Written by Sunderapandyan.
Community cheer leader, leisure sportsman, web developer & innovator – Sunderapandyan is hard to pin down. He reports about critical South Asian issues to the world.
Sri Lanka is on the road to a “Zimbabwe-style dictatorship or rule by a military junta like that of Burma” committed to snuffing out dissent, according to the Sonali Samarasinghe, widow of Lasantha Wickrematunga, the crusading Sri Lankan editor who was shot dead last month.
Mrs Wikrematunga
“I was increasingly under threat. I went into hiding and then decided to leave Sri Lanka. It was too poisonous and dangerous to stay. We are being labelled terrorists by state media for expressing concern for civilians killed in a warzone. Sri Lanka is sliding towards some kind of mono-ethnic dictatorship where minorities and dissent is not welcome. It could soon be Zimbabwe or Burma,” said Mrs Wikrematunga.
Almost 30 journalists have left Sri Lanka after being “threatened”. Reporters have been detained without charge and last month the biggest private television station was ransacked for not beaming enough “patriotic broadcasts”.
Last week, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed Prof. Sisira Jeyasooriya an ethnic Sinhalese regarding the recent military developments in Sri Lanka. Asserting that Tamils have suffered “systematic discrimination practised against them” by past Sinhala Governments, Prof. Sisira Jeyasooriya, associate professor of Economics at La Trobe University in Victoria said that Colombo’s military victories are unlikely to bring violence to an end, as the Tigers will resort to guerilla warfare, and added that the Government is engaged in false propaganda to ensure its survival.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCuy3V653As]
Meanwhile in USA, Mr. Bruce Fein, counsel for US-based group Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), Thursday afternoon 3:00 p.m. submitted to United States Attorney General, Mr Eric Holder, the Model Indictment charging U.S. citizen and Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and U.S. green card holder and Sri Lanka’s Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, for genocide, war crimes and torture against Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Counsel urged the Department to open a grand jury investigation into the crimes, based on evidence amassed in the three volume 1000-page document which the Counsel said “amply satisfies the Department’s threshold for commencing a criminal investigation.”
Durint this same time, public protests continued in Southern India where the ruling state political party DMK was seen in a tight spot trying to maintain its alliance with Congress which has come under direct criticism by the protesters in the state for supporting the Colombo government in the War.
Congress functionary Sirkazhi Ravichandran, a 47-year-old father of two children, immolated himself Saturday to protest his party’s inaction on the Eelam Tamils issue.
In Malaysia a 27-year-old Sri Lankan Diaspora Tamil Mr Raja who has been living there for the past three years immolated himself and died on Friday leaving a note in his diary saying “I am burning myself to death resting my hopes on global Tamils to save the Eezham Tamils. I plead American President Barack Obama to bring in a ceasefire in Sri Lanka.” This brings the total number of self immolations demanding a ceasefire in Sri Lanka so far to four .
A new opinion poll results released by a premier educational institution The Loyola College in Chennai, Southern India, Friday revealed that 86 percent of the people surveyed in Tamil Nadu feel that the Sri Lankan government was engaged in a genocide against the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka by using the alibi of fighting terrorists.
The Sri Lankan Army reported today that a suicide bomber has killed 20 Sri Lankan Army soldiers. The Army further stated that 8 civilians were also killed in the attack which took place outside the conflict zone where the fleeing civilians were being interrogated prior to be taken to concentration camps in the south of the country.
Reacting to the mounting international perssure and internal dissent, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa alleged that international media and aid agencies have been “infiltrated” by LTTE agents. These organizations were “hiding” the Tigers’ excesses while giving exaggerated figures of civilian deaths in the conflict-hit northern zone.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who had earlier threatened to expel foreign journalists and agencies found siding with the LTTE, also said it was unfortunate that such organizations do not highlight the fact that the Tigers were holding civilians as hostage.
The comments came as Lankan security forces continue their offensive to rout the Tigers out of their last remnants, ignoring international calls for halting the offensive.
Tags: Bruce Fein, Ceasefire, Civil War, genocide, Gothabaya Rajapakse, India, Lasantha Wikrematunga, LTTE, self-immolation, Sri Lanka, Tamil, Tamil Eelam
2 Comments
a timely report…
This makes sense.
LTTE wants violence.
Gotabaya the CIA agent and some of his Army friends want violence also.
Therefore they sign a secret agreement to ruin the country.
Agreement allows LTTE to intimate the tamil population and not vote for anyone else.
Army govt can then use the pretext of defeating the LTTE to destroy the democracy.
Sinhalese nationalists blinded by ‘defeating the LTTE’ are failing to see what is really happening.
The economy will collapse and the Army will rule the country in an impoverished military style dictatorship.
SL is joining the ranks of Burma, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and so on.
Will it be too late when the people in Sri Lanka finally wake up.
By then it might be a burmese style junta where everyone is assaulted and killed if they protest in anyway.
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[...] was reading one article in particular written by “Sunderapandyan” last month entitled Sri Lanka on the road to a Zimbabwe-style Dictatorship”. He talks about the backwards slide Sri Lanka is taking as time progresses, and I agree with his [...]