Volvos for judges

While cabinet ministers and the Opposition leader are getting luxury bullet proof cars, Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges have been given brand new Volvo S40 cars.

There are 23 judges in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal.

Will Rajitha be left without teeth?

By Dilrukshi Handunnetti

UNP national list parliamentarian Rajitha Senaratne is to appeal against the Court of Appeal order disqualifying him — but parliament sources said his parliamentary privileges would be temporarily revoked until an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court and a stay order obtained.

On Friday, the Court of Appeal upheld a petition by another parliamentarian Dilan Perera and declared that the outspoken Dr. Senaratne was disqualified from sitting or voting in parliament because he had business transactions with state institutions.

UNP General Secretary Gamini Athukorale said the next step would be to appeal while the UNP parliamentary group is also expected to take up the matter when it meets on Wednesday.

Under the constitution, the UNP could renominate Dr. Senaratne, a dentist, as a national list MP, thereby entitling him to again sit and vote in Parliament, but party sources said this was unlikely.

Dr. Senaratne told The Sunday Times yesterday that at Wednesday's meeting he would raise questions relating to other MPs whose family members held public posts.

ACTC demands commission to probe Kumar's killing

Alleging that police are ignoring vital clues in the assassination of ACTC leader Kumar Ponnambalam, the party has called on President Chandrika Kumaratunga to appoint a commission to probe the killing.

ACTC leader Appathuray Vinayagamoorthy in a letter to the President said the party felt the investigators were not conducting the probe properly.

"The car in which Mr. Ponnambalam travelled was removed from the scene of the crime to the Wellawatte police station and thereafter taken and kept at the CDB Headquarters at Gregory's Road. On a subsequent date the vehicle was taken to the Government Analyst's department to find evidence. We learn that no evidence was discovered at that stage not even the finger print of Mr., Ponnambalam, leave alone the four bullet holes.

"The vehicle was then released to the CDB, but subsequently the CDB had found a bullet lodged in the rear left floor of the car. On hearing this the Government Analyst requested that the car be brought back for investigation. Even the second effort was in vain. The car was released to the CDB and on a later date CDB is said to have recovered yet another bullet from the left hand side front door of the window.

"We find it difficult to understand how the CDB on two occasions recovered vital evidence that the Government analyst could not find, specially since it is the job of the Government Analyst to do so," the letter said.

The ACTC said that according to eyewitnesses the assassins had got away without wiping the fingerprints and it is believed that the fingerprints had been wiped off later.

"According to another witness, a vehicle had arrived at the scene soon after the assassination carrying five individuals. Two of these men were dressed in Police uniform. One of the Policeman is said to have been a Sub Inspector from the Wellawatta Police station.

"They had surrounded the car and spent some time there. Thereafter all five have left the scene in the same vehicle they had come. This is of utmost importance when one considers the claim that the finger prints had been wiped after the shooting and not by the assassins themselves."

The letter also questions the inability of the police to investigate about a jet black Isuzu jeep with tinted windows. The vehicle had been parked at the end of Ramakrishna Road.

Church stand on coal plant goes to Cabinet

By Shelani de Silva

The Sub-Committee appointed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga to study the proposed coal power plant in Norachcholai will present the views expressed by the Catholic Church to the Cabinet.

The Sub-Committee comprising Ministers C V Gooneratne , Anuruddha Ratwatte and Lakshman Kiriella met a Catholic delegation on Thursday to get the Church's views.

The Catholic delegation led by Chilaw Bishop Rt. Rev. Frank Marcus Fernando and two priests attended the meeting. Officials from the Ceylon Electricity Board were also invited by the Sub-Committee for the meeting.

The Bishop told The Sunday Times that the Catholic Church will not change its stand on the issue. 'We are totally against it, we urge the Government to declare officially that it has scrapped the project and to remove the police post situated near the site. President Kumaratunga gave us the assurance that the project will not go ahead during the elections' he said.

The Church submitted its objections citing the security situation, the problem regarding the Talawila shrine and effects on fishing and agriculture. However the CEB had assured the Church that the project will not be harmful.

'No decision was taken but the views will be submitted to the Cabinet. Meanwhile Minister Jeyaraj Fernadopulle who on several occasions had assured the Catholic Church of not going ahead with the project was also invited but had not come for the meeting.

Focus on Rights

Taking criticism in perspective

By: Kishali Pinto Jayawardena

The awe that is traditionally accorded here to annual country reports published by the U.S. State Department is quite incredible. Witness thus the prominence given in the state press this week to the Report on Sri Lanka for 1999, albeit in pursuit of predictable straining to make out a case that the LTTE has been called strictly to order by the United States for arbitrary killings and human rights abuses.

In the first instance, this is not quite the entire story. While the LTTE has indeed received critical scrutiny to a far greater extent than in the past, the Government is not allowed to escape unscathed. The Report enumerates "credible accounts of voting irregularities" in the December 21st Presidential elections, and "serious human rights abuses" by the security forces including numerous extra judicial killings and almost certain killings of prisoners captured on the battlefield.

Criticism of the efficacy of both the Human Rights Commission and the Committee to Inquire into Undue Arrest and Harassment by human rights observers is also given particular citation. Besides these, its most extensive focus is on the constraining of the rights of freedom of speech and expression by the Sri Lankan Government.

Thus, the Report makes the point that though free speech is constitutionally protected, it is restricted by the Government in practice, "often using national security grounds permitted by law", as is evident by the ongoing news censorship. There is also reference to the failure to implement crucial People's Alliance campaign promises relating to reform of the media and to the numerous cases filed in court against journalists that have been viewed as "frivolous and intended only to intimidate and harass the media".

Instances where journalists have been assaulted and attacked both individually and while participating in marches have also been catalogued in a manner that can be brushed aside only by the most credulous optimist. Thus, we have the contents of the U.S. State Department Report for 1999 relating to Sri Lanka in its rightful perspective. This then brings us to the second point.

While the concerns expressed in the Report relating to the protection of civil liberties such as freedom of speech and expression or the right to vote cannot be faulted, one is confronted with a fundamental irony in the manner in which we traditionally accord homage to these annual reports. For instance, the Report talks of the impunity of Sri Lankan military personnel who have committed human rights violations but who have not been brought to trial, remaining a "serious problem".

Again, we have allegations of murder, torture and brutality in government prisons, specially against Tamil prisoners, being singled out for attention. Thus, it is pointed out that despite legal prohibitions, the security forces and police continue to torture and mistreat persons in custody and prisons and that at least one person died in police custody during the year as a result of beatings received after he was arrested for suspected terrorist activity.

The Report devotes a specific section to protection given in law and in practice in the country to prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In similar vein, there is considerable detail set aside to the practice of detention and arrest of terrorist suspects with the comment that while the arrests are justified by the Government on security grounds, many claimed that it were a form of harassment.

These concerns by the U.S. State Department are not new, neither are they any the more or less comprehensive than comments made by internationally respected human rights monitoring groups such as Amnesty International. That these concerns are very real, given the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka is also not precisely the issue at this juncture.

The problem comes in the ironic juxtaposition of these concerns being voiced by the U.S. State Department with regard to the situation in other countries while these precise concerns of minority rights and liberties remain issues of increasingly urgent priority in the United States itself.

The problem comes in the manner in which we unhesitatingly pay heed to articulation of these concerns while forgetting the fact that the United States itself can ill afford to advise or even report on other countries regarding protection of minority rights while preferring to sidetrack or ignore international human rights treaties enforcing such rights.

The disrespect given by the United States to these international instruments is, after all, now a sine qua non. Thus, it was only in 1992, twenty six years after its adoption by the UN General Assembly (and following suit after one hundred and nine other states) that the United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (ICCPR) the foremost human rights instrument enforcing international standards today.

Even after ratification, it has entered reservations with regard to fundamental provisions in the ICCPR, insisting on its right to execute juvenile offenders and its right to inflict cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, particularly with regard to certain conditions of detention such as prolonged solitary confinement.

As at 1998, the United States had also not ratified several other international human rights instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the American Convention on Human Rights and other Inter American treaties.

What is significant in all this is the fact that non ratification of these instruments cannot be justified by a "holier than thou" attitude that the practical situation in the United States does not demand the enforcing of these international standards.

On the contrary, if a similar report as the present 1999 country report on Sri Lanka were to be compiled on the United States by some other country claiming superpower status to write authoritatively on human rights standards in states, the cataloguing of human rights abuses would undoubtedly be as grave and as horrific.

Thus, we have the ongoing controversy regarding the shooting of Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant by four New York city cops who justified their actions on the basis of mistaken identity and was allowed to get away with their defences in court.

That Diallo's mutilated body was found to have some forty-two bullet holes in it was only part of the horror of the story.

Then again, we have the incident of Anthony Baez who was playing football in the streets of New York with his brothers on an December evening in 1994 when their football accidentally hit a parked patrol car.

An infuriated police officer grabbed Baez and held him round the neck then other officers knelt on his back as he lay face down on the ground. Anthony choked to death and the officer who was responsible and who was found to have a record of police brutality was put on trial but acquitted.

Later however, he was convicted on federal civil rights charges.

Commenting on these incidents and many others that epitomise an increasingly grave pattern of such brutality across the United States, Amnesty International in its publication "Rights For All" point out that these abuses arise from individual misconduct encouraged by an institutionalised failure to hold officials accountable.

Others result from inadequate systems of control or an outright refusal to recognise or respect international standards for human rights protection.

Legal immunity for perpetrators of violation of minority rights focusing mainly on the Latinos, the African Americans but including Asians as well continue to be of concern.

It is remarked that economic policies and political trends are creating conditions presently in the United States where these violations are becoming more widespread and increasingly severe.

Thus, while the concerns voiced by the State Department over the situation in Sri Lanka should undoubtedly be taken constructively, the above reminders on how far the United States itself has to go in redressing its own human rights record, should also be best kept in mind.

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