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India must act to end Sri Lanka conflict:
moderate Tamils (Two decades of Indo-Sri Lankan accord)
By IANS Friday July 27, 08:25 AM New Delhi, July 27 (IANS)

Two decades after India's bid to bring peace to Sri Lanka ended with a bloody nose, moderate Tamils in the island want New Delhi to take decisive steps to end the raging conflict there.
Political and rights activists from the Tamil community also insist that the India-Sri Lanka agreement of July 29, 1987, could have led to a lasting solution if only it had not been sabotaged by Colombo and the Tamil Tigers.
In any case, India should act more forcefully to bring about a settlement between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), they told IANS in separate email and telephonic interviews.
'India has an important role to play, all the more as the nationalists on both sides in Sri Lanka have held a political solution hostage,' said Ahilan Kadirgamar of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum (SLDF), a group of mainly diaspora activists.
'India can contribute towards guaranteeing any credible solution that emerges within Sri Lanka, and strengthening the forces of democracy and pluralism which occupy the middle group in the country,' the SLDF spokesperson said.
K. Vigneswaran, general secretary of the Akhila Ilankai Tamil United Front who was a senior official in the north-eastern provincial government in Sri Lanka in 1988-90, said it was time for India to play 'a more proactive role'.
'India must help Sri Lanka to work out a solution that would be acceptable to the majority of the Sinhalese, the majority of the Tamils and the majority of the Muslims,' he said.
'Such a solution is not likely to satisfy Sinhala or Tamil extremists,' he added. 'India has to seriously think of reverting to the active diplomacy of the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi period.'
Rajan Hoole of the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), a prominent rights group, said the deteriorating affairs in Sri Lanka 'desperately calls for external actors to impose sanity and change the course of things'.
'There is not going to be any decisive action without India taking the lead. India needs to get its act together to deal with the problem in a multilateral context, if previous mistakes are not to be repeated.'
Kadirgamar said SLDF also wanted a multilateral role by New Delhi. 'India is already involved in numerous ways,' he said. 'If that is to continue to enhance peace efforts in the country, India ought to be part of the global structures that support peace efforts in Sri Lanka.'
He said: 'Even the LTTE continues to call for Indian role to find peace in Sri Lanka. There is a sense of regret among Tamils in general that if the LTTE had not destroyed its relationship with India, India would still extend its support and good offices to settle the conflict and obtain justice for the Tamils.'
The varying comments come on the 20th anniversary of the India-Sri Lanka pact that led to the deployment of thousands of Indian troops in a bid to bring peace in the island. The troops ended up fighting the LTTE and came home in March 1990 after losing nearly 1,200 men and suffering hundreds of casualties.
Since then, and more particularly after the LTTE assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, New Delhi acts as if it has washed its hands off Sri Lanka, a situation moderate Tamils say needs to change - and fast.
A Tamil activist based in Britain said India needed to persuade the Sri Lankan government and the international community to grant 'genuine devolution of power and constitutional change that meets legitimate Tamil aspirations'.
Like him, all Tamil moderates admitted that the 1987 accord was a sincere attempt to end the violence in Sri Lanka that had raged for four years, even if the pact had some loose ends.
'It was a golden opportunity for the Tamils,' Minister for Social Services and Social Welfare Douglas Devananda said, blaming the government and 'Tamil representatives' of the day for its failure.
Hoole added: 'It was the best that could have happened at that point of time to end the Sri Lankan conflict. At that time the Tamils could not have hoped for anything more.'


How could Rizana Naffeek be guilty?
By Victor Karunairajan

On June 16, 2007, a three-member panel of judges of the Dawadami High Court in Saudi Arabia found Rizana Naffeek guilty of murder of the 4-month old son of Mr and Mrs Al Otaibi under Shariah Law and sentenced her to death by beheading. She was granted one-month stay of execution to lodge an appeal against this sentence.
The tragic incident occurred at the Al Otaibi family residence around 12 30 in the afternoon of May 22, 2005 while the infant was being bottle-fed by Rizana Naffeek. She has been in the employ of that household for only two weeks at that time. She had arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 4, 2005 billeted to work as a housemaid for the family of her sponsor, Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi, a civil list officer in the country’s Ministry of Finance.
Dawadami where they lived is nearly 400 kilometres from Riyadh and was to this place Rizana Naffeek was sent a few days after arriving in Riyadh. She was recruited as a housemaid and since she was underage for such an overseas posting, the job agency that handled her travel documents had falsified her records and obtained a passport for her stating that she was born February 2, 1982 whereas she was actually born February 4, 1988, that is six years later. At the time of the tragic incident she was only 17 years old.
One wonders how many children have been recruited from Sri Lanka in this manner to slave in the Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates by job agency sharks!
Domestic workers recruited to work in Saudi Arabia come under the provisions of the Saudi Labour Law. It requires that all domestic workers brought into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to perform certain duties should have those clearly stated to them. If, for example, one is employed as a housemaid, her sole duty is to clean. However, if an overseas worker is employed to look after children she must be certified and trained in childcare. She must be recruited as a baby-sitter or childcare professional and certainly not as a housemaid. It appears the Al Otaibi family ignored this stringent requirement at great risk to their infant son and in violation of Saudi Labour Law.
In the trial of Rizana Naffeek it was not the Saudi Labour Law that was applied. She was tried under the traditional Shariah Law which itself demands thorough investigation and filing of appropriate documents especially medical and other certificates relevant to the case. It is only after that a judgment can be delivered.
Rizana Naffeek does not speak Arabic and hardly any English; her employer’s wife and others in the household do not speak Sinhalese or Tamil, Tamil being Rizana’s mother tongue. Her sponsor-employer works in Riyadh, some 400 kilometres away from the Dawadami household of his family. In other words she was left at the mercy of a family who could only express themselves to her in gestures.
It is common knowledge that far too many Sri Lankan housemaids are being abused with utter cruelty. There is the recent story of a Sri Lankan housemaid who had eggs daubed on her face and boiling water poured all over her because the eggs slipped from her hands, fell down and broke. Far too many reports indicate they are badly treated and survive on low-rationed food and even their salaries do not compensate their hard labour sufficiently.
When she was recruited, Rizana Naffeek was still a schoolgirl from a poverty-stricken hamlet in the Muttur District attending Sapir Nagar School and her dream was to have a good house and help her siblings to continue with their education. Many young girls from her district had sought employment in the Middle East and this opportunity had attracted her as well.
She was not only under age for recruitment but did not even have any experience doing household chores; her house was a hovel with a leaky roof and the family subsisted on what their father could trade in for firewood he gathered in the neighbourhood. They were also among those who were severely affected by the tsunami.
She certainly cannot be expected to be a baby-sitter let alone to feed a 4-month old infant. She was employed in the Al Otaibi household as a housemaid and she should never have been made to bottle-feed a child. In this respect it is the mother of the child who is culpable of neglect of an infant child. Choking while bottle-feeding is one of the causes of infant mortality recognized as such throughout the world.
It is quite unfortunate this factor was ignored or overlooked by the court that tried Rizana Naffeek. Furthermore, based on the terms of employment, the court should have taken to task the sponsor-employer Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi and his wife. It appears, instead of being asked to account for their neglect, which led to such a horrible consequence, Rizana Naffeek was tried as a proxy for the death of their child.
How she came to be charged for strangling the baby to death remains a mystery. If that was the way the Al Otaibi family made representations to the Dawadami Police where she was arrested and held, then there is a gaping weakness in the charge. In the Police Station she was believed to have been harshly handled without being able to be understood and with no translator facility given and was forced to sign a document which was submitted to court as her confession. It was on that basis she was charged for murder by strangulation.
Was this the story that was given by the Al Otaibi family or constructed by the Dawadami Police? Rizana Naffeek was forced to sign a document that she could not read, let alone even to have an idea what the contents in it were!
This becomes even more inconceivable to believe when Rizana Naffeek had an opportunity to have her understood with the help of an interpreter when she explained her plight to the Sri Lankan Embassy. What was recorded at that time was also filed in court but it seems to have ignored it altogether. She had also said that she was born in February 1988 and not February 1972, which too was ignored.
She was not even given the opportunity to submit her Certificate of Birth, which in comparison to a passport is a more important document; and that much for thorough investigation required under Shariah Law. The court simply ignored the conflicts it faced with the charge that were in favour of Rizana Naffeek and in fact they underscored her innocence.
Since the Shariah Court sessions are held behind closed doors where the accused hardly has a role to play and may not even understand what is being discussed or communicated if they are not-Arabic speaking, one is not sure whether any medical reports were submitted in the case as to the cause of death of the baby. Here again did the court merely take the words of the mother suffering the anguish of her baby’s death and blaming Rizana Naffeek for his death?
When infants are breast-fed or bottle-fed care must be taken that the feeding is done properly holding them at the right angle, keeping them comfortable and then soon afterwards ensuring they are burped. This could not have been expected of a 17-year old nor could the mother have, even if she had instructed her properly but with only gestures. It is the mother who should have bottle-fed the child; he was only four months old. What has the Shariah Court to say about the mother’s neglect?
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which prohibits the execution of offenders of crimes committed when they were less than 18 years old. The moment the question of her age was raised at her trial, the court should have thoroughly investigated this factor and her Certificate of Birth should have been entered as a production. If the court has failed to give credence to it, then it has failed to uphold the rights to which Rizana Naffeek was entitled and denied her the results of investigation that were required by the Shariah Law itself.
In this respect, did the court itself act against its own law? The answer, most regretfully, has to be in the affirmative.
Even though Rizana Naffeek was unfairly charged and improperly tried even under the harsh provisions of the Shariah Law, the family of Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi could have saved a great deal of embarrassment to the Shariah Court and on the international scene, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia let alone to the family itself by accepting the court’s request to pardon her.
No court anywhere in the world not even under Shariah Law if Rizana Naffeek was properly tried with her rights ensured, could have convicted her of murder. Accidental death is not a capital crime under Shariah Law and this could have happened in the case of the infant child even if the mother was feeding her baby; it has happened to others and it will continue to be one of the causes of infant mortality.
Rizana Naffeek is not guilty of the crime she was charged with and tried by the Dawadami High Court.
(Victor Karunairajan is a South Asian journalist who lives in Canada. )

Posted on : Fri Jul 27 5:54:08 EEST 2007
Resilient growth but macro stability under pressure –
Deutsche Bank chief economist

Current economic growth of 5% to retain thru 07

By Yohan Perera A top expert on global economy said yesterday that Sri Lanka would experience an economic growth of 6% next year while then present 5% would remain during the coming months. This is in contrast to the Central Bank’s target of maintaining a 7% to 8% growth within next three to four years.
Central Bank Director Nandalal Weerasinghe stated during a discussion recently that the Bank’s target is to maintain a 7 to 8% growth within next two to three years.
Chief Economist Deutsche Bank Group and Managing Director Deutsche Bank Research Prof. Norbert Walter however deferred with this view when addressing the media where he stated that Sri Lanka’s growth has been resilient but macro stability might come under pressure.
He said fiscal deficit will remain high and would be around 8% of GDP. Prof. Walter explained that persistent current account deficit which would be around -1% would keep Sri Lankan rupee under pressure. He also stressed the need for maintaining fiscal prudence and cutting public debt. “Prudent policies are needed to manage vulnerabilities as the country’s foreign reserves are low and public debt is high,” he said. He was also of the opinion that the oil prices which is not going to come down for some time will also have a negative impact.
Commenting on the global economy he said it continues to grow for the fifth year in succession. This trend will most probably continue into 2008. However he said there are numerous risks that point towards a difficult 2009.
Both Central Bank interest rates and bond yields seem to have reached a plateau. Stock markets have further upside potential.
“The US housing recession has not yet affected other economic sectors and has thus dampened US economic growth only slightly” he said explaining the global economic situation. Euro land and Germany as its main economic growth engine are back on the growth track. Structural problems, however, persist. Since they are not addressed by appropriate reforms, the improvement is only cyclical.
He opined that Small Asian economies and especially Japan are benefiting from the tremendous growth in India and China. Due to increasing investments, strong regional export demand and a low Yen Japan seems to be back on track as well. Emerging market economies, especially India and China, are experiencing strongly export-led growth, implying a large increase in foreign exchange reserves.
“Asset price bubbles and current account disequilibria will eventually correct. This will imply foreign exchange gyrations and financial market disruption. Protectionist actions may endanger the global “goldilocks” conditions,” he pointed out.