update: wikileaks on sri lanka -a lashkar-e-tayyiba facilitation team in sri lanka?

of the leaked 251,287 american diplomatic "cables " only 931 have been published so far. of that only 5 were on sri lanka (even though there are are reportedly 3,225 on sri lanka in total.) i have posted some thoughts earlier, on first 4 published.

this is on the 5th.

it is from 'diplomatic security daily' sent from american state department on june 19, 2009.

text relevant to sri lanka -

"¶19. (S//NF) DS/TIA/ITA notes earlier credible tearline suggests Khafa,s network is striving to stand up two teams in southern India that rely on the support of LT members based in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal. Although specific details of planned LT attacks remain unknown, late-May intelligence indicates Khafa,s cells were engaged in surveillance activities of potential targets, likely in southern India. Early-May reporting further suggests Kerala or Tamil Nadu may be used as a base of operations following the establishment of a facilitation team in Sri Lanka, with the estimated time of completion for setting up the facilitation route and camps to be two to three months. (Appendix sources 8-18)

shafiq khafa is a member of "india-based"(?) lashkar-e-tayyiba terrorist group operating mainly from pakistan aiming, it claims, to 'liberate' kashmir and to establish an 'islamic' state in south asia.

rest of the content is self explanatory.


hopefully we will get more info on what happened to this 'operation', since it seems to have zero public results. or is it still dormant?

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update: wikileaks on sri lanka - american ambassador's report on 01/15/2010 on alleged war crimes accountability

of the leaked 251,287 american diplomatic "cables " only 553 have been published so far. of that only 4 were on sri lanka (even though there are are reportedly 3,225 on sri lanka in total.) i have posted some thoughts on first 2 published earlier.

i published another post based on the 3rd document earlier today. it is on how british foreign minister miliband was fishing for uk tamil votes when interfering in sri lanka just before the terrorists' defeat.
(curiously even after 3 hours it is not in kottu blog aggregator while it is in feed readers. other posts from other blogspot blogs published later are in kottu. whether intentional or technical it goes to show that blog aggregators are not the best way to get the all view points of sl bloggers. so kindly subscribe to my feed if you have not already done so, many thanks to those who already have ) .

this post will be about the 4th leak on sri lanka that came out last night sri lankan time.

btw wikileaks website was offline most of the evening sl time due to the fact that it was under a unprecedentedly massive (ie probably government sponsored ) cyber attack and its eurapean servers could not handle it. also servers rented from american based amazon were denied to them by that company yesterday due to u.s. government pressure. so much for american freedom of expression.

since it is possible that wikileaks can go offline again, i will soon post the full text of all sl related leaked documents elsewhere and provide links to them too when referring to them in posts. i will of course always link to the wikileaks site

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now lets looks at the report titled "SRI LANKA WAR-CRIMES ACCOUNTABILITY: THE TAMIL PERSPECTIVE" authored by american ambassador to sri lanka patricia butenis. (new link to same from new wikileak site)

this was written on january 15, 2010. that is during final stages of presidential elections.

here is the summary in full

"There have been a few tentative steps on accountability for crimes allegedly committed by Sri Lankan troops and civilian officials during the war with the LTTE. President Rajapaksa named a committee to make recommendations to him on the U.S. incidents report by April, and candidate Fonseka has discussed privately the formation of some form of “truth and reconciliation” commission. Otherwise, accountability has not been a high-profile issue -- including for Tamils in Sri Lanka. While Tamils have told us they would like to see some form of accountability, they have been pragmatic in what they can expect and have focused instead on securing greater rights and freedoms, resolving the IDP question, and improving economic prospects in the war-ravaged and former LTTE-occupied areas. Indeed, while they wanted to keep the issue alive for possible future action, Tamil politicians with whom we spoke in Colombo, Jaffna, and elsewhere said now was not time and that pushing hard on the issue would make them “vulnerable.”"

its a good summary of the document and cover the main points made in main text of doc.

alleged war crimes
war crimes are correctly prefaced by word 'alleged'. good. because no kind of evidence is presented to say that any war crimes actually were committed by sri lankan government side. nor is there any indication in the document to say amercan diplomats have seen any evidence to that effect.

in fact nobody has seen any verifiable evidence of these alleged war crimes by "sri lankan troops and civilian officials" anywhere. those who continue to speak about them please let us, sri lankans, have the evidence.

ppl who continues to accuse us of war crimes and fails to produce the evidence, are slandering us and depriving us of our rights. such accusers by blindly following unsubstantiated allegations made by tamil tiger terrorist's remaining foreign based supporters have become tools of those murderers .

also if anyone is applying a double standard and is reluctant to use the same words "war crimes" in accusing american and other western governments and military and fail to call obama, bush, blair, etc etc. "war criminals" (in spite mountain of verifiable solid evidence of war crimes by them in iraq, afghanistan, and pakistan) they are also racists.

now there is some confusion with meaning of following para in this document.

"There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power. In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka."

is the ambassador saying "sri lankan president responsible for "alleged war crimes"", in the sense they have personally committed war crimes?of course not. it clearly does not say that.

in fact it does not say what these alleged crimes were and their nature so we cannot say how anyone can be held responsible for them.

is it saying that ultimate responsibility for any war crimes even if committed by any military or government officials rest with rajapaksa brothers and fonseka in their then official capacity? maybe, but that would be true of any country. so why then the use of words "In sri lanka this is further complicated ... "

only the ambassador butenis can clarify this and she should.

maybe she is lousy sloppy writer? possible. there is evidence of sloppiness even in this para. she refers to "President Rajapaksa and his brothers (sic)" now only one brother (defense secretary gotabaya rajapaksa in addition to president can be held responsible for any alleged war crimes if they were ever committed. other brothers were not directly involved in defeating terrorists with military means. so clearly a slip of the pen there.

so ms. butenis do explain your words!

it would be unwise to come to unjustified conclusions or second guess such vague and imprecise words.

this is esp vital since certain media organizations have intentionally mis-characterized her words. (more on that in another post)

accountability and reconciliation
what is said in this document about progress in establishing a mechanism for accountability is redundant. president rajapaksa has since then appointed 'the commission on lessons learnt and reconciliation' well past anything mentioned by ambassador butenis on that count.

she was right in her assessment that all these alleged war crimes and accountability not being a main issue of the election apart from president's promise to "personally to stand up to any international power or body that would try to prosecute sri lankan war heroes". which was a popular and morally correct stand to take on his part.

tamil diaspora vs sri lankan tamils
we already know that tamils in sri lanka and racist tamil activists in diaspora have different interests and butenis confirms this in this document..

sri lankan tamils are more focused "on current bread-and-butter issues". and imo government should stick to them too. bc racists in diaspora will not be satisfied until tamil tigers are revived and again start murdering sri lankans so that they can continue to claim asylum in west.

r sampanthan
tna leader r.sampanthan says he "would not discuss “war crimes” per se in parliament for fear of retaliation" !? this from a person who supported tamil tiger terrorist murderers and whose party acted as terrorists' proxies. we sri lankans have forgiven him for that vile crime without any 'retaliation' whatsoever. but he still slanders us. so much for any desire for reconciliation on his part. he is a liar. period.

sarath fonseka
it seems sarath fonseka made private promises to mano ganesan without disclosing them to public to get his support, of course this was suspected at time ( i and others said so. see my election posts) . given that ganesan supported ltte terrorists and is yet to regret that support, these promises could very well be harmful to sri lanka. ganesan and fonseka should explain themselves to sri lankan public .


mano ganesan
"On accountability, Ganesan told us that while the issue was significant XXXXXXXXXXXX accountability was a divisive issue and the focus now had to be on uniting to rid the country of the Rajapaksas."

now Xs seems to indicate a self censorship/redaction on wikileaks part ( they maybe mere noise in document formatting). they do that only if real danger can result from leaving it uncensored in wikileaks editors opinion. what dangerous thing did ganesan have to say on riding the country of the rajapaksas?
ganesan should explain.

international community "push"
[few unnamed tamil politicians] "have suggested to us that while they cannot address the issue[national reconciliation and creating a political system more equitable to all ethnic communities], they would like to see the international community push it. such an approach, however, would seem to play into the super-heated campaign rhetoric of Rajapaksa and his allies that there is an international conspiracy against sri lanka and its “war heroes.”"

ambassador butenis is right that so called "international community" pushing anything on sri lanka will not be welcomed by sri lankans. to call such a natural desire for freedom from interference a mere "super-heated campaign rhetoric" only point to limitations of her mind. maybe she has got used to working with willing slaves in other countries? then she better learn to change her attitude.


in conclusion ambassador butenis and some sri lankan politicians especially ganesan and fonseka should explain themselves.

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wikileaks on sri lanka update - david miliband interfered in sri lanka to get uk tamil votes

of the leaked 251,287 american diplomatic "cables " only 553 have been published so far. of that only 4 were on sri lanka (even though there are reportedly 3,225 on sri lanka in total.) i have posted some thoughts on first 2 published earlier.

this will be on 3rd and i will cover the 4th in another post after this .

this leak made happy reading for me bc it confirms what i ( and others of like mind) have said all along; certain leftish british politicians (esp from labour party then in power) desired to stop and impede sri lanka's fight against terrorist murderers bc they wanted votes of tamil diaspora in uk and they thought pandering to vocal tamil tiger terrorist supporting racists is the way go. (here is just one instance among many where i said this was happening)

the leaked memo is dated 05/07/2009 [new link to same from new wikileak site](11 days before end of tamil tigers) and reports on a meeting american diplomats from us london embassy had with british foreign office sri lanka team leader tim waite and desk officer sharon diaz on same day.

i will quote to the most interesting part first

"8. (C/NF) Waite said that much of HMG and ministerial attention to Sri Lanka is due to the “very vocal” Tamil Diaspora in the UK, numbering over 300,000 and who have been protesting in front of Parliament since April 6. He said that with UK elections on the horizon and many Tamils living in Labour constituencies with slim majorities, the Government is paying particular attention to Sri Lanka, with Miliband recently remarking to Waite that he was spending 60 percent of his time at the moment on Sri Lanka"

i think i don't have to elaborate on this.

remember miliband was uk foregn minister and he was spending 60% of his time on sri lanka. and this was may 2009, and uk elections were held on may 06, 2010, one year later(though they were initially expected earlier).

btw (C/NF) means confidential /no foreigners a level of secrecy higher than (C)-confidential . significantly only this part (8) of the memo and and summary which contain part of this are marked (C/NF) . other sections are marked (C) or lower.

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"the civilians caught in the conflict zone remain the UK’s primary concern in Sri Lanka, followed by humanitarian access and addressing IDP needs."
this is pure spin for wider consumption. note how baser motives were not referred to in this less secret section. and btw sri lanka hardly got any kind of aid from uk then or now. they pledge, never disburse.

"Waite described Miliband and French Foreign Secretary Kouchner’s April 29 visit as “good,”"
here they were not being honest, and amercans clearly knew that, hence the quotation marks on "good". they and others wanted sri lanka to declare a ceasefire and stop military operations. visit failed.

the 5 public demands made by these politicians from what remains of genocidal british empire indicate their still colonial racist mindset

• "visas to be issued swiftly to international humanitarian staff" [sure we should stop everything and issue visas to westerners so they can come here and judge and control us as they want],
• "travel permits" [ditto],
• "full access to IDPs as soon as they have crossed the front line and the monitoring of all stages of screening" [oh boy they wanted to run their own civil service here to supervise us 'natives', including how we separate those who were killing us and our children from innocent tamils. i have been reluctant to believe that uk directly helped the terrorist murderers but this demand to control screening for terrorists may indicate that they wanted to guard some of their own employees ],
• "commitment to have 80 percent of IDPs resettled by the year’s end" [we and they don't even know how many ppl were displaced at that point and the condition of their homes and infrastructure but our royal master miliband order us to promise him NOW! in fact we did settle 80-90% of those idps(300,000+) within 1 year with the help of real foreign friends with genuine goodwill for our and idp welfare].
• "allow the distribution of sufficient food and medicine to meet the needs of civilians" [ yes these racist scumbags assume that we intentionally starve ppl. in fact for years on end sri lanka sent food and medicine to areas controlled by tigers, most of it was kept by the facist ltte. we paid the teachers and doctors too. and nobody died of starvation, no epidemics took place. we did that without orders from miliband or his majesty vulgar queen ]

"The UK also supports a special Human Rights Council session on Sri Lanka"
we know how that turned out, uk got soundly defeated and sri lanka was commended by human rights council for defeating terrorism and conducting a humanitarian operation to rescue civilians from ltte. fact.

"HMT has decided to support the USG position on delaying Sri Lanka’s proposed Stand-By Arrangement with the IMF"
so much for IMF's economic only conditions and no political interference in its decisions. we got the thing after dealy but no crisis resulted from delay due to prudent management.

anyway that is enough we now know what kind of monsters were dealing such obsessively with sri lanka and with what motives; petty uk politics and ingrained colonial racism.



racist idiot miliband and his party lost the election deservedly. though i suspect he and others in uk will continue to play with lives and blood of innocent sri lankans (to racist like him we are not human) for petty political gains. how many lives were lost while blood suckers like miliband and gordon brown his prime minister spend their time and resources elongating murderous tigers' bloody carnage. how many dead children are cursing miliband the racist now?

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ps
btw this leak also confirms my speculation as to who will be embarrassed by wikileaks
to qoute,

"another group that may be embarrassed are non american western diplomats and their sl tools, the ngos. to give them credit, americans were never much in to interfering in sri lanka's effort to defeat terrorist tamil tiger murderers, but other western countries were. these documents may report on actions of those others during and after the ceasefire."

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