INDIA-SRILANKA-MALDIVES

Fonseka on ‘hunger’ strike for a telephone

Retired Sri Lankn Army General, Sarath Fonseka, who was arrested in Feb, is on a hunger strike demanding that he be permitted to use a telephone. Observers see the ‘denial’ of phone facility as a move to prevent Fonseka from ‘speaking’ on ‘war crimes’ from his prison cell.

He has gone on fast at the naval headquarters in Colombo where he is detained pending trail in a military court on charges that he had conspired to overthrow the government of President Rajapaksa.

Other charges slapped on the 59-year-old war hero include that he had taken bribes from arms dealers

Fonseka camp claims that a court had granted him permission to use a telephone brought to him by his wife, Anoma, but the army has denied him the facility.

Prasad Samarasinghe, military spokesman, has rejected the charge. According to him, the right to use a telephone could be granted only by Lt General Jagath Jayasuriya, the army commander, and not by a court.

Once considered as a Rajapaksa loyalist, Fonseka had turned against the President and contested unsuccessfully in the Presidential election held on January 25.  

He will remain on hunger strike until he is allowed to telephone his two daughters, who are both living in the United States, say reports.

WAR CRIMES PROBE

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon plans to set up an expert panel to look into rights abuses during the Wanni War particularly in the final phase that had ended with the killing of  LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran in April last year.

Ban Ki-moon conveyed his plan to President Rajapaksa on Friday Mar 5 and told him that the proposed panel would advise the Sri Lankan Government on ‘accountability issues’ relating to possible rights abuses.

The president rejected the plan as ‘totally uncalled for and unwarranted’. It (the appointment of the panel) would certainly be perceived as an interference with the current general election campaign’, Rajapaksa told the Secretary General and assured him that Sri Lanka would take ‘necessary and appropriate action’.

Colombo has been under intense international pressure for a while to conducts a war crimes inquiry. Last October, the US State Department published report that said government troops had shelled civilians and that the Tamil rebels used civilians as human shields.

Last month (Feb 2010), the European Commission decided to suspend zero tax benefit to imports from Sri Lanka as a punishment for violation of human rights agreements linked to the import scheme.

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