No way to celebrate a fake Jubilee

[Mark Brown]

No wonder the Diamond Jubilee is a bit of a flop - latest Diana exposee [ed.]:
New book reveals the British Royal family ordered MI6 to assassinate Diana on 23rd July 1997 at WAG, just after William & Harry's St Tropez, Al Fayed holiday.
http://www.terminalx.org/2012/04/new-book-reveals-british-royal-family.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diana-Inquest-Who-Killed-Princess/dp/0980740746/



From: Sri Lanka Campaign Information <info at srilankacampaign.org>
Subject: No way to celebrate a Jubliee


This year, Queen Elizabeth II in celebrating her diamond jubilee, to 
mark sixty years as monarch and head of the commonwealth will be 
hosting a private luncheon in London on the 6th of June with the Prime 
Minister, the Foreign Secretary ... and a war criminal.


The President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, a man against whom the 
UN have found credible allegations of responsibility for the murder of 
40,000 civilians, and who leads a government that oversaw the 
disappearance of 32 people this March alone, will join the Queen and 
other heads of state at the taxpayer-funded meal.

This is no way to celebrate a jubilee.

The Government of Sri Lanka were rightly taken to task by the UN Human 
Rights Council, both for their failure to address accountability for 
past crimes, and their continued use of torture and oppression. They 
responded in typically belligerent fashion by redoubling their attacks 
on independent journalists and human rights defenders. It is therefore 
absolutely vital that at this key moment the international community 
keep the pressure on. This is not the moment to treat the President of 
Sri Lanka to pomp and pageantry -- nor should the Queen be forced to 
spend herjubilee posing for photos with a man who should be indicted 
for mass murder.

You can help make sure this doesn't happen

The British Royal Family has recently introduced ways for you to give 
them your opinions. We can and should use these channels to tell them 
that the Queen should be celebrating her jubilee in the company of war 
criminals.

This is the form that the Royal Household has set up to send a message 
to the Queen: http://www.thediamondjubilee.org/send-message-queen
  - please use it to register your disgust at President Mahinda's 
presence. A sample message is provided at the end of this email.

The Royal household is very sensitive to negative publicity around the 
jubilee. There is a good chance that this will be successful but, even 
if he does come, it is important that we register our strong 
objection. At least President Mahinda will not be able to portray his 
visit as a public relations triumph.

The jubilee should not be about torture and mass murder. Please send 
the Queen that message today.


Kind regards,

The Sri Lanka Campaign

  
PS. Please spread the word about this campaign to friends and family. 
You can use the website we have set up to do this. If you use social 
media you can also send the Queen the message on Facebook, on twitter 
(by messaging her, using the hashtag #diamondjubilee or both) or by 
liking or retweeting the messages we have sent.

  

Sample message:

Madam,

Congratulations on the sixtieth anniversary of your accession and 
sixty years as head of the Commonwealth. But please let me say I am 
sorry to learn that the President of Sri Lanka, Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa, 
has been invited to the anniversary luncheon on the 6th of June. Out 
of respect for the many victims of this man's brutality I would ask 
you to think again.

President Rajapaksa led the 2009 campaign against the Tamil Tigers in 
which around 40,000 innocent civilians were killed. A UN panel found 
there were credible allegations that he was responsible for war 
crimes. He has presided over a government that has overseen the murder 
of 35 journalists with no effective investigation. This March alone 
his security forces did nothing to prevent, and in many cases were 
complicit in, 32 disappearances. UN investigations show that torture 
is endemic throughout Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is still trying to heal. The President of Sri Lanka is 
hindering this process and the international community is finally and 
rightly starting to take him to task over this. But all that work 
risks being undone if he is fêted at events such as yours. Please 
reconsider.

-- 
Tamils protest against Rajapaksa’s invite to Diamond Jubilee
26th May, 2012
Ref: 
https://stopdeportations.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/tamils-protest-against-rajapaksas-invite-to-diamond-jubilee/

Hundreds of Tamils and supporters gathered outside Downing Street this 
afternoon to protest against the Her Majesty’s Government’s decision 
to invite Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa to the Queen’s Diamond 
Jubilee event.

Campaign group ‘Tamil Solidarity‘ charge Rajapaksa with Genocide for 
his role in the civil war and ongoing human rights abuses.

Her Majesty’s Government have planned another mass deportation of 
Tamil asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka in advance of the Diamond Jubilee; 
flight number PVT030 on Thursday 31st May 2012 at half past three in 
the afternoon, leaving from an undisclosed airport. This is despite 
mounting evidence that people deported by the British Government to 
Sri Lanka have subsequently been interrogated, abducted, tortured and, 
in at least one case, killed.

During the protest, a coach from the company ‘Just Go!’ drove down 
Whitehall. This company are used by the UK Border Agency to drive 
deportees from detention centres to the airport on the day of a mass 
deportation, as can be seen from this video of a previous deportation 
to Sri Lanka on 15th December 2011.

Mass deportations to Sri Lanka resumed in June 2011 after Britain’s 
ex-Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, arranged a meeting with Sri Lanka’s 
Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagma and opposition MP Wijedasa 
Rajapaksa during the week of June 6, 2011 in Colombo’s Hilton hotel. A 
flight followed on 16th June 2011. There have been 3 more since then 
(28th September 2011, 15th December 2011 and 28th February 2012).




SEE ALSO: UK accused of permitting alleged war-criminal to escape 
prosecution
TamilNet, Friday, 06 April 2012
Ref: http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=35070


In May 2009, the tranquil paradise of Sri-Lanka was schizophrenically 
turned upside with brutal horror as the area of the North West of the 
island became scene to one of the worst outbreaks of mass killing 
witnessed in the last century. The conflict between the Sri Lankan 
military and the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which had re-commenced in January 2009 resulted 
in an estimated 100,000 people being killed, mainly Tamil civilians, 
mostly as a result of indiscriminate aerial bombardment. Human-rights 
abuse continued in the so-called 'welfare camps' where over 280,000 
displaced Tamil civilians were kept for months. Abuses are still 
reported in the country 3 years on (Amnesty International recently 
issued a report saying human rights violations remain routine in 
Sri-Lanka three years after the end of the war Ref:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/new-report-exposes-ongoing-illegal-detention-sri-\
lanka-2012-03-13 ).

A reminder of the genocide of Tamil people in Sri Lanka in Spring 
2009:

Sri Lanka War-Crimes Accountability The Tamil Perspective 15/01/2010
Ref: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470208.html

Genocide in Sri Lanka (11/04/209)
Ref: http://london.indymedia.org/articles/1108

UN concealed carnage to keep Sri Lanka goodwill (30/05/2009)
Ref: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/05/431282.html

Bloodbath unfolding in Sri Lanka (13/05/2009)
Ref: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/05/429989.html

Sri Lanka Gov't capture last Tamil Tiger territory/Blood & Dishonour
(16/05/2009)
Ref: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/05/430293.html

Throughout April and May 2009, in the face of the Sri Lankan 
Government's blockade of independent media and international monitors 
into Northern Sri Lanka, reports and evidence emerged
from independent investigations conducted by "War Without Witness" 
that Sri Lankan military forces used banned arms such as cluster bombs 
and chemical weapons (including Phosgene and Mustard Gas) in their 
attacks leading to what the UN estimates to be 25000-30000 civilian 
deaths in the last week of fighting alone. Owing to the Sri Lankan 
Government's continued blockade of independent media and international 
monitors into the Northern regions of the country, at the time, the 
international media reported a laughable estimate of the amount of 
civilian casualties having been as low as 7000 between January - March 
2009. Media blockades in the country continued for over 18 months 
after the end of the war (and remain to a large extent) which has 
meant that the truth of the extent of the humanitarian crisis has been 
largely shielded from the world, but has been revealed by Channel-4 
who in their 2 documentaries "Sri Lanka: The Killing Fields" the first 
one originally broadcast on Tuesday 14th June 2011 and Part-2 
broadcast on Wednesday 14th March 2012 revealed incontrovertible 
evidence of war crimes, such as previously unseen footage of 
extra-judicial executions, and evidence of torture and other 
ill-treatment and sexual violence of Tamil civilians and Tamil Tiger 
(LTTE) fighters.
.

The Sri-Lankan government's version of events in the immediate 
aftermath of the conflict were largely accepted by the western media. 
Bell Pottinger were hired by the Sri Lankan government at some time 
shortly after the end of the civil war on the island, and they 
assisted in convincing the international community that the SL govt. 
be given a chance to reform themselves in the aftermath of a war in 
2009 against the separatist Tamil Tigers. In Channel 4’s recent 
documentary “Sri Lanka – The Killing Fields – part-2�, senior Bell 
Pottinger executive David Wilson was secretly filmed bragging that 
Bell Pottinger wrote Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa’s speech at the UN 
in 2011. What happened in Sri Lanka in 2009 is one of the darkest 
chapters in humanity’s history, and of note was the lack of coverage 
by the media of what happened at the time and since, as a result of a 
lack of response from the civilised world. Bell Pottinger assisted in 
this process.

A UN panel of experts, appointed by the secretary-general, reported 
last year that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the 
final weeks of the 26-year-long war. They found "credible allegations" 
of war crimes – by both sides, although they said that most of the 
civilians had been killed by government artillery, which even 
deliberately targeted hospitals.

On 7th March 2012, the United States submitted the draft resolution 
against Sri-Lanka to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) 
at its 19th session in Geneva, which began on February 27. The 
resolution notes that Sri Lanka has failed to implement the 
reconciliation measures recommended by the country's own Lessons 
Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and called for Sri Lanka 
to take more concrete actions towards reconciliation and especially, 
addressing the accountability issue and implementing the 
recommendations put forward by the LLRC. The resolution was adopted on 
22 March with 24 in favour, 15 against (including China and Cuba).

Though the resolution seeks to address alleged violations of 
international law, critics point to the fact that the resolution, in 
giving credibility to the LLRC, will only entrench Sinhala state rule 
over Tamil territories and provide it a fraudulent legitimacy to do 
so.