The focus of Tamil media has shifted from people entrapped in the one time LTTE held areas in Mullaitivu to the people in camps which are called welfare camps by the Government and detention camps by the anti-government elements. Tamil media or for that matter the Tamil politicians do not seem to place much emphasis after the physical decimation of the LTTE on the political solution to the ethnic problem that was once much talked about.
However, this surely does not mean that the politically conscious Tamils consider that the political solution they were fighting for is no more needed with the defeat of the Tigers. They seem to be nervous to speak about matters that would upset the euphoric psyche of the southern people. Occasionally some Tamil politicians are being heard meekly grumbling over the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Government to find a political solution to the ethnic problem. Otherwise Tamil media and politicians are obsessed now with the situation in the camps where the people displaced from all over the Wanni are housed.
It is clear that the Government cannot and would not hold them in camps forever or at least for years. Once the infrastructure including electricity and water supply is restored, roads, paddy fields, vegetable plots, surroundings of schools and houses, lakes and irrigation canals are cleared of landmines and booby traps and also once the houses damaged and destroyed by the war are repaired or rebuilt, people have to be resettled. Authorities might take steps to screen these internally displaced people (IDP) for possible LTTE cadres and sympathizers in the meantime.
Irrespective of the fact where these people live, in camps or in their original places, people would tend to talk politics and concentrate on the lethargy in the state machinery and again will begin to paint things in ethnic colours, once they begin to bury the harrowing memories of cruelty and the barbarity of the war. Even if the ordinary people do not want to see things in ethnic colours politicians in the South as well as in the North would show the things to them in such colours. Then again Tamil politicians will cry for political solutions and go on pilgrimages to Chennai, Delhi and Western capitals.
Under the present circumstances where the euphoria over the war victory coupled with majoritarian triumphalism reigns, the people in the North as well as the South, no one would dare to press the Government hard for a political solution since it would earn the wrath of the majority. But the question is what is the government going to do in this regard? One may argue that there is no need for a political solution or for that matter a pacification process now that the LTTE has been crushed, their leaders have been killed, every inch under their writ has been recaptured by the troops and the vast arsenal the outfit possessed has been confiscated by the state.
Also one may argue that even if the LTTE or any other Tamil group resumes another rebellion, it can be crushed as the LTTE, the most ruthless and powerful terrorist outfit in the world according to some analysts was decimated and that therefore, there is no point in wasting time and energy in finding political solutions to the Tamil grievances.
There have been controversies over many Tamil demands, but some of their demands such as the right to work in their own language are uncontestable. Those are the rights that cannot be given by any other community. They are birth rights of communities. Talking about giving rights to another community is itself a term soaked with racism. Any community can plunder rights of other communities if they have power, but no community can offer rights as the rights are natural. Only thing other communities can do is to recognize them and act accordingly. Likewise what the Tamils (not some of the Tamil parties) expect the rulers and the other communities is not to give them their rights, but to recognize them.
No one for the moment denies that the Government troops would crush any powerful or ruthless insurgency as they did in respect of the LTTE. But the important question one may pose in response to that is whether we should create a situation which can in turn present a bloody insurrection for us to test our military prowess destroying thousands of lives and property worth billions in the decades to come. Some form of reconciliatory process therefore must be in place to avert a re-emergence of ethnic animosities and recurrence of bloodshed. You may call this a political solution while another may treat it as a corrective measure. Even the stance of the JVP that is dead against the political solutions and devolution of power is that bringing about equality among communities would solve the current problem. It is an admission that there are inequalities among communities and the need for corrective measures.
However, the “universally” accepted term for the remedy for the Sri Lankan ethnic issue seems to be political solution or more specifically the devolution of power. The UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon, the Japanese special envoy Yasushi Akashi and various foreign leaders have been referring to a political solution to the ethnic problem during their recent visits to Sri Lanka. Indian leaders too are invariably calling for political solutions.
Government’s stance in this regard is extremely vague. President Mahinda Rajapaksa while addressing the nation to announce the defeat of the LTTE said in parliament on May 19 that, “it is necessary that the political solutions they need should be brought closer to them faster than any country or government in the world would bring.” This manifests that he has understood the need of corrective measures to the mishandling of issues by the past governments.
Also the joint communiqué issued by the Sri Lankan Government and the United Nations at the end of the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon’s visit to Sri Lanka last month said that “President Rajapaksa and the Secretary-General agreed that addressing the aspirations and grievances of all communities and working towards a lasting political solution was fundamental to ensuring long-term socio-economic development.”
However, Government does not seem to have a concrete programme to evolve any political solution other than the over dragged APRC process. On the other hand parliamentarian Wimal Weerawansa a close ally of the Government ridiculed APRC Chairman Professor Tissa Vitharana openly claiming that President Rajapaksa had found fault with Vitharana for mentioning about the political solution at a meeting held to pay tribute to the security forces. This casts doubts on the credibility of the government.
Even if we agree on the need for a political solution, it is high time for the experts to survey whether devolution of power is the only structural setup that can ensure the rights of the various communities, since Sri Lanka has already experimented the system for the past twenty years.
However, taking into account the mood of the southern people, the degree of pressure on the Government for political solution and the confusion in the country over what the lasting solution should be, it is surmisable that the status quo in respect of political solution would be the same for some years to come.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
POLITICAL SOLUTION – MISSING IN ACTION !!!
Friday, June 19, 2009
Karunanidhi's appeal to Centre on relief to Sri Lankan Tamils !!!
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Friday asked External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to prevail upon Sri Lanka to allow unloading of a ship carrying relief material sent by overseas Tamil diaspora for the displaced people in the island nation.
The Vessel -- MV Captain Ali -- which set sail from Britain on April 20, is currently anchored outside Chennai port as it was turned away by Lankan Navy on June nine after detaining it for several days.
According to Lankan Navy, the ship was turned away on the ground that it violated internationally accepted formalities followed by merchant ships seeking to enter Lankan waters and that it did not conform to the International Ships Port Facility Security (ISPS) code.
In a letter to Mr. Krishna, Mr. Karunanidhi said the ship carrying humanitarian aid collected by Tamils in Europe for the internationally displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka was turned away by the island nation's Navy. It is carrying about 884 tonnes of food, medicine and other relief materials.
"I consider it appropriate and timely as well as critical for Government of India to intervene at this juncture and persuade Government of Sri Lanka to allow unloading of the relief materials sent through the Vessel," he added.
He said he was deputing State Minister for Higher Education K Ponmudi to meet Krishna to take up the matter with him.
The tragedy of refugees in Sri Lanka, hidden from the eyes of the world !!!
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“Small children are suffering malnutrition and a lack of medicines. There are young girls who are pregnant, between 17 and 19 years of age, in need of care… the government has no capacity at all to handle this massive problem, no news so far has come out in the news papers in Sri Lanka, the rest of the nation is kept in dark regarding the situation of the refugees”.This is how a social worker recently describes the situation for the internally displaced persons (Idp) held in the refugee camp in Chettikulam 12 kilometres from Vavuniya to AsiaNews. He had visited the camp before (see AsiaNews 05/06/2009) and now he says: “some of our friends returned there yesterday and report that the situation is still serious”.
Prasanna – a pseudonym to protect his anonymity – says that in Chettikulam there are more than 300 thousand people and added to that number, refugees who live in smaller camps dotted around the area of Mannar and Jaffna. But he adds that “there is still no data on the precise number of the refugees”.
“No one speaks of the IDPs – says Prasanna - not a single photo is allowed out of the camp, no papers write anything about it, people do not know about the great tragedy is going on in their country”.
The social worker appeals to the international community, “and in particular to the Indian government”, to show greater concern for the plight of the refugees. “The only interest of the Colombo government - says Prasanna - is to find more Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam members who are living in the camp and kill them”.
UNHCR has taken satellite photos of the area occupied by the Chettikulam camp, “an immense area subdivided into different and separate zones”, the AsiaNews source explains. “The military brought us to one are and told us to help the people there. We have not been allowed to visit other zones. The area is so vast that it is impossible to estimate how many people are being held there”.
Monsoon delayed; 45% less rains in June !!!
The delay in monsoon now appears to be worrisome as the weather office on Friday said the country had received just over 50 per cent of the normal rainfall so far this season.
Of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions, 28 reported deficient or scanty rainfall while eight received excess or normal rains.
"Actual rainfall for the country as a whole is 39.5 mm against a normal of 72.5 mm with a deficiency of 45 per cent," India Meteorological Department Director B P Yadav said.
Southwest monsoon, which had brought cheer to the farming community due to its early onset on May 23, had stopped in the tracks over Konkan region of Maharashtra since June 7.
Cyclone Aila, which razed parts of Orissa and West Bengal, struck a devastating blow to the monsoon system by sucking away moisture from the winds and weakening the annual rainfall system.
However, the weatherman said that monsoon is expected to advance over some more parts of Maharashtra, including Mumbai in the next two-three days.
But central India may not receive rains any soon in the absence of a strong surge, the weather office said.
Under normal conditions, monsoon should have reached Mumbai by June 10 and covered entire Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Uttar Pradesh by June 15.
Of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions, 28 reported deficient or scanty rainfall while eight received excess or normal rains.
"Actual rainfall for the country as a whole is 39.5 mm against a normal of 72.5 mm with a deficiency of 45 per cent," India Meteorological Department Director B P Yadav said.
Southwest monsoon, which had brought cheer to the farming community due to its early onset on May 23, had stopped in the tracks over Konkan region of Maharashtra since June 7.
Cyclone Aila, which razed parts of Orissa and West Bengal, struck a devastating blow to the monsoon system by sucking away moisture from the winds and weakening the annual rainfall system.
However, the weatherman said that monsoon is expected to advance over some more parts of Maharashtra, including Mumbai in the next two-three days.
But central India may not receive rains any soon in the absence of a strong surge, the weather office said.
Under normal conditions, monsoon should have reached Mumbai by June 10 and covered entire Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Uttar Pradesh by June 15.
Centre rejects Modi's anti-terror Bill, again !!!
This will not go down well with Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s government in Gujarat. The Centre on Friday announced it had returned for the second time a stringent anti-terrorism Bill framed by the state government.The Union Cabinet has sought three amendments to the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Act (GUJCOCA), announced Home Minister P Chidambaram at a press conference.
“Under the proposed Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Act, a confession before a police officer is admissible in a court. This should be made inadmissible,” Chidambaram said after a cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“The Act also contains a clause stating that a court cannot grant bail if the public prosecutor opposes it. The court should have the power to grant bail even if the public prosecutor opposes it,” Chidambaram said.
The third amendment related to Section 20 (2) of the Act that the Home Minister did not specify.
“Once these amendments are effected, the cabinet will be in a position to recommend to the president to grant assent to the act,” Chidambaram said.
Chief Minister Modi suspected the Centre had a political motive in seeking the amendments. "This is what we have been asking for. But I see politics behind all this. Why does the centre have double standards?" he told CNN-IBN.
Subramanian Swamy for ‘autonomous Tamil state’ in Sri Lanka !!!
CHENNAI: The U.S., China and Israel that helped Sri Lanka have the moral responsibility to prevail upon President Mahinda Rajapaksa to ensure constitutional guarantee of equality to Tamils, said Subramanian Swamy, Janata Party leader, on Wednesday.
Talking to reporters here, Dr. Swamy said India also could not shirk its responsibility as it had extended help to Sri Lanka. “Now that the LTTE is no longer in the picture we can go ahead and help the Tamils. There is a need to create an autonomous Tamil state.”
Dr. Swamy, who will be in the U.S. till August, decided to visit Washington to meet officials in charge of the South Asia and prevail upon them to put pressure on Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka was planning to create a military base in Katchatheevu and India should not allow it to happen. “It must warn Sri Lanka that it will not hesitate to cancel the Katchatheevu agreement if the country goes ahead with its plans,” he said. As regards the Sethusamudram project, he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to issue a directive that the project be put on hold till all the analysis was done with regard to its environmental impact. Instead, the government could develop the Tuticorin Port into an international container port, connecting to Kolkata by a railway line along the coast.
Talking to reporters here, Dr. Swamy said India also could not shirk its responsibility as it had extended help to Sri Lanka. “Now that the LTTE is no longer in the picture we can go ahead and help the Tamils. There is a need to create an autonomous Tamil state.”
Dr. Swamy, who will be in the U.S. till August, decided to visit Washington to meet officials in charge of the South Asia and prevail upon them to put pressure on Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka was planning to create a military base in Katchatheevu and India should not allow it to happen. “It must warn Sri Lanka that it will not hesitate to cancel the Katchatheevu agreement if the country goes ahead with its plans,” he said. As regards the Sethusamudram project, he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to issue a directive that the project be put on hold till all the analysis was done with regard to its environmental impact. Instead, the government could develop the Tuticorin Port into an international container port, connecting to Kolkata by a railway line along the coast.
LTTE leader now admits Prabakaran is dead !!!
Colombo (PTI): An LTTE leader, who had earlier disputed the fact of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabakaran's death, has now admitted that the Tiger supremo is no more.
Head of "International Secretariat" of the intelligence wing of the LTTE, Arivazhakan, who had earlier disputed claims that Prabakaran was dead, has now confirmed in a media statement that the Tiger chief was killed, the online edition of the Daily Mirror newspaper said on Thursday.
Arivazhakan had last month dismissed the report of Prabakaran's death as "engineered rumours spread by the government of Sri Lanka and its military establishment" and had asked the global Tamil community not to trust the report.
Amidst suspicions of a power-struggle among the remnants of the LTTE, the group's newly-named chief of international relations S. Pathmanathan had last month itself admitted that Prabakaran was dead.
This was almost a week after the Sri Lankan government announced that its troops killed the LTTE chief in the fighting in the northern war zone.
Chennai wants Katchatheevu back from Lanka !!!
Katchatheevu, a 275-acre, uninhabited islet on the Palk Strait between Sri Lanka and India, is becoming the next big issue in Tamil Nadu politics with the Opposition parties demanding a resolution in the state assembly to press New Delhi to retrieve the island from Sri Lanka. Then PM Indira Gandhi had handed over the island to Sri Lanka in 1974.
The politicians are aghast at reports of Sri Lankan army personnel attacking Indian fishermen in the island. The fishermen frequent the region because of the big catch. They sometimes use the island to dry their net.
Replying to the opposition demand on Thursday, chief minister M Karunanidhi said he was willing to move a resolution provided all parties gave their unconditional support. "Leaders of many parties have expressed their desire that India should retrieve Katchatheevu from Sri Lanka. I'm willing to move a resolution to this effect in the assembly if all parties, including opposition parties, are willing to provide unilateral support. The DMK has always strongly opposed India's move of handing over the islet to Lanka."
Karunanidhi had on Tuesday written to prime minister Manmohan Singh, drawing his attention to Sri Lanka's proposal to set up a military base in Katchatheevu.Fishermen from Tamil Nadu, especially in the Rameshwaram region, often get into trouble with Sri Lankan navy personnel.
In a recent incident, fishermen complained of an attack by the Sri Lankan navy in which a fishing boat split into two. Other boats rescued the fishermen but they complained that a Sri Lankan warship was permanently based near Katchatheevu, creating problems for them. The fishermen conceded that at times they crossed the International Maritime Border Line in search of a bigger fish.
The island has a Catholic shrine that attracts devotees from both countries. But the Sri Lankan government banned Indians from worshipping there, following intensification of the war against the LTTE. Though Sri Lanka claims it has destroyed the LTTE and the war has ended, Indian fishermen still complain of harassment by the Sri Lankan navy.
Some Rameshwaram fishermen, however, say that more than the better catch, it is the huge haul of conches of different sizes and shapes that draws Indian fishermen there."Some of the big conches command a huge premium of Rs2 lakh per piece. It is mostly bought by people in Kerala. In fact, the deal is done on the shores the moment the fishermen reach Indian soil," a fisherman told DNA.
Coast guard sources say some "unscrupulous" Indian fishermen were to blame for the problem, as they clandestinely engage in "nefarious activities".
The politicians are aghast at reports of Sri Lankan army personnel attacking Indian fishermen in the island. The fishermen frequent the region because of the big catch. They sometimes use the island to dry their net.
Replying to the opposition demand on Thursday, chief minister M Karunanidhi said he was willing to move a resolution provided all parties gave their unconditional support. "Leaders of many parties have expressed their desire that India should retrieve Katchatheevu from Sri Lanka. I'm willing to move a resolution to this effect in the assembly if all parties, including opposition parties, are willing to provide unilateral support. The DMK has always strongly opposed India's move of handing over the islet to Lanka."
Karunanidhi had on Tuesday written to prime minister Manmohan Singh, drawing his attention to Sri Lanka's proposal to set up a military base in Katchatheevu.Fishermen from Tamil Nadu, especially in the Rameshwaram region, often get into trouble with Sri Lankan navy personnel.
In a recent incident, fishermen complained of an attack by the Sri Lankan navy in which a fishing boat split into two. Other boats rescued the fishermen but they complained that a Sri Lankan warship was permanently based near Katchatheevu, creating problems for them. The fishermen conceded that at times they crossed the International Maritime Border Line in search of a bigger fish.
The island has a Catholic shrine that attracts devotees from both countries. But the Sri Lankan government banned Indians from worshipping there, following intensification of the war against the LTTE. Though Sri Lanka claims it has destroyed the LTTE and the war has ended, Indian fishermen still complain of harassment by the Sri Lankan navy.
Some Rameshwaram fishermen, however, say that more than the better catch, it is the huge haul of conches of different sizes and shapes that draws Indian fishermen there."Some of the big conches command a huge premium of Rs2 lakh per piece. It is mostly bought by people in Kerala. In fact, the deal is done on the shores the moment the fishermen reach Indian soil," a fisherman told DNA.
Coast guard sources say some "unscrupulous" Indian fishermen were to blame for the problem, as they clandestinely engage in "nefarious activities".
Sri Lankans face tough time ahead !!!
Aid agencies warn that the condition of Sri Lankans living in camps will still be a major challenge for months to come.
The United Nations estimates that up to 300,000 people were displaced during fighting between Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers in which the government forces declared victory on May 18 ending 26-year of the conflict.
The agency said it had been able to send £400,000 to three partners in Sri Lanka - World Concern, Leads and Habitat for Humanity - as they help the Tamil people, the vast majority of whom are now being held in government-controlled camps.
The funds have helped the groups in their distribution of food, water, clothing, hygiene packs, shelters, kitchens and environmentally-friendly toilets and cookers.
However, overcrowding – with some people sharing a tent with 10 others - poor diet and water shortages remain issues.
Tony Senewiratne, National Director of Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka said, "I believe that the people in the camps are having a really tough time despite all that people are doing to alleviate the situation.
"This is not going to change in the short term."
Selina Prem, Country manager of World Concern working on the east coast, said food shortages had eased over the last few weeks but the big problem now is wells drying up in the dry season.
For 8,000 people in north Trincomalee there is little water available locally and thousands of litres are needed daily.
Commenting on how the displaced were coping, she said, "People seem generally to have accepted the fact they have to stay in the camps but their desire is to go home or to be able to travel to other camps to meet up with family members.
"They are glad the fighting is over but their concern for the future is not the political settlement but when they can go home, how to start again – all the personal worries of family, home and livelihood."
Leads is providing meals at 11 kitchens for more than 18,000 people in Vavuniya and recently provided clothes and footwear for 10,000 people at camps in Jaffna, where building work is underway on 100 emergency shelters and communal kitchens.
Also it's planning to build 200 emergency shelters and sanitation for people with disabilities once sites are secured.
Tearfund's Clare Crawford said, "Our partners in Sri Lanka are the most amazing examples of teams of people, called by God, ready to give everything in the service of the wounded, the poor, the widow, the child.
"They are helping thousands of people who have gone through immense suffering and tragedies."
The United Nations estimates that up to 300,000 people were displaced during fighting between Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers in which the government forces declared victory on May 18 ending 26-year of the conflict.
The agency said it had been able to send £400,000 to three partners in Sri Lanka - World Concern, Leads and Habitat for Humanity - as they help the Tamil people, the vast majority of whom are now being held in government-controlled camps.
The funds have helped the groups in their distribution of food, water, clothing, hygiene packs, shelters, kitchens and environmentally-friendly toilets and cookers.
However, overcrowding – with some people sharing a tent with 10 others - poor diet and water shortages remain issues.
Tony Senewiratne, National Director of Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka said, "I believe that the people in the camps are having a really tough time despite all that people are doing to alleviate the situation.
"This is not going to change in the short term."
Selina Prem, Country manager of World Concern working on the east coast, said food shortages had eased over the last few weeks but the big problem now is wells drying up in the dry season.
For 8,000 people in north Trincomalee there is little water available locally and thousands of litres are needed daily.
Commenting on how the displaced were coping, she said, "People seem generally to have accepted the fact they have to stay in the camps but their desire is to go home or to be able to travel to other camps to meet up with family members.
"They are glad the fighting is over but their concern for the future is not the political settlement but when they can go home, how to start again – all the personal worries of family, home and livelihood."
Leads is providing meals at 11 kitchens for more than 18,000 people in Vavuniya and recently provided clothes and footwear for 10,000 people at camps in Jaffna, where building work is underway on 100 emergency shelters and communal kitchens.
Also it's planning to build 200 emergency shelters and sanitation for people with disabilities once sites are secured.
Tearfund's Clare Crawford said, "Our partners in Sri Lanka are the most amazing examples of teams of people, called by God, ready to give everything in the service of the wounded, the poor, the widow, the child.
"They are helping thousands of people who have gone through immense suffering and tragedies."
Chidambaram calls Maoists for talks !!!
The Centre on Friday asked the Maoists in Lalgarh area of West Bengal to lay down arms and come for talks. Home Minister P Chidambaram said he endorsed the appeal of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to the Maoists and the tribals to come for talks.
"I endorse that appeal. If they wish to talk, they should come forward to do so. We will be happy to facilitate the talks," Chidambaram told media-persons after a Cabinet meeting in New Delhi [Images]. The Home Minister said the ongoing operation by police and paramilitary personnel in Lalgarh would take more time and the forces should expect the "unexpected". "Progress will be slow. They (forces) are making progress. ... So far, the operation is going according to plans but they must be prepared for the unexpected. I sincerely hope that with the kind of action we have advised, the operation will be successful.
"An operation of this kind will take some time. In fact, it will take considerably more time than was anticipated," he said when asked about the situation in Lalgarh. He said the forces were "moving and moving cautiously" and the ongoing operation was not against the tribals but only against the Naxalites .
"I endorse that appeal. If they wish to talk, they should come forward to do so. We will be happy to facilitate the talks," Chidambaram told media-persons after a Cabinet meeting in New Delhi [Images]. The Home Minister said the ongoing operation by police and paramilitary personnel in Lalgarh would take more time and the forces should expect the "unexpected". "Progress will be slow. They (forces) are making progress. ... So far, the operation is going according to plans but they must be prepared for the unexpected. I sincerely hope that with the kind of action we have advised, the operation will be successful.
"An operation of this kind will take some time. In fact, it will take considerably more time than was anticipated," he said when asked about the situation in Lalgarh. He said the forces were "moving and moving cautiously" and the ongoing operation was not against the tribals but only against the Naxalites .
Thursday, June 18, 2009
500 cops kill one dacoit after 3-day shootout !!!
Lucknow: After battling over 400 heavily armed police personnel for more than 50 hours in an Uttar Pradesh village, bandit Ghanshyam Kewat was on Thursday shot dead after he tried to escape by jumping off the roof of the house under siege.Before attempting his escape, Kewat killed a constable of the Special Task Force (STF), taking the number of police personnel killed in the prolonged gunbattle in Suruwal Rajapur village in Chitrakoot, 280 km from here, to four.
Director General of Police (DGP) Vikram Singh confirmed that Kewat, who headed a gang that operated in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and was wanted for over two dozen murders, abductions and other crimes, had been gunned down.
The gunbattle started on Tuesday night after an STF team reached Suruwal Rajapur on a tip-off that bandits, including Kewat, were hiding there.
"Kewat was on the first floor of a house that the cops had covered for the past 30 hours. However, he managed to reach the roof and jumped into the fields behind," a police official told IANS.
He had also tried to escape earlier on Thursday.
Additional Director General of Police Brijlal, who is heading the operations, told IANS: "Kewat made a desperate attempt to escape from the village at around 2.30 a.m. by firing indiscriminately. However, the entire village has been surrounded by us and the return fire by our cops forced him to turn back and take cover."
A commander of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and a police constable were killed Wednesday morning and a constable of the Special Operations Group was killed Tuesday night.
Over a dozen policemen, including two senior officers, were injured in the exchange of bullets. Inspector General (IG) of the PAC B.K. Gupta and Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Banda range S.K. Singh had received bullet injuries Wednesday afternoon and were rushed to Allahabad by a helicopter.
"Both Gupta and Singh sustained bullet injuries in their lower abdomen. They have been admitted here (Lucknow). I visited them Wednesday evening and the doctors said they are fine and recovering fast," DGP Vikram Singh told reporters.
Who are the Maoists, what do they want ???
New Delhi: Maoist rebels have killed 10 government supporters in West Bengal this week and declared a "liberated zone" close to the city of Kolkata, sparking unease among investors in the communist-ruled state.The attacks by the rebels, who are fighting for the rights of poor farmers and the disenfranchised, are among the most brazen in years.
Who are the Maoists?
The rebels began an armed struggle with a peasant revolt in Naxalbari village in West Bengal in 1967 but were initially crushed by the Congress-led government.
After regrouping in the 1980s, they began recruiting hundreds of poor villagers, arming them with bows and arrows and even rifles snatched from police.
Authorities say they are led by Koteshwar Rao, also known as Kishanjee, who is in charge of militant activities, and Ganapathi, the political leader. Neither have been seen in public and remain hidden in dense forest bases.
How big is the movement?
The rebels have an estimated 22,000 combatants in more than 180 of the country's 630 districts. They operate across a "red corridor" stretching from Andhra Pradesh to Chhattisgarh and into West Bengal.
How severe is the Maoist threat?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the insurgency as the biggest internal security challenge since independence. More than 1,000 attacks were recorded in 2008, as the Maoists targeted politicians, police and villagers suspected of being informers.
Authorities say the Maoists have a well thought-out plan to spread their influence into urban areas. Some of their recent attacks have been closer to cities and the latest strike in West Bengal is a show of their capability. Others say their influence will not extend far beyond remote rural areas.
The Maoists regularly attack railway lines and factories, aiming to cripple economic activity. Their base in the "red corridor" gives them control of some of country's mineral rich areas.
They could feed off the resistance in parts of rural India, including in West Bengal, against rapid economic growth that excludes hundreds of millions of poor.
The rebels advance to Lalgarh in West Bengal is near the construction site of a $7 billion steel plant by India's third largest steel producer, JSW Steel Ltd, which is watching how the government tackles the violence. It could potentially scare off prospective investors from setting up shop in and around the Maoists' sphere.
How do the Maoists get arms?
They are in touch with other militant groups operating in India, including groups in Kashmir and the northeast, who help them. Police say they are equipped with automatic weapons, shoulder rocket launchers, mines and explosives.
West Bengal vs Naxals: The showdown begins !!!
Kolkata: The West Bengal government on Thursday rushed reinforcement of security forces to its troubled Lalgarh region in West Midnapore district even as the Maoist rebels called for a two-day shutdown in five states beginning on Monday to protest the security operations.Official said police and paramilitary forces had been asked to move to West Midnapore district, about 200 km from Kolkata, to conduct a joint operation to flush out Maoist guerrillas who have been active in organising a tribal movement alongside a group called the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA).
"We have moved forces in the morning," Inspector General of Police Raj Kanojia said.
Asked when the operation against the guerrillas will be launched, Kanojia said, "We have our people there. They will take the decision at the appropriate time."
Another senior police officer, who did not wish to be named, said, "We are ready to launch the operation. We are waiting for orders."
Reports from Midnapore town, the headquarters of the district, said five companies of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and two companies of the Cobra Force, specially trained to combat Maoists, have reached the district.
Police have also sent a large consignment of tear gas shells and protective shields for security personnel taking on the Maoist rebels in the troubled area.
However, the PCAPA and Maoists have dug up roads and felled several trees on approach ways to Lalgarh to obstruct the entry of the security forces.
On Wednesday, the state government had declared that it was ready to launch an operation to free Lalgarh from the control of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) even as the guerrillas shot dead three workers of the ruling CPI-M.
In response, a top rebel leader said the Central and state governments had started psychological warfare against the people in Lalgarh with its show of force.
"The Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) and Home Minister (P Chidambaram) have started a psychological warfare by amassing huge forces. If they start the operations, we will resist with the help of the people who are with us," CPI-M politburo member Kishanjee told a television channel over phone.
Kishanjee alias K Koteshwar Rao hails from Andhra Pradesh but has been camping in Lalgarh.
He said the rebel group has decided to call for a two-day shutdown beginning on Monday in West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar.
Lalgarh has been on the boil since last November when a landmine exploded on the route of the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and then central ministers Ram Vilas Paswan and Jitin Prasada.
Police arrested some school students and allegedly harassed tribal women following the landmine blast. In protest, angry tribals virtually cut off the area from the rest of the district.
During the last few days, the agitators have torched CPI-M offices, driven away the party's supporters and forced police to wind up several camps, thereby establishing a virtual free zone.
Maoists have been active in the three western districts of the state – West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. They also backed the Trinamool-sponsored movement against the state government's bid to establish a chemical hub at Nandigram in East Midnapore district.
Sri Lanka May Become ‘Hong Kong of India’ After War !!!
Sri Lanka’s economy can bounce back from its weakest growth in six years and become the “Hong Kong of India” as the end of almost three decades of civil war boosts business opportunities, HSBC Private Bank said.
Decades of fighting on the Indian Ocean island shackled its $32 billion economy, which according to figures released yesterday expanded 1.5 percent last quarter from a year earlier as the global recession intensified the slowdown. Ports, retailers, apparel and tea exporters could lead a recovery after the Tamil Tiger rebels were defeated last month.
“The rebound will be spectacular,” said Arjuna Mahendran, the Singapore-based chief investment strategist for Asia at HSBC Private Bank, which oversees $494 billion in assets. “To start with, Sri Lanka’s location gives its port a natural advantage.”
Sri Lanka could benefit from its proximity to India, just as Hong Kong profits from being a trade hub to China. Sri Lanka lies 31 kilometers (19 miles) south east of India, the world’s second-fastest-growing major economy.
Seventy percent of the volume handled by the Colombo port is trans-shipment of goods imported by India and this could be increased because Indian ports don’t have adequate depth, Mahendran said. Sri Lanka has embarked upon a plan to quadruple capacity at the Colombo port in three years.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated on May 16, ending their 26-year struggle for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka. The Tigers, who controlled a third of the country at one point, fell swiftly since January as the Sri Lankan military launched an unprecedented offensive to wipe them out.
‘Lot of Potential’
“It’s something you never expected to happen when you have lived most of your life under the specter of war,” said Otara Gunewardene, who runs Odel, Sri Lanka’s biggest department store. “It’s unbelievable. I see things differently now and see a lot of potential for growth.”
Odel plans to sell a stake in the company to overseas investors and spend $20 million to add another 70,000 square feet to its flagship store in Colombo and open new outlets in other cities in the country.
“We fought terrorism and now the economic war has to be fought,” said Malik Fernando, whose family owns Dilmah Tea Co., among the best-known Ceylon tea brands in the world. “For manufacturers, the cost of doing business is very high because infrastructure, like roads and power, was neglected because of the war.”
Small Economy
Dilmah, for example, operates a bus service in Colombo to pick up their workers from home because “we know that if they use the public transport, they are going to be late, fagged out and stressed,” Fernando said.
Still, Sri Lanka can be turned around quickly as it is a small economy and Dilmah is exploring options to expand in the hotels and tourism business, Fernando added. John Keells Holdings Ltd., the island’s biggest diversified company, said it sees opportunities to grow in all its businesses from property development to banking and insurance.
Tea exporters could also benefit from a 30 percent surge in prices this year while the worldwide recession hasn’t sapped demand for the high-end lingerie and apparels the nation sells overseas, HSBC’s Mahendran said.
Sri Lanka, which receives about 500,000 tourists each year, aims to increase that number by at least 20 percent annually through a global campaign entitled “Small Miracle,” said Dileep Mudadeniya, managing director of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau.
More Tourists
The war discouraged travelers from the U.S. and Europe for years from visiting the teardrop-shaped tropical island.
Occupancy rates have been 40 percent in the past two years in Colombo’s five-star hotels, which have a combined capacity of 2,000 rooms, said Jerome Auvity, general manager at Hilton Colombo. As a result, the average room tariff is about $62 a night, he said.
“There is no immediate reaction suggesting business is rising,” Auvity said. “Give it another six months to see whether confidence returns to Sri Lanka’s leisure market. There is still this dark cloud, this debate and issue regarding the displaced people.”
The final battles have left about 300,000 people displaced and living in more than 40 camps across the northern part of the country. President Mahinda Rajapaksa said last month he intends to resettle them in the region within 180 days.
Still, the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka expects foreign direct investments to quadruple to $4 billion by 2012, led by investments in ports, tourism, telecommunication and textiles.
Foreign Investment
“We have been getting encouraging responses from foreign investors,” said Dhammika Perera, chairman of the Board. “We expect three leading hotel chains to sign an investment agreement with us in about three months.”
Sri Lanka’s economic growth can accelerate almost four times the current pace to 6 percent by 2010, says Prakriti Sofat, an economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. in Singapore. Citigroup Inc. economist Anushka Shah expects growth at 5.7 percent next year.
The nation’s benchmark stock index, the Colombo All-Share Index, surged 3.1 percent to 2416.02 at close of trade today, the most since the week the war ended, as local investors snapped up shares.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now keen for the likes of George Soros, Mark Mobius and other top fund managers to invest in the country and help the Colombo Stock Exchange double its capitalization to $14 billion in a year.
“It will take a while for people to realize that a 30-year war has ended and the dividends it can bring,” said Channa de Silva, director general of the Commission. “Sri Lanka is a country waiting to unfold and we are confident there will be a lot of interest internationally.”
Decades of fighting on the Indian Ocean island shackled its $32 billion economy, which according to figures released yesterday expanded 1.5 percent last quarter from a year earlier as the global recession intensified the slowdown. Ports, retailers, apparel and tea exporters could lead a recovery after the Tamil Tiger rebels were defeated last month.
“The rebound will be spectacular,” said Arjuna Mahendran, the Singapore-based chief investment strategist for Asia at HSBC Private Bank, which oversees $494 billion in assets. “To start with, Sri Lanka’s location gives its port a natural advantage.”
Sri Lanka could benefit from its proximity to India, just as Hong Kong profits from being a trade hub to China. Sri Lanka lies 31 kilometers (19 miles) south east of India, the world’s second-fastest-growing major economy.
Seventy percent of the volume handled by the Colombo port is trans-shipment of goods imported by India and this could be increased because Indian ports don’t have adequate depth, Mahendran said. Sri Lanka has embarked upon a plan to quadruple capacity at the Colombo port in three years.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated on May 16, ending their 26-year struggle for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka. The Tigers, who controlled a third of the country at one point, fell swiftly since January as the Sri Lankan military launched an unprecedented offensive to wipe them out.
‘Lot of Potential’
“It’s something you never expected to happen when you have lived most of your life under the specter of war,” said Otara Gunewardene, who runs Odel, Sri Lanka’s biggest department store. “It’s unbelievable. I see things differently now and see a lot of potential for growth.”
Odel plans to sell a stake in the company to overseas investors and spend $20 million to add another 70,000 square feet to its flagship store in Colombo and open new outlets in other cities in the country.
“We fought terrorism and now the economic war has to be fought,” said Malik Fernando, whose family owns Dilmah Tea Co., among the best-known Ceylon tea brands in the world. “For manufacturers, the cost of doing business is very high because infrastructure, like roads and power, was neglected because of the war.”
Small Economy
Dilmah, for example, operates a bus service in Colombo to pick up their workers from home because “we know that if they use the public transport, they are going to be late, fagged out and stressed,” Fernando said.
Still, Sri Lanka can be turned around quickly as it is a small economy and Dilmah is exploring options to expand in the hotels and tourism business, Fernando added. John Keells Holdings Ltd., the island’s biggest diversified company, said it sees opportunities to grow in all its businesses from property development to banking and insurance.
Tea exporters could also benefit from a 30 percent surge in prices this year while the worldwide recession hasn’t sapped demand for the high-end lingerie and apparels the nation sells overseas, HSBC’s Mahendran said.
Sri Lanka, which receives about 500,000 tourists each year, aims to increase that number by at least 20 percent annually through a global campaign entitled “Small Miracle,” said Dileep Mudadeniya, managing director of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau.
More Tourists
The war discouraged travelers from the U.S. and Europe for years from visiting the teardrop-shaped tropical island.
Occupancy rates have been 40 percent in the past two years in Colombo’s five-star hotels, which have a combined capacity of 2,000 rooms, said Jerome Auvity, general manager at Hilton Colombo. As a result, the average room tariff is about $62 a night, he said.
“There is no immediate reaction suggesting business is rising,” Auvity said. “Give it another six months to see whether confidence returns to Sri Lanka’s leisure market. There is still this dark cloud, this debate and issue regarding the displaced people.”
The final battles have left about 300,000 people displaced and living in more than 40 camps across the northern part of the country. President Mahinda Rajapaksa said last month he intends to resettle them in the region within 180 days.
Still, the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka expects foreign direct investments to quadruple to $4 billion by 2012, led by investments in ports, tourism, telecommunication and textiles.
Foreign Investment
“We have been getting encouraging responses from foreign investors,” said Dhammika Perera, chairman of the Board. “We expect three leading hotel chains to sign an investment agreement with us in about three months.”
Sri Lanka’s economic growth can accelerate almost four times the current pace to 6 percent by 2010, says Prakriti Sofat, an economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. in Singapore. Citigroup Inc. economist Anushka Shah expects growth at 5.7 percent next year.
The nation’s benchmark stock index, the Colombo All-Share Index, surged 3.1 percent to 2416.02 at close of trade today, the most since the week the war ended, as local investors snapped up shares.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now keen for the likes of George Soros, Mark Mobius and other top fund managers to invest in the country and help the Colombo Stock Exchange double its capitalization to $14 billion in a year.
“It will take a while for people to realize that a 30-year war has ended and the dividends it can bring,” said Channa de Silva, director general of the Commission. “Sri Lanka is a country waiting to unfold and we are confident there will be a lot of interest internationally.”
Tamil protest ends after 73 days !!!
A 73-day protest involving thousands of people demonstrating over the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka has ended.The protest featured hunger strikes, mass sit-ins blocking central London roads and people throwing themselves into the River Thames.
One of those involved, Ambi Seevaratnam said: "After 73 days, nothing has worked. The Tamils have been betrayed by the international community."
Protesters have at times clashed with police in Parliament Square.
Last month, a senior Metropolitan Police officer warned the long protest was diverting resources from other areas.
Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said if it continued it would have a "long term" impact on crime.
Police in London chose not to use force to clear the protesters, but maintained a 24-hour presence, with the cost of the operation exceeding £10m.
Participants had put up several tents in the centre of Parliament Square and at one point opened a curry takeaway.
We only [blocked the roads] for attention. We couldn't get our message across... I'm 100% sure people understand it was because of a crisis in Sri Lanka
Sivendran Nadarajah, protester The number of protesters varied over the 73 days from a handful to more than 15,000 as organisers called in support via text message and website posts.
About 100,000 demonstrators joined a march and rally organised by the British Tamil Forum in early April.
Surges in activity followed developments in Sri Lanka. In May government forces wiped out almost the entire senior Tamil Tiger leadership, ending the 26-year war between the army and the rebels.
The UN believes that nearly 7,000 civilians may have been killed and another 13,000 injured in the war since January. More than 250,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the north.
Suren Surendiran, of the British Tamil Forum, said further events, including another central London rally this Saturday, had been planned.
Cannot play media.You do not have the correct version of the flash player. Download the correct versionHe said: "I am pleased with how the protest has gone. It was an opportunity to make the British public aware of our concerns and despair.
"Previously people thought of Sri Lanka as a holiday destination or a place for cricket. Now they are aware of some criminal activities, including state-sponsored terrorism.
"Whether people take sides or are aware of the details, I don't know. But they are aware something is happening there."
Tamils 'betrayed'
Sivendran Nadarajah, 20, from Mitcham in south London, told BBC Asian Network he thought the protests had been "worth it" because they had brought the truth about Sri Lanka to the fore.
He said protesters were sorry for the inconvenience caused when they blocked roads with the protest.
"We only did it for attention. We did a lot of protests calmly, peacefully, where thousands of people turned up. We couldn't get our message across. But when we blocked the road... I'm 100% sure people understand it was because of a crisis in Sri Lanka."
The rebels made a last stand in the conflict zone, before being defeated Ambi Seevaratnam, who was involved in talks between student organisers and police, said many people remained extremely angry about the fighting in the country.
She said students had decided to continue to put pressure on politicians and the media.
"To achieve this it is not enough to stand in Parliament Square and scream," she said.
"After 73 days, nothing has worked. We feel the Tamils have been betrayed by the international community."
The Tamil Tiger rebels started fighting in the 1970s for a separate state for Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east. They argued Tamils had been discriminated against by successive majority Sinhalese governments.
A statement by a UK Tamil students group said on Wednesday a pledge would be made as the protest ended "to continue the struggle for self determination by other means".
LTTE remnants regrouping?
A month after their defeat in the hands of the Sri Lankan army, the remnants of the LTTE plan to re-organise and pursue the goal of a separate Tamil state from abroad, with the rebels' international relations chief Selvaras Pathmanathan taking the lead."The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam has reached a new stage. It is time now for us to move forward with our political vision towards our freedom," Pathmanathan said in an e-mail audio file that has flown around the Tamil diaspora, the British media, including BBC and The Times, reported.
Pathmanathan, who is wanted by Interpol in connection with his role as the Tigers' main arms smuggler, gave no indication that the group would renounce violence but announced the establishment of a "provisional transnational government of Tamil Eelam".
He said Rudrakumaran Vishwanathan, their overseas-based legal adviser, would head a committee which would decide on a future course of action "within democratic principles".
Tamil Eelam is the name given by the Tigers to the north and eastern areas of Sri Lanka to which they lay claim.
Pathmanathan is one of a handful of senior cadres who escaped annihilation last month because he is based overseas. It is not clear from where has he issued the message, media reports said.
In the final phase of the battle, the troops eliminated the top Tamil Tiger leadership, including its supreme Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The Sri Lankan government has dismissed the so-called 'provisional transnational' government, pointing out that the LTTE does not exist any more.
"The LTTE is no longer a factor. It was military defeated and it cannot achieve a separate state even if it had the military prowess What can it do it now?" Lankan Media Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa was quoted as saying.
The pro-LTTE TamilNet did not carry Pathmanathan's statement and it is not clear if he is really in charge of the rebel remnants.
However, in a column, it has said the "need of the time now is the metamorphosis of the existing infrastructure into a democratic and inclusive transnational government of Eezham Tamils to strengthen the diaspora socially, economically and culturally; to achieve the goal of independence and sovereignty of Eezham Tamils in the home country and to meetthe international challenges internationally."
The Tamil diaspora, mostly in Canada, Australia and UK, has been donating millions of dollars for the LTTE cause.
The Tigers are a banned terrorist group in most Western countries. Last week, the founder of the British Tamil Association was sentenced to two years in jail for illegally procuring electrical components for the group.
Anti National : Centre blocks anti-conversion Bill !!!
The central government is going to block the anti-conversion Bills that have been introduced by various BJP governments but the response is not uniform.Home Minister P Chidambaram has decided to take a firm stand on the controversial anti-religious conversion Bill blocking Presidential assent. But the response is different for various state governments.
So, in Rajasthan where the Congress is in power the Centre has asked the Ashok Gehlot government whether it plans to drop the Bill passed by the earlier BJP government.
In Madhya Pradesh where a BJP government is still in place, the Centre has decided to withhold assent.
Centre stops anti-conversion laws:
Rajasthan: Left it to Congress government to drop Bill Madhya Pradesh: Rejected BJP government's BillBroadly the Bills provisions banned conversion by force or fraud or inducement and made it punishable. But all this, the Centre says violate the freedom of religion as laid down in the constitution.
"When I was CM in those 10 years there was no case for forcible conversion," said Digvijay Singh, former Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh.
"This is unacceptable and goes against Supreme Court judgements," said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Leader, BJP.
The BJP-led states had proposed laws in response to the increase in conversions by Christian missionaries.
But ironically they weren't the only ones, the Congress had passed a similar law in Himachal Pradesh and Orissa too has one which was passed in 1967.
Inflation slips into negative zone, falls to -1.61% !!!
Inflation turned negative 1.61 for the first time in thirty years but the prices of food items like fruit and vegetables, cereals and oil were still higher than last year.With the wholesale price index shrinking to 232.7 points for the week ended June 6 from 236.5 in the same week a year ago, India possibly is the only major economy moving into a deflationary zone though the European region is near zero level due to recessionary pressures.
“Negative inflation was expected by the market and policy makers. It reflects lower commodity prices on a year-on-year basis,” said Atsi Sheth, Chief Economist, Reliance Equities.
The stock markets immediately welcomed the development and jumped by about 200 points from the morning lows as market analysts expect this to help further ease the monetary policy restrictions and pave the way for cut in banks' lending rates.
“Negative inflation does not reflect deflationary environment. Though WPI is higher from week before, deflation is not a concern right now,” said Indranil Pan, Chief Economist, Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Releasing the wholesale price data, the government said in a statement that "the annual rate of inflation, calculated on a point to point to basis stood at minus 1.61 per cent for the week ended June 6 as compared to 0.13 per cent for the previous week and 11.66 per cent during the corresponding week of previous year".
However, food articles were costlier by 8.7 per cent from the comparable week last year as pulses moved up 17 per cent, cereals 13.5 per cent, and fruit and vegetables 10 per cent. The dip was on account of a fall in fuel prices as international crude oil is now ruling around $70 a barrel against over $140 a barrel during the year-ago period.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Four NSG hubs to be operational by June 30 !!!
The four NSG hubs announced in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror strikes last year will be operational by June 30.
This was stated by NSG director general N P S Aulakh after his meeting with union home minister P Chidamabarm on Tuesday.
"We have got land at all the four places -- Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai," Aulakh said. The four hubs for both anti-terror and anti-hijack operations will be operational by June 30, he said.
In the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks in November last year, the government had decided to set up NSG hubs in the four cities followed by more in the state capitals.
The NSG is faced with gigantic task of setting up the hubs as the 8,000-strong force is drawing men from its existing ranks.
The force, which gets its men on deputation from the Army and paramilitary forces, is still in the process of recruiting additional personnel needed for the new hubs. In the meantime, it was likely to operationalise it with existing strength.
Sources said batches of 200-250 army commandos (drawn from the Special Action Group) and 50-60 paramilitary troops (drawn from the Special Ranger Group) would be deployed initially who will be the first line of defence and offence in case of a terror attack.
Construction of commando barracks and training facilities have started at these hubs and the force, in coordination with the state governments concerned, is completing communication and other civic facilities at these camps.
Till the time the training facilities are developed at the new hubs, fully trained commandos from the Manesar (Gurgaon) garrison would be deputed to man these centres.
The new centres will be equipped with all facilities for launching counter operations, the sources said, adding that para-military commandos will provide backup support.
The decision to create new regional hubs was taken by the Centre after demands from various state governments for tackling major terror-related activities.
This was stated by NSG director general N P S Aulakh after his meeting with union home minister P Chidamabarm on Tuesday.
"We have got land at all the four places -- Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai," Aulakh said. The four hubs for both anti-terror and anti-hijack operations will be operational by June 30, he said.
In the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks in November last year, the government had decided to set up NSG hubs in the four cities followed by more in the state capitals.
The NSG is faced with gigantic task of setting up the hubs as the 8,000-strong force is drawing men from its existing ranks.
The force, which gets its men on deputation from the Army and paramilitary forces, is still in the process of recruiting additional personnel needed for the new hubs. In the meantime, it was likely to operationalise it with existing strength.
Sources said batches of 200-250 army commandos (drawn from the Special Action Group) and 50-60 paramilitary troops (drawn from the Special Ranger Group) would be deployed initially who will be the first line of defence and offence in case of a terror attack.
Construction of commando barracks and training facilities have started at these hubs and the force, in coordination with the state governments concerned, is completing communication and other civic facilities at these camps.
Till the time the training facilities are developed at the new hubs, fully trained commandos from the Manesar (Gurgaon) garrison would be deputed to man these centres.
The new centres will be equipped with all facilities for launching counter operations, the sources said, adding that para-military commandos will provide backup support.
The decision to create new regional hubs was taken by the Centre after demands from various state governments for tackling major terror-related activities.
26/11 report points loopholes in police response !!!
Mumbai: The Ram Pradhan Committee report on Mumbai Police's response to 26/11 terror strikes was partly tabled in Maharashtra Assembly on Tuesday.Maharashtra government refused to submit the entire report, calling it sensitive information that relates to matters that are subjudice. But there are many loopholes in the report and Action Taken Report.
The report says that lessons from the Mumbai train bombings were simply not imbibed and Standard Operating Procedures put into place in 2006 remained on paper.
The report cites a complete collapse of coordination between city, state and national security agencies while top officers reacted individually since there was no proper command centre and the Home Department was ineffective.
Even the Quick Response Team of Mumbai Police failed to act as it had no training to tackle such terror strikes.
Pradhan Committee report also cites a shortage of weapons and ammunition with the Mumbai Police and says police were not adequately trained to use AK-47s because of lack of ammunition.
The report also criticises the lack of proper coastal security cover and intelligence.
Heated discussions were held on Monday and Tuesday on the report of the Ram Pradhan Committee that investigated the 26/11 terror attacks with some ministers also proposing another panel to study it and others questioning why only former Mumbai Police commissioner Hasan Gafoor had been singled out for transfer.
The report was discussed threadbare at the Cabinet meeting on Monday evening.
Many state ministers have said that the report had clearly spoken of "intelligence failure" and questioned the appointment of D Shivananandan, commissioner of the State Intelligence Department at the time of the terror attacks, as city police chief.
The Opposition also blamed the government for avoiding a discussion and said that was why the report was only tabled on the last day of the current session of the Assembly.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan defended Gafoor, who has been blamed by the 26/11 report.
“(I) don’t think that there was any failure from the part of Mumbai Police commissioner. There are some parts of the Pradhan report which pertain to Kasab's trial. Sharing such sensitive information could adversely affect the course of the trial. We are not withholding any other information,” said Chavan.
After the report was submitted last fortnight, the government had set up a two-member committee comprising Chief Secretary Johny Joseph and Additional Chief Secretary (home) Chandra Iyengar to prepare an action taken report (ATR).
Cops' biggest handicap on 26/11: Obsolete, faulty guns !!!
Mumbai: On 26/11, the Mumbai Police were fighting two battles - one with 10 terrorists who came from the sea and the other with their own systemic and infrastructural failures.Constable after constable has reported how their .303 rifles jammed, how their bullets misfired and how many of them could simply not hit the target.
Images of a Railway Police Force (RPF) constable struggling to shoot at Ajmal Amir Kasab and Abu Ismail Khan from his jammed carbine at the Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus station are some of the most enduring ones of the attack.
During the attack not just one but at least three more RPF personnel ran for cover, unable to fire back because their guns jammed when it mattered most.
The 10 terrorists were armed with AK-47s and hand grenades and the Mumbai Police fought pitched battles with their archaic World War II era .303 rifles.
Several guns, which had not been used for years, jammed and the terrorists just walked away.
Constable Harshad Patil told the special court hearing the Mumbai attacks case: "I tried to fire at the attackers armed with AK 47 rifles, but very first bullet misfired from my .303 rifle rendering the weapon useless. The bullet was very old and defective which caused jamming of the gun on firing of the very first round."
Police Commando Gitanjali Gaurav admitted that though she was trained to handle sophisticated weapons, but on November 26 she had no weapons on her.
As observed by the Ram Pradhan Committee, out of the total 270 AK-47s available in the city at that time, hardly 20 were used during the operations.
According to internal orders of the Mumbai Police, officers are required to attend firing practice once a year but sources say even that was not being followed.
As a result, most of the policemen on the streets that night were woefully out of firing practice.
Gitanajali Gaurav told the court that 50 police were deployed at Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus as regular security cover. Many had opened fire from their .303s but Kasab and Ismail could not be stopped.
Constable Ambadas Pawar admitted in court that all bullets fired at Kasab and Ismail missed the terrorist pair.
Multiple authorities were relaying messages, compounding the chaos on the ground.
Pradhan Committee report says the Anti-Terrorism Squad was taking orders from both the Mumbai City Control Room and the State Control Room, leading to confusion.
Taking a lesson from the 7/11 train bombings in 2006, Mumbai Police had said in its Standard Operating Procedure that a unified command-and-control centre should be set up in such crises. But during 26/11, the plan remained on paper.
The 60 commandos of the Quick Response Team (QRT) of the Anti-Terrorism Squad in Mumbai, which is considered almost as well-trained as the NSG, was poorly utilised.
Errors by Mumbai Police on 26/11 proved fatal !!!
Mumbai: Ram Pradhan Committee report on 26/11 isn’t targeting Mumbai Police and does say that the men showed exemplary courage and bravery but the enormity of the attack led to a few fatal mistakes.The attack was of unprecedented magnitude, from cold blooded murders at a South Mumbai restaurant to foreign nationals brutally killed in two of the city's landmark hotels.
On 26/11, the Mumbai Police knew they were facing a different scale of terror attack. Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar knew it too and each officer was taking the best and most appropriate course of action according to him in the circumstances.
Even as Mumbai Police faced a serious lack of leadership, there were some unintended but crucial errors of judgement made at the Cama Hospital.
When Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar learnt that there was firing in a lane outside the Cama Hospital, they decided to leave their positions and pursue the terrorists together, instead of spreading out and covering the vantage points around the hospital with the help of junior personnel.
This decision went against the Standard Operating Procedure that Karkare himself had drafted.
The officers did not inform the control room about their decision to pursue the terrorists. As a result, they were isolated from the rest of the force. Under police protocol, it is mandatory for a team or even an officer to communicate his movement from point A to point B.
The officers also made one last fatal error. The Control Room had informed them that the two terrorists were standing near a red car in the Rang Bhavan lane.
Wireless logs now in possession of CNN-IBN, suggest that both Kamte and Karkare had been in constant touch with the Control Room about their movements within the hospital.
But it was perhaps the urgency of the situation and heat of the moment that caused the errors near the Cama Hospital.
Instead of proceeding on foot, the officers chose to take a regular police jeep which restricted their firing and attack options, and did not give them adequate cover.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab and Ismail Khan seized the opportunity to open fire at almost point-blank range, ending the lives of three top police officers.
Mumbai Police's laxity let Kasab slip out of Cama !!!
Mumbai: Police officers present at Cama Hospital during the Mumbai terror attacks gave repeated and clear instructions asking for the area to be encircled and reinforcements to be sent but their calls went unheard.Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare, additional commissioner Ashok Kamte and senior inspector Vijay Salaskar were all gunned down near the Cama Hospital on the night of 26/11.
Six months later, a CNN-IBN investigation has sifted through police call records on that fateful night to reveal some startling facts.
Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar all reached the Cama Hospital separately on the night of November 26, 2008.
At 1124 hrs IST, when Pakistani terrorists Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab and Ismail Khan had already been inside Cama Hospital for 25 minutes, Karkare called the control room from his position at the rear entry of the hospital.
"I am at Cama Hospital. There is firing going on here.. Blasts are taking place... three-four grenade blasts have taken place in front of us in the last five minutes. It is important to encircle Cama Hospital. We are next to Special Branch office. Send a team to the front side of Cama Hospital and this needs to be co-ordinated to ensure that there is no cross firing," Karkare told the Control Room.
Four minutes later, Karkare called again.
"ATS, QRT (Quick Response Team) and Crime Branch's team are on the side of SB2 office. So we need a team on the front side of Cama. We need to encircle Cama Hospital. Surround it. Ask Mr Prasad {Joint Commissioner (Law and Order)} to request Army authorities," Karkare said.
The Control Room responded by saying, "Sir, noted."
Meanwhile, Additional Commissioner of Police Sadanand Date was battling Kasab and Ismail inside the hospital.
Date had arrived at Cama soon after the terrorists, and was taking them on with other officers. Starting at 2319 hrs IST, at regular intervals, Date kept telling his wireless operator to ask the Control Room for reinforcements.
Date's conversation with the Control Room:
At 2319 hrs IST: Firing going on in Cama Hospital. Send commandos immediately.
At 2320 hrs IST: Firing going on, on the sixth floor. Help quickly.
At 2323 hrs IST: Two-three blasts have taken place. Help immediately.
At 2325 hrs IST: Firing is going on, on sixth floor of Cama. Need reinforcements.
At 2326 hrs IST: Shortage of striking at Cama.
At 2327 hrs IST: Send striking to Cama, running short of men.
At 2328 hrs IST: Heavy firing. We are all injured. Need help. Please need reinforcements.
Date's right eye was injured, his left leg badly wounded during the gunbattle. Yet he continued to shoot. At around midnight, Kasab and Ismail left Cama Hospital from the front entrance
They went to hide in the Rang Bhavan lane, nearby and when they saw Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar looking for them in their car, they shot them dead.
The crucial question is: Why were Karkare's orders for encircling Cama and securing its front gate not followed promptly? Did Sadanand Date's repeated calls for help go unheard?
The Mumbai police say they did send reinforcements that night - at least 70 to 80 police officers. They say the problem was that there were too many officers, and not enough co-ordination.
Negligence, carelessness or a sheer lack of co-ordination - whatever the reason, the fact remains that Kasab and Ismail were able to walk out of Cama Hospital on the night of 26/11 without being stopped. They had killed, and would kill again... and they could have been prevented.
Revealed: US allowed Pakistan to go nuclear !!!
The United States allowed Pakistan to manufacture and acquire nuclear weapons without informing the Congress, a non-profit corruption watchdog has said, quoting a whistleblower who was fired for objecting to the policy.A Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon official, who tried to object to this policy of the then US administration of keeping the Congress in dark on this issue, was fired.
"As a CIA intelligence officer and later in the Pentagon, Rich Barlow learned that top US officials were allowing Pakistan to manufacture and possess nuclear weapons," Danielle Brian, executive director, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), told a Congressional hearing last week.
Washington-based, POGO is a non-profit non-partisan watchdog that works with whistleblowers and government insiders to expose corruption, fraud, and abuse of power.
"Barlow also discovered that US officials were hiding these activities from Congress," Brian told US lawmakers in her testimony during a hearing.
"Barlow objected and suggested to his supervisors that Congress should be made aware of the situation... he was fired," said Brian in her testimony.
"Barlow is now destitute and living in a trailer," she said as she went on to give other examples of the fate of the whistleblowers in the US government.
An investigative story published by UK's The Guardian newspaper in 2007 had said: 'In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan.'
According to the newspaper, Barley soon discovered that senior officials in government 'were breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology'.
This was done because in the closing years of the cold war, Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance, it said.
'We had to buddy-up to regimes we didn't see eye-to-eye with, but I could not believe we would actually give Pakistan the bomb,' Barlow was quoted as saying.
He next discovered that Pentagon was preparing to sell Pakistan jet fighters that could be used to drop a nuclear bomb and came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding Pakistan's programme, it said.
'They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license,' he said.
'He (Barlow) prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal -- a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb -- he found himself a marked man,' the paper said.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
French: Search for Flight 447 to continue !!!
LE BOURGET, France: The arduous mid-Atlantic search for the remains of Air France Flight 447 will go on as long as there is hope of finding the plane's black boxes, the French defense minister said Tuesday.
Herve Morin and his Brazilian counterpart Nelson Jobim met at the Paris Air Show and shared notes on progress of the search, which includes the Brazilian military, a French submarine and Dutch ships towing two high-tech U.S. Navy listening devices seeking sounds emanating from the Airbus A330's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, pings that will grow faint and die after two more weeks.
“France is determined to continue the search as long as there is hope of finding the black boxes,'' Morin told reporters at the Paris Air show, seeking to play down reported disaccord between the two countries over how long to keep up the operation.
“We've now found 49 bodies. And we'll continue doing this until the moment that, technically, we determine the searches are useless,'' Jobim told the Agencia Estado news agency.
Jobim said that after four or more days of not finding bodies, the search could perhaps be halted. The last bodies were believed to have been found Friday by a French vessel, but that has not been confirmed.
At the search scene, a vast swath of the Atlantic northeast of Brazil, the weather was fine Tuesday and ships sailed in a grid pattern, trying to find more debris and bodies.
Jobim said the French will continue searching and helping to identify the bodies, but the entire identification process would take place in Brazil “to avoid double autopsies, which would be a horrible thing for the families.''
Flight 447 crashed into the sea May 31 as it hit thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Experts say the evidence uncovered so far points to at least a partial midair breakup of the plane, with no signs of an explosion or terrorist act.
Without the black boxes, thought to be thousands of feet (meters) underwater, the probe into the disaster that killed 228 people has focused on the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.
There is no hard evidence that the speed monitors, Pitot tubes, were to blame. However, pilots' union official said Air France had finished replacing air speed monitors on all its long-haul Airbus aircraft under pressure from pilots who feared they might be linked to the crash. The plane that crashed had older Pitot tubes.
Airbus' chief salesman, John Leahy, defended his company's handling of information about past difficulties with Pitot tubes, saying it followed normal procedures for sending out “service bulletins'' to airlines about them. “It's up to the airlines to decide what they want to do on that.''
Families of about 40 of the victims have created a new group to defend their interests in seeking information from the French government and Air France, which they say has treated them with ``a lack of humanity,'' according to spokesman Christophe Guillot-Noel.
Guillot-Noel told a news conference in Paris the families wanted access to counseling and updates on the inquiry into the causes of the crash.
“We are not here to seek alms; we are simply here so that the families who depended on the people who were in the airplane can have the necessary comfort to be able to withstand this catastrophe,'' Guillot-Noel said. The group is called the Association for Truth, Aid and Defense of Victims of Flight 447.
Airbus CEO Tom Enders noted that the company doesn't run the investigation. “We offer support, but we do not speculate about the reasons. It is still too early. There is no possibility to know at this point why Air France 447 really came down.''
And company officials said the A330 has been a reliable part of what records show is a safe form of travel.
The A330 “is the workhorse of the industry. Every day, 24/7, an A330 takes off somewhere in the world,” Leahy said at the air show.
Herve Morin and his Brazilian counterpart Nelson Jobim met at the Paris Air Show and shared notes on progress of the search, which includes the Brazilian military, a French submarine and Dutch ships towing two high-tech U.S. Navy listening devices seeking sounds emanating from the Airbus A330's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, pings that will grow faint and die after two more weeks.
“France is determined to continue the search as long as there is hope of finding the black boxes,'' Morin told reporters at the Paris Air show, seeking to play down reported disaccord between the two countries over how long to keep up the operation.
“We've now found 49 bodies. And we'll continue doing this until the moment that, technically, we determine the searches are useless,'' Jobim told the Agencia Estado news agency.
Jobim said that after four or more days of not finding bodies, the search could perhaps be halted. The last bodies were believed to have been found Friday by a French vessel, but that has not been confirmed.
At the search scene, a vast swath of the Atlantic northeast of Brazil, the weather was fine Tuesday and ships sailed in a grid pattern, trying to find more debris and bodies.
Jobim said the French will continue searching and helping to identify the bodies, but the entire identification process would take place in Brazil “to avoid double autopsies, which would be a horrible thing for the families.''
Flight 447 crashed into the sea May 31 as it hit thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Experts say the evidence uncovered so far points to at least a partial midair breakup of the plane, with no signs of an explosion or terrorist act.
Without the black boxes, thought to be thousands of feet (meters) underwater, the probe into the disaster that killed 228 people has focused on the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.
There is no hard evidence that the speed monitors, Pitot tubes, were to blame. However, pilots' union official said Air France had finished replacing air speed monitors on all its long-haul Airbus aircraft under pressure from pilots who feared they might be linked to the crash. The plane that crashed had older Pitot tubes.
Airbus' chief salesman, John Leahy, defended his company's handling of information about past difficulties with Pitot tubes, saying it followed normal procedures for sending out “service bulletins'' to airlines about them. “It's up to the airlines to decide what they want to do on that.''
Families of about 40 of the victims have created a new group to defend their interests in seeking information from the French government and Air France, which they say has treated them with ``a lack of humanity,'' according to spokesman Christophe Guillot-Noel.
Guillot-Noel told a news conference in Paris the families wanted access to counseling and updates on the inquiry into the causes of the crash.
“We are not here to seek alms; we are simply here so that the families who depended on the people who were in the airplane can have the necessary comfort to be able to withstand this catastrophe,'' Guillot-Noel said. The group is called the Association for Truth, Aid and Defense of Victims of Flight 447.
Airbus CEO Tom Enders noted that the company doesn't run the investigation. “We offer support, but we do not speculate about the reasons. It is still too early. There is no possibility to know at this point why Air France 447 really came down.''
And company officials said the A330 has been a reliable part of what records show is a safe form of travel.
The A330 “is the workhorse of the industry. Every day, 24/7, an A330 takes off somewhere in the world,” Leahy said at the air show.
PM talks tough to Zardari: India ready to talk to Pak again but ‘only on terrorism’ !!!
and Pakistan will begin to talk to each other again but after a cold handshake, the Prime Minister in an unprecedented move didn't even wait for the media to leave before telling President Asif Zardari that India would only talk about terrorism.
"My mandate is limited to talking about terror," said Manmohan Singh.
No question of the old 'composite' dialogue, in other words not warm hugs it's a cold start after a cold war.
Confirmed by Foreign Secretary PM told Zardari that mandate for this meeting is 'limited' to talking about terror. Delhi moved quickly to downplay reports that Zardari had been embarrassed.
"His making an opening remark in front of cameras shouldn't be read as unprecedented. Some reports suggested," said Shiv Shankar Menon, Foreign Secretary, India.
But there was no mistaking Delhi's concern. This was their first meeting since the Mumbai attacks, a terror attack which derailed India-Pak talks.
If earlier New Delhi succeeded in getting Islamabad to accept a Pakistan hand in the attacks today Delhi agreed to take the talks forward on one major condition that they only discuss how to stop terror against India.
So, the Dr Singh and Zardari decided, within the next one-month the foreign secretaries will meet.
Lanka seeks international help to capture LTTE leader !!!
Having wiped out the LTTE leadership from northern Sri Lanka, the government is now seeking international help to nab its fugitive leader K Padmanathan, believed to be active in carrying out the Tigers' operations overseas.The Sri Lankan government has forwarded details to other countries seeking arrest of Padmanathan, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said.
"In terms of world opinion and also in relation to how we could counter LTTE terror network forces, there are still some elements at large," Bogollagama said.
"That is why we have gone very much public in terms of seeking of the arrest of K Padmanathan. That is important. That is one such person," he he told a TV channel.
Bogollagama said the government might have countered terrorism comprehensively by defeating the LTTE, "but a lot more has to be done".
The Tamilnet reported on January 30 this year that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had appointed Pathmanathan, "a high profile representative of the movement," as its international face.
"Pathmanathan will be representing the movement in any further peace initiatives and will be the primary point of contact for engaging with the international community," a letter sent to various international actors by the LTTE's department of international relations, said.
Tamilnet said Pathmanathan will work abroad "with required mandate from the LTTE leadership" and that he had "begun corresponding with international actors".
According to Sri Lankan government, Padmanathan (alias KP) has become one of the important custodians of slain LTTE leader Prabhakaran's wealth.
Sri Lankan news website "Lankaweb" termed 'KP' as the brain behind LTTE's 'international illegal activities' and a 'fugitive wanted by Interpol'.
His arrest will be a big breakthrough to get more information and details of the international network of LTTE, including links to drug and human smuggling, details of illegal arms dealers and money laundering, the website said.
"KP has for decades been the LTTE's chief procurer of arms, ammunition and electronic equipment. He is supposed to have helped raise finances abroad in the initial years of the LTTE and set up its many offices in foreign countries.
"More importantly, he is the brain behind the clandestine LTTE shipping network that became the Tigers' virtual lifeline," it said.
The LTTE, in its first communication nearly a month after Prabhakaran's death and defeat has tried to revive the pro-Sri-Lankan Tamil campaign.
In an audio address, also posted on a pro-LTTE website, slain LTTE chief Prabhakaran's international representative K Pathmanathan declared that the rebels were now planning to take the political road.
He said the movement would set up a government in exile while working towards a provisional Tamil government in Sri Lanka itself.
The struggle for this provisional government would be led by the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance. It would work in close coordination with the government in exile.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Bogollagama has called on the international community to help arrest Pathmanathan.
'New government' for Tamil Tigers !!!
Sri Lankan rebel group the Tamil Tigers say they are forming a "provisional transnational government" to pursue self-rule for the Tamil minority.In a statement released from an unknown location, a Tigers' spokesman said the new body would advance what he said was the next phase of the struggle.
The move comes almost a month after the government declared it had finally defeated the Tamil Tigers, or LTTE.
Rebels had fought for decades for a Tamil homeland in the island's north.
At the end of the conflict, most of the group's leaders were dead and many of its supporters in the Tamil diaspora confused and humiliated.
The announcement came in a statement by Selvarasa Pathmanathan, one of the few senior Tigers still alive and the movement's head of international relations.
He announced plans to set up what he called a provisional transnational government of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil homeland.
'Necessary move'
Mr Pathmanathan said it was a necessary move to advance "the struggle", saying people wanted such a homeland and self-rule.
He said a committee was being formed to help the process, headed by an exiled Tamil lawyer, Rudrakumar Viswanathan.
Late last month, Mr Pathmanathan acknowledged that the Tamil Tigers' main leader, Prabhakaran, was dead and he said the LTTE had given up violence.
But this statement suggests it hasn't given up a separatist agenda.
That is not likely to go down well with the international community or with the Sri Lankan government, which is still celebrating its military victory.
"We have removed the word 'minorities' from our vocabulary," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said recently, and one of his ministers said that anyone espousing the ideals of the LTTE was violating the law.
Tamil ranks 15th linguistic group in the World!
Tamil ranks 15th linguistic group in the World!
“If our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present in the new media, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized”.
Jacques Chirac, 22nd President of France (1995-2007)
Article one (1), paragraph one (1) of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, (6 June 1996) says, “This Declaration considers as a language community any human society established historically in a particular territorial space, whether this space be recognized or not, which identifies itself as a people and has developed a common language as a natural means of communication and cultural cohesion between its members. The term language specific to a territory refers to the language of the community historically established in such a space.” Also there are many other International Declarations, Charter, Recommendations, etc advocating the linguistic rights of peoples.
The “Ethnologue” organisation says that in nearly two hundred countries, more than 6,800 languages are in use; that out of these languages only 2,261 have writing systems and that all other languages are only spoken.
Analysis of these languages on a regional basis, shows that: nearly 2,200 languages are spoken in Asia, around 2,000 in Africa, nearly 1,000 in the Americas, 1,300 in the Pacific region and 230 in Europe.
When we consider the living languages and look at the top twenty most spoken in the World, we see that the Tamil language ranks between fifteenth and seventh position.
It is interesting to compare this linguistic group with those people whose language is linked to a specific country - such as Poland, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma) and Iran. There are many other examples in Europe and Asia. The speakers of these languages, which rank far below Tamil, have a Country of their own! For information, it is even to be noted that many Tamil words are in use in the English language.
At the same time, the Sinhalese language ranks only at sixty-eighth position and it is only used in Sri Lanka. This fact should be considered seriously by the International Community, which pretends to be ignorant of this truth. We are reminded of the ‘Chicken and Egg’ story!
The Tamil Language which is spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Mauritius and a few other countries is the result of colonial emigration from South India of Tamils in the British Colonial period. During the same period, in 1862, Tamils were brought from South India to work in the tea plantations in the Up-country area in then Ceylon.
These Tamils are not to be confused with Tamils who have lived in the Island for thousands of years, long before the arrival of Buddhism and the birth of the Singhalese language in the island. The actual historical evidence of the island’s Tamil Kingdom, prior and during the colonial period can be found in Universities, Libraries and government Archive Centres in Portugal, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Fortunately, this evidence cannot be destroyed like the documents destroyed in the Jaffna public Library by the heinous Sri Lanka government-sponsored arson attack in 1981. This was done deliberately to completely destroy historical evidence of the Tamil Kingdom and the history of the Tamil people in the Island.
It is to be noted that the Tamils were taken to South Africa to work in the sugar cane industry at the same time as Tamils were brought to Ceylon to the tea plantations. But today none of the Tamils in South Africa work in the sugar cane industry. Even with the horrendous history of Apartheid, Tamils have prospered well in South Africa. Today they are in part Academics, Economists, Industrialists and many are in key positions in South African decision-making bodies. However, in the Up-country in Sri Lanka, Tamils are still in the tea plantations picking tea leaves as they have done, under extremely exploitative conditions, for generations. This shows that Ceylon or Sri Lanka’s racism against Tamils is worse even than the evils of Apartheid in South Africa.
Under the Ceylon 1948 Citizenship Act and the laws of disenfranchisement, the Tamils of Indian origin (who are known as plantation Tamils or up-country Tamils) were deprived of selecting their representatives to Parliament. More than a million plantation Tamil workers were rendered stateless. The majority of them were repatriated back to India in 1964. These people had lived in the Island for over hundred and fifteen years and they were the backbone of Sri Lanka’s economy – the tea, rubber and cocoa industries.
It is surprising that the people who speak one of the oldest languages in the World, which ranks in fifteenth position as most spoken language, do not even have any fundamental political rights in the Island of Sri Lanka. Why is this? The present feeble attempts of the International Community with regard to the Genocide being committed against the Tamils, exemplify and hint at what also happened in the past.
The current atrocities - the most vile slaughter of the Tamil people - follow six decades of ill-treatment, discrimination, torture and killings – conspicuously ignored by the international community - despite the fact that human rights defenders and others, have worked day and night for over two decades, documenting and exposing these massive violations.
As we said in our Press release of 16 April 2009, “The continued use of Tamils as Pawns must be stopped and their inalienable rights should be respected”. The International Community must help the Tamils to obtain their lost rights and their land. This is the only way Tamils can live in peace and harmony - even with their neighbours.
Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); the UN Charter; Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other instruments provide strong legal basis and encouragement for the re-establishment of Tamil Kingdom in the island of Sri Lanka.
Furthermore the mandate given by the Tamil people in the 1977 and 2004 general elections stands witness to this case.
“If our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present in the new media, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized”.
Jacques Chirac, 22nd President of France (1995-2007)
Article one (1), paragraph one (1) of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, (6 June 1996) says, “This Declaration considers as a language community any human society established historically in a particular territorial space, whether this space be recognized or not, which identifies itself as a people and has developed a common language as a natural means of communication and cultural cohesion between its members. The term language specific to a territory refers to the language of the community historically established in such a space.” Also there are many other International Declarations, Charter, Recommendations, etc advocating the linguistic rights of peoples.
The “Ethnologue” organisation says that in nearly two hundred countries, more than 6,800 languages are in use; that out of these languages only 2,261 have writing systems and that all other languages are only spoken.
Analysis of these languages on a regional basis, shows that: nearly 2,200 languages are spoken in Asia, around 2,000 in Africa, nearly 1,000 in the Americas, 1,300 in the Pacific region and 230 in Europe.
When we consider the living languages and look at the top twenty most spoken in the World, we see that the Tamil language ranks between fifteenth and seventh position.
It is interesting to compare this linguistic group with those people whose language is linked to a specific country - such as Poland, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma) and Iran. There are many other examples in Europe and Asia. The speakers of these languages, which rank far below Tamil, have a Country of their own! For information, it is even to be noted that many Tamil words are in use in the English language.
At the same time, the Sinhalese language ranks only at sixty-eighth position and it is only used in Sri Lanka. This fact should be considered seriously by the International Community, which pretends to be ignorant of this truth. We are reminded of the ‘Chicken and Egg’ story!
The Tamil Language which is spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Mauritius and a few other countries is the result of colonial emigration from South India of Tamils in the British Colonial period. During the same period, in 1862, Tamils were brought from South India to work in the tea plantations in the Up-country area in then Ceylon.
These Tamils are not to be confused with Tamils who have lived in the Island for thousands of years, long before the arrival of Buddhism and the birth of the Singhalese language in the island. The actual historical evidence of the island’s Tamil Kingdom, prior and during the colonial period can be found in Universities, Libraries and government Archive Centres in Portugal, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Fortunately, this evidence cannot be destroyed like the documents destroyed in the Jaffna public Library by the heinous Sri Lanka government-sponsored arson attack in 1981. This was done deliberately to completely destroy historical evidence of the Tamil Kingdom and the history of the Tamil people in the Island.
It is to be noted that the Tamils were taken to South Africa to work in the sugar cane industry at the same time as Tamils were brought to Ceylon to the tea plantations. But today none of the Tamils in South Africa work in the sugar cane industry. Even with the horrendous history of Apartheid, Tamils have prospered well in South Africa. Today they are in part Academics, Economists, Industrialists and many are in key positions in South African decision-making bodies. However, in the Up-country in Sri Lanka, Tamils are still in the tea plantations picking tea leaves as they have done, under extremely exploitative conditions, for generations. This shows that Ceylon or Sri Lanka’s racism against Tamils is worse even than the evils of Apartheid in South Africa.
Under the Ceylon 1948 Citizenship Act and the laws of disenfranchisement, the Tamils of Indian origin (who are known as plantation Tamils or up-country Tamils) were deprived of selecting their representatives to Parliament. More than a million plantation Tamil workers were rendered stateless. The majority of them were repatriated back to India in 1964. These people had lived in the Island for over hundred and fifteen years and they were the backbone of Sri Lanka’s economy – the tea, rubber and cocoa industries.
It is surprising that the people who speak one of the oldest languages in the World, which ranks in fifteenth position as most spoken language, do not even have any fundamental political rights in the Island of Sri Lanka. Why is this? The present feeble attempts of the International Community with regard to the Genocide being committed against the Tamils, exemplify and hint at what also happened in the past.
The current atrocities - the most vile slaughter of the Tamil people - follow six decades of ill-treatment, discrimination, torture and killings – conspicuously ignored by the international community - despite the fact that human rights defenders and others, have worked day and night for over two decades, documenting and exposing these massive violations.
As we said in our Press release of 16 April 2009, “The continued use of Tamils as Pawns must be stopped and their inalienable rights should be respected”. The International Community must help the Tamils to obtain their lost rights and their land. This is the only way Tamils can live in peace and harmony - even with their neighbours.
Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); the UN Charter; Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other instruments provide strong legal basis and encouragement for the re-establishment of Tamil Kingdom in the island of Sri Lanka.
Furthermore the mandate given by the Tamil people in the 1977 and 2004 general elections stands witness to this case.
PM calls for global unity to defeat terrorism !!!
In his first address to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday called for greater global cooperation to defeat the "spectre of terrorism" and reform of international financial bodies."The spectre of terrorism, extremist ideologies and illicit drug trafficking haunts our region. Terrorist crimes committed today are transnational in nature," Manmohan Singh told leaders of SCO at Hotel Hyatt Regency in Russia.
"No country is immune from them. It is imperative that we genuinely cooperate with one another and on a global scale to resolutely defeat international terrorism," said the PM, who is on his first overseas visit since his re-election last month.
India, along with Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia, are participating as observer at the summit of the SCO, a six-nation regional grouping dominated by Russia and China that also includes Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev are among the leaders participating at the 9th SCO summit.
Alluding to festering instability and a surge in Taliban-led violence, Manmohan Singh reiterated India's commitment to contributing to international efforts for the economic reconstruction of Afghanistan.
This is the first SCO summit at which an Indian prime minister is participating since the SCO leaders decided to include observer countries in full-format discussions at their last summit in Dushanbe.
Unveiling his vision of regional integration and prosperity, the prime minister stressed on greater economic connectivity and more cooperation among SCO members and observers to address issues relating to sustainable development and the global financial meltdown.
"We believe that with the resources available with us, the SCO and India can mutually reinforce each other's efforts towards the economic emancipation of our region," Manmohan Singh said while offering to share India's development experience.
He also underlined the need for closer cooperation in the fields of energy and food security, and infrastructure development.
The Prime Minister exhorted the SCO to seize the global financial crisis and concert it into an opportunity for "greater economic cooperation between the members of the SCO and India" and pressed for reform of the institutions of global governance, including financial institutions, to bring them in tune with "present and emerging economic realities."
PM to meet Zardari
Marking their first encounter since the 26/11 Mumbai carnage, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday shook hands and posed for cameras ahead of their talks in Russia.
Manmohan Singh and Zardari met at the summit of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the Ball Room of Hotel Hyatt Regency where they are participating as observers.
They will meet later on Tuesday for a 30-minute meeting at the Silver Room of the hotel.
Terrorism will top the agenda at their first meeting since the November 26, 2008 terrorist attacks that led India to suspend the composite dialogue with Pakistan, officials said.
Private plane crash kills 3 Indian Americans !!!
Police is investigating the cause of a crash of a single-engine family-owned plane that claimed the lives of an Indian American hotelier, a Kerala native, his 11-year-old son and an Indian American doctor friend in eastern New York.
New York State police said divers recovered the body of the plane's owner, 41-year-old Mathai Kolath George, Monday. The bodies of his son, George Kolath, and 52-year-old Krishnan Raghavan were recovered Sunday. Kolath, an Albany hotelier, was entertaining his son and Raghavan, a local doctor, with an afternoon jaunt Sunday in his Piper Cherokee plane when it plunged into the Mohawk River shortly after takeoff from nearby Mohawk Valley Airport.
The plane, which was registered to Kolath Airlines LLC of Bear, Delaware, sank in 30 feet of water and was found by people in a boat nearby. Authorities on Monday recovered the small plane and loaded it on a barge. "He stopped for lunch at a small airport and they took off and (after) their takeoff, we don't know what happened," Kolath's brother-in-law Anil Paulose was quoted as saying by Newsday.
Kolath was the "most high spirited person I've ever seen. He was so full of energy," he said. Media reports cited Skip Ryan, a pilot who was also waiting to take off, as saying the plane appeared to lose power in the air, plunging nose-first into the river. A skydiving instructor at Mohawk Valley Airport said he and others who were in the small airstrip's restaurant heard the crash, ran down the airstrip and jumped into the river.
Independent body needed to investigate Sri Lankan abuses - Amnesty !!!
An independent international commission must be set up to investigate human rights violations in Sri Lanka over the last 20 years, as successive governments have failed to account for abuses such as torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings during its civil war, Amnesty International said.
Sri Lanka last month declared victory over rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a conflict which lasted over a quarter of a century and saw tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands of people uprooted from their homes and forced to live in displacement camps.
Human rights groups have been particularly critical of the last months of the war, where they say both the government and Tigers showed a wanton disregard for human life with between 10,000 and 20,000 people killed during this period alone.
The military has been accused of continuously using heavy artillery to shell a tiny strip of land where Tigers were trapped along with hundreds of thousands of civilians, while rebels were accused of holding civilians hostage and using them as human shields. Both parties have rejected the charges.
However, the government remains under pressure to recognize calls both domestically and internationally for accountability and transparency, with the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying earlier this month that any credible accusation of human rights violations should be investigated.
But according to a report published last week by the London-based human rights group, serious human rights violations have been occurring in the Indian Ocean Island for many years.
"As the Sri Lankan people contend with the most recent abuses committed by both sides of the recent conflict, particularly during the last few months of the fighting, the reality is that they have been haunted by injustice and impunity for years," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director.
FLAWED JUSTICE
The report titled "Twenty Years of Make-Believe: Sri Lanka's Commissions of Inquiry" said that over the last 20 years, there have been assassinations of public figures, killings of aid workers and other civilians, and enforced disappearances.
It cited various examples of violations including the massacre of 17 aid workers from Action Contre la Faim (ACF) in the town of Muttur in 2006. Fifteen bodies were discovered lying face-down on the front lawn of the charity's office, with bullet wounds to head and neck, indicating that they have been shot at close range, execution style. Two more staff members were found in a car nearby, possibly trying to escape.
The report also mentions the case of a lawyer tortured to death in police custody as well as the mass "disappearance" of 159 people from a camp for displaced people.
Ad hoc commissions of inquiry established by the government over the last two decades have lacked any real credibility and delayed criminal investigations, said the study.
Authorities had failed to protect victims and witnesses, said Amnesty, adding that state agents had even intervened directly in some cases to eliminate witnesses through bribes, threats, harassment, intimidation and violence, including murder, to discourage police investigations.
The study added that the country's "glacially slow" criminal justice system - which is subjected to political pressure - is so degraded that the vast majority of human rights violations over the past 20 years have never been investigated, let alone heard in court.
"The Sri Lankan authorities have had little success in providing accountability for abuses against civilians committed by the LTTE; they are even less likely to effectively investigate and prosecute their own forces for violations of human rights and humanitarian law," said Zarifi.
"Given the scale of the problem of impunity in Sri Lanka, accountability can only be achieved with the active commitment of the Sri Lankan government, supported by systematic and sustained international human rights monitoring and technical assistance."
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