained, the state media screamed in it's headlines that he was a JVP murderer- he had been convicted even before he was formally charged and what's more the JVP was linked to him conspicuously.

Why this sudden change of heart, Paakshikaya? After all, didn't you call the JVP the darlings of democracy not so long ago? Didn't you welcome their re-entry to the mainstream of democratic politics? But now you find them repulsive, even more than the UNP!

I shall explain why, Paakshikaya. The south is unlike any other electorate in this country, Paakshikaya and you know it. It is unlike, say, the western province where you have your traditional strongholds in the Gampaha district. It is unlike the north central province because the electorate is a healthy mix of the rural-mostly in the Hambantota district- and the urban- mostly in the Galle district.

Then, the south is also where the PA began its march to victory in 1994, largely as a result of a miscalculated UNP decision over the Fransiscu fiasco that led to dissolution of the then provincial council.

The south was eager to embrace the PA in 1994 for a variety of reasons. It was home to many families who had lost at least one victim to the violence that reigned at that time. It was also vastly underdeveloped and Chandrika Kumaratunge promised to change all that with grandiose development schemes. And, that was also a time when the JVP re-organization was still in it's infancy and the electorate did not consider them a viable option.

You cannot deny Paakshikaya that, four years on; the circumstances have now changed very much in the south. Your government's rehabilitation of the victims of violence in the south has been far from satisfactory. The grandiose development plans for the region have not borne fruit and the much-publicised Southern Development Authority (SDA) is almost a non-existent entity now.

And the JVP has come of age politically whether we like it or not. Remember what happened in the five provinces which held polls recently, Paakshikaya? The PA obtained just over 40% of the vote even in areas, which it won. The difference between that and a 50% majority was the vote that went to the JVP. The UNP vote was stable at around 40%.

Now, in the south, Paakshikaya, the JVP percentage will be much higher. I'm sure the votes they are taking are not ours- they are all anti-UNP votes that would have otherwise accrued to the PA. Therefore, while the UNP vote will still remain stable at around 40%, the PA vote will dip further.

Now this is why you will not win as predicted on Thursday, Paakshikaya.

I can fully appreciate your reluctance to accept this especially in these columns on the eve of the elections. But, I also know that your own stalwarts have made their sentiments clear about all this recently and voiced their concerns at the highest level- at cabinet meetings.

And that, my friend is the reason why your adorable President is now contemplating implementing the Official Secrets Act. She is scared these concerns and many other issues that are likely to embarrass her administration will be made public because what transpires at cabinet meetings are now regularly reported in the independent media.

This, my friend, must teach you an important lesson- a lesson the UNP has learnt the hard way. Whenever a government tries to tinker with a free media it is tacitly conceding that it is no longer popular and viable. That is what happened to us in the late eighties and early nineties and is happening to you now.

Let me refresh your memory on this issue, Paakshikaya. I think most reasonable people will agree that what propelled your government to power in 1994 was the campaign for the so-called "free" media led against the UNP regime of that time. And you were hardly shy of joining that media bandwagon. Chandrika Kumaratunga, S.B. Dissanayake and Mahinda Rajapakse were in the forefront of it then.

There you were singing the praises of freedom of the press and promising you will never ever try to gag your critics. Your government never won any prizes for keeping its promises but even by its low standards, it has treated the media with disdain, imposing a censorship, assaulting journalists and prosecuting newspaper editors for criminal defamation.

And now, Paakshikaya, to crown it all, on the eve of the southern provincial poll you are thinking of re-introducing the Official Secrets Act just because your President doesn't have the confidence in her ministers that they will keep their mouths shut! And then, Paakshikaya you have the audacity to write in these pages saying the poll will be won by you on Thursday. Let us leave that to the people, shall we, my friend? In the mean time, you can think of what excuses to offer when you find that the PA will not gain control of the south.History, they say, has a habit of repeating itself. The UNP lost the last southern provincial council at the last election. It then lost the general and presidential elections that followed. The PA will lose control of the south on Thursday. Need I say any more about what will happen to it when general and presidential elections are held next year?

From the Blue Corner

Clean up grand old party and out Mr. 'nice' guy

By Paakshikaya

I was hoping I could take a well-deserved holiday this week after campaigning in the south, but the editor of this esteemed newspaper tells me I should air my views this week too- so as not to give an undue advantage to my friend Viruddha Paakshikaya on election week.

I shall oblige but I did tell him that I need not have bothered because the PA will win the southern province, come Thursday and there is no need to doubt that prediction.

In previous weeks I highlighted the deficiencies of the UNP campaign in the south and exposed the various divisions within the party. That was when my friend Viruddha Paakshikaya accused me of conspiring to topple Ranil Wickremesinghe from the UNP leadership!

This week, as the campaign closes I must confess I did take a peek at the UNP campaign in Galle, Matara and Hambantota, attending some of their meetings incognito- and the experience was comforting, purely from a political point of view.

What are the issues that UNP speakers raise at their campaign rallies, Viruddha Paakshikaya? Do they talk of what our government has failed to do or what the UNP hopes to do? No, they do not because I assume they do not have facts to support their arguments. Instead they resort to character assassination of Minister Mangala Samaraweera and President Chandrika Kumaratunga even descending to the level of dragging her children into the issue.

I need not tell you that this is a low level of politicking. It is not that we are against the occasional risqué joke on a political platform, we would even enjoy that. I do remember that our own S.W.R. D. Bandaranaike and the UNP's Dudley Senanayake and Sir John Kotelawela were not averse to such tactics.

But others in the UNP do not seem to care for dignity and decorum. Those of us in the Old guard of the SLFP remember how one of your stalwarts remarked when Mrs. Bandaranaike assumed the Prime Ministerial chair, "that chair will have to be washed every month". So, the UNP does have a history of resorting to the vulgar and the unprintable but still, I feel the campaign in the south has seen more of it than at any other time.

Why I am lodging this protest now, Viruddha Paakshikaya is because you always try to impress upon our collective readership that your leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe is the perfect gentleman. He is the type of man, you seem to say, who would open a door for a lady and would blush a powder pink even if a dirty joke is cracked in his presence. On that score, I rather agree with you, Viruddha Paakshikaya.

But then, why does he permit all these assorted scoundrels to destroy that image? Why doesn't he intervene and put a stop to this nonsense? Is it- and I cannot but resist the temptation and ask- because he is a weak and inefficient leader who has no control over his flock?

Then, we come to the next obvious question- what does Ranil Wickremesinghe himself say at campaign meetings and the answer to that is amusing indeed. I heard him compare the country to the national cricket team that has just completed a disastrous defence of their World Cup. Sri Lanka without the UNP, he says, is like the cricket team without Dave Whatmore! Viruddha Paakshikaya, your leader's arguments only testify to one fact- he has nothing else to say that would convince the voters of the south to vote for the UNP!

The voters of the south, Viruddha Paakshikaya, are aware of their responsibilities. Whatever the armchair pundits in Colombo may say, they recognise though this is a provincial poll to elect provincial representatives, it is also an election that will send an important message to the rest of the country. They also know the outcome of the poll may determine the timing of the General and Presidential elections.

Therefore, they will act cautiously and carefully. Their choice is clear. Do they choose a government which has made many promises, kept some of them and sincerely wants to honour the remaining pledges in the future or, do they choose a party which is clearly demonstrating it is still learning to oppose, let alone govern?Then, many in the UNP- not the PA- are talking of the impact of the JVP- on these elections. I will concede that the JVP has its strongest political base in the south, more so in the Hambantota district. And the party does have an appeal for the radical youth- after all, everyone is a socialist at 20, but then, few are socialists when they are 40!

But those who forecast a massive vote for the JVP are forgetting key facts relating to voting patterns in the south, Viruddha Paakshikaya. Remember the south is also the region which is home to many, many victims of JVP terror. These families will never vote for the JVP again and they will not vote for the UNP either because it was the UNP regime which presided over that era of terror.

Then, don't forget that the PA government has done a considerable amount of development work in the region. Don't forget that hundreds of thousands have found jobs in the province.

Don't forget that ministers Mangala Samaraweera, Mahinda Rajapaksha, Richard Pathirana and Amarasiri Dodangoda are all men of stature and integrity in the government, giving credibility to the PA's pledge to develop the south.

And, not least of all, don't forget that President Chandrika Kumaratunga herself campaigned tirelessly in the region addressing rally after rally, drawing huge crowds demonstrating her charisma is still immensely more than that of her rival-you know who, Viruddha Paakshikaya!

Then, I must also reassure you, Viruddha Paakshikaya, that the election will most certainly be free and fair. You know very well that I was one of the many in the SLFP who felt ashamed at what happened at Wayamba earlier this year and we made every attempt- and succeeded- at preventing a recurrence at the elections to the other five provinces.

Now, we see a sinister attempt to float rumours and speculation that rigging has been planned for Thursday. This is the figment of a fertile imagination in the UNP, Virudhdha Paakshikaya.

The people who float this rumour know they will be vanquished in the voting and therefore are taking precautions, concocting elaborate stories- like one that goons from Mahiyangana have descended in the south to stuff ballot boxes!

You will need better stories than that, Viruddha Paakshikaya, to defend your party's performance when the results are known on Friday. My prediction of course is the PA will retain control of the council comfortably and will win all three districts- Galle, Matara and Hambantota, though the latter will see a closer contest. The UNP will poll less than 45% of the vote and the JVP less than 10%, I daresay.

And, since your leader is resorting to cricketing analogy, some may be tempted to query whether Ranil Wickremesinghe casts himself in the role of Arjuna Ranataunge, the captain everyone is trying to get rid of!

I must forewarn you, Viruddha Paakshikaya these days every cricket lover is fervently asking for a clean up of the cricket administration and wants to see Arjuna Ranatunga out after the disaster at the World Cup. After next Thursday's election, every loyal UNPer will be fervently asking for a clean up of the grand old party and want to see Ranil Wickremesinghe out. And, my guess is, like Arjuna Ranatunge, Ranil Wickremesinghe is more than likely to say, "our boys did pretty well, so, why should I go?"

Cold, cruel torture goes on

By Kishali Pinto Jayawadena

Sri Lankans would do well to spend sometime in quality reading on the Amnesty International (AI) report titled "Sri Lanka; Torture in Custody" released this Tuesday.

The 37 page report by the internationally respected human rights monitoring body details a chilling prevalence of torture in the countr/y, for which the LTTE as well as the Government, are held responsible. An immediate call has been issued to the Government of Sri Lanka to strengthen safeguards against torture and other cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and punish those responsible.

Assuredly, Tuesday's report gives the lie to the pompous and distinctly ridiculous claim made by state representatives last year to the UN Committee on Torture (CAT) that reported incidents of torture in the country: "are but isolated acts carried out by some individuals".

These optimistic minds need to be rudely awakened. As the report underscores, Sri Lanka is currently being subjected to a cold brutalisation of society which now accepts torture of detainees, criminal suspects and persons in custody. The theory is that torture is unequivocally prohibited by the Constitution. The tragedy is that, right now, it is among the: "most common human rights violations in Sri Lanka"

Testimonies obtained by AI from victims of torture, medical certificates corroborating these testimonies, judgments of the Supreme Court and reports of various committees and commissions of inquiry illustrate the extent of the problem.

Witness the following account of K.A. Sisira Kumara, a mechanic from Makola, Gampaha district who was tortured on 07/12/1998 by four officers of the Sapugaskanda police station after he was arrested on the suspicion of having stolen a car radio. " They took me upstairs….in that room, they first kicked me and hit me all over the body. Thereafter, they tied both my hands behind me and tied my two fingers with a thread and tied a rope to the fingers and told me to stand on a chair. One of the officers took a rope and tied it to my hand and put it on the hook and then tied the end of the rope on to something. Then all of a sudden, he pushed the chair back and I was hanging and suffered immense bodily and mental pain." He further described how they swung him around by pulling his hair, then suddenly let go so he was going around in circles. They hit him with a two inch thick and three feet long white pole and kicked him.

At one point, the rope snapped and he fell to the ground but was tied up in a similar way. He was given the same treatment the next night as well. "I could not even bend my hands. One of the policemen brought the white pole and had it aligned to my hands and straightened my hands forcibly. It caused me great pain"

The AI report also highlights the case of Pradeep Kumar Dharmaratne, the Aranayake provincial reporter for the Dinamina newspaper who was assaulted by the Aranayake police for critiquing their inactivity in preventing the trade of illicit liquor in the area.

Meanwhile, the greater focus of the report is on torture, including rape of persons taken in as terrorist suspects. Instances of torture of Tamil people not only by the services but by several other armed Tamil groups fighting alongside the security forces are documented in horrific detail.

On the other hand, members of the LTTE are held responsible for the torture and killing of persons deprived of their liberty. Torture methods used by members of the LTTE include hanging prisoners upside down and beating them, making them inhale chilli fumes, inserting pins and nails under their fingernails and beating them with rods. Tragically, the documentation highlights reports of ill treatment of children as young as 14 recruited to the armed group against their will and torture of children suspected of being LTTE by the forces.

What now of government responsibility? AI itself acknowledges the difficult law and order situation prevailing in the country, both in terms of the going conflict and the apparent increase in common criminal activities over the past few years. It has been made clear however exactly where the buck stops. "Abuses by opposition groups or rising crime can never provide a justification for governments to disregard their obligations to respect human rights, including the right not to be tortured from which no derogation is permitted under any circumstances…………." the report reminds.

AI concerns in this respect are understandable. The question is not whether the Sri Lanka Government deliberately encourages practice of torture. The question is why are institutional, legal and political factors that permit torture kept in force? The question is why this prevalence of such incidents in the country despite the recent enactment of laws including the Torture Act? The question indeed is more of the sins of omission rather than commission.

Take the Torture Act for example. The Act passed by Parliament in 1994 makes torture punishable by imprisonment for a term not less than seven years and not exceeding ten years and a fine. Responsibility for prosecution is given to the Attorney General's Department with the victim having little choice in the matter. In a grandiloquent but somewhat puzzling comment, the 1998 CAT report points out that since the Act was passed only four years back, no significant difficulties have been encountered in implementing the Act but that it is too early to undertake such an analysis.

The truth is, of course, that no difficulties have yet been experienced because the Act itself has remained virtually dormant. Responding to increasing criticism however, some action appears to be at last underway as seen by recent reports that charges have been filed under the Torture Act against several police officers. Seven indictments are reportedly before the High Courts arising from eight judgments by the Supreme Court during 1997 and 1998 where the court found police officers responsible for torture, awarded compensation and recommended further investigation.

AI has meanwhile called for an investigative body fully independent of the police to open criminal investigations whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe that an act of torture has been committed.

Apart from the bypassing of the Torture Act, certain provisions under emergency and PTA continue to aid and abet the practice of torture. These include the absence of any or minimum safeguards relating to conditions of detention, admissibility of police confessions to senior police officers, (though conviction on a mere confession is rare) and doing away with the normal procedure in relation to deaths in custody in respect of inquests, postmortem examinations, disposal of bodies and judicial inquiry.

The open use of unauthorised places of detention despite an official prohibition to this effect also facilitates torture of detainees.

Added to the whole is the inefficacy of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) about which the AI report diplomatically states no more than that: "the HRC has been slow to make a significant impact on the human rights situation in the country". In reality, the HRC has proved lamentably incapable of fulfilling its role as a powerful rights monitor.

In April 1999, the Government announced its intention of increasing the budget of the HRC from Rs 14,235 million to Rupees 25.1 million " to support the planned expansion of scope, intensity and the focus of the Commission's activities".

It is only to be hoped that with the budgetary increase, some dramatic transformation of its functioning would also be evident.

Tuesday's release of the AI report with detailed recommendations as to what is necessary to remedy current human rights abuses could not have been timed for a better moment.

Sri Lanka's second periodic report under CAT is already overdue. The critical nature of the AI report carries with it, its own message.

In the absence of actual serious commitment to making things better, clever monkeying around with words and statistics may not help us this time around.

inside the glass house:

New perspectives in conflict resolution

India, which has consistently maintained that the disputed territory of Kashmir is a domestic problem, last week rejected any form of UN "intervention" following its military skirmishes with Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee predictably rebuffed an offer by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to send one of his trouble-shooters to the region: a request that originally came from Pakistan.

"Send the envoy to Pakistan," Vajpayee was quoted as saying. "We don't need any envoys here."

India's stand is consistent with that of Sri Lanka which has also rigorously maintained that its own Tamil separatist war in the north does not warrant any UN intervention or outside political mediation.

Just after the series of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan last year, the Secretary-General sent a special envoy, Assistant Secretary-General Alvoro de Soto, to South Asia in order to assess the political and military environment in the region.

De Soto was welcomed in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But he was cold-shouldered by India which rejected his request to visit New Delhi on the ground that it was not the "appropriate time."

India felt that no UN envoy should be permitted even to stick his foot in the door because it would be a bad precedent. The Indians surmised that if you give the UN an inch — before long there would be a contingent of blue-helmeted peacekeepers at your doorstep.

Annan himself has been planning a goodwill tour of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ever since the region went nuclear.

But the Indians, conscious of the fact that he may raise the two politically sensitive issues of Kashmir and nuclear weapons, sent him a blunt but polite message: New Delhi is not really ready for him. In short: Don't call us. We will call you.

As a result, Annan's trip to South Asia, originally announced late last year, is in limbo.

Last week the 54-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) urged the UN "to play a greater role in Kashmir so as to put an end to the escalating conflict in the region, in accordance with UN principles and the UN Charter."

The UN has so far remained helpless unable to assume any role, however passive and altruistic, against the wishes of a member state.

But the longstanding argument— advocated both by India and Sri Lanka— that any unilateral UN intervention would be a violation of a country's national sovereignty is being gradually chipped away.

Asked which is more important: human rights or the sovereignty of nations, Annan came out strongly in favour of the former.

"There is an emerging international law that is making it clearer and clearer that governments cannot hide behind sovereignty and abuse the human rights of their people and expect the rest of the world not to do anything about it," he said.

Annan was specifically responding to the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo which he described as a problem that is "fundamentally a human rights problem."

The Secretary-General's statement was also particularly relevant to both India and Sri Lanka where the warring parties accuse the two governments of human rights violations — although not on the scale and intensity as in Yugoslavia.

Meanwhile, in the US, rightwing political groups have criticised Annan for meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, two Arab heads of state who are on a US political hit list.

Asked whether he would negotiate with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic — as he did with the Iraqi and the Libyan, Annan was firm: "Let me say that in these situations, whether one is dealing with peace, one is dealing with negotiations or one is dealing with humanitarian activities, you deal with those in authority."

"We have to be realistic. I think there is time for realism and there is time for purity. We sometimes have to deal with aggressors and even shake their hands in order to save lives," he argued. "Hopefully, that does not include Velupillai Prabhakaran," one Sri Lankan diplomat commented wryly.

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