Sri Lanka among most charitable

Sri Lanka has been ranked eighth among countries who are more prone to charity, a global study has revealed.

The World Giving Index, the largest study ever carried out into charitable behaviour across the globe, which ranked Sri Lanka the eighth most charitable nation, has found that happier people are more likely to give money to charity than those who are wealthy.

The World Giving Index used a Gallup survey on the charitable behaviour of people in 153 countries representing 95 percent of the world’s population. The survey asked people whether they had given money to charity in the last month and to rank how happy they are with life on a scale of one to ten.

For all countries CAF compared the strength of the relationship between giving with both a nation’s GDP and the happiness of its population. CAF found that the link between happiness and giving is stronger than the link between wealth and giving.

The study also measured two other types of charitable behaviour alongside giving money - volunteering time and helping a stranger. The “World Giving Index” combines the levels of each charitable behaviour to produce a ranking of the most charitable nations in the world.

Sri Lanka came eighth on the World Giving Index with 56 percent of the population having donated to charity. Sri Lanka’s happiness score was 4.2

CAF Director of Research Richard Harrison said: “We have always thought of ourselves as a charitable nation and now for the first time we can see how charitable we are compared to the rest of the world.

“Donating money to charity is something that is traditionally seen as being driven by how wealthy a person is. However, it is clear that happiness plays an important role in influencing whether people give.

“The findings suggest a positive cycle where one person gives to charity, the charity improves the happiness of the individuals they support and they in turn are more likely to give.”

Australia and New Zealand topped the “World Giving Index”. Malta was found to be the country with the largest percentage of the population (83 percent) giving money, the people of Turkmenistan are the most generous with their time with 61 percent having given time to charity and Liberia was top of the list for helping a stranger (76 percent).

World Giving Index

First 25 countries

Country Rank Index% %money %time %help score out of 10

Australia 1 57% 70% 38% 64% 7.3
New Zealand 1 57% 68% 41% 63% 7.4
Canada 3 56% 64% 35% 68% 7.5
Ireland 3 56% 72% 35% 60% 7.0
Switzerland 5 55% 71% 34% 60% 7.5
USA 5 55% 60% 39% 65% 7.2
Netherlands 7 54% 77% 39% 46% 7.6
United Kingdom 8 53% 73% 29% 58% 5.6
Sri Lanka 8 53% 58% 52% 50% 4.2
Austria 10 52% 69% 30% 58% 7.2
Lao People's
Democratic
Republic 11 50% 64% 32% 53% 5.0
Sierra Leone 11 50% 29% 45% 75% 3.0
Malta 13 48% 83% 21% 40% 6.3
Iceland 14 47% 67% 26% 47% 6.9
Turkmenistan 14 47% 17% 61% 62% 6.6
Guyana 16 45% 36% 33% 67% 6.0
Qatar 16 45% 64% 18% 53% 6.4
Hong Kong 18 44% 70% 13% 50% 5.1
Germany 18 44% 49% 28% 56% 6.7
Denmark 18 44% 67% 20% 45% 8.0
Guinea 18 44% 28% 42% 61% 4.3
Guatemala 22 43% 46% 33% 51% 6.5
Trinidad and
Tobago 22 43% 45% 25% 60% 6.7
Myanmar 22 43% 36% 40% 52% 5.3
Thailand 25 42% 73% 18% 36% 6.9
Kuwait 25 42% 41% 19% 67% 6.6
Luxembourg 25 42% 58% 28% 41% 7.0
Norway 25 42% 43% 38% 45% 7.6

Last 25 countries

Country Rank Index% %money %time %help score out of 10

France 91 27% 31% 22% 28% 6.3
Singapore 91 27% 35% 10% 35% 6.1
Republic of Congo
(Brazzaville) 91 27% 11% 18% 51% 3.8
Republic of Moldova 100 26% 17% 20% 42% 5.6
Nepal 100 26% 22% 21% 36% 4.9
Georgia 134 19% 5% 15% 37% 3.8
Turkey 134 19% 14% 7% 35% 5.1
India 134 19% 14% 12% 30% 5.1
Vietnam 138 18% 17% 6% 32% 5.3
Montenegro 138 18% 18% 6% 31% 5.2
Russian Federation 138 18% 6% 20% 29% 5.2
Bulgaria 141 17% 18% 3% 30% 3.8
Cambodia 142 16% 34% 2% 13% 4.1
Pakistan 142 16% 20% 8% 20% 5.2
Romania 142 16% 14% 5% 28% 5.4
Rwanda 142 16% 15% 11% 21% 4.0
Bangladesh 146 15% 12% 5% 29% 5.1
China 147 14% 11% 4% 28% 4.5
Lithuania 147 14% 4% 6% 33% 5.5
Greece 147 14% 8% 5% 28% 6.0
Serbia 150 13% 14% 5% 21% 4.8
Ukraine 150 13% 5% 14% 19% 5.2
Burundi 152 12% 9% 7% 21% 3.8
Madagascar 153 12% 6% 11% 18% 4.6

Police discover Sun Sea’s link to Norway

Stewart Bell

The Bangkok-based human smugglers who have so far sent two shiploads of illegal migrants to Canada have been called “sophisticated” and “well organized.” But nobody ever said they were perfect.

Before the last ship, the MV Sun Sea, left Thailand in July carrying almost 500 Sri Lankan migrants, the smugglers made the passengers sign contracts that spelled out how much each owed for the journey to Canada.

The contracts were then mailed to Norway, ostensibly for safekeeping. They were, after all, valuable receipts. They were proof of millions worth of uncollected debts, not to mention highly sensitive.

The problem was, they were mailed to the wrong address.

According to newly released details of the case, the contracts — in which Sun Sea passengers pledged to pay the smugglers between $5,000 and $30,000 upon reaching Canada — were mislabelled and delivered to the wrong person.

The recipient handed them to Norwegian police, who passed them on to their Canadian counterparts. The gaffe has given Canadian officials a unique insight into the smugglers’ system of payment, which involved an up-front deposit of about $5,000 and a hefty debt that was to be paid off after arrival in Canada. It has also linked the smuggling operation to Norway.

The Norwegian connection and the blunder that brought it to light are described in a transcript of an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing held in Vancouver on April 7. A declassified copy of the transcript was recently released to the National Post.

“Now, these are a series of payment contracts signed by various individuals who ended up travelling on the MV Sun Sea,” Kenny Nicolaou, a Canada Border Services Agency representative, explained at the hearing.

“You can see the general tenor of the contract. Essentially it says, ‘I paid this much up front, depending on the situation, and I owe this much, who this family member in Canada pledges to pay on my behalf once I arrive.”

Mr. Nicolaou said the Sun Sea’s arrival in Canada was “the end result of a sophisticated, well organized, for profit human smuggling operation orchestrated by a network of agents in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.”

Boarding began in April 2010 and occurred in “continuing waves” until the ship sailed for Canada on July 5. An “intricate network of agents” organized the effort, he said. “It was well organized and it was designed to generate large sums of money.”

The Sun Sea arrived off the British Columbia coast last August carrying 492 Sri Lankan migrants who had contracted smugglers to ferry them from Thailand. All have made refugee claims. The Canadian government has spent more than $25-million so far dealing with the ship.

In all likelihood, Canadian authorities already knew about the Sun Sea by the time the contracts were intercepted. But the package would have given them advance notice about who was on board, how much they had paid and how much they still owed the smuggling syndicate.

The CBSA raised the Norwegian matter at the hearing of a Sun Sea migrant whom the government alleges was involved in the smuggling operation. The man’s lawyer downplayed the significance of the documents, saying “there is no credible evidence before the board to say that these are the contracts that the people on board the Sun Sea were a party to.”

The IRB has sealed all the exhibits related to the Sun Sea refugee cases.

The RCMP is investigating the suspected organizers of the Sun Sea and Ocean Lady, the ship that smuggled 76 Sri Lankan migrants to Canada in 2009. To date, the IRB has ruled that four of the Sun Sea migrants were members of the Tamil Tigers rebel group.

The intended recipient of the contracts was not identified in the transcript but Norway has a large Sri Lankan population and is the base of the Nediyavan faction of the Tamil Tigers. The head of the Nediyavan group, Perinpanayagam Sivaparam, was arrested in Olso last month.

Dutch police reportedly want to question him about an alleged Tamil Tigers fundraising network that has been extorting money from ethnic Tamils in the Netherlands. The Dutch authorities arrested seven suspects in April.

The European case is similar to the RCMP’s recent investigation of the World Tamil Movement, a Toronto-based rebel front group that raised millions to support the Tamil Tigers until the federal government banned it in 2008, shut it down and seized its assets.

National Post
sbell@nationalpost.com

Security issues may keep Tamils in detention

BY DOUGLAS QUAN, POSTMEDIA NEWS



VANCOUVER -- Ever since a shipload of Tamil migrants arrived in Canada on Aug. 13, the government has argued for their continued detention on the basis that their identities have not been verified.

But as a third round of detention hearings gets underway on Wednesday, lawyers for the migrants say they won't be surprised if the government starts making a new argument: that some of the migrants should be held because they pose a possible security threat.

If that happens, it'll bring a new level of complexity to the hearings, experts say, putting Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicators into the difficult position of having to weigh the migrants' rights to liberty with protecting the country.

"They're in a bit of a tough spot," said Gregory James, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer.

When the cargo ship MV Sun Sea arrived on B.C.'s coast last month with 492 men, women and children aboard, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews stated publicly that the ship included "suspected human smugglers and terrorists" belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group that battled the Sri Lankan government for 25 years and whose members are banned from entering Canada.

And Rohan Gunaratna, who has consulted for the Canadian government and is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, was quoted widely in media reports saying the captain of the Sun Sea was a Tamil Tiger.

But so far, officials with the Canada Border Services Agency are keeping mum about what evidence, if any, they have to support those claims.

"The CBSA is exercising due diligence in the screening of all irregular migrants for both security and criminal threats. This is an ongoing investigation and the CBSA cannot comment at this time," said spokeswoman Esme Bailey in an e-mail.

One of the migrants' lawyers, Douglas Cannon, who says Toews' comments amounted to "fear mongering," says he is anxious to learn what the government knows.

"If you have evidence, come out with it," he said.

Larry Smeets, another migrant lawyer, says, based on Toews' remarks, he has warned his clients that they could remain in detention even after their identities have been verified.

"I expect that's what's going to happen," he said.

Last October, 76 Tamil migrants showed up on the B.C. coast aboard another vessel, the Ocean Lady. Official transcripts from the detention hearings of those migrants offer some insight into what could be in store for the current group of migrants.

Initially, the 76 migrants - all men - were held on the grounds that their identities still needed to be verified. But after a couple of weeks, the government started making the case that the migrants were potential security threats.

Government lawyers said traces of explosives had been found on the Ocean Lady and on the personal belongings of a few of the migrants.

They said the ship's name had been deliberately disguised and that its true name was the MV Princess Easwary.

They cited testimony from Gunaratna, who asserted that, based on information from a terrorism database he maintains and confidential sources, the ship was owned by the Tamil Tigers.

Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicators sided with the government in those early days, and agreed to continue holding the migrants on security grounds.

However, one adjudicator, Leeann King, acknowledged during one hearing that she had an "extremely difficult" time making her decision.

"This section of the (Immigration and Refugee Protection) Act was passed in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, and has been seen very rarely by members of this division in this region," she said.

"I don't have much guidance."

But by December, adjudicators were starting to become impatient with the government and started ordering the releases of migrants.

In one particularly tense hearing, adjudicator Otto Nupponen said flatly that "there is nothing whatsoever" that would tie the migrant in question with the Tamil Tigers and that any further steps the government took to inquire into his background would likely amount to "a fishing expedition."

He raised questions about the credibility and impartiality of the government's witness, Gunaratna, pointing out that he had close ties to the Sri Lankan government and that he had even helped the president write his memoirs.

"There is more than just a slight basic apprehension of bias," Nupponen said.

On the discovery of trace amounts of explosives, Nupponen said the government could keep swabbing the ship, but "one once again needs to question what the purpose of that really would be and if there are further hits, what then? What is that supposed to mean?"

Government lawyers appealed to the Federal Court to stay the releases and even called for top-secret hearings so that they could share in more detail some of the security concerns they had with respect to 25 of the migrants.

But just as those hearings were set to begin in January, the government called off the hearings. Instead, it consented to the release of all the migrants under a host of conditions, including that the migrants report to Canada Border Services Agency officials on a weekly basis and that they not associate with members of any criminal organizations or anyone who supports foreign or domestic terrorism.

"Over time, the longer you keep someone in detention, the harder it is to justify," said James, the immigration lawyer.

Factbox:

The government can detain foreign nationals if it has reasonable grounds to believe they:

- are unlikely to appear for an examination, hearing or removal

- are a danger to the public

- are inadmissible for security reasons or for violating human or international rights

- have not established their identity

Refugees spark racism row

An opinion poll last month indicated that a majority of Canadians wanted the Tamils to be sent back.

"Why such rage directed at such a minuscule group?" asked columnist Stephen Hume in the Vancouver Sun. "Perhaps it's because they aren't white ... How we respond to a few Tamils seeking safety and a future for their children says far more about us than it does about them. And what it says so far is rather distasteful."

This provoked a furious reaction. "Gee, could it be that we are sick of being played for Patsies?" was one of the milder responses from readers. "You might sing a different song if your community was flooded with Hindus, Vietnamese, etc who brought such worthy skills with them as drive-by shootings, drug wars, murder of their own wives and daughters," read another.

Views from Canada

By EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Great news: There is a country in Asia willing to take Sri Lankan Tamil refugees by the thousand — with the United Nations' seal of approval.

And they're already doing it. In the first six months of 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says the generous country accepted 1,857 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, who had been staying temporarily in India.

UN refugee spokesman Michael Zwack says these Tamils are now "rebuilding their lives." The UN quoted one Tamil refugee, a 39-year-old woman, who said she was pleased with her new home for a pretty good reason: "Peace."

So where is this wonderful place that Sri Lankan refugees are going to by the thousand?

Sri Lanka.

That's right. Thousands of Tamil refugees are returning to Sri Lanka — because it's safe. Within Sri Lanka itself, internal refugee camps for displaced Tamils are winding down, as Tamils go back home.

For example, the Menik Farm refugee camp in Sri Lanka once had 228,000 Tamils in it. It's down to less than 35,000 now, with 3,000 people going home every week.

It's an amazing success story, and it's because the 30-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers terrorist group is over. The terrorists lost. The war ended last spring. Everyone can go home.

Including the 492 gatecrashers who showed up on Vancouver Island last month.

This isn't Sri Lankan government propaganda. It's Tamil refugees telling the story, not with words but with deeds. They're leaving some of the friendliest places on earth to go home.

For example, the 1,857 refugees mentioned above had been staying in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It's a huge state, with more than 66 million people, overwhelmingly Tamil, as its name implies. Even from that Tamil paradise, Tamil refugees are going home to Sri Lanka.

We already knew 71% of Tamil refugees in Canada go home to Sri Lanka for holidays, too, according to a survey done by Canadian immigration officials, and reported by QMI Agency.

Question: If thousands of Tamil refugees from around the world are going home to Sri Lanka, and 71% of Canadian Tamil refugees go back there for holidays, why are we still going through the motions with the 492 Tamils on Vancouver Island, as if they are legitimate? And why are more Tamil ships steaming our way?

That's easy. Criminal smugglers made an estimated $20 million profit from the voyage. Why wouldn't they keep doing it?

Canadian immigration lawyers love it. It's lucrative work — they're paid by legal aid. Which is another way of saying "paid by your taxes."

Politicians love it. With more than 200,000 Tamils living in Toronto, there are plenty of votes to be had by pandering.

And liberal, white journalists love it, because it's a chance to prove how sensitive they are, to polish their politically correct credentials.

That just leaves the rest of us — chumps paying the bills, and watching helplessly while 492 queue-jumpers butt in to the front of the line. Not just queue-jumpers, but queue-jumpers fleeing a "peaceful"place.

So are we going to change our laws to keep out these shysters, like Australia has done? Or is being the world's sucker the new Canadian identity?

Read Ezra Levant's blog @ ezralevant.com

Jason Kenney, the federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

There are several of these [human smuggling] syndicates actually competing with each other for this business. They were involved in the arms trade in the Sri Lankan civil war, but since the cessation of hostilities have sought a new business line, a new commodity to smuggle, and that is human beings ... They are charging people on average about $50,000 to be smuggled to Canada in the most dangerous and worst way possible – in dangerous vessels that either have been decommissioned or should be.

This poses a serious challenge to the integrity and fairness and public support for Canada’s immigration system and our refugee protection system in particular. Since the arrival of the last vessel, there’s been a very significant drop-off in the general public support for immigration, and public support for refugee protection in particular. That’s something we need to be responsive to. Our security partners in Australia, for example, tell me they believe the syndicates targeting Canada have the logistical capability to deliver several large steel-hold vessels a year, each with hundreds of passengers ... Imagine this happening every month or every other month. That would fundamentally undermine public confidence and support for Canada’s generous approach to immigration and refugee protection – which is one of the reasons we need to take action to deter the smuggling networks and disincentivize their potential customers from buying the package to come to Canada ...

The public is pretty clear in their condemnation of this ... They want an immigration system that’s characterized by the principle of the rule of law and fairness, and they see this as a violation of those principles. And that feeling is strongest among new Canadians, in all of our research.

Some 60 per cent of Canadians have said we should prevent the boats from entering our territorial waters in the first place – which implies the use of force and the risk to human life, and that’s a risk we are not prepared to assume.

Over 50 per cent of Canadians in polling have said that those from these vessels who are deemed to be bona fide refugees should be deported back to their country of origin ...

We have decided instead to produce a balanced package which recognizes and upholds our international and domestic legal obligations – the essential obligation under the UN conventions for refugees and torture is an obligation of non-refoulement – that is to say, if someone has a well-founded fear of persecution, a risk to their life, a risk of torture, you can’t send them back to the country that they fear. And the package we propose would not do so ...

I believe that these migrants have mixed motives for coming to Canada: some are primarily economic migrants, some may well be bona-fide refugees ... and some of them have a mix of economic and political reasons ... I should say contextually, that since the cessation of hostilities in Sri Lanka, some 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees living in Tamil Nadu, India, have since voluntarily returned to Sri Lanka. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has facilitated the voluntary return of many Sri Lankans living with temporary status in southeast Asian nations. The Canadian Border Services Agency has done a survey which indicated that a majority of successful Tamil asylum seekers in Canada have subsequently returned, at least for visits, to the country where they allegedly feared persecution ...


Source: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

dquan@canwest.com

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Analysis - American Angle

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USA fears loss of Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka should become Switzerland of Indian Ocean

By John Stanton

“Sri Lanka has been a friend and democratic partner of the United States since gaining independence in 1948 and has supported U.S. military operations overseas such as during the first Gulf War. Commercial contacts go back to 1787, when New England sailors first anchored in Sri Lanka’s harbors to engage in trade. Sri Lanka is strategically located at the nexus of maritime trading routes connecting Europe and the Middle East to China and the rest of Asia. It is directly in the middle of the ‘‘Old World,’’ where an estimated half of the world’s container ships transit the Indian Ocean. American interests in the region include securing energy resources from the Persian Gulf and maintaining the free flow of trade in the Indian Ocean.” --Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report, 2009.

Most Americans are not familiar with the long history of relations that Sri Lanka and the USA have. In fact, most -- and to be fair, a good deal of the world’s population -- couldn’t pinpoint the country on a map even though Sri Lanka is one of the top trading partners of the USA.

Still, some may know Sri Lanka through the name Mathangi Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A., a globally recognized musician/singer/artist. Many will remember that science fiction giant Arthur C. Clarke (2001 Space Odyssey) made his home in Sri Lanka. Perhaps a handful will know that Sri Lanka is a Cricket powerhouse.

Others may remember the 2004 tsunami that destroyed large portions of the Sri Lankan coastline, wiping out thousands of lives and leaving many more thousands internally displaced. Some will be familiar with the Sri Lankan’s military defeat of the LTTE -- Tamil Tigers -- in 2009 after roughly 26 years of conflict. The victory came with a burdensome price tag: thousands killed, nearly 460,000 Tamils/noncombatants confined in holding camps/displaced, and the horrible legacy that is one million landmines that dot former warfighting zones.

So what do they do in Sri Lanka besides producing excellent tea and Cricket players? Here is the industry/services breakdown for 2009:

Sri Lanka’s natural resource base consists of limestone, graphite, mineral sands, gems and phosphate.

The agricultural sector is 12.8 percent of GDP and includes rice, tea, rubber, coconut, and spices. The service industry is 58 percent with key sectors being tourism, wholesale and retail trade, transport, telecom and financial services. The industrial sector comprises 29.2% of GDP and includes garments and leather goods, rubber products, food processing, chemicals, refined petroleum, gems and jewelry, non-metallic mineral-based products and construction.

Major exports (amounting to $7 billion US) in 2009 were garments, tea, rubber products, jewelry and gems, refined petroleum, and coconuts. The main markets for those products were the USA ($ 1.54 billion US), the United Kingdom, India and Italy.

Major suppliers to the Sri Lankan economy were India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Iran, Malaysia, Japan, U.K., U.A.E., Belgium, Indonesia, South Korea and the USA (totaling $9.6 billion US of which $283 million was with the USA).

USA-India-China: Sri Lanka as Geopolitical/economic battlespace

For US policy makers and military planners, Sri Lanka has now become a top geopolitical priority. A sense of urgency is driving the grand brains in the White House and Pentagon to figure out how “not to lose Sri Lanka.” In short, that means an answer to the question, “How can we use Sri Lanka to further US national security interests in the Indian Ocean?”

“Friendly” economic competition (and the concomitant struggle for resources, markets, jobs) between the USA and China/India will inevitably move to military conflict at some future date. Why? There simply are not enough energy stores in the world to meet the needs of the three nations which, combined, make up 41 percent of the world’s population. And this excludes Indonesia and Brazil that together make up just over 6 percent of the world’s population. The five nations make up 47 percent of the world’s population and their hunger for energy, raw materials, food, construction materials, “the better life,” is insatiable. All are pre-positioning for economic security which, of course, is an element of national security.

In state and corporate governing circles within the five countries (USA, India, China, Indonesia, Brazil), there is a far graver threat to be dealt with: the prospect of restive populations revolting as their job prospects darken, social programs are cut, income inequality increases, and health/pension benefits become more restricted, even eliminated. Meanwhile, up above, the losing classes watch as their nation’s stock exchanges operate as though it’s business-as-usual. In this volatile environment, internal mass dissent/boycotts are, arguably, the number one threat to each nation’s security.

So where does Sri Lanka fit in?

“Indian threat perceptions have grown as China has become more active in South Asia. Sri Lanka is no exception,” said Maria Kuusisto of Eurasia Group in an interview with Kari Lispschutz of World Politics Review. “Chinese investment has expanded rapidly, including the strategically situated commercial deep-sea port in Hambantota -- which is [Sri Lankan] President Mahinda Rajapakse’s home constituency -- and the two-phase coal power plant in Norochcholai. During the civil war in Sri Lanka, Beijing provided unconditional diplomatic, economic and military support to the Sri Lankan government, winning significant goodwill in Colombo. And China is now offering to provide financing and technical expertise to the Sri Lankan government, which is pursuing an aggressive, multi-million dollar reconstruction program. New Delhi sees this Chinese maneuvering as an incursion into its historic sphere of influence, and is consequently trying to outbid the Chinese for strategically important infrastructure projects.”

While India and China solidify their relationships with Sri Lanka, the USA/West has had a muddled foreign policy that seems to always be fixated -- no matter the region -- on Iran and China. Writing in Future Directions International, Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe indicated that the European Union used the war crimes card following the defeat of the LTTE simply to punish Sri Lanka for its trade relations with Iran and China, not out of any great concern for human rights.

“Following the LTTE defeat in May, the EU sought to pursue a motion against Sri Lanka for war crimes investigations at the UN Human Rights Council, which collapsed when 29 countries of the 47-member council voted in solidarity with Sri Lanka. India itself came out strongly in support of Sri Lanka at the Council and later even criticized the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Commenting on Sri Lanka’s diplomatic feat, Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United Nations, Dayan Jayatillaka, said: ‘This is not a lesson that Sri Lanka taught the West. It is a victory of the developing countries and the global south. It was not a defeat of the Tiger Diaspora alone. It was the defeat of a powerful bloc of forces. Geneva was a miniature diplomatic Dien Bien Phu or Bay of Pigs for the EU.

“The unfolding events earlier this year underscored the fact that Sri Lanka’s confrontation with the West, which has seen relations plummet to their lowest point since the 1970s, has had less to do with human rights and more to do with a fierce geopolitical struggle for influence. There is little doubt that Sri Lanka’s move to broaden relations with China and Iran, its rejection of Western demands in its internal affairs, the timing of its victory over the LTTE, and its acceptance in June 2009 as a Dialogue Partner to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) were crucial in influencing the West’s attempts to take punitive action against Sri Lanka -- moves which served to further strengthen Sri Lanka’s relations with China.”

Senate Foreign Relations Report 2009: The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!

The Sri Lanka Foundation (SLF) reports that former Sri Lankan military commander Sarath Fonseka was favored by the USA to win the Sri Lankan presidential election in 2010 over rival and current president Mahendra Rajapaksa. Fonseka was apparently awarded permanent residency in the USA, according to the SLF, and spent too much time hanging around Washington, DC during the LTTE conflict.

Fonseka is now charged with Criminal Breach of Trust by the Sri Lankan government under Sri Lanka’s Property Act.

Many Sri Lankans here in the USA and in Sri Lanka itself see Fonseka as a tool of the US government and Western interests. Others, of course, don’t.

The SLF derides the Senate Foreign Relations Report of 2009 (see link above, also known as The Kerry Report) as being the product of a dumbfounded US foreign/military policy establishment that was shocked when the Sri Lankan military defeated its LTTE nemesis. Their criticisms of US foreign policy practices (subterfuge, spreading money around via NGOs, fanning the flames of class conflict) are certainly not without ample historical precedent.

The SLF views the purpose of the Kerry Report as this: “Their mission: to make recommendations to prevent further erosion of US security interests in the island and increase US leverage in Sri Lanka for securing longer term US strategic interests and expanding the number of tools available at Washington’s disposal.”

No problem there, that’s what the large nation’s do.

But then it gets very interesting. SLF goes on to say, “If the LTTE had succeeded, the US would have gained control of two thirds of Sri Lanka coastline, enabling them to secure Persian Gulf energy resources to Japan, interfere if and when the need arose, with the flow of these same resources to China, selectively interfere with free trade in the Indian Ocean, and undermine stability in India by provoking Tamil and Hindu sentiments in Tamil Nadu”

“To make matters worse, not only did President Rajapaksa destroy the cornerstone of US policy in the region [by defeat of the LTTE], but he was, as The Kerry Report identified, responsible for the country’s drift towards China (and the non-Western world), considered one of the biggest challengers to US hegemony of the world.

“All this threatens US national security interests, and President Rajapaksa is considered a threat to US National Security.

“US policy, the report states, has to be re-charted. A regime change is considered imperative: Rajapaksa must go.”

:The battle lines were drawn for January 26, 2010. The battle was not between Rajapaksa and Fonseka, but between Sri Lanka and the US. On May 18, 2009, Sri Lanka won a historic proxy war on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon, defeating the scourge of terrorism [LTTE] and the threat of neocolonialism. Election day was crucial -- Sri Lankans had to defeat the neocolonialist if they were to protect their victory at Nanthikadal.

“The sovereignty of Sri Lanka is being challenged and is at stake..”

With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Sri Lankan Ambassador Tamara Kunanayakam (Cuba and Venezuela) urged Sri Lankans to study Latin American and USA relations. Writing in Why Latin America is Important for Sri Lanka, she states, “Whereas the economic performance of China and India impress most observers in Sri Lanka and much of our efforts are focused on warding off attacks from our former colonial masters and their allies who continue to have a stake in this country, we have failed to grasp the significance of the history that is being written in Latin America.

“Sri Lanka cannot remain indifferent to this evolution. The quality of its international relations cannot be appreciated through the narrow vision of those who judge its good health solely through the state of relations with Western powers.

“Sri Lankan foreign policy must take into account the reality of a world that is changing and Latin America as constituting an important factor in that change.”

Become the Switzerland of the Indian Ocean

How can Sri Lanka -- with 21 million people, just .3 percent of the global populace -- rebuild and reunite its tattered country after 26 years of war and a tsunmai, while at the same time avoid Faustian economic and military bargains with the world’s giant nation-states? Can its leaders avoid the lure of bribes (in any form), the sweetheart deals that will inevitably be forthcoming, and the trappings of power?

Can the Sri Lankan people calm the ethnic turbulence between (Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim) that has plagued it and develop a common national consciousness/identity?

Can Sri Lanka avoid getting tangled in the competition between the world’s largest nations that will only escalate in the future?

DeSilva-Ranasinghe made this observation. “So far, at least, Sri Lanka appears to have successfully balanced the competing interests of India and China.” He cited the commentary of a former Sri Lankan diplomat named Jayantha Dhanapala on the delicate balancing act.

“There are elements in America and India who would like to raise the China bogey . . . This is not a zero sum game where our relationship with China is at the expense of our relationship with India. We cleverly balanced the relationship.”

How long that relationship can be balanced remains to be seen.

As they rebuild their country and amend their constitution, they would do well to look to Switzerland as an example of a neutral -- even sane---nation state. Their survival may depend on it.

With the USA shifting focus and resources to the Indian Ocean, they’d best move quickly and warily.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
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MOVIE REVIEW: Have You Heard from Johannesburg?

The Long Story of a Long Revolution

By MIKE HALE

When documenting racist atrocities, one proven tactic is to go long, matching the gravity of your subject with sheer duration. Joining “Shoah” (about 9 hours) and “Eyes on the Prize” (14 hours) in this category is “Have You Heard From Johannesburg,” Connie Field’s seven-film, eight-and-a-half-hour documentary series about apartheid.

What Have You Heard From Johannesburg gives us is a history -- inside and outside the Apartheid regime -- that allows us to see what South Africa's Afrikaners, its Blacks (and its other two "colored" groupings), as well as the world at large, thought and felt about what was going on. It does this via talking heads, but in this case, the same heads often span thirty or forty years. We see many of them as young people and also as aged seniors. We explore Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand; many of the African countries (during the 1960s) as they shake off their colonizers; Scandinavia, Europe and the middle east, including Israel. They're all here, especially the United Nations, the majority of whose members consistently vote against South Africa and its Aparthied regime, only to have the UN's powerful Security Council members continue to shore up the foul regime by voting against the majority membership. One might conclude, as is often true regarding UN actions, that the organization was created to keep power in place and strengthen the status quo.

The history of the subjugation of South Africa’s nonwhites and of their long battle against their white rulers — a struggle frequently undermined, until near the end, by the governments of the United States, Britain and France — certainly deserves the time. And “Have You Heard” (the title comes from the lyrics of the Gil Scott-Heron song “Johannesburg”) presents a vast amount of information that will be new to most American viewers, especially in its early sections.

Setting education aside, however, it’s a tricky business evaluating these documentaries from a cinematic standpoint. Judged as a whole — that is, watched from beginning to end — they don’t really justify their lengthy claim on our attention. There are repetitions large and small. Many images of police brutality and everyday indignities recur from film to film; more egregiously, the 90-minute fifth and sixth parts, which cover the same period from slightly different angles, feel redundant.

Ms. Field (“The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter”) might argue that there’s nothing wrong with that. She conceived the project as a set of self-contained documentaries (originally there were to be just three) that could be seen independently, with no requirement that the viewer watch the entire series. Therefore it shouldn’t matter if there’s significant overlap between a film about economic sanctions and university divestment and one about corporate divestment.

But whether or not you plan to watch the whole series — and why wouldn’t you, if you want to learn about apartheid? — the fact is that the two easily could have been combined into a single film that would have been better at half the length. “Have You Heard” would have benefited from judicious editing throughout: you get the feeling that Ms. Field had trouble choosing among so many eloquent witnesses, so many horrific pieces of old footage.

Film Forum in Manhattan is presenting the series in three separate programs of roughly two and three-quarters to three hours each. Program 1, consisting of three hourlong films, is best. It proceeds chronologically from the institution of apartheid in 1948 through the Sharpeville massacre, the jailing of Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders, Oliver Tambo’s establishment of the A.N.C. in exile, the Soweto uprising, the murder of the activist Steve Biko and the passage of the United Nations arms embargo in 1977.

Heroes are identified, larger-than-life figures now little known to a general American audience: Mr. Tambo; Mr. Biko; the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme; the Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston; the Mata Hari of the anti-apartheid movement, Conny Braam. There are villains as well, some of them still making excuses for apartheid and complaining to Ms. Field’s cameras of how they were misunderstood.

Archival film provides a steady drumbeat of humiliation, horrible violence and transfixing bigotry. A white man on the street looks into a camera and says, “They’ve only just come down from the trees.”

Programs 2 and 3 take the story away from South Africa, recounting the various international campaigns against apartheid — the sports boycotts; the fight within the United States, particularly during the Reagan administration, for economic sanctions; and the corporate divestment campaign. The films here, in addition to covering similar ground, also feel less urgent, farther from the action. The events they depict were essential to the overthrow of apartheid, but after a while the crowds of white people marching through the streets or running onto rugby pitches start to blur together.

The seventh film, “Free at Last,” closes Program 3 by returning to South Africa for the end game, when escalating violence and economic isolation finally led to the release of Mr. Mandela and the end of apartheid.

The use of the title “Free at Last” cries out for a comparison with “Eyes on the Prize,” so here it is. “Have You Heard” gets points for passion and immediacy, in contrast to the somewhat stately “Eyes on the Prize,” but it loses them for its messiness; its literalist impulse to illustrate every point, often with random images not directly connected to the story; and its occasional cheesy luridness. Gunshots are used as transitions between scenes and replace the sounds of the hits and kicks in a rugby match.

Even at the level of average-to-mediocre television, though, “Have You Heard” tells an amazing story. If you don’t know it, or you want reminding, the clumsy storytelling can be endured.

HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG

Produced and directed by Connie Field; narration written by Jon Else; directors of photography, Tom Hurwitz and David Forbes; series edited by Gregory Scharpen, with additional editing by Ken Schneider and Dawn Lodgson; music by Marco D’Abbrosio and Todd Boekelheide; released by Clarity Films.

How Beijing won Sri Lanka's civil war

By Peter Popham

A year after the 27-year Tamil insurgency was brought to a decisive end, Peter Popham looks at how China triumphed where the West failed

A year ago, one of the world's most brutal and pitiless terrorist groups, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was hunted down and exterminated on a strip of beach in the far north-east of Sri Lanka.

In a war that had dragged on for 27 years, more than 80,000 on both sides had died, hundreds of thousands had lost their homes and the future of one of the most idyllic tropical islands in the world hung in the balance. Suddenly it was all over.

In defiance of all predictions, the war was brought to a swift and bloody end. The plight of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians caught in the middle was brushed aside: a Chinese veto prevented the UN Security Council from even debating the issue, let alone sending monitors to investigate. Foreign journalists were barred both from the conflict zone and the prison camps set up for Tamil survivors, as was David Miliband when the then foreign secretary flew in to try to find out what was going on. Local journalists critical of government action were terrorised into silence.

Then on the morning of 19 May, after a final gun battle lasting an hour, the bodies of 18 of the top Tiger leaders were found sprawled among the mangroves. Among them was the supreme leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The war was over.

It was a great victory, the emphatic end of a terrorist gang whom no one in their right mind would mourn. But it was achieved in the teeth of opposition from the US and its allies, and at appalling human and moral cost. How had it been allowed to happen?

The answer, in one word, is "China". When the US ended direct military aid in 2007 over Sri Lanka's deteriorating human rights record, China leapt into the breach, increasing aid to nearly $1bn (£690m) to become the island's biggest donor, giving tens of millions of dollars' worth of sophisticated weapons, and making a free gift of six F7 fighter jets to the Sri Lankan air force. China encouraged its ally Pakistan to sell more arms and to train pilots to fly the new planes. And, crucially, China prevented the UN Security Council from putting Sri Lanka on its agenda.

Suddenly, thanks to China's diplomacy, the hectoring of the US and Europe didn't matter any more. After nearly 500 years under the thumb of the West, the immensely strategic little island in the Indian Ocean had a new sugar daddy – one with a very different conception of its duties. Sri Lanka's "traditional donors" had "receded into a distant corner", the country's Foreign Secretary, Palitha Kohona, told The New York Times in 2008. "Asians don't go around teaching each other how to behave," he said. "There are ways we deal with each other – perhaps a quiet word, but not wagging the finger."

Money, arms and diplomatic cover are necessary preconditions for taking a war to its logical conclusion, but they are not enough. Also required is ideological cover: a casus belli that must go beyond the thirst for revenge, communal hatred or the urge of the majority to impose its will permanently on the minority. It must be possible to sell it as a just war. For this purpose, as Bob Dylan recognised a long time back ("With God on our side"), religion comes in handy.

Enter the Sinhalese Buddhists.

We in the West by and large have a pretty foggy understanding of Buddhism, but one thing we know for certain is that Buddhists are for peace. So the idea that the war party in Sri Lanka – not just in the past five years but throughout the years of independence – was identifiable with Buddhist monks does not sound right. It's like finding Trappist monks engaged in a talk-athon or Orthodox Jews running a pork pie factory.

Buddhists don't do war. Look at the Dalai Lama: for 50 years he has strained every fibre to prevent Tibetan resistance to Chinese oppression turning violent. He has a great line on this challenge: "In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher."

Up close, Sinhalese Buddhism looks as harmless and pacific as any other variety. Visit any temple in the country during Poya or full moon day, a monthly national religious holiday on the island, and you will find scenes of perfect serenity as families dressed all in white offer food to the monks in their saffron robes, then picnic under the trees or stroll around the whitewashed stupa.

By contrast, listen to the words of the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana in 2002: "There are two central concepts of Buddhism," the monk said, "compassion and wisdom. If compassion was a necessary and sufficient condition, then the Buddha would not have elaborated on wisdom or prajna. Hitler could not have been overcome by maitriya [compassion] alone. Today there is a discourse about peace in Sri Lanka. It is an extremely artificial exercise and one that is clearly being orchestrated under threat of terrorist attack."

Imagine those words coming from the mouth of the Dalai Lama and you get an idea of how sharply the views of some Sri Lankan monks diverge from the pacific Buddhist norm. He is not saying "bomb the hell out of the Tigers, as the Allies destroyed Hitler". But the implication is clear enough.

How did Sri Lankan Buddhism veer off so sharply from the other schools? Buddhism was born in northern India in the 6th century BC, and spread throughout the subcontinent and beyond. But eight or nine hundred years later it began to lose ground to new schools of devotional Hinduism, which steadily supplanted it. Eventually it disappeared from the Indian mainland altogether.

Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka watched this process with alarm, and hatched a way to stop it at the coast: they wrote a new book of scripture, the Mahavamsa, to establish indissoluble links between the historical Buddha and their island. The Mahavamsa claimed that the Buddha had visited Sri Lanka three times and had declared it "dhammadipa", "the island of righteousness" – a sort of Buddhist Promised Land, where the Sinhalese should rule and Buddhism should be unchallenged. The Mahavamsa, although not accepted by scholars as a core teaching, helped to ensure that the island remained Buddhism's last remaining outpost in the subcontinent. But there was a price to pay: a vein of intolerant chauvinism, inimical to the religion elsewhere, became part of its permanent baggage.

After independence in 1948, Sri Lanka's Buddhists established themselves as a fierce, intimidating nationalist presence. Although the fourth prime minister, Solomon Bandaranaike, had done the Buddhists' bidding in making Sinhala the official language, he temporised over Buddhists taking over schools run by Christians. So in September 1959, a monk called Talduwe Somarama pulled a revolver out of his robes and shot him dead.

When Mahinda Rajapaksa won the general election of 2004 to become Prime Minister, the Norwegian-negotiated ceasefire of 2002 was already unravelling. One year later, he became President, but even though the island's peace was increasingly fragile, it was still unclear where his policy was headed. His party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (founded by Bandaranaike), was, like the opposition, still supposedly committed to the stuttering peace process. The champions of all-out war were limited to 10 newly elected monk MPs and another small extremist party.

Then, in August 2005, the Tigers assassinated Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka's highly regarded foreign secretary, himself a Tamil, and peace quite suddenly disappeared from the scene. The following April, the Tigers abruptly cancelled scheduled peace talks in Geneva, and six days later Rajapaksa's new army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, was nearly killed by a Tiger suicide bomb. As the war shadows deepened, monks were again on hand to hurry things along.

On 21 July, the Tigers shut off sluice gates to a reservoir near Trincomalee in the north-east, depriving nearly 30,000 people, many of them recent Sinhalese settlers, of drinking water and water for their fields. A group of politicised monks rushed to a temple near the reservoir and announced that they were going to march on the Tigers' lines and fight them to the death.

It was merely a stunt: as one Sri Lankan journalist who covered the event recalled, "they did not have the numbers or the public support to take on the LTTE during the march. As they were walking they were stopped by the military." But it succeeded in sparking the new war: the air force attacked Tiger positions on 26 July, after which ground troops began the operation to take charge of the gates. The war's final phase was under way.

Like it or not, the pax sinica is spreading across the world: in return for getting the West off Sri Lanka's back, the Chinese got to build a new port at Hambantota on the south coast, a vital link in the "string of pearls" they are constructing across the Indian Ocean, from Burma to Pakistan. But just as significant as the success of the Chinese is the failure of the Western model.

The annihilation of the Tigers took practically everybody by surprise. Sri Lanka had been battling it out against the improvised forces of the Tigers since 1983, but victory never seemed close. Under its charismatic founder and leader, the Tigers fought with fanatical zeal in jungle terrain that was ideal for guerrilla warfare, and the government troops, with their cautious, conventional tactics, were no match for them. Whenever victory seemed on the cards, heavy pressure from India and the West brought the two sides to the negotiating table. A ceasefire signed in 2002 was greeted by the outside world as a major step towards achieving a federal solution. That agreement slowly unravelled, but when the war restarted informally in July 2006, the Tigers still controlled nearly one-third of the island.

By spring last year, the Tigers had lost nearly all their territory and were boxed into 85 square kilometres of jungle – but even then, outright government victory seemed improbable.

Why? Because however brutal their tactics, the Tigers had succeeded in establishing the idea that the Tamils, discriminated against for many years by the Sinhalese majority, were entitled to their own homeland. The conventional wisdom held that this war neither could nor should have a military outcome, but a diplomatic one. Like errant children, both sides would eventually come round: a ceasefire, peace talks, some kind of settlement imposed by pressure from the West and facilitated by the Norwegians was the only way out of the mess, however unsatisfactory. The Tamils would run their side of the island, the Sinhalese would run theirs.

There were plenty of arguments against such a resolution. For one thing, the island's Tamils are by no means confined to the north and the east. Under British rule, Tamils were favoured for government jobs; today Tamils constitute a majority of the population of the capital, Colombo. At the other end of the social scale, tens of thousands of poor Tamil peasants were brought in under the Raj as indentured labour to work on the tea estates. Both Colombo and the estates were well outside the region the Tigers wanted for its sovereign state. But in a small island polarised between warring ethnic groups, and with a history of ethnic cleansing on both sides, what sort of future could Tamils outside "Eelam" look forward to?

But the prospects for Tamils who found themselves inside the state that Prabhakaran wanted to carve out of the island were hardly more promising. During his 25 years in control, the guerrilla leader had been distinguished by one characteristic above all: utter ruthlessness. He had eliminated every possible rival for power, killing all moderate and pacific Tamil leaders as well as those who favoured the gun. He had subjected Tamils both inside the island and in the diaspora to punitive taxes to fund his war, and had forced thousands of families to give up their children to fight as soldiers. He had ordered pogroms against Muslims in the area he controlled, forcing thousands of them to flee, as well as massacring Sinhalese civilians.

Within the ranks of his guerrilla army he demanded total dedication, inventing the suicide bomb as a weapon of war and requiring his cadres to carry cyanide capsules so they could kill themselves rather than submit to enemy interrogation. On the rare occasions he appeared in public, including his one and only press conference in 2002, he always wore military fatigues, cultivating the image of the single-minded guerrilla leader – but family snaps unearthed after his death showed him living in luxury.

His challenge in 2002 was to convince the world that the man who had ordered the assassinations of both the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and the Sri Lankan president, Ranasinghe Premadasa, was capable of re-inventing himself, Sinn Fein-style, as a civilian leader worthy of international respect. But it was a transformation that proved well beyond him: his reflexive response to any crisis remained the same – to murder the people he held responsible. The idea that a man of his kidney could run a plausible democratic state was one of the sicker jokes of the decadent period of US diplomatic hegemony.

But even if Prabhakaran had turned out to possess the political gifts of a Gerry Adams, there is a strong argument to be made that the West had no business trying to dictate peace terms to the legitimate government of the island, faced with an astonishingly brutal insurgency.

The reuniting of Sri Lanka under Sinhalese domination fills many in the minority community with foreboding: a Tamil businessman in Trincomalee told me that he fears the arrival of another wave of government-sponsored Sinhalese colonisation. He also talked of how the new arrivals impose their symbolic presence by installing Buddha statues.

There was plenty wrong with the Sri Lankan polity in the years after independence, and there is plenty still wrong with it today. In the words of the then UN high commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, now president of the International Crisis Group, after her visit in October 2007, it is a country where "the weakness of the rule of law and prevalence of impunity are alarming". But the idea that these wrongs could be righted by splitting this small island down the middle into two armed camps, and putting one of the halves in the pocket of a homicidal maniac, is one of the crazier ideas to have gained currency in our times.

A little day music in Jaffna

By Haasinee Halpe-Andrée

The Chamber Music Society gives a historic first concert in the north, and recognizes a mission to bring classical Western music – Bach and Mozart – to the people of the Wanni


It is early February. We – the Chamber Music Society of Colombo – are in the middle of our weekly rehearsals. Suddenly, the concert master raises his hand to say he has a special announcement. We are taking our music to Jaffna.

The response is a chorus of “Wow!” Three weeks later we – a group of 20 musicians – are on a bus heading to Jaffna. It is March 26, 9 p.m. We have a 12-hour journey before us, and the bus does 60 kph at its fastest.

The younger members of the group are impatient, while the older ones urge all to get some sleep and to try and enjoy the trip. And don’t forget: We are carrying a lot of prized music instruments worth millions. They have to be protected at all costs, especially if this is going to be a long and bumpy and perhaps even dangerous ride. Music instruments are not to be treated lightly.

I tell myself that I will sleep right through the ride and wake up only on arrival in Jaffna. This will not happen. The trip is an adventure, much too exciting and nerve-racking to sleep through.

Settled in for the night, I start to say my prayers before sleep. Jokes about snoring and ear plugs come from my colleagues, while the concert master sits in a corner and snacks on his dinner. One of our main concerns is how many rest-rooms we will get to use on our journey.

Our first stop is a bus stop/tea-shop in Galewala. Our ears are assailed by a Sinhala and Tamil pop version of ‘So This Is Christmas’ enjoyed by the people sitting at a table in front of us. Soundarie and I make a face, then realize we are being snobs, and that music is music, whether it is classical, rock or pop, well performed or not – a universal language and a powerful binding force.

This song could have been doing its bit to support the fragile bonding process between communities. It so happens that the owners of the tea-shop are a Sinhalese, a Tamil and a Muslim. We are a close-knit family, for sure.

We finally arrive in Jaffna, 13 hours later. After staying up the whole night, I was about to drop off to sleep and very nearly missed the famous Jaffna sunrise.

The Wanni

We peer out the windows of the bus. What do we see? Mostly a strange spectacle of devastation and development, side by side. A slow sun rises above a landscape of pale, pocked and pitted, battle-scarred roads.

I recall my last visit to Jaffna, 12 years earlier. The war was raging and we had to wear helmets and bullet-proof jackets. The soldiers had a battle-weary, bleak look in their eyes. This time things are different. Soldiers manning a checkpoint return our waves and greet us with huge smiles as welcoming and beautiful as the now completely visible morning sun.

The bus slows near a water tank that was destroyed during the war. Once-occupied homes are now empty shells. An Army Jeep rattles past us. In the back of the vehicle are covered plastic pails, containing possibly breakfast for a garrison. Yellow ribbons strung up along the road warn us of the lethal presence of land mines yards away.

The bus slows down near a sinister, ugly hulk of metal, battered and misshapen – the remains of the notorious bulldozer-tank that was famously destroyed by the late Corporal Gamini Kularatne, the soldier hero whose action on the night of July 10, 1991 is now a part of history. Six hundred soldiers were surrounded by 5,000 LTTE cadres at an Army camp at Elephant Pass.

An LTTE assault imminent, soldier Kularatne bravely confronted the advancing bulldozer tank and lobbed two grenades into the tank. His action was key to ending the infamous siege on the Elephant Pass camp. Corporal Gamini Kularatne, who at the time was a Lance-Corporal, died of his injuries four days later, and was posthumously promoted to the rank of Corporal and awarded the Parama Veera Vibushanaya, the Sri Lanka Army’s highest award for bravery. Corporal Kularatne is known as the “Hasalaka Hero”, named after the farming village in Kandy where he was born.

Thirteen years ago, in 1997, during an army-escorted media trip to Jaffna, we were taken to see this tank. Today it is a monument to a national hero, decked with garlands.

As our bus proceeds slowly along the uneven roads to Jaffna, we see patches of bright colour – pieces of sari material tied to trees outside kovil prayer stations. There seems a kind of defiance in what should be a welcome touch of colour to the scene.

Cattle on the road make way for us, twitching their ears. Female cyclists go by in vividly coloured frocks and children in white make their way to school. Their school ties hang straight and starched on their uniforms, and they are all barefoot. Not long ago, the Jaffna peninsula was the scene of great suffering and death, and now life goes on, while memories of a 30-year war recede like a bad dream.
It is 7.30 a.m. Jaffna town is wide awake. The streets are a bustling mass of colour as people head to work or to the market.

We get lost in the middle of town looking for our guest house. We stop at a wayside enterprise calling itself ‘Sorry Baby’. The “sorry” bit is puzzling. The proprietor and the waiters should be the opposite of sorry to see a busload of hungry customers at their doorstep. The man making kotthus gives us women a welcoming smile.

Chuckles our soprano, Mary Anne: “Hey, he knows his business!” Smiling soldiers on bicycles stop as we wave to them. We ask whether we could take photographs with them. They oblige readily. “Hondhata gaththaa da?” they ask with broad grins as they cycle away.

Finally we find our guest house and sit down to breakfast. We have steaming-hot pittu, a cream-brown version of the Indian special; the softest of string hoppers, with crab, prawn, cuttlefish, and chicken, and an interesting dish of chickpeas and brinjal, made sweet and sour, accompanied by kotthu and rice. Oh boy! We ordered the same dishes for all our meals that day.

After our late breakfast, we laze on chairs and relax before the concert. Soon it is 3 p.m., with just an hour to go. We clamber back into the bus. In the excitement, I lose a part of one earring, which had been held in place with a piece of chewing gum. The gum was a suggestion from our principal cellist Dushy when my earring came loose on the bus.

We arrive at the concert venue, the cavernous Veerasingam Hall. We all feel very hot in our all-black outfits, black shirts and trousers for the men and concert black for the women. As we walk in, we see a hall that is half full, with mostly schoolchildren. We were hoping for a full hall, but there is still time for last-minute and late arrivals.

It is 4 p.m. Time to begin the music. The orchestra is ready to perform, but the hall is still half full. Well, half-full is better than half-empty, they say!

It is so hot inside the hall that the perspiration is dripping down our faces and backs, soaking our concert kits. We look at the sheets of music in front of us through a mist of perspiration.

We start playing. In the middle of the overture to Handel’s opera ‘Agrippina’, somewhere in the audience a cell phone rings. Then a second cell phone rings. Through the corner of my eye I note that someone is getting up to send someone out of the hall. Close to the stage, from the front row, a foot-tapping audience member is keeping time as oboist Hasitha plays a rhythmic solo.

The applause at the end of the concert is rewarding enough – at least for a half-full hall. The audience crowds round the stage for a close-up look at the musicians and their music instruments. They seem clearly grateful for our presence. They must appreciate the effort to bring one hour’s worth of serious Western classical music all the way from Colombo, a journey that will add up to some 25 hours of travelling time, coming to Jaffna and going back to Colombo.

“Many thanks. Please come again,” they chorus. “Yes, come back again. Soon. We want to hear more of your wonderful music.” “We are sorry the hall wasn’t full, but we’ll make sure it’s packed next time.”
“Yes, you MUST come back. All of you. Please.”

With all the advance publicity for our concert in Jaffna, with notices put in the Tamil and English newspapers, and the generous sponsorship of Concerts Norway, the concert could have had more people. This was a disappointment.

Western classical music has a long way to go up here, just as we had to come a long way to bring Bach, Handel and Mozart to Jaffna. We foresee an uphill struggle to push serious Western music into this world of confused Westernization.

We spend the rest of the afternoon touring Jaffna. Much of what we see is saddening, the results of recent history: we stop to gaze at the magnificent Jaffna Fort, that has taken so many batterings, and the imposing Jaffna Library, next door to the Veerasingam Hall, where we gave our concert.

Jaffna is teeming with visitors and pilgrims from the south and other parts of the country. Many are doing their own cooking out in the open, preparing meals on open fires.

I am confused by the mixed messages I am receiving. Here I am in a great city, and surrounded by gaudy commercial Westernisation. This is not my idea of an ancient city with a rich history woven with strands of Sinhala and South Indian culture.

It is time to head home. We will spend the night in the ancient city of Anuradhapura. It’s been a long day, and we are looking forward to sleeping on the bus over the next few hours.

We are woken up at a checkpoint in Omanthai and asked to get off the bus with our luggage. Five sleepy-looking army staff – two men and three women – apologetically start looking through our luggage.

The boxes and cases carrying our music instruments must intrigue them. It’s unlikely they have seen anything like this before – black containers in a variety of weird shapes and sizes. If this was war-time, these objects would have come under the severest scrutiny.

At Anuradhapura, we get off at our hotel. I share a bedroom with Mary Anne. For the next three hours we talk about the concert and our Jaffna experience. We fall asleep, and when we wake up it is late morning, and we have almost missed breakfast.

Some of us hire bicycles to see Anuradhapura. Lakshman marvels at the ancient city and reminds us of almost three millennia of history and grandeur. Here too, gaudy commercial Westernization stands next to ancient dignified history.

Kesara, our resident photographer, is clicking away. I sit in the shade and sip a Dilmah Moroccan green tea with a cinnamon stick, thinking of Yarl-Paanam, slowly healing and opening up to the rest of the world in her first year of true peace in three decades.

We went all the way there and made music. It was worth it.

Sri Lankan Sinhalese And Tamil Community Celebrate Traditional New Year

Colombo DPA – Sri Lankans are set to celebrate their traditional New Year free of the threat of terrorism for the first time in 26 years, after the army defeated Tamil rebels in May.


Sikhs, Sinhalese, Tamils, and people of South Asian descent across the world celebrated their new year Tuesday. The celebration is known to Sikhs as Vaisakhi, Puthandu to Tamils and Aluth Avurudu to Sinhalese throughout the world.

Traditional sports festivals and other celebrations are among the events planned for April 14, as locals take time off and travel all over the country, including to the northern regions held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) until their defeat last year.

The traditional New Year is celebrated by both the majority Sinhalese Buddhists and the minority Tamil Hindus, who account for around 73 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, of the country's 20-million population.

Sri Lankans are enjoying their new freedom to move around the country, as previously strict security regulations were relaxed. "We are having close to 10,000 visitors to the (northern) Jaffna peninsula from the south of the country," said G Kuganathan, news editor of the Tamil daily Uthayan.

"The majority are Sinhalese who were unable to come here during the war," he added.

During the past 20 years the main road between the south and the Northern Province capital Jaffna was closed, except during a Norwegian-backed truce from 2002 to 2006. Even then, few holiday-makers travelled to the north.

But this year, both civilians who were caught up in the conflict and soldiers are enjoying the most peaceful New-Year season for nearly three decades.

"We have given leave to soldiers - except for the minimum required number - enabling them to visit their parents in their villages," military spokesman Major General Prasad Samarasinghe said.

In the areas worst hit by the fighting last year, soldiers are organizing celebrations for the predominantly Tamil villages, he said.

"We are relaxed and have no tension this year as in other years. Even I can take time to visit my parents," Samarasinghe added.

However, an estimated 75,000 Tamil civilians displaced by the war still remain in camps unable to return home, largely due to the unfinished clearing of landmines, the government claims.

New Year celebrations have also been organized for the displaced persons' camps in the north.

As the checkpoints that used to dot the country's roads are disappearing, Sri Lankans are also travelling to other holiday destinations.

"This year we have seen more people in the market places," Wasantha Chandrapala, a journalist based in the eastern town of Ampara, said. "One reason is that there aren't any security problems and the people can move freely."

Ampara was one of the towns seriously affected by the violence, including several fatal bombs during the war.

Nearly three decades of war cost Sri Lanka the lives of over 100,000 civilians and around 23,000 soldiers. An estimated 7,000 soldiers were maimed and more than 300,000 civilians displaced in the final phase of the conflict.

The ruling United People's Freedom Alliance led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa won a landslide victory with over 60 per cent of the vote in last Thursday's parliamentary elections, largely due to Rajapaksa's popularity for ending the war.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also chipped in with her own new year message. In the message released by the US State Department, Clinton said that every year the celebration brings the hope of new beginnings and fresh promise, but this year it carries added resonance.

“For the first time in decades, Sri Lankans from all parts of the island can celebrate together in a peaceful and united country. This is an opportunity for Sri Lankans of all backgrounds, living inside and outside the country, to renew their bonds and work together to build a prosperous, democratic nation defined by tolerance and respect for human rights,” she said.

Uthayakumari, "There’ll be no New Year until I find my daughter"

KILINOCHCHI, 15 April 2010 (IRIN) - Uthayakumari, 39, lost her husband and a son in fighting between Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government forces in 2009, and is still searching for her daughter who went missing earlier the same year.

The girl was aged 16 when she was forcibly recruited by the Tigers in 2007. Uthayakumari and her family made an ill-fated decision to stay in LTTE-controlled areas to remain in contact with her.

“People in the country are celebrating the New Year this week. For me, every hour that goes by is an hour of suffering and weeping for the death of my loved ones, and trying to locate my lost daughter.

“They [Tamil Tigers] were on a child-abducting spree - they wanted to expand their ranks. My daughter never wanted to join the LTTE. They abducted her in December 2007 from Kilinochchi town and kept her in their camps on the war front. She was a beautiful child who never liked violence, but the LTTE took her away.

“We were helpless. In those days, the LTTE controlled all these areas [in Kilinochchi], so we couldn’t do anything about the abductions.

"We didn’t want to leave the war zone because our daughter was held by the LTTE. I didn’t feel it was right for our family to run away, leaving her. As the war and LTTE moved from Kilinochchi to Mullaitivu areas, we also moved with the LTTE.

"Later on, in April 2009, we decided we had to leave as the war became unbearable. A lot of shelling was going on.

“While we were fleeing Mullaitivu to government-controlled areas, a shell fell between my husband and my son. They both died on the spot; I saw my husband's body being torn into pieces. I was very near to them. My spirit died that day, and I’m now living like a dead person.

“Soon after the last New Year, I lost the people I loved the most. How can I celebrate another New Year? Nothing feels new or fresh to me.

“I have contacted the authorities to find my daughter. I cannot locate her at all. Please help me to find my daughter. Many LTTE-abducted children were rehabilitated and released by the government, but my child was not on any of those lists .

“For me, there will no New Year until I find my daughter. But I just don’t know where to look for her.”

New urban rituals in the traditional Sri Lankan new year

Like much of South India, Sri Lankans also sport colourful unique traditions associated with the annual celebrations of the new year. However the traditions and rituals associated with the festival are different from those practiced in South India and are heavily dependent on auspicious and inauspicious times which are published in all major national newspapers before the date. These include the observance of a nonagatha period (a few hours between the ending of the old year and the start of the new year where you are not supposed to do anything), ganu denu (literally translating to ‘transactions’ – good time to collect lots of money), the traditional lighting of a hearth, etc.

These traditions are held sacrosanct, and a failure to observe them properly is considered highly inauspicious. But like many traditional festivals the world over, some urbanization tends to creep in – mostly by way of shortcuts, a sudden need to accommodate time zones and great confusion on as to how a lot of new fangled technological devices (that are nevertheless an integral part of daily life) fit in. Following is a hilarious yet very true list of urban new year rituals in Sri Lanka.

01. The Kokis Run

(Kokis is a traditional food that is a must have on the table)

Performed approximately 2 days before the new year this ritual involves a trip to the local supermarket to buy kokis, kavum and other avurudhu (new year) foods because the stuff in the shop is better than anything you, your spouse or your maid could ever manage in the kitchen.

02. The Alco Rush

Performed at about 8.30 p.m. in the evening before the wine stores close, this ritual involves individuals standing in long queues to buy unnecessarily large quantities of alcohol because uncle Bebastian (Beba – drunkard) just might drop by.

03. The I-Wish-I-Could-Drop-By Storytelling Session

This ritual involves you making up various excuses not to visit hated relatives and colleagues who feel they are owed a visit by you and/or your family during the avurudhu season.

04. The Can-I-Drop-By Storytelling Session

For individuals who are tired of spending New Year’s day with their family, this ritual allows them to explore the option of spending the day with other -more interesting- individuals (most often those who have completed the Alco Rush ritual).

05. The Perpetual Chain-Sarong

Performed during the ganu-denu (gift giving) time this ritual involves finding a sarong someone gave you last avurudhu and giving it to an individual who will do exactly the same thing with it. It’s just sooo avurudhu to give sarongs.

06. The Time Shift Conversation

Conducted with relatives living abroad. If the auspicious time for boiling milk in Sri Lanka is 7.45 a.m. should your cousin in Little Rock, Arkansas fire it up at 9.15 p.m. on the 13th or at 7.45 a.m. on the 14th? Is he allowed to light a fire in his dorm room anyway?

07. The Microwave Rationalization

This ritual involves an individual attempting to explain to an elderly individual -generally the grandmother- why using the microwave to cook stuff when you’re not supposed to light the fire is perfectly alright. Will result in this incident being referred to when anything goes wrong for anyone in the house for the next 365 days.

A Happy Sinhala and Tamil New Year everyone!

Once Under Attack, Jaffna Media Get Reprieve

By Feizal Samath



JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Apr 14 , 2010 (IPS) - About eight months back, delivery boys for this northern city’s main newspaper were accompanied on their rounds by government soldiers – the first time a Sri Lankan broadsheet was being delivered under armed guard.

Today, almost a year since the war against the Tamil secessionists ended in May 2009, life for Jaffna journalists is slowly changing for the better.

"We were facing threats from some armed groups and we had to seek protection," recalled M V Kanamylenathan, chief editor of the Tamil-language ‘Uthayan’ newspaper. Ironically, its protector – the army – was also accused – alongside other sectors – of intimidating this newspaper group in the once war-battered northern capital.

"We have gone through hell," said the newspaper’s deputy editor, G Kuganathan. "Things are slightly improving now," he confirmed. These days the military is polite and even apologetic when seeking to publish a press release, he added.

In the past, "they would demand publication [of a press statement] and issue veiled threats if it didn’t appear in the newspapers the next day," Kuganathan told IPS. The military still controls Jaffna, though.

Described as having the most vibrant newspaper industry outside the island capital of Colombo, Jaffna also faced the most serious threat to journalists in this South Asian country, particularly at the height of the 25-year battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The ‘Uthayan’ and two other newspapers in the northern city that has an estimated population of 750,000 had faced the worst forms of intimidation and threats to the media. Journalists and media workers were killed and newspaper offices bombed.

During the bloody conflict with the LTTE, journalists across Sri Lanka were under pressure from all sides, including the government and the rebels.

At least 15 journalists and media industry workers across the island state were killed beginning in 2006, when one journalist working for an online newspaper disappeared. Another 15 were either abducted or arrested by police based on trumped-up charges.

Yet no one was arrested despite so-called ‘extensive investigations’ by state agencies.

According to Lakshman Gunesekera, a former newspaper editor, Jaffna’s press suffered tremendous pressure from various forces. "They withstood unbelievable pressure," he said in a phone interview from Colombo.

Pressure on Jaffna’s newspapers, all published in Tamil – the language of the Tamil minority, which is mainly found in northern Sri Lanka – came from government agencies, LTTE militants that controlled the city at different times and Indian peace-keeping forces.

Indian troops came to Sri Lanka in 1987 to help enforce a peace pact between the Sri Lankan government and the rebels. When the pact failed, the foreign force turned their guns on the rebels. Even members of the press were not spared.

"Once a senior Indian officer threatened us with death if we didn’t toe the line," said Kanamylenathan in his modest newspaper office in Jaffna.

The pressure on all fronts was such that at one point, according to N Parameswaram, a Jaffna freelance journalist who works for the Reuters news agency and some Colombo-based newspapers, four militant groups wanted their stories published as lead articles at the same time. "The editor had to tell them that that would be the first time in the world that a newspaper had four lead stories," he said.

Two other Jaffna newspapers, though less popular than the ‘Uthayan’, are ‘Valampuri’ and ‘Thinakural’. ‘Valampuri’ is the mouthpiece of the pro- government Eelam People’s Democratic Front.

‘Thinakkural’ is a Colombo-based newspaper with a Jaffna edition. It toes the line of whoever is in charge in Jaffna unlike the ‘Uthayan’, which voices dissent, albeit with some restraint.

Both newspapers suffered threats and intimidation, though to a lesser extent compared to the ‘Uthayan’.

Gunasekera said newspapers have thrived in Jaffna because, next to Colombo, it is a strong socio-cultural centre. "This northern town has the most educated elite (after Colombo) and high literacy, and many want to write or express their views," he said.

Many of the ‘Uthayan’ journalists left the newspaper following death threats while at least six workers, including two reporters, have been killed since 1985 when the paper started publication. Until tensions eased, the newspaper’s office was bombed at least twice by government jets and Indian peacekeeping forces.

Just before the August 2009 municipal council poll in Jaffna, an unknown group threatened to kill the ‘Uthayan’ workers, including freelance correspondents, if they did not cease publication. The newspaper appealed to the President, who immediately ordered the army to protect the daily.

This led to the unusual situation of armed soldiers on motorbikes accompanying newspaper distributors on their early morning rounds in the city.

"I don’t think anyone has faced the kind of intimidation and threats Jaffna’s journalists have suffered," noted Chulawansa SriLal, convenor of Sri Lanka’s Free Media Movement, the country’s most powerful media watchdog.

On at least two occasions, the ‘Uthayan’ has won bravery awards from a group of local media organisations. These are no doubt well deserved.

Jaffna library trying to put the past behind

By Sutirtho Patranobis, Hindustan Times




Compared to many bombed out homes and churches in town, the Jaffna Library is housed in a starkly and stately, milk-white building.

A statute of goddess Saraswati in the courtyard and armed Sri Lankan army patrols outside the walls keep watch as students, retired government servants and academics step inside the library’s noiseless reading rooms with high ceilings to pour over books and journals.

“You need to take your shoes off (before entering) as this is a ‘temple of knowledge’’, former head librarian S. Thanabaalasinham said.

The library building was inaugurated in 1959 by mayor, Alfred Durayappah, assassinated in 1975 by slain Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, his first high-profile murder.

But for all the coats of white paint on the façade, the scars of a violent night in 1981 remain like a torn book in the dusty, dark corner of a shelf.

“We can’t replace them,’’ Thanabaalasinham said about the thousands of rare books and Palmyrah leaf manuscripts destroyed when the library was burnt down by a drunk, rampaging mob of policemen on the night of May 31, 1981.

Around 97,000 books and manuscripts were turned to ashes.

The library building was re-built; then, after a second attack, abandoned. It moved to neighbouring Nallur.

For years, the scorched building remained empty with bullet-marked walls wrapped in the lingering smell of burnt pages.

Rebuilding began in 1998 and the new library building was reopened in 2003. It now has more than 100000 books and 200 regular users.

“We are getting books from all over the world. Last month we received 1000,’’ Thanbaalasinham said, adding that library’s website was ready to be inaugurated. He expects that more students and researchers from across Sri Lanka would gradually start using the library.

He spoke about the library’s India connection. The High Commission of India’s first secretary Siddharth Chari laid the foundation stone of the building, targeted in ’81, in 1954.

“After it was burnt down, the Tamil Nadu government with MGR as chief minister sent books worth Rs 5 million to the library,’’ Thanbaalasinham said.

Its Election Time Again — Sri Lanka’s Favourite Past Time

By Raisa Wickrematunge

Each election has its own unique properties. This time of course, we have everyone from cricketers to athletes to teledrama actresses contesting. In fact, an unprecedented number of candidates with little or no political experience have decided to jump on the political bandwagon. Perhaps the foray of a retired General into presidential politics was the catalyst for this movement.
In any case, as the country is steadily plastered over with posters and cutouts, let’s take a minute to examine the facts and figures that make up General Election 2010.

7620 Number of candidates who have signed up for the political merry-go-round, according to Additional Commissioner, Elections Department, W. P Sumanasiri. That’s a lot of candidates. In fact, that’s a huge leap, when you compare it to…

5698 The number of candidates who registered to run at the 2004 general elections.

36 The number of political parties contesting this time.

301 Number of independent candidates, as opposed to…

192 Number of independent candidates in the 2004 elections.

127 Number of election-related incidents as of March 25, including assault and misuse of state property (figures by CAFFE)

46 Number of direct elections law violations as at the date above – according to CAFFE.

15 Incidents involving misuse of state property (CAFFE)

100 Number of times Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake has called for a free and fair election.

11098 Number of polling booths that will be set up around the country so that the people can exercise their basic right to vote.

45957 Total number of IDPs in Jaffna, the Wanni, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara, to name a few, who are qualified to vote.

416419 Total number of eligible postal voters at this election.

61691 Number of rejected postal votes.

22851 Number of votes rejected because of delays in sending in the application form before the deadline.

43281 Number of postal voters registered in Kurunegala, the highest number in any district.

3000 Number of Duminda Silva posters around Colombo.

06 Number of times main Opposition party UNP has won the general elections since independence

15000 Number of posters featuring a politician carrying a child/hugging the elderly.

There you have it — a laundry list of (mostly) factual figures which make up the general election 2010. Come April 8, it will certainly be interesting to see how many of the 7000 plus candidates make the cut.



Backgrounder: Mathematical complexity in Sri Lanka's parliamentary election

Here is a look at the mathematical wonder of appointing Members of Parliament (MP) based on the proportional representation (PR) system of election in Sri Lanka.

A total of 196 MPs elected from 22 electoral districts would join 29 MPs to be elected based on the national PR to make the total number of MPs in parliament to 225.

Every voter in addition to his vote for the party or independent group of his choice, is entitled to indicate his preference for not more than three candidates nominated by the same political party or independent group. But the preference votes could be cast only if he/she votes for the party/independent group of his choice.

The first step is the determination of the political party/ independent group which has polled the highest number of votes in the particular electoral district or in other words the party or group which won the district. The candidate who is in that party' s list with highest number of preference votes gets elected. This is popularly known as the "Bonus Seat."

Every political party/independent group polling less than 5 percent of the total votes cast in the district is disqualified from having any candidate elected. The votes polled by such parties are deducted from the total votes polled in the district. The balance is known as the "relevant number of votes."

Assuming the final result of the Colombo district would be as shown below;

Number of votes polled in the district 1,200, 000

Votes polled by party A 645, 000

Votes polled by party B 350, 000

Votes polled by party C 150, 000

Votes polled by party D 55, 000

The A party candidate who has secured the highest number of preference votes will get elected as an MP.

The number of votes polled by D would be deducted from the total votes polled. The relevant number of votes for Colombo would then be 1,145,000

The relevant number is then divided by one less than the number of members to be elected from Colombo, i.e.: 19-1 = 18

1,145,000/18 = 63,611

The D gets eliminated as they have polled less than 5 percent.

Thereafter number of votes polled by Party A, B and C is divided by 63,611 as given below;

Party A gets the bonus seat: 1

Party A's total votes 645,000/63,611=10 remainder 8, 890

Party B's total votes 350,000/63,611= 5 remainder 31, 945

Party C's total votes 150,000/63,611= 2 remainder 22, 778

The total number of MPs elected so far would then be 18. Still one more seat remains to be filled up.

The Party B would be entitled to this 19th seat as it has polled the highest remainder.

In case where remainders are level-pegging, the last seat would be decided by drawing lots.

The national list of MPs is created as follows:

After 196 members have been elected, the Commissioner of Elections will apportion the remaining 29 seats among the political parties/independent groups in the same proportion as the votes polled countrywide by each political party/independent group.

For example:

In the last general election the total votes cast was 7,943,706. When it was divided by 29 (seats) the result was 273,920.

Party A polled 3,887,823/273,920=14 seats

Party B polled 3,498,370/273,920=13 seats

Party C and D who polled 143,307 and 132,461 were entitled to the remaining two seats.

Source: Xinhua