federalidea.com

Full text of media release by National Peace Council of Sri Lanka:

The suicide bombing in a busy street in Colombo’s commercial area of Fort, targeting buses in which riot police were stationed have killed at least 10 and injured another 95 including civilians passing by in the vicinity. The National Peace Council condemns this attack which has the hallmarks of the LTTE.

[A glass plate protecting a statue of Buddha is damaged at a temple near the scene of the bomb explosion in Colombo May 16, 2008-pic. Reuters via Yahoo! News by Buddhika Weerasinghe]

Sadly the blast took place in the heart of Colombo’s business centre, in close proximity to the Hilton hotel and opposite a Buddhist temple. It took place at a time in which millions of Sri Lankans are preparing to celebrate Vesak, the day of the birth, Enlightenment and passing of Lord Buddha, whose foremost precepts were to not take life and to meet hatred with love. Ironically, the police personnel were stationed for riot duty in view of the inauguration of the administration of the newly elected Eastern Provincial Council at the Presidential Secretariat nearby and a demonstration by the opposition parties against the manner those same elections had been held.

The Provincial Council elections and the local government elections held earlier in the east were deeply flawed.They highlighted the disappointing status of democracy in Sri Lanka despite over seventy five years of universal franchise. The people living in the Eastern province failed to experience free and fair elections that could have facilitated a credible process of devolution of power. It is now the responsibility of the government and provincial administration to ensure that development of the east will go hand in hand with the protection of human rights and human security in these areas.

The National Peace Council expresses our condolences to the victims and their families. We call upon both the Government and the LTTE to end their reliance on a military solution and, in this Vesak period, to contemplate the path of negotiations based on human values and principles of non-violence to ensure the best interests of the people they claim to represent.

Executive Director
On behalf of Governing Council

National Peace Council of Sri Lanka

“Funnily enough, I enjoy the fight,” he said in an interview. “It’s true. And if I had to give it up I wouldn’t know what to do.” A practicing Anglican Christian of Sri Lankan descent, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam was born in 1926, was raised partly in what is now Malaysia and received his law degree from University College in London in 1951.

Starting a Party, and Hoping to Crash Singapore’s Parliament Again:

by Seth Mydans

IT might seem late for a fresh start, but that is the story of J. B. Jeyaretnam’s life, a political intruder who refuses to stay away.

J B Jeyaretnam Last month he was back after six years of political banishment, the grand old man of political opposition ready to joust again with Singapore’s immovable political establishment.

[J. B. Jeyaretnam]

“We are just beginning!” he exclaimed at a small news conference announcing the formation of a new party, the Reform Party.

It was an unusual phrase to hear from an 82-year-old man who has been running for office-when the courts would allow him-since 1971.

But Mr. Jeyaretnam seems unable to stop pushing, a man at the mercy of his own force of personality, certain of his principles, uninhibited and seemingly immune to intimidation.

He paid his way out of bankruptcy a year ago, after having been convicted in 2001 of defaming members of the ruling party; ordered to pay damages; barred from the practice of law; and expelled for the second time from Parliament.

He says he has lost count of the number of times he has been sued for defamation for his political statements.

“We in Singapore are denied the rights to speak up, to tell the government to change course,” he said at the news conference.

He widened his eyes and smiled a puckish smile, displaying three large, widely spaced teeth, and rededicated himself to the rescue of his nation.

“The most important thing,” he said, is that what we have to bring about-and I’m saying it quite seriously-is the liberation of our people, the empowerment of our people.”

It seemed an outsize vision for this lone crusader at this late stage. He said 10 people had enrolled in his party; others had declined to step out into the cold light of open opposition.

But it is not so much his mission or his party that drew reporters, but the phenomenon of Mr. Jeyaretnam himself.

His persistence and his defeats are woven through Singapore’s history as a sort of counterpoint to its steady rise to affluence and economic success. In its 42 years, this city-state of 4.5 million people has built what its founder, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, in a recent interview called “a first world oasis in a third world region.”

Most people accept restrictions on civil liberties and free speech as the price of their material well-being. Few people, even the discontents, call for fundamental change as Mr. Jeyaretnam does.

“We are quite narrow minded,” a 16-year-old high school student said, asking that her name not be used when talking about Mr. Jeyaretnam. “We think about getting a degree, getting a good job, that’s all. There aren’t any political discussions. It’s not really our culture. We just study and that’s it.”

WHATEVER his support, and whether or not he held a seat, Mr. Jeyaretnam has represented the idea of an opposition in a system that offers little role for one.

For Singapore’s first 16 years as an independent nation, since 1965, Parliament did just fine as a monopoly of the People’s Action Party of Mr. Lee. In 1981, after what he says were half a dozen attempts to win a seat, Mr. Jeyaretnam crashed Parliament’s gate in a special election as its first, and noisiest, opposition member.

His wife, Margaret, whom he had met when they were law students in Britain, died of breast cancer a year before the election, and it is one of Mr. Jeyaretnam’s regrets that she did not live to see him win.

Mr. Jeyaretnam’s relationship with the legislature since then has been defined by the establishment’s moves to eject him and his own attempts to get back in.

He lost his first parliamentary seat in 1986 after being fined and jailed for a month, when he was convicted of making a false declaration of his party’s accounts, a charge he says was politically motivated.

Of the five general elections since then he has been legally permitted to run in only one, in 1997. Though he did not win, he earned a special nonconstituency seat as “top loser” under election laws.

He held that seat until his latest conviction for defamation in a suit whose plaintiffs included Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister at the time.

The next election is due by 2011 and Mr. Jeyaretnam plans to run again “if I’m still here.” He added, in his commanding voice, “I’m 82 and still fit.”

The People’s Action Party is a brilliantly successful political meritocracy that has all but monopolized the political talent here.

And that, says Mr. Lee, is the only way it can be.

“We do not have the numbers to ensure that we’ll always have an A Team and an alternative A Team,” he said once, when asked why Singapore did not have a vigorous opposition. “I’ve tried it. It’s just not possible.”

Since Mr. Jeyaretnam opened the door, there have never been more than four opposition members of Parliament. Today, only two of the chamber’s 84 members represent opposition parties, and unlike Mr. Jeyaretnam, they take a decorous and cooperative approach.

Mr. Jeyaretnam’s flamboyance has clearly irritated Mr. Lee over the years, and the government-friendly newspaper Today recently called their relationship one of the world’s longest-running political feuds. “His weakness was his sloppiness,” Mr. Lee wrote in his autobiography, “From Third World to First.” “He rambled on and on, his speeches apparently unprepared. When challenged on the detailed facts, he crumbled.

“Jeyaretnam,” he writes, “is a poseur, always seeking publicity, good or bad.”

HE does indeed love the limelight, but it is far more than a pose. Like with some dissidents in other nations, Mr. Jeyaretnam’s single-minded pursuit of a moral vision seems to be a compulsion.

“Funnily enough, I enjoy the fight,” he said in an interview. “It’s true. And if I had to give it up I wouldn’t know what to do.” A practicing Anglican Christian of Sri Lankan descent, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam was born in 1926, was raised partly in what is now Malaysia and received his law degree from University College in London in 1951.

His son Philip has followed him into law and is president of the Law Society of Singapore. His other son, Kenneth, is an economist in London. Mr. Jeyaretnam says they were among the benefactors who helped pay his way out of bankruptcy.

Back in Singapore with his British law degree, Mr. Jeyaretnam rose quickly in the legal establishment, serving as a magistrate, district judge, prosecuting counsel, registrar of the Supreme Court and chief of the Subordinate Judiciary, a position of status and influence.

He resigned in 1963 at the age of 37 and went into private practice because, he said, “I was disillusioned, completely.” In 1971, he made the first of his many unsuccessful runs for Parliament.

At the news conference he was asked the question that lies at the heart of people’s fascination with him: why he continues after all these years of what seems like futility.

“I am concerned with reform and with people’s thinking about the real values in life,” he said. “Why are we here? What is the purpose of our being?” [courtesy: NYTimes.com]

By M. S. M. Ayub

It is now time for the political parties to use the Eastern provincial council election results to justify their policies and stands. The New Left Front says that the results point to the fact that power devolution must be carried out on ethnic lines and the JHU views that the Eastern people have totally rejected terrorism. The JVP’s Wimal faction one day prior to their announcement of the National Freedom Front, their new party, said in a statement that JVP’s vote bank in the East had been eroded.

Government’s claim that the results are an endorsement of its actions is in some places contradicted by the very results. For instance the UPFA has been defeated in Mutur where one of the three symbolically significant areas in the liberation of the East, Sampur is located. Interestingly Government was defeated in Mutur by the UNP, a party that repeatedly scorned the Government’s war efforts in the East. One might question as to whether the people in Sampur, Mutur and Eechilampattu areas did not want to endorse the liberation from the grips of the LTTE.

The reality is otherwise. They probably approve the government’s war victory in the area for they are free from the LTTE harassments and especially their lands in places like Manirasakulam are free now, though they did not want armed clashes in their area for fear of being caught in the crossfire and being rendered homeless. The majority of people in that area are Muslims who are more loyal to the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the sense of ethnic allegiance has surmounted their willingness to express approval to Government military victories at the election.

As far as the Sinhalese who voted for the UNP are concerned, no sane person can claim that they were opposed to or did not desire the troops gaining an upper hand in the battles in Thopigala and Kanjikudichchaaru jungles and villages around Sampur. But their political allegiance has excelled their patriotism.

The majority of the Tamils in the East this time have voted with the UPFA-TMVP alliance and this too is being interpreted by the leaders of the Government as an endorsement of their war victories or the liberation of the East, as they call it. Had the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which supports the LTTE contested and had the Tamil people in the East voted with the TMVP in the same way as they have voted this time, then it would have been a clear manifestation of their endorsement of the liberation of the East. What really has happened is that Tamils have voted to the Tamils who are prominent in the fray, irrespective of whether they are fighting for or against the Tamil Eelam.

Forty per cent of voters in the east have not cast their votes for reasons known only to them. What prevented them from voting? Fear of violence, disgust over the political system, protest against the Government’s military campaign, fear of LTTE reprisals or the call by the TNA to abstain from voting may have been the reasons. Therefore it is too early for the Government to rejoice over the approval of the liberation of the East by the majority of the people in the East.

Provincial Councils (PC) as well as District Development Councils (DDC) were brought about to solve the ethnic problem in the long run and also to impart the message of democracy to and build confidence in the Tamil people in the short run by way of power sharing. However the very mechanism has been manipulated by the ruling parties for their short term political ends shattering the confidence, if there is any, in Tamil people as well as the other communities in the very concept of democracy.

At the first and the only election in 1981 for the DDCs, the first ever power sharing mechanism in the effort to solve the national question, thugs transported to Jaffna from the south by the ministers of the UNP Government of President J.R. Jayawadene went berserk chasing away polling agents and voters and stuffing ballot boxes. They also burnt the Jaffna library, one of the best in south East Asia and six ballot boxes went missing and were never located.

The last meeting of the TULF campaign for that election at Nachchimar Koviladi in Jaffna on May 31, 1981 was disrupted by the goons of the ruling party and police following PLOTE gunmen shot dead two policemen injuring another two at the meeting site. Government by its folly could not win over the Tamil people for its first ever power sharing programme.

The first Jaffna DDC election in1981 and the first Easrtern Provincial Council election in 2008 are two elections where the ruling parties used undemocratic means in the process to inculcate love for democracy in those who have resorted to violence to win political rights.

It is very vital for any government to free the Pillayan group from their armed life and bring them into democracy, not the one that is taught in schools and universities, but at least into the democracy that is followed by the ministers of our country. Although ridiculous to call it democracy, it is better than resorting to jungle warfare in the name of a community and kill members of other communities in hundreds while being hunted down by the ever growing security forces.

Government’s support for the Pillayan group is acceptable in that perspective though its motive most probably is not that but just to gain the former terrorists’ expertise in terror and surveillance in its war effort against the LTTE. However there is always a risk of lower rank cadres of the group re-joining the LTTE in the event they get fed up or annoyed with the democracy they have newly embraced. They were for a long time in a utopian separate state which filled them with hopes and enthusiasm and if they poise to break link with the new-found democracy due to the maladministration, corruption and lethargy of the Government which are rampant, they, unlike the youth in other parts of the country, have an option, the utopia.

The LTTE is eagerly looking for avenues to re-surface in the Eastern Province which they call “Then Thamileelam” or Southern Tamil Eelam and they might be vying to win over their former cadres currently with Pillayan. Unless the Government succeeds in retaining the former rebels in the East occupied in some work they consider fruitful and satisfied, there is every possibility that the short-term aspirations of both theirs and the LTTE might meet and coincide.

However the leaders of the Karuna-Pillayan group have no option but to be assimilated with the present political system in the country, however much it is corrupt, for there is no room for them to go back to the LTTE’s fold. LTTE would not pardon them even if they genuinely desire to re-join the Tamil Eelam struggle dissociating again with the so-called democratic process. Ordinary members of the Pillayan group would be pardoned and absorbed into the ranks of the LTTE as the outfit needs an Eastern regiment in its efforts to re-capture and annex the East with the North.

Therefore it is imperative for any Government to give Pillayan group some kind of administrative responsibility so that the cadres of the group in the long run would be assimilated and absorbed by the non-insurgent ordinary society. Since the UPFA-TMVP coalition has won the Eastern Provincial Council election the Government’s task in this regard has become uncomplicated.

It is reported that the Muslim ministers have collectively requested the President to appoint Hisbullah as the CM. Some of them were actually not voicing for Hisbullah but they fear that the SLMC would ridicule them in the event Pillayan becomes the CM. And also they have reportedly threatened to withdraw from the portfolios they are holding, in that event. Although this was good news for the media it was sure no ministers, be they Muslims, Tamils or Sinhalese would resign their portfolios for another person, especially given the way some of them joined the Government. And Hisbullah also would not be in a position to go against the Government.

On the other hand, had the Government appointed Hisbullah Chief Minister, Pillayan also would not be able to oppose it in a decisive manner, since he too has no alternative in the present circumstance other than to stick to the Government, for he gets supplies for his armed cadres totally from the Government. Therefore President Mahinda Rajapaksa is in position to take the cudgel against any of the both any time. [dailymirror.lk]

“With a terrible record of torture and disappearance, Sri Lanka doesn’t deserve a seat on the UN human rights council. It should be voted out,” says the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, in a comment that appeared on the daily Guardian, U.K., May 15th edition.

[Archbishop Desmond Tutu]

No right to be there:
“With a terrible record of torture and disappearance, Sri Lanka doesn’t deserve a seat on the UN human rights council. It should be voted out.”

Full text of the article follows:

It would seem self-evident that a country which tortures and kidnaps its own people has no place on the world’s leading human rights body. Apparently not: Sri Lanka, despite repeated criticism for its human rights record, is running for re-election to the UN human rights council, with a vote to be held in New York on May 21.

Governments owe it to Sri Lankan human rights victims-and to victims of human rights abuses around the world-to ensure that the Sri Lankan bid fails. This will be an important test of the 47-member council, to show that the UN’s standards for it will be honoured.

If Sri Lanka is defeated this year, that will be important not just for the Sri Lankan human rights leaders who, at great personal risk, have called for Sri Lanka’s defeat, and for Sri Lankan civil society. In combination with the humiliating defeat last year of Belarus, it will send an important signal for the future: governments with track records of serious human rights abuses do not belong on a body set up to protect the victims of such abuses.

Sri Lanka has failed to honour its pledges of upholding human rights standards and cooperating with the UN since joining the council two years ago. Indeed, its human rights record has worsened during that time. The Sri Lankan idea of cooperation with the UN, meanwhile, has been to condemn senior UN officials (including the high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, and the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes) as “terrorists” or “terrorist sympathisers.”

The systematic abuses by Sri Lankan government forces are among the most serious imaginable. Government security forces summarily remove their own citizens from their homes and families in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Torture and extrajudicial killings are widespread. When the human rights council was established, UN members required that states elected must themselves “uphold the highest standards” of human rights. On that count, Sri Lanka is clearly disqualified.

The separatist Tamil Tigers have used despicable tactics in their war against the government, including frequent suicide bombings. But that can in no way excuse the scale of government abuses.

Fortunately, the news from the council is not all bad. Countries running from other regions of the world have credible claims to be leaders in promoting human rights. Argentina and Chile, which suffered terribly from torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the past, have become leading supporters of human rights, and now seek to join the council. On the African slate, there are some true human rights leaders, and-thankfully-no candidacy from Zimbabwe or Sudan. In the entire world, Sri Lanka stands out as the most clearly unqualified state seeking election to the council this year, and the place where things are getting unambiguously worse.

Defeating the Sri Lankan candidacy would be a comfort to the people of Sri Lanka. It would place international pressure on the government to respect human rights, and to accept a UN human rights monitoring mission, which it has stubbornly refused. It would help make the council a place where true human rights leaders in all regions can help lead the world towards greater respect for human life and human dignity. An outcome, in short, that would benefit those who care about human rights in the world. Any other result would be a travesty.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Courtesy: Guardian, UK-[No right to be there]

By Kusal Perera

The much pampered and wholly manipulated elections for the de-merged Eastern Province came to a close during the week end. The government insists it was a free and fair election and said so even during the voting. Statements made on behalf of the government says the victory it gained proves the people in the East have pinned their faith on democracy. JHU boss Champika says even the Tamil people have joined in defeating Eealm separatism. Thus the government would now want the South to bear all its corruption, mismanagement and plundering till the war is won in the North.

The opposition rejects the election almost in unison and cries foul. The JVP and the SLMC / UNP alliance said so from the start. The UNP and Rauf Hakeem came out very clearly in rejecting the results as totally rigged. Election monitoring groups kept pumping news of numerous incidents of thuggery, assault, vote rigging and stuffing all through the day the polling was on.The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) reported over 80 instances of severe rigging where they said voting would have to be cancelled and re-elections held in those booths. Lanka Polls Watch (LPW) claimed the elections had been so violent it does not reflect the people’s decision and therefore the whole election has to be declared null and void.

As for the quality of the elections held, the Opposition and the Election Monitoring groups are of the same mind, though PAFFREL would say the violence this time is a countinuation of election violence from all previous regimes. Granting it is so, the fact that this election was totally rigged does not in any way make any of those violations simple and pardonable. “So what now ?” is the most important question.

Now the Opposition could, if it is realy serious about rejecting the election results on the basis of violent rigging, publicly declare they would not accept the results and therefore decide not to take oaths and sit in the Provincial Councils. The argument is very simple and logical if argued as follows. The government promised a free and fair election. Though with very serious doubts, the Opposition decided to give the government a chance to prove its bona fide offer and therefore contested. Since the government went back on its promise and brutally suppressed the democratic right of the people in electing their own representatives, the Opposition decides to withdraw its participation in the PC. Thus the decision, not to take oaths and sit in the Council.

With such politics, the role of moitoring bodies too would fold up with a report or two and may be with a media conference that would provide many theoretical arguments. While all those heavy decisions are deliberated here in Colombo, what would happen to the people in the East ? Will their lives change for the better after the PC is established ? Will they get those powers as defined in the 13th Amendment and as promised by the government ?

On May 08th in the ‘Daily Mirror’ under the caption, ‘What makes free and fair different in the East’ I noted with much disgust that “Either way, Pillayan winning or losing, numbers of election related violence increasing or decreasing, elections being free and fair or heavily rigged, East will not have democracy under a PC that would any way have to maintain a heavy military presence to exist.” That most unfortunately seems the only option left now, after the elections. With Trincomalee becoming the provincial capital of the East, the LTTE proved it could penetrate Trinco’s most secured area with the sinking of the Navy ship within the harbour itself. There were also reports of artillery firing between the LTTE and the TMVP in the Verugal Aru area on the day of the elections. Thus it is clear the TMVP not only carries personal arms but has heavy weapons as well. It is also very imminent the TMVP PC members would now carry their arms and openly too as security for themselves. Most of them would have heavy presence of their own armed cadres with justifications that they need to have security in the face of LTTE threats. State security forces would have to maintain all the barricades, all search operations and all other security measures to help the PC function amidst LTTE ambushes and sporadic attacks. The threat of the LTTE, the presence of heavy military deployments and armed Pillayan cadres would continue without a change.

There is also the possibility of TMVP transferring the chief administrative functions of the PC to Batticaloa, as it is there they have a formidable armed presence. It would also mean, the opposition in the Eastern PC would not have the democratic right to do politics in any of the 03 districts, without arms. Yet it’s a fact the SLMC / UNP men are not made for such politics. They would thus lose any possibility of opposing the Pillyan rule in the PC.

Within that context that would certainly evolve, what relevance is there for the 13th Amendment and for its full implementation as promised by the President ? For sure, there is absolutely no chance for any devolution, even to the extent one sees in the South. Chief Minister of the NC Province, Bertie Premalal, wanted the people in the East to vote for the UPFA as that would give them the benefit of having President’s development projects in the East. It’s thus the President who would decide the course of development, depending on which way the PC goes. That would be how the 13th Amendment is to be fully implemented.

Again, just 03 days before the Eastern elections, 05 schools in the East were taken over by the central government through a gazette notification. Although the 13th Amendment does have provisions for such central government interventions, if the government is politically determined to devolve all powers available under the 13th Amendment, then the government would not take over institutions that are already under the provincial administration. That is not what the government would be doing. The government has already moved in with the Oluvil port development work. There is that much marketed “Negenahira Udanaya” [Awakenig of the East] and then “Maga Neguma and Gama Neguma” [Road and village improvement programmes] going East. All of them not only mean centralising whatever development the government is talking of, but also taking them under the Rajapaksa family. That simply is the petty mindset of Sinhala centralism.The JHU reacted immediately to the 13th Amendment proposal with their own opposition to devolution and said, “no police powers to the East and even land must not be devolved”. The JVP with their version of “Indian expansionism” wants the 13th Amendment proposal dropped from the APRC. The government would use all of it to prune the 13th Amendment and the way ahead is too conspicuous that it needs no forecasting.

Who would oppose such Sinhala centralism ? Not the Opposition for sure. The UNP that tries to safely avoid the issue of devolution would not want to campaign for the 13th Amendment. Right now the UNP is searching for escape routes to get back to a more Sinhala platform thinking they could also compete with the JHU and the government for Sinhala votes. In the East too they played for the Sinhala votes. Ravi Karunanayake’s stress on the D.S. Senanayake era as one who improved the East, was for the consumption of the Sinhala votes in the East. He little knew that it was this same DS who changed the demographic pattern in the East against Tamil representation. So was Ranil W’s last minute statement on the GSP+. He wanted to promote himself as the saviour of the Sinhala labour in the apparel industry, at the expense of all HR violations, for all those violations effect mostly the Tamil polity.

Therefore, in this society no political leadership would want the 13th Amendment implemented in full. Not even Pillayan who would only want power, which he has gained by joining the government and his project would have little or no relevance to the people in the East and their lives in a devolved province. For them, as before, it would be living under a gun and no power no matter who holds it above them. [dailymirror.lk]

by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
[Secretary-General, Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process]

The Peace Secretariat profoundly regrets the murder of Ms Maheswary Velautham during a visit to Jaffna to see her sick mother. Given the plethora of deaths this country suffers from, the Secretariat has not been accustomed to issuing statements of sympathy and sorrow for individual cases. We regret the lives of known and unknown, of civilian and military, and even the lives of our fellow citizens who have been conscripted or deluded into fighting intransigently for a terrorist movement. Soldiers or ministers, rebels or the over hundred civilians who fell prey to suicide bombs and other instruments of terror in the south in the last four months, they are all Sri Lankans and it did not seem to make sense to bewail them individually.

[Maheswary Velautham]

Maheswary is one such individual, martyred to terrorist intransigence, but the day and the manner of her death are symbolic of the uphill struggle Sri Lanka faces if we are to restore the pluralist democracy that we need. It occurred just after the election of a Provincial Council that should be able to fulfil the diverse demands of development in the East, whilst maintaining the unity of the country. It occurred shortly after the appointment of a Task Force for the North, that would be able to promote the needs and aspirations of the people there who have suffered for too long from totalitarianism and terror, during which specific measures for development fell by the wayside. These are positive steps, but they will be subject all the way to spoilers, the spoilers who cannot take electoral defeat, even though they deprived the country of elections for a decade in the eighties and thus nurtured terrorism in North and South, and the spoilers who, springing from that bitter birth, believe that a fight to the death is the only option open to them.

Maheswary’s murder occurred too on the day when Sri Lanka was subject to the Universal Periodic Review with regard to Human Rights, for which the country had put itself forward in terms of its membership of the Human Rights Council. Ironically, it brought home to those worried about continuing violence in Sri Lanka the root cause of all this violence, the terrorism that victimizes everybody, but most obviously the vulnerable. Thus she was killed when she went up in haste to see her sick mother, leaving aside the security given to her because she believed that, amongst her own relations, she would not be in danger. We recall now what happened to Mr Kadirgamar, who did not allow the homes of his neighbours to be searched, in the belief that they were like him and could be relied upon.

The Sri Lankan delegation had explained that it accepted that there had been a period in which human rights were in grave danger, but it pointed out that the situation had improved over the last year, as statistics made clear, with regard to disappearances and deaths, and in particular those of journalists, which had been highlighted in questions. It was noted that 2006 had seen much internecine warfare, given the brutal manner in which the LTTE had treated former militants after ensuring that they were disarmed under the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement. The Peace Secretariat had noted that these groups had no redress at all, since under the CFA complaints to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission had to be forwarded by only the government and the LTTE, and unfortunately in those days the government thought that Tamils were not its responsibility. More recently the Secretariat had appointed Tamil monitors to Vavuniya and Trincomalee and Amparai, areas in which the 2002 government had abandoned all Tamils to the LTTE.

It is in such a context that the government has had an uphill struggle to ensure the reintegration of moderate Tamils into the political process. It has taken an enormous amount of courage for such moderate Tamils to resume active participation in democracy and discussion, through the All Party Representative Committee, through elections, through involvement in executive action, in the Cabinet and now through the Task Force for the North. The courage of those who have taken this path against all odds, those in the TULF, the EPDP, PLOTE, the EPRLF-P, the TMVP and other groups, and so many individuals, must never be forgotten. The commitment of the government, that such moderate Tamils, groups and individuals, must never be abandoned again remains absolute, and it is the least that can be done for the brave lady of whom we are now bereft.

At a personal level, the Secretariat worked closely with Maheswary Velautham, as she is currently the nominee of the EPDP to the APRC. She was the legal adviser to the Hon Douglas Devananda, Leader of the EPDP, and was a lawyer and forceful Human Rights Activist. As the only woman member of the APRC, she was more than capable of holding her own in discussion, and was a strong, vibrant and enthusiastic participant at its deliberations.

She was deeply committed to a political resolution of the conflict and to a united Sri Lanka where all ethnic and religious communities would live together in peace and dignity. In a sense she was a true reflection of a multi cultural Sri Lanka, speaking all three languages – Tamil, Sinhala and English – and moving easily with people from all communities and districts.

Passionate in seeking to meet the aspirations of the people in the North and the East whom her party represented, within a context of democratic pluralism, she could speak poignantly and forcefully in Sinhalese too. She spoke eloquently for unity in diversity and for the full implementation of the 13th Amendment, in a speech she made at a press conference the APRC gave following the presentation of its first report on the implementation of the 13th amendment to the President on 23 January 2008.

In addition to her deep and vibrant political and social commitment, Ms Velautham was closely involved in meditation and spiritualism and often said that this was an effective way to reach an understanding of one’s self as well as others. It was also she thought a pathway to love and peace for all humanity. She was an admirable example of an accomplished, humane, articulate, courageous and professional Sri Lankan woman.

Two weeks ago, asked to be part of the Sri Lankan delegation to the Commonwealth Youth Ministers Conference, she spoke passionately on an area in which she felt the expansion of opportunities was essential. Her vibrancy and sense of humour and camaraderie at that conference exemplified her thorough commitment to service through sympathetic involvement. She will be sorely missed, yet another of the brave Tamil moderates who are the principal targets of terrorist totalitarianism. We can only hope that the democratic pluralism for which she stood up so fatefully will go from strength to strength, nurtured by such unswerving commitment.