PU.S., EU are also accused
The U.S. and EU have each emerged as villains in the eyes of an international tribunal that has been holding hearings about the human rights violations suffered by the besieged Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.

A ceasefire between Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan government broke down in 2008, prior to last summer's war that led to the decisive military defeat of the Tigers. U.S. State Department officials and their EU counterparts were each critical of human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan armed forces, but that has not prevented the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal for Sri Lanka from making critical observations about the role played by Washington and Brussels.

'It has also been pointed out that international actors did not intervene in a productive and even handed manner to strengthen the CFA (ceasefire) and to uphold the achievements already realised,' the tribunal notes in its report after three days of public hearings.

'If we analyse the conflict as either an international conflict or an internal armed conflict, we have clearly found that war crimes were committed by the government of Sri Lanka.'

The U.S., UK and other unnamed foreign governments have meanwhile been accused of undermining the LTTE (Tigers) and its commitment to peace by calling for a complete renunciation of violence 'in word and deed'. The EU's decision to ban the LTTE 'was also seen as a grave error that destroyed the parity of status necessary for the continuation of the peace process.'

Politically, the tribunal's most damming observations are reserved for the Sri Lankan government, which stands accused of carrying out a programme of disinformation against the backdrop of using massive military power against Tamil civilians, including the use of cluster bombs and white phosphorous.

'The attempt to annihilate the Tamil population with or without the use of illegal weapons certainly constitutes one form of war crime,' the tribunal's report says.

Criticism is also levied against the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps, sometimes termed 'concentration camps'. Poor living conditions in these camps, including abysmal sanitation, insufficient drinking water and malnutrition, meant they were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Soldiers of the Sri Lankan Army were guilty of sexual abuse and rape and the tribunal noted how, apart from mass deportations of Tamils, 'selective terror campaigns' were carried out by means of abductions, assassinations, detentions and torture.

In its concluding remarks the tribunal's recommendations include the establishment of a Truth and Justice Commission to investigate war crimes, the repeal of the 1979 Prevention of Terror Act, the reduction of military forces in Tamil areas and safety for the 12,000 remaining Tamil political prisoners. For its part, the international community is urged to appoint a UN Special Rapporteur for Sri Lanka, and to engage in means to monitor and protect the Tamil community's human rights.

The tribunal's findings and recommendations are signed by Chairperson Fracois Houtart and Secretary General Gianni Tognoni. Other members of the tribunal included former chief justice of the Delhi High Court Rajinder Sachar, renowned Egyptian writer and doctor Nawal Al Saadawi and former UN assistant secretary general Denis Halliday.

British quality of mercy

A UK-based Pakistani businessman jailed for resisting a burglar, who threatened the lives of his wife and family, is likely to suffer the knock-on effects of his action for many years to come.

Fifty three year old Munir Hussain has been released from prison following a public outcry and the intervention of Britain's Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, but the nightmare experience of being attacked, as well as the fear of being killed, is part of the suffering he expects to endure for many years to come.

Unbelievably, Hussain, chairman of the local Asian Business Council, was originally sent to prison. On that terrible day he had chased an Egyptian-born career criminal Walid Salem and his two accomplices who had forced their way into the Hussain family home in Reading, West of London, where they terrorised their innocent victims and threatened to kill them.

The two accomplices escaped and are still at large, but Hussain raised an alarm as he and his brother Tokeer ran after Salem. The burglar was subsequently caught and severely beaten with a cricket bat and metal pole resulting in brain damage.

Judge John Reddihough, who sentenced Hussain and Tokeer, said they did not have the right to take the law into their own hands. But Lord Judge, who heard the appeal, said this was a case of 'true exceptionality' and that the court had to reflect 'the principles of justice and mercy.'

Hussain has now been freed on a suspended sentence, but brother Tokeer is expected to spend an estimated five months in prison before he is released. A spokesman for the Hussain family says the terrifying experience is likely to affect them for the rest of their lives.

China jails Tibetan film-maker

The Chinese government's acute sensitivity about Tibet and its determination to stamp out any evidence of Tibetans' demand for self-rule has been underlined by the decision to jail a film-maker who had the temerity to make a documentary praising the Dalai Lama.

Leaving Fear Behind, the film in which Tibetans speak about their lives in Tibet, was shot by Dhondup Wangchen, who has been sentenced to six years imprisonment by a court in Xining (capital of Qinghai province). His friend and fellow film-maker, Lama Jigme Gyatso, was also imprisoned and beaten, but has since been released.

The brutal treatment they have endured speaks volumes about day-to-day life in China and disputed territories under Chinese control. This is the other side of the so-called economic miracle and sheds some light on the price that ordinary people have had to pay for sustaining the huge rates of economic growth so envied by the outside world.

Wangchen's relatives say he would like to appeal his sentence, but he has no access to independent legal advice and a family lawyer has been prevented from representing him. The film-maker's wife, Lhamo Tso, currently living in exile with her children, said in a statement, 'I appeal to the court in Xining to allow my husband to have a legal representative of his own choosing. My children and I feel desperate about the prospect of not being able to see him for so many years. We call on the Chinese government to show humanity by releasing him. My husband is not a criminal; he just tried to show the truth.'

Another family member and co film producer who is seeking political asylum in Switzerland, cousin Gyaljong Tsetrin, commented, 'The fact that my cousin Dhondup Wangchen has to enter the appeal process without legal assistance shows how human rights are being trampled upon by the Chinese government in Tibet.

'I am also greatly concerned about Dhondup Wangchen's health as he has contracted Hepatitis B through the poor conditions and torture he has endured in prison and is not receiving medical treatment. I ask myself how he will survive in prison for six years.'

Born in a remote part of northeast Tibet, Wangchen visited Lhasa and India before deciding to make a film about his fellow Tibetans. Some 108 Tibetans were interviewed in 2008 for their views about the Dalai Lama, the Beijing Olympics and Chinese rule over their occupied country.

One young woman commented, 'We have no independence or freedom, so Tibetans have no reason to celebrate. The Chinese have independence and freedom, so this is something they can celebrate.'

IPCC's melting claim

Chinese, Indian, Nepalese, Bhutanese and other citizens of Asian countries bordering the mighty Himalayas can heave a sigh of relief following a fresh ruling by UN experts that mountain chain glaciers are not likely to disappear by 2035.

Grown men and women in Asia and around the world are known to have been reduced to tears by a prediction in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the likelihood of Himalayan glaciers 'disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is high.'

Such a prediction by any other institution may have been greeted with a degree of scepticism, but the lPCC created by two UN organisations, the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme, has a weight and carries a punch that no others can match.

It was the IPCC's 2007 report, which carried the erroneous information about the Himalayas melting that won the Nobel Peace Prize of that year.

Last month the IPCC issued a statement in amazing bureaucratic gobbledygook that amounts to an apology for its misjudgement. 'It has come our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers,' says a statement issued by the IPCC. 'In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well established standards of evidence, required by the lPCC procedures, were not applied properly.'

The IPCC's shoddy work has far wider implications because it will embolden those critics who argue that theories of climate change are wrong — as proven by the IPCC report — and there is no need to cut world carbon emissions.
In a further demeaning development some so-called IPCC experts have been casting around for someone to blame for their flawed report. They have fastened on to an Indian scientist, Dr Syed Hasnain, who works for the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute.

For his part Dr Hasnain denied making any firm prediction about the imminent melting of the Himalayan glaciers. In a statement to the world' s media he admits saying the glaciers were shrinking fast, but without making any firm prediction about how they would all be gone by 2035.

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