Yearly Archives: 2011

Rajapakse summons: Command responsibility and jurisdiction under Intl humanitarian law

‘As for the ways by which rulers over others may become implicated in their crimes, there are two. tolerance and protection….we must hold that a person who knows of a crime and is able and bound to forbid it and does not do so, himself commits a crime … the people or the king are […]

By Lakshman Indranath Keerthisinghe | Published on October 3, 2011 at 11:20 am

Scapegoating of a General

Indignation over Shavendra
There is indignation in Sri Lanka at the fate that has befallen General Shavendra Silva who has been served with summons in the United
States where he is representing his country as a diplomat in the United Nations. He is faced with both a case against him as a representative of the Sri Lankan […]

By Dr. Jehan Perera | Published on October 3, 2011 at 10:44 am

Chief Justice or husband must resign

“All the four Judges of the Court were on the bench. Wright… had been raised to this high place over the heads of many abler and learned men solely
on account of his unscrupulous servility. Allibone was a Papist, and owed his situation to that dispensing power, the legality of which was now in question. Holloway […]

By Uvindu Kurukulasuriya | Published on October 3, 2011 at 2:37 am

“MR PRESIDENT, “YOU’VE BEEN SERVED”

WASHINGTON DC, 1 OCTOBER 1330hrs: In a press release titled “Mr President You have been served, lawyers for the Plaintiffs in the Torture Victims Protection Act case against
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse has said the world’s media may become part of a ground breaking legal action.
President Rajapakse is being accused of extrajudicial killings.
The Plaintiffs in […]

By Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge | Published on October 1, 2011 at 4:17 pm

Lawyers request US Court to approve use of social media to serve summons on Rajapakse

WASHINGTON DC October 1,2011:The plaintiffs in the Torture Victims Protection case against Sri Lanka’s President Rajapakse today filed a motion with the United States District Court in Washington DC seeking authorization to serve summons by publication in a
newspaper or through electronic means as all conventional methods had been denied. The motion also addresses issues of personal […]

By Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge | Published on October 1, 2011 at 3:59 pm

A Pyrrhic victory

The United States’ extra-judicial killing of United States citizen Anwar al-Awlaki off the battlefield and unengaged in active hostilities
against the United States was as lawless as was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s extra-judicial killing by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, which was condemned by the United States. The al-Awlaki precedent will lie around like a […]

By Bruce Fein | Published on October 1, 2011 at 3:17 pm

Sri Lanka and Kashmir: Are they ready for truth and reconciliation?

would a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) work in South Asia? A Sri Lankan and an Indian discuss whether Sri Lanka and Kashmir/India are ready for truth, whether forgiveness trumps justice and whether their countries will ever accept that all must accept responsibility if they are to move on from entrenched conflicts.
The idea for such […]

By Dheera Sujan | Published on September 30, 2011 at 8:30 pm

Canada threatens to boycott 2013 CHOGM in Sri Lanka over human rights issue

Stephen Harper’s government, which alienated many Tamil-Canadians in the last days of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009, is aggressively
campaigning to pressure Sri Lanka on human rights and political reconciliation.
It’s a dramatic shift in the Conservative approach to Sri Lanka’s fractured politics. For years they vilified the separatist Tamil Tigers as terrorists, and didn’t vocally […]

By Campbell Clark | Published on September 30, 2011 at 7:21 pm

Looking Ahead: U.S.-India Strategic Relations and the Transpacific Century

Thank you so much for inviting me to speak at the National Bureau of Asian Research’s launch of their heralded Strategic Asia volume. I am
particularly pleased to have this opportunity given that this year’s title is Strategic Asia 2011-12: Asia Responds to Its Rising Powers – China and India.
I want to salute the National Bureau […]

By Robert O. Blake, Jr | Published on September 30, 2011 at 6:56 pm

Protection of Human Rights in Sri Lanka: Duplicity of the British

Who made thee ruler and judge over us?
‘The West won the world not by superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non Westerners never do.’ Samuel. P. Huntington as quoted by J.B. Muller in his dissertation Anglophiles, Eurocentric Arrogance and […]

By Lakshman Indranath Keerthisinghe | Published on September 26, 2011 at 12:49 am