General Sarath Fonseka, the former Sri Lankan army chief jailed for running as an opposition candidate, has declared he will lead an Arab Spring-style uprising to force the government from office.
Outlining his return
to active politics after he was released from jail in May following pressure
from the United
States
Instead he launched a bitter
attack on President Rajapaksa, whom he accused of persecuting his family and
terrorising opponents, and pledged a new campaign to topple his government.
"I'm definitely asking people to rise up," and "overthrow the
government by democratic methods," he said.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph
he denounced his former commander-in-chief as a "dictator" and called
on the international community to "de-recognise" the government.
General Fonseka criticised
British prime minister David Cameron for meeting President Rajapaksa at a
Jubilee lunch in London
"[They should] derecognise the government and give
protection to the people...if there is a dictator violating human rights and
the democracy of the people, I think the world will have to take care of that.
He cited a series of abuses by
pro-government politicians including rapes and murders of opponents and pointed
to an incident in February when police opened fire on a crowd of 5000
fishermen, including women and children, protesting against rising fuel prices.
One fisherman was killed and three were wounded.
Two teenage girls were recently
gang-raped by suspected pro-government figures while two members of the JVP
which supported his presidential campaign were shot dead by motorcycle gunmen
last month.
"You have seen how it took
place in other countries and how those people were rescued from tyrannical
regimes. I hope and pray it will not be like Libya
Despite his family's
"sacrifices", he said he was happy to be the figurehead of
opposition.
"It's a sacrifice I'm making
in order to get freedom and democratic rights for the people of this country
.They are sacrifices, but otherwise who will stand against the mal-practices of
this government and those who control this country?" he said.
Despite being banned from
standing for election for the next seven years, General Fonseka remains a
popular hero in Sri Lanka for leading its armed
forces to victory in its 27 year civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. He was hailed by large crowds at rallies throughout the
country but his popularity led to a rift with President Rajapaksa and his
brother, the defence secretary Gotabaya.
Gen Fonseka said although the
victory was not his alone, "I commanded the army to victory, I planned the
operations and commanded the troops...I definitely feel proud," he said.
He eventually resigned later that
year and challenged Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election. He was
defeated in what he denounced as a rigged ballot and was later jailed for three
years on corruption charges and stripped of his rank, medals and pension.
He spent the next two years in
jail where he was held in solitary confinement "24 hours a day" and
denied contact with other prisoners, he said. His son-in-law disappeared amid
rumours that the government was seeking his arrest and has now been missing for
two and a half years, while his wife was unable to rent or buy a home because
government officials threatened potential sellers and landlords. "Now the
intelligence bureau follow me wherever I go, even to weddings," he said.
He dismissed allegations that Sri
Lankan troops committed war crimes but criticised the government for failing to
answer them fully. He was ready to face any accusations and denied his army had
targeted civilians sheltering in a no-fire zone in the last stages of the war –
estimates of civilians deaths range from 9,000 to 40,000.
@ The Telegraph
By Mirza Waheed
A journalist and the author of the novel “The Collaborator.”
INDIA
[Corpses were brought in by the truckload and buried on an industrial scale. The report cataloged 2,156 bullet-riddled bodies found in mountain graves and called for an inquiry to identify them. Many were men described as “unidentified militants” killed in fighting with soldiers during the armed rebellion against Indian rule during the 1990s, but according to the report, more than 500 were local residents. “There is every probability,” the report concluded, that the graves might “contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances,” a euphemism for people who have been detained, abducted, taken away by armed forces or the police, often without charge or conviction, and never seen again.]
By Mirza Waheed
I read about this in faraway London Kashmir . The
assembly was debating a report on the uncovering of more than 2,000 unmarked
and mass graves not far from the Line of Control that divides Indian- and
Pakistani-controlled Kashmir . The report, by India’s
government-appointed State Human Rights Commission, marked the first official
acknowledgment of the presence of mass graves. More significantly, the report
found that civilians, potentially the victims of extrajudicial killings, may be
buried at some of the sites.
Corpses were brought in by
the truckload and
buried on an industrial scale. The report
cataloged 2,156 bullet-riddled bodies found in mountain graves and called
for an inquiry to identify them. Many were men described as “unidentified
militants” killed in fighting with soldiers during the armed rebellion against
Indian rule during the 1990s, but according to the report, more than 500 were
local residents. “There is every probability,” the report concluded, that the
graves might “contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances,” a euphemism
for people who have been detained, abducted, taken away by armed forces or the
police, often without charge or conviction, and never seen again.
Had the graves been found under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s
compound in Libya Homs Syria India
The Indian government has long been intransigent on the
issue of Kashmir — preferring to blame Pakistan for fomenting violence rather than
address Kashmiris’ legitimate aspirations for freedom or honor its own promises to resolve the issue according to the wishes of
Kashmiri people and
investigate the crimes of its army. And almost a year after the human rights
commission issued its report on mass graves, the Indian state continues to
remain indifferent to evidence of possible crimes against humanity. As a
believer in a moral universe, I expected better. But it is an all too familiar
pattern.
In March 2000, a day before President Bill Clinton visited India village
of Chattisinghpora Srinagar India
It took nearly 12 years — primarily because of the Indian
government’s refusal to prosecute those involved in the murders — to reach the
Supreme Court of India. On May 1, in a widely
criticized decision, the court left it to the army to decide how to
proceed, and the army hasopted for a
court-martial rather
than a transparent civilian trial. In the eyes of Pervez Imroz, a Kashmiri
lawyer and civil rights activist, the court’s decision “further emboldens the
security forces” and strengthens “a process that has appeared to never favor
the victims.”
But the victims have not forgotten Kashmir ’s
estimated 8,000 “disappeared.” Perhaps the most telling reminder is the women
who stage a symbolic protest every month in a Srinagar Buenos Aires
IN the long and bloody narrative of India Kashmir , there come seasons that are etched in the public
consciousness as collective epitaphs of mourning and loss. In the summer of
2010, there was a mass uprising against Indian rule in Kashmir — an
Arab Spring before the Arab Spring.
It came after police killed a teenager; thousands of people
came out into the streets across Kashmir . The Indian paramilitary forces and police yet again reacted
with brute force, keeping the region under virtual siege for over two months
and killing 120 people, many of them teenagers. The youngest, Sameer Rah, not
even 10, was beaten to death by irate paramilitaries. The provincial government
promised “speedy justice.” But once again, no one has been charged with these
killings, let alone convicted of them.
The Indian government must do what may seem inconceivable
to the hawks in the military establishment but is long overdue. Before it can
even begin to contemplate negotiating a lasting political solution in
consultation with Kashmiris it must act to deliver justice — for the parents of
the disappeared; for the young lives brutally extinguished in 2010; for the
innocent dead stealthily buried in unmarked graves in the mountains; for the
Kashmiris languishing in Indian prisons without any legal recourse; for the
exiled Kashmiri Hindu Pandits who
fled in 1990 after some were targeted and killed by militants; and for the mother
of Sameer Rah, who still doesn’t know why her young son was bludgeoned to death
and his body left by a curb.
