TamilNet has reported that families of key members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – missing after arrest by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) or who surrendered at the end of the war on Vanni – are to file Habeas Corpus (HC) applications next week.
According to Sri Lanka minister D Gunasekara, the wives of senior LTTE members Balakumaran and Yogi are now widows.
Some sources in Jaffna say that both were killed after surrendering to the SLA, while others say they are still being held in special SLA detention centres.
This contradictory and confusing information has led their families to file Habeas Corpus applications next week, either in Jaffna or Vavuniyaa High Court.
Some humanitarian organisations are assisting the families to file these applications.
However, thousands of HC applications filed by family members – of persons gone missing after arrest by the SLA during 1996 and 1997 and after 2002 – in the High Courts of Jaffna and Vavuniyaa have yet to be resolved.
meanwhile, students detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) after surrendering, yesterday began sitting their GCE A/L examination which 245,000 students will take throughout the country.
Around 2,500 students from the districts of Vavuniyaa, Mannaar, Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu in Vanni, will sit the tests at Vavuniyaa Tamil Maththiya Makaa Viththiyaalayam centre
of these, 367 were students who surrendered and were arrested under the PTA as LTTE members and detained in a rehabilitation centre in Vavuniyaa, sources in Jaffna said.
A Jaffna student, S Suhirthan, who has been detained in Batticaloa prison under the PTA since his arrest April last year, will now be allowed to sit for the A/L/ examination, sources in Batticaloa said.
Last week an Akkaraipattu Magistrate disallowed his application to sit for the examination in a centre in his home town in Jaffna district.
But later, following an intervention by the Prisons Department, the Magistrate reversed the decision and allowed him to sit the examination in a centre in Batticaloa district.
l Malaysia’s Deputy Chief Minister of Penang, and human rights advocate, Professor Ramasamy, is to form an international committee to collect evidence on the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
The aim of the committee is to present a case to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Panel.
‘The group will also fight for human rights anywhere, in places where people are deprived of their rights and privileges,’ said the Batu Kawan MP, who is a long-time human rights activist.
The report on war crimes committed during hostilities between the Tamil Tigers rebels and the Sri Lanka government would also be presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Prof Ramasamy was quoted as saying.
Ramasamy said that those involved, including leaders in the Sri Lankan and Indian governments who were responsible for the genocide, should be brought to book.
‘The group, comprising NGOs, activists and politicians, is expected to be operational within a few months,’ Prof Ramasamy added.
The formation of the this genocide committee follows a similar effort by the Dublin War Crimes Tribunal, conducted by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) based in Milan, which held hearings in January this year on war crimes charges in Sri Lanka from eye-witnesses and other material evidence.
In the findings, issued by the tribunal, they said the Sri Lanka government is ‘guilty of war crimes’ and ‘guilty of crimes against humanity.’
The tribunal also concluded that the charge of genocide requires further investigations.
Eye witnesses included several escapees from the final week of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) offensive in the Mullaitivu ‘No Fire Zone’ where they allegedly slaughtered more than 20,000 Tamil civilians after training heavy weapons on them.
Earlier this month a group of Tamil expatriate organisations, led by Swiss Committee of Eelam Tamils (SCET), filed a case in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Germany.
This was for approving the appointment for ambassador of Sri Lanka in Germany of an ex-Major General who was widely believed to have committed war crimes.
According to the President of SCET, the same group is also expected to file a criminal complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) based on new evidence requesting under Article 15 for the issuance of an arrest warrant for dual Sri Lankan-United States national Gotabaya Rajapakse for war-crimes.
The request, in addressing the non-signatory status of Sri Lankan and the United States to the Rome Statute, draws on jus cogens and universal jurisdiction logic to bring war crimes perpetrated in Sri Lanka within the jurisdiction of the Court.
l Sri Lanka’s health department faces a growing crisis over the delay in the import of the first consignment of BTI bacteria from Cuba, as the number of deaths due to dengue fever rose to 149 by last Friday.
The health ministry has failed to get a positive response from the Cuban Embassy in Colombo.
A newspaper report suggested that controversy surrounds the closure of the Cuban embassy in Colombo while the health ministry was desperately attempting to get a positive response on the import of the first consignment of BTI bacteria from Cuba, as three weeks had passed since opening a Letter of Credit.
Anti-Malaria Campaign Director Dr Sarath Deniyage, according to the news report, had stated that he had no clue as to when the stock of 10,000 units of BTI from Cuba would reach Colombo as there was no one at the Cuban embassy to answer questions.
The BTI bacteria is being imported as a last-ditch measure in the fight to eradicate dengue.
‘We have opened an LC for Rs.30 million to import BTI and the Cubans were to start production after they received the money and the production order,’ Dr Deniyage said, according to the news report.
‘But the closure of the Cuban embassy in Colombo has delayed the process. We are waiting for their response and desperate to get down the BTI stock as early as possible.’
Several attempts by the Colombo media to contact the Cuban mission in Colombo also failed as there was no one to respond to telephone calls, e-mails or fax messages.
