Aruni Pradeepika has a post about the LTTE’s abduction of her father – a farmer in Mahavilachchiya. Perhaps the first in the Sri Lankan blogosphere. The title “My Father” seems to have gone unnoticed in kottu.org feed. There are no comments on her blog about it (what can one say?). What is not clear from the post is whether it was an attempted abduction or a successful one.
Best read her post for the details.
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Cerno 
Well done Cerno. Much thanks for bringing this to our notice.
🙂
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as this earlier post at lanka rising (http://lankarising.blogspot.com/2007/11/tragedy-at-mahawilachchiya-e-village.html) made clear there was several cases of abductions and killings of framers by ltte at mahavilachchiya recently ( and similar crimes were perpetrated almost every other day from the beginning of terrorist ltte ) . ngo peaceniks, pro ltte media, and so called human right activists totally ignore them. (and want to give power to those murderers for “peace”) in contrast to totally unsubstantiated “white van abduction theories “
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link
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sittingnut: Thank you for the link as grim as it is. Your comment gave me the idea to run a search for Mahavilachchiya related posts/discussions on groundviews.org and vikalpa.org.
The screen shots (taken 16th Dec 2007) of the groundviews.org and vikalpa.org search results pages on the topic don’t say much (or they say too much). Perhaps the sites were using different names/spellling for Mahavilachchiya (tried upper and lower case) or had more pressing things to talk about. Or the data base was having a bad day. I won’t make excuses for anyone.
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Aruni’s father was abducted and never returned. The second incident of killing of 4 people in Mahavilachchiya came later.
As for Aruni’s case, after the story went on the press few donors helped the family financially. Aruni’s elder sister is getting ready for her final exams in University of Colombo. Aruni had to sit for AL during the same week father was abducted! Aruni’s younger brother is sitting for OL these days.
Mr Dian Gomes, CEO of Slimline has provided Aruni (and two other girls) free management training at their company. What the children of the family say is rather than financial donations what they want is opportunities to study and work. They don’t want to depend on donations for the rest of their lives. More than anything else, they need the father back.
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Why was this not taken up by the NGO bastards in Colombo? Filthy pigs…
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see the latest Human Rights Watch Report – here:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/12/07/slanka17509.htm
They have asked called for the setting up of a UN mission to monitor HR violations. To quote the relevant section: “Human Rights Watch believe a United Nations field operation with a strong monitoring mandate is urgently required. A field presence would be able to document and monitor violations by all parties to the conflict and provide a mechanism to protect civilians as well as helping to limit further deterioration of the human rights situation.”
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jack point
so you don’t think there aren’t hr violations by ltte unless un says so?
why do you think un monitoring mission will be anything different than another version of slmm, staffed and influenced by ngos that have totally ignored these kind of atrocities?
do you want un missions to investigate other criminals disregarding sl judiciary and law enforcement ? why is ltte different from other criminals, according to you ( other than its power to inflict a wider range and quantity of atrocities) ?
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Sittingnut
Just mAl wanted to know what the NGO’s were doing, gave him the latest report for hi sinfo. They have’nt picked up this incident but they have reported others.
The request for a field monitoring mission seems reasonable eough, if they can monitor more closely they can report better.
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A search on http://hrw.org/ didn’t bring up any reports on Mahavilachchiya, but then I could be looking in the wrong sections of the site. http://www.amnesty.org seems to be too busy condemning government clumsyness (where as the LTTE has a more slicker media machine)
So much for 10second searches. Back to work 😦
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jack point
your answer is contradictory.
if they are not able to observe they should not report anything.
as i said problem with ngos is their selective reporting. parroting unsubstantiated ltte propaganda and ignoring substantiated incidents. given that bias giving them more power is not the answer.
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I doubt that the LTTE will be happy to let people troop into a human rights office in Kilinochchi to make unflattering reports about the LTTE hauling kids away.
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Well, HRW do document a number of LTTE atrocities. Given that you seem to be skeptical of NGO’s, and parts of the media I’m not sure who you expect to report on matters of human rights violations.
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Off topic, but when SIttingnut mentions, bias, selective reporting and “double standards”, a term that is much in favour with politicians and the media, I find Mahinda Rajapkse something of enigma.
How, for example does one reconcile his position with the Palestinians with that of the LTTE?
“He has been the President of the Sri Lankan Committee for Solidarity with Palestine for the past 25 years and has always maintained a close interest in finding a peaceful solution to the Middle East problem within the framework of a sovereign Palestinian state.”
http://site114.webhost4life.com/priu/data/about.htm
The Palestinians were greatful enough of his services to name a road after him.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Palestinians-name-road-after-Sri-Lankan-president/240906/
The PLO is now, willing to settle for a negotiations, but I don’t think this was the case 30 years ago.
Even stranger is his stance on human rigfhts.
“From the start of his career, Rajapaksa adopted a centre-left political stance, identifying himself with labour rights and becoming a champion of human rights. He was a leading member of the Parliamentarians for Human Rights.
He came into prominence as a leader, together with Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu, of the Mothers Front, which organized the mothers of the “disappeared” in the white terror of 1988-90. The Visva Bharati University of Calcutta in India conferred on him the title Professor Emeritus for his record on human rights.”
http://site114.webhost4life.com/priu/data/about.htm
The Human Rights Watch Report of 1990 makes interesting rading in this context:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1990/WR90/ASIA.BOU-11.htm#P718_161127
Doubtless the local newspaper archives of the period would also make interesting reading.
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Cerno,
I’m sorry to see the debased quality of debate, brought about by the usual suspects, on this vital post.
By way of explaining the points you’ve brought up in your comments, Groundviews and Vikalpa knew about this issue *before* Aruni’s post. In fact, we have a video of Aruni’s sister speaking about the issue since Aruni was at the time too traumatised to speak about it.
With respect to her family and others at Mahavilachchiya who care for Aruni’s well-being, and because we operate on the principle of “do no harm” which means that we don’t go with a story, however compelling, if it places, or is seen to place, those involved in it in harms way, we did not go with the story until she did herself on her blog. We intend to follow this up as put up a report on Vikalpa as soon as possible and I am personally in touch with key people from the village to ensure that coverage of the issue, on our fora, does not negatively influence measures underway to resolve the issue.
Finally, searching for Mahavilachchiya in English on Vikalpa will yield zero results even when we have the story up. All the Sinhala / Tamil content there is in UNICODE – you’ll need to type it in Sinhala to get any results.
Best regards,
Sanjana
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Sanjana Thank you for the update and clarifying things.
I stand corrected.
If there’s anything I’ve realised from this post, it is the degree to which the reporting of human rights violations are politicised.
The worst mistake is to give into assumptions which easily slide into flippant remarks.
I definitely won’t resort to making judgements made on quick web searches again.
I apologise for my irresponsible conclusions.
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jack point :
you are still contradicting your own previous comments about the need for an un mission.
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hrw has issued solid reports on child solders etc. as i have acknowledged elsewhere. but they have also accepted completely unsubstantiated ltte propaganda and ignored substantiated atrocities of ltte. which is the point i have made all along here.
their report in august pdf 2.1 mb is typical of their sloppy standards in reports on sl. i dealt with that in at the time as you know since you commented in that thread
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“Given that you seem to be skeptical of NGO’s, and parts of the media I’m not sure who you expect to report on matters of human rights violations.”
imo ppl should report substantiated facts. ngos have continuously ignored facts about ltte atrocities but they do give publicity to unsubstantiated white van theories. are you denying that ?
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am not sure what your point about mahinda r is, but
if mihinda etc. engaged in “selective reporting and “double standards” ” that does not excuse anyone else from so doing now.
un mission promoted by ngos with a history of selective reporting and double standards is not the way forward. esp when it is opposed by sl public.
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you have also ignored the questions in my comment dated december 18, 2007 at 7:57 pm.
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about sanjana sattotuwa’s comment:
he makes a few curious statements.
he says “Groundviews and Vikalpa knew about this issue *before* Aruni’s post” and says they have video statement from here sister. can we see where it was published or commented on in groundviews and vikalpa?
facts about this atrocity were substantiated, public and undeniable. so it is not question of their “knowing” but their intentional ignoring even when they have substantiated facts that is the problem, (in contrast to their repeated parroting of ltte propaganda including white van conspiracy theories)
he says it was fear of placing “those involved in it in harms way” that prevented them from publishing this. that does not stand up to scrutiny. the facts were public and known, their writing a post would not have changed the condition of those concerned danger wise.
nor was this the only such incident.
as such they could have written posts about them in a genareal way if they did not want to get in to specifics( though as i said the specific facts were already public) .
they after all do publish posts based on completely unsubstantiated incidents based solely on ltte propaganda( and those can sometimes put ppl in harm’s way )
.
so this excuse of sanjana is complete trash.
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“quick web searches” may or may to be a good way come to conclusions. but the undeniable fact remains that ngos ( and their websites) intensionally ignored this and other atrocities of ltte while repeatedly giving credence and publicity to ltte propaganda including uninstantiated “white van’ abduction. theories.
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sorry about the typos – among others “intentionally” not “intensionally” , “unsubstantiated” not “uninstantiated”
sorry
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sittingnut Your comment time stamped December 21, 2007 at 9:15 pm some how ended up in the moderation queue – wordpress.com tends to do that with occasionally with posts containing links. Even though I have moderation turned off.
Sorry about the delay.
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The excuse is plain and simple. NGOs work for the foreign donors, and the donors (primarily the Norwegian government and EU) aren’t interested in blaming the LTTE. We have seen ample evidence of what happens when someone crosses the line, as Frederica Jansz did when she was employed at International Alert [1].
There’s no point in blaming these NGOs. They really have no choice. They do what they get paid for, and that’s a fairly rational way of making a living.
Why do these donors then target the government and not the LTTE. Because we’re winning the war and they want to reverse our advances and bring about the oft-spoken “politico-military parity” between the “two parties” to pave the way for a “just and sustainable solution”, which in plainspeak means a fractured and unstable Sri Lanka run by their lackeys the LTTE and another minion like Ranil or Chandrika that leaves our nation free to be exploited by these donors, their corporate rogues and these NGO goons. This is what they did in East Timor and Iraq, and this is what’s going to happen in Sri Lanka. The Norwegian government is our own Halliburton.
1. http://www.sinhaya.com/ia.htm
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Cerno,
FYI – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opA3Ml7MydM
Sanjana
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Sanjana: Thank you for the update. Haven’t had the time or the bandwidth to check it out yet
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