Yearly Archive: 2015

Rear Admiral (Dr.) Sarath Weerasekera VSV,RWP,USP,Ndc,Psc 

2015 April 15th

To:  Hon. Chamal Rajapaksa,

Speaker,

Parliament of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.

Hon. Speaker,

POST OF OPPOSITION LEADER

I write in regard to the proposal to designate Mr. R. Sampanthan Opposition Leader.  I am firmly opposed to any such step.  Mr. Sampanthan, both as a result of public statements made by him, as well as his membership in the Illangai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), has identified himself with certain agendas antithetical to the State, and making him Opposition Leader will put him in a position to pursue those agendas with greater ease, to the detriment of the State.

I wish to place on record the following concerns, which I trust will inform any decision to appoint Mr. Sampanthan Opposition Leader.

On the 31st March 2011 a panel of lawyers appointed by Ban Ki-Moon submitted a review of the Sri Lankan War IV without ever visiting the island. The report was composed in the manner of a prosecuting team rather than a judicial assessment. It was as slipshod in its methodology as flawed in several of its conclusions. Nevertheless, it is widely cited in a number of quarters, quarters hostile to the admittedly distasteful Rajapaksa Regime and happy to have any cane to beat up their activities.

A headmaster wielding a cane must have judiciousness on his side. Moral crusaders such as, say, Amnesty International must adhere to ethics in presentation and quotation. But, as it happens, the last four years have seen blatant dishonesty in quotation as well as interpretation.

Sri Lanka’s policy makers need to approach the issue of an investigation whether it is international or domestic by taking stock of the legalities and mandates legally in place. No inquiry can be limited to a period omitting the origins and terror unleashed over decades. No inquiry can omit to name and shame all parties that were connected to that terror directly & indirectly just because they are steering the investigation’s mandate and jurisprudence. None of the tribunals held thus far have provided solace or reconfirmed the truth as the sufferers know it and no amount of money can compensate for any loss except the realization that there is a root to the terror that prevails and it is not the counter measures for terrorism that needs to be pursued but the roots that create, cause and fan that terror. Unfortunately these parties are in the driver’s seat of all international investigations!

With just days for the UNHRC Panel to conclude accepting submissions it has emerged that the UNHRC has been cheating the system by providing UNHRC war crimes forms to only one party and that too clandestinely with links to LTTE-TNA. The shocking discovery immediately takes us back to sample formats appearing on internet to help Tamils compile cases against Sri Lanka during the Panel of Expert investigation. We now question how many of the ‘witnesses’ that the Panel of Experts claimed to quote from were bogus people. We question how many witness accounts were lies.