UN’s Ban Mute on Sri Lanka’s Election Request, Impunity and Fraud Implicitly Accepted, UN Sources Say
January 06 2010 – Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, January 6 — The UN’s conflicted stance on Sri Lanka has become more apparent in the run up to the Rajapaksas’ January 26 snap election. Nine days ago, Inner City Press asked the spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to confirm that Sri Lanka had requested some UN presence during the election, and to state the UN’s response.
While the Spokesman, Martin Nesirky, did not answer this question for an entire week, Inner City Press has been told first by one, now by a second, top adviser to Ban Ki-moon that the UN would not be responding positively to the request.
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Fate of Tamils being decided in closed hearings
January 06 2010 – The Globe and mail
With the power of security certificates being nullified in the courts, Ottawa is wielding a rarely used section of federal immigration law in their place to ensure that 25 migrants they suspect are Tamil Tigers remain behind bars.
Starting as early as this month, secret evidence will be used in closed hearings at the Immigration and Refugee Board in Vancouver. Government lawyers will introduce evidence they hope will persuade the board to continue the incarceration of about two dozen Tamil migrants, who arrived in a ship off Canada’s West Coast last fall claiming to be refugees from postwar Sri Lanka.
Unlike ordinary detention hearings, these sessions are closed to the public, to the migrants involved and to their lawyers, and the evidence given is secret. Special advocates, appointed by the government, represent the migrants’ interests.
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Exclusive: On board the Tamil asylum boat
January 06 2010 – CNN
They are home movies of a different sort. Children scamper across the wooden deck. Parents lie on woven mats trying to fend off boredom. A handful of men share a single hose as a shower at the back of the boat.
This is daily life aboard the Indonesian fishing boat carrying more than 200 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers to Australia.
Video and pictures chronicling their daily life, were given to CNN by Sanjeev Kuhendrarajah, one of the asylum seekers. He calls himself Alex.
He was raised in Canada and is now on board with a camera and a laptop. He has become, he says, a reluctant spokesman.
“I am not the leader of this ship and I am not God. I cannot save lives,” Alex said us in a broadband interview with CNN. We’re at the point where we don’t know what to do anymore.”
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Tamil migrant routinely threatened in homeland, he reports
January 05 2010 – The Globe and Mail
He was an educated, medical professional helping to rebuild his country, which was devastated by poverty, war and a catastrophic tsunami. But he was also routinely threatened – by both government officials and rebel separatists – who tried to pressure him to give aid money to those who didn’t need it.
Once, his house was ransacked. Later, he was unlawfully arrested, yanked off a Colombo street in broad daylight by uniformed men.
The man, who can’t be identified because of a publication ban imposed by the Immigration and Refugee Board, finally had enough. He was among 76 young Tamils who paid smugglers to take them to Canada on a decrepit freighter in October.
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‘Restore media freedom’ candidates urged
January 05 2010 – BBC Sinhala
Media organisations in Sri Lanka have urged main candidates at the presidential elections to prove that they are genuinely interested in restoring media freedom.
Eight media organisations said they will hand over a document titled “Implementing the Reform Program,” to all candidates at 26 January presidential polls.
The Free Media Movement (FMM) accused all governments that came to power since 1994 of failing to implement pledges to strengthen press freedom.
Freedom of Information Act
FMM convenor Chulawansa Srilal challenged the government to produce the Freedom of Information Act that has been approved by the Cabinet, before parliament if the government is genuine in safeguarding press freedom.
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