A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Q: The UN claims the panel of experts set up to advise Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on accountability issues with respect to the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka has found ‘credible reports of war crimes’ committed by both the Government and Tamil rebels. How valid are these assertions in your opinion?
The Sri Lankan government should respond, not react, to the panel report. This should be viewed as an opportunity for Sri Lanka to tell its side of the story. The UN Panel of Experts never visited Sri Lanka and interviewed the key players. For instance, the Panel should visit the centres rehabilitating former LTTE leaders and cadres, the unprecedented development in the north and the east devastated by 30 years of war, review the documentation on how government provided humanitarian assistance to the LTTE controlled areas, and interview the formation commanders that fought in the last war. The UN panel report is largely based on reporting by human rights, media, and international organizations heavily lobbied by the LTTE as well as front, cover and sympathetic organizations of the LTTE. For instance the Panel quotes from the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a LTTE front group acknowledged by the international security and intelligence community as a principal provider of funds for LTTE procurement of arms, ammunition and explosives. While the Sri Lankan government lacking in public diplomacy failed to reflect the ground reality of the fight in the terminal phase (October 2008-May 2009), LTTE’s aggressive and selective reporting influenced human rights, media and international organizations.
In Iraq and Afghanistan where over a million civilians have been killed, there is no UN Panel advising the UN Secretary General to investigate war crimes. In May 2009, Sri Lanka was successful in dismantling the LTTE the battlefield but failed to counter the LTTE led misinformation and the disinformation campaign globally. Governments, International organizations and NGOs today react to lobbying and campaigning, a capability Sri Lanka needs to build and operationalize in the coming months and years.  The number one lesson from Sri Lanka for contemporary and future war fighters is that they must win both the battlefield and the information operation campaign.
Q: The UN statement issued on the release states that ‘The Secretary-General sincerely hopes that this advisory report will make a contribution to full accountability and justice so that the Sri Lankan Government and people will be able to proceed towards national reconciliation and peace.’ Given the long term repercussions of the report, how would you recommend the government’s respond to the contents of this report?
In addition to a point by point rebuttal of what is factually inaccurate, the Sri Lankan government should respond to the Panel report in many other ways. The outcome of such a Report signifies a massive failure on the part of the Sri Lankan government especially of the Ministry of External Affairs to respond to a new type of threat.
The Sri Lanka government should produce a White Paper detailing what happened in the terminal phase of the battle and recommendations to ensure that Sri Lanka will remain stable and peaceful. The White Paper should also list what government has done since May 2009 to build reconciliation between the different communities, rehabilitation efforts to give a second life to LTTE leaders and cadres, and the unprecedented development in the north and the east. Sri Lanka must highlight that not a single terrorist incident has occurred in the country since the LTTE was dismantled and all communities in Sri Lanka now live in peace and harmony.
Q: The panel in its recommendations calls for ‘initiating an effective accountability process beginning with genuine investigations’. How far do you believe the government should go in heeding these recommendations?
The Sri Lankan government routinely investigates allegations of atrocities. Whenever there is a credible allegation, it is absolutely essential for the Sri Lankan criminal justice and prisons system to act.  If a soldier or an officer is found guilty, the state has the responsibility to punish that individual. However, there is a distinction between isolated acts of atrocities conducted by individual soldier and systematic war crimes conducted by an army. The UN Panel report alleges that there were war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan military and by the LTTE. It is apparent that the LTTE had a policy of conducting massacres of border villages, bombings of public places and forced recruitment of children. Even during the IPKF period, the LTTE used hospitals as cover to attack Indian peacekeepers causing high fatalities and casualties among Indian soldiers. In defence, when the IPKF fired back, both LTTE cadres and civilians were killed. As a professional military trained by the US, UK, India and other countries, the Sri Lankan military did not systematically and deliberately kill or injure civilians. In contrast, the LTTE has been notorious for using human shields, human bombs and provoking retaliatory attacks. After penetrating a government declared zone for civilians, the LTTE deliberately hid behind a human wall and attacked causing suffering, injury, and death to both civilians and military personnel. Alleging that Sri Lankan security forces intentionally and wilfully targeted civilians stated by a UN panel of experts need careful study. Similar allegations by UN agencies, NGOs, and other bodies have been levelled against the armies of US, UK, Israel and other standing militaries fighting brutal insurgencies.

Claims that NSW senator-elect Lee Rhiannon has been victimised because of her past links to socialism have been rubbished by NSW Labor upper house MP Luke Foley.
Sydney academic Wendy Bacon yesterday compared the public scrutiny of Ms Rhiannon over her support for a boycott of Israel to McCarthyism.
In an article on ABC website The Drum under the headline “The character assassination of Lee Rhiannon”, Professor Bacon said the high-profile Greens member had been subjected to unfair attention because of the political beliefs she and her parents held in the 1960s.
“Her sin: her family’s membership of the Socialist Party of Australia which continued to support the Soviet Union after its 1968 invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia. All of that happened more than 40 years ago,” wrote Professor Bacon, who is director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
“This attack smacks of McCarthyism.”.
But Mr Foley, who has been vocal in his criticism of Ms Rhiannon’s support for the campaign to boycott Israel, said Professor Bacon’s claims were simply untrue.
He said Ms Rhiannon was rightfully subjected to scrutiny over her support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, which had nothing to do with her political past.
“My criticisms of Lee Rhiannon are around her activities in the here and now,” Mr Foley said. “I think what is important here is the extremism of the Greens . . . and Lee Rhiannon is the most high-profile supporter in Australian politics of the BDS.”

Role of Social Networking: Nearly a quarter of Egyptians (23%) say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to obtain news about their country’s political situation; 6% access these sites but have not used it as a source of political news. About two-thirds (65%) do not use the internet or email.

Anyone surfing the Internet this week is free to read leaked documents about the prisoners held by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to print them out or e-mail them to friends.
Except, that is, for the lawyers who represent the prisoners.
On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantánamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified even after they were made public.
Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files “in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards” — handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department’s Court Security Office.

Beyond the tragic events of the story itself, however, Arrigoni’s death highlights a complex political context, a web of power relations among various actors in Gaza including Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, the Salafis, other Palestinian factions, and the international community. At the root of these dynamics is the Israeli and Western policy of isolating Gaza and ignoring Hamas. The crippling four-year-long blockade of Gaza has created the conditions of human misery and desperation in which a handful of people have turned to extremism. A new report from International Crisis Group states that the blockade has amounted to “an assist provided to Salafi-Jihadis, who benefit from…Gaza’s lack of exposure to the outside world.”

ALI MOORE: This report criticises the UN for failing to take action, especially by not publicly talking about casualty figures, which the report and the authors say could have strengthened the call for the protection of civilians. You were the UN spokesman. Why didn’t that happen?
GORDON WEISS: Yeah, well, I was the UN spokesman and I was making statements about numbers, but there was obviously a decision taken not to use the specific figures that we were gathering. I was also part of that particular cell that’s mentioned inside the report who were trying to calculate casualty figures on a daily basis. But there was a decision taken up the chain not to use those figures.
ALI MOORE: Was that a decision you believe that was taken under pressure from the Sri Lankan Government? Was it a calculated decision to ensure the UN could stay in the country?
GORDON WEISS: I think the broader view was that if the UN used those figures it would make the UN’s position in the country untenable, and the UN mission was not a political mission or a peace-keeping mission or an observer mission, it was a humanitarian mission. So you had a lot of humanitarian agencies who were there trying to deliver the basics to those who were caught up in the siege.
ALI MOORE: So was that in essence a judgement that it was better to be there and be silent than not be there at all?
GORDON WEISS: I think it was, yes.
ALI MOORE: Was that right, do you think, in hindsight?
GORDON WEISS: No. I didn’t believe that it was right, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to change that.
ALI MOORE: In your view, though, clearly the UN could have done more?
GORDON WEISS: Yes, but in my view the UN can always do more. I mean, I don’t think the UN is ever in situations where it just gets things right. You know, this was a very, very tough theatre. It was the cutting edge of humanitarian action. It was always going to be tough. So that the UN got something wrong is no surprise; the question really is the degree to which it got it wrong.

The international community now has an obvious decision to make. Take action against Sri Lanka or remain silent, therefore guaranteeing other states will behave similarly (Israel, the US, China etc). The UN report is very clear on what both Colombo and the Tamil Tigers did to civilians. Tragically, in yet another example of UN gutlessness, it appears that directions were given to local staff to remain silent during the war. Shameful:

After the Sri Lanka war crimes report by the UN Panel of Experts was quietly presented to the UN Security Council by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Inner City Press asked Ban two questions about the report.
Among his answers on Sri Lanka, Ban implicitly acknowledged the report’s charge that the UN withheld casualty figures during the conflict.
Asked  to “respond to the criticisms in the report that the UN failed in those last months to do what it could to help protect civilians, including keeping statistics of the actual casualty figures back,” Ban said that the Sri Lankan authorities said that they couldn’t guarantee the safety of UN staff:
“the security situation was very precarious, at the last stage of the crisis. And we were told by the Sri Lankan Government, as I understand and remember, that the Sri Lankan Government would not be able to ensure the safety and security of United Nations missions there. Then we were compelled to take the necessary action according to their advice.”

A 24-country poll found that most people believe WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is not a criminal and should not be charged by the U.S. government for releasing thousands of secret U.S. documents.
The poll by Ipsos found 79 percent of people were aware of WikiLeaks and two-thirds of those believed Assange should not be charged and three-quarters supported the group’s bid to make public secret government or corporate documents.
U.S. respondents had a far more critical view, with 81 percent aware of WikiLeaks and 69 percent of those believing Assange should be charged and 61 percent opposing WikiLeaks’ mission.
The countries found least likely to support legal action against Assange by the U.S. government were South Africa, Germany, Russia and Argentina, while the highest support was in the United States, South Korea, Britain, India and Indonesia.