Monthly Archive for September, 2006

USAID Senior Official Wins Prestigious Service to America Award
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ — Mark Ward, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Asia and the Near East bureau, will be presented the International Affairs Medal at tonight’s Service to America Medal annual awards program. The Service to America Medals are sponsored by the Atlantic Media Company and the Partnership for Public Service and recognize the accomplishments of America’s public servants.

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Having served USAID in the Foreign Service for 20 years, Ward is being acknowledged for his leadership of the U.S. recovery and reconstruction efforts after the Asia Tsunami in 2004 and the South Asia earthquake of 2005.

With the onset of the Tsunami, which claimed nearly 200,000 lives, USAID was able to respond immediately, providing life-saving food, water, medical care and shelter. Under Ward’s leadership as the head of the Agency’s Tsunami task force, longer-term projects such as the reconstruction of water systems and roads were begun. Key initiatives that Ward steered included the rehabilitation of 50 miles of the major coastal road in Aceh, Indonesia, and the reconstruction of the 160-meter Arugam Bay Bridge in Sri Lanka which was destroyed by the tsunami.

A former USAID Mission Director in Pakistan, Ward’s service as chair of the Agency’s South Asia Earthquake Task Force, provided invaluable insight helping to create innovative strategies to provide relief for earthquake victims, including support from public/private partnerships. Continuing this expertise, he serves as the U.S. Government advisor for the South Asia Earthquake Relief Fund, a consortium of American corporate CEOs who were asked by President Bush to raise private funding for relief and reconstruction.

Ward, married with two sons, is a native of San Francisco and received both his undergraduate and juris doctorate degrees from the University of California at Berkley.

For more information on USAID’s Tsunami and South Asia Earthquake efforts please visit the following web pages:

http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/tsunami

http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/south_asia_quake/

Public Information:  +1-202-712-4810
http://www.usaid.gov

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Courtesy: Daily Mirror – September 23, 2006

The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was Friday granted access to the lone survivor of the Pottuvil massacre. Kareem Meera Mohideen is warded at the Ampara General Hospital receiving treatment for severe cut injuries. Police guarding the patient prevented SLMM monitors from seeing him Wednesday citing his poor state of health and hospital policy which did not allow visitors, casting doubts over the transparency of ongoing inquiries.

However a second attempt by the monitors Friday proved successful and the SLMM spokesman said the visit was satisfactory and the monitors would continue their probe before releasing a report.

A?a??A?We managed to visit the patient Friday. We are satisfied with the access granted and will now continue with our inquiries before releasing a report on our findings,A?a??A? SLMM spokesman Thorfinnur Omarsson said.

As inquiries were still progressing, he refused to say if the monitors had managed to record a statement from the victim who was earlier said to be in a serious condition. However the spokesman quoted hospital doctors as saying the victim was expected to fully recover from his injuries suffered during the brutal attack in which 10 of his colleagues were killed.

It should be noted that the police while refusing access to the monitors on Wednesday, had said the victim was not in a condition to speak for at least another two weeks due to the severe injuries on his throat.

The victim is under tight police guard with restricted access to include even his immediate family members as a result of the controversy over the incident with the Government accusing the LTTE, while residents blame the STF.

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Arugam Bay was devastated by the tsunami, but the people began to rebuild. Things were looking better, until the Tamil Tigers tried to kill the Sri Lankan army chief.

ARUGAM BAY, Sri Lanka – The sun is setting over the Indian Ocean and, for a moment, Arugam Bay is paradise. The coastline, a jagged, gray-toothed smile of crumbling walls and stone foundations destroyed by the 2004 tsunami, is bathed in the giddy, rose-colored light of dusk.

The upstairs bar at the Siam View Inn is beginning to fill up with surfers who just finished their afternoon session at the south end of the bay. It is, they know, a wonderful secret spot A?a??a?? a reward for intrepid and fearless surf travelers, a right-hand point break which can carry you into next week, if you’re lucky enough to out-paddle the other fifty hard core surfers gunning for the same peak.

But tonight they’re out of the water early. Mostly Aussies, along with a handful of Japanese, they’re keen to see day two of the World Cup soccer matches, Australia versus Japan, on the bar’s satellite television set.

As the first round of beers is poured, the national anthems are played before the start of the match. The Aussies sing along to the sounds of Waltzing Matilda. Everyone seems to savor the good fortune to be in this place, at this moment.

It is a well-earned moment of serenity in what has been a tumultuous two years for the people of Arugam Bay and the surrounding areas.

The Siam View Inn had 22 rooms before the tsunami hit. Now it has four. The owner, a German named Manfred, is a quiet but determined guy who knows how to get things done. He is rebuilding slowly, with the hope that if he does, they A?a??a?? the tourists A?a??a?? will come.

The reputation of having been devastated by the tsunami was obviously bad for business, and though there has been progress, the region is far from reconstructed. Officially, over 30,000 Sri Lankans were killed by the 2004 tsunami, many of them in this area on Sri Lanka’s southeast coast. Thousands more here are still living a rudimentary existence in thatch houses without water or electricity.

But businesses like the Siam View, struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of the tsunami, began to see a light at the end of the tunnel: the possibility of becoming, if not a mainstream tourist spot, at least a bragging-rights stop for the young, hip, “Lonely Planet”-type traveler.

But then, in April, the Tamil Tiger rebels used a female suicide bomber, a “Black Tigress,” in an assassination attempt in Colombo against Sri Lanka’s army chief, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka. The attempt only injured Fonseka, but likely killed any hopes for rekindling a viable tourist trade in Arugam Bay.

“Sixty people canceled on me after that,” says K.M. Rifei, one of the managers at the Siam View Inn. “They were from all over the world, too A?a??a?? Germany, England, Australia.”

Rifei is troubled by the developments, but he’s seen enough tragedy in his life that his emotional range seems wisely shifted to neutral. Rifei says he lost 17 members of his family in the tsunami, including his son, who was just one-and-a-half years old.

“When the tsunami hit,” he says, as we sit on the deck of restaurant overlooking the beach, “my family was all in the water, including my son.”

Now the challenge, the same for everyone here, is surviving the tragedy after the tragedy. If the world’s most deadly natural disaster wasn’t enough, Sri Lanka’s slow slide out of a 2002 cease-fire agreement between the government and the Tamil Tigers and back into civil war now seems not only inevitable, but already in progress.

The economic costs are already high. Two pro surfing events scheduled to take place in Arugam Bay this summer have been canceled because of the violence.

“We weren’t expecting much from them, though,” says 24-year-old Asmin, whose father and uncle own the Tropicana, a small surfboard rental shop, and handful of beachside rental cabanas. “They’d probably all stay at five star hotels somewhere else.”

Asmin and his family are Muslims, like the majority of the people in this area, and so don’t directly share in the Sinhalese versus Tamil feud that has divided Sri Lanka for decades.

Jamaldeen, Asmin’s father, says the people here have a good relationship with government security forces, especially the elite police commandos known as the Special Task Force (STF), who are in charge of this area.

“The Tigers aren’t active here but the government perceives this as an area in which they operate,” says Jamaldeen, “so they don’t invest a lot to help counter that reputation.”

It is, I think, a dilemma like the legendary scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” in which American Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (an avid surfer), played by Robert Duvall, covets a stretch of beach held by the enemy (Charlie) simply for its surf.

When his men protest that the beach is heavily fortified, Kilgore responds, “Charlie don’t surf!” and orders an attack on the beach.

Like Charlie, Tiger may not surf either, but the perception of potential violence here, as in other areas of the country, hasn’t made Arugam Bay seem like a safe spot for many mainstream travelers to hit the water.

Jamaldeen says that the ongoing dearth of tourists could eventually do what the tsunami did not: kill their business.

And while businesses struggle to survive, many tsunami survivors in the region are also still doing the same, even a year and a half later.

In one refugee camp a few miles from the beach, hundreds of families are just scraping by, they say, without any assistance.

Kaleander Musama says she, her husband and six children got a large water tank from the government a few days after the tsunami, but that was the last thing they ever got A?a??a?? since then there has been no one to refill it.

As I photograph the family, an angry old woman from the camp confronts me.

“You people are like the marauding elephants that come and ransack our homes and leave us with nothing,” says the woman, Yasim Bawa. “Three hundred photographers have come here and taken our picture and nothing has changed.”

I ask her why things haven’t changed, why the government hasn’t helped them more.

“You know what I got from the government after the tsunami?” she asks, half smiling now A?a??a?? “a coupon for 100 rupees (about $1).”

Things are a little better at another refugee camp further up the road where the Sri Lankan Lion’s Club has helped build dozens of new houses with concrete walls and corrugated tin roofs.

Still, the trauma of the event still lives with all of the families here.

Forty-two-year-old Mohammed Bahdurdeen, a tall, proud-faced man, makes a living as a fisherman when he can hire onto a local boat. But those days are often few and far between.

Mohammed Bahdurdeen and family

Mohammed places his hands on the shoulders of his six-year-old son Ajiwath, a boy seemingly full of energy A?a??a?? if not words.

“Since the tsunami he doesn’t speak anymore,” says Mohammed. “I think the trauma was too much for him.”

Others here can speak, but have tired of it when nothing seems to change.

Back at the Siam View Inn, the world cup match is over with the Australians beating the Japanese 3-1.

As the crowd, a few at a time, pays their tabs and heads out, there are smiles on the faces of the employees behind the bar. It was a good night A?a??a?? the kind of night they haven’t seen in quite some time A?a??a?? and with the increasing violence, may not see for some time again.

It is, however, a place stubbornly committed to optimism in the face of challenging times.

Above the bar on a whiteboard is a message in blue marker written on the day of the tsunami. It has not been wiped clean since.

It reads, “This event is not the end, just a new beginning. A great chance for all of us. Posted 20 hours, December 26, 04.”

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By Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi

POTTUVIL, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s military on Monday accused Tamil Tiger rebels of hacking 10 Muslim labourers to death in the island’s east, but angry local residents blamed security forces.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) denied any involvement in the killings, which took place near the island’s Yala National Park on Sunday, instead blaming the military for the latest in a string of mass killings and abuses.

The killings near the town of Panama in the tsunami-battered eastern district of Ampara — which has so far escaped the worst of recent fighting — came just days after the government and rebels agreed to meet for talks to halt violence that has killed hundreds of people since late July.

“(Police) Special Task Force (STF) troops killed these people,” said Muslim M.S. Mohedeen, as around 2,000 people, including women and children, gathered around a mosque in the eastern town of Pottuvil where the bodies were laid out and incense burned to mask the stench of death.

“We don’t blame anyone else,” he added. “The LTTE can’t come into this area. It is completely controlled by the STF. Without the STF’s knowledge, no one can come into this area.”

The army said one person had survived the attack and had been taken to Ampara hospital.

A military spokesman said the labourers had gone missing at the weekend when they had gone to renovate a sluice gate, and were found hacked to pieces. He blamed the Tigers.

Nordic truce monitors were on the way to the scene.

“The LTTE notes that this is a Sri Lankan government controlled area and a Sri Lankan military camp is stationed near the location of the massacre,” the rebels’ Peace Secretariat said in a statement.

“The Sri Lankan military is adopting its long tradition of blaming the LTTE for the atrocities it commits,” it added, pointing to the massacre of 17 aid workers in August which the Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission blamed on government troops.

EXCHANGE OF FIRE

The latest killings also came as the navy exchanged fire on Sunday with the rebels’ feared naval wing, the Sea Tigers, and said it, along with the air force, sank a large vessel carrying rebel weapons and ammunition.

The navy did not say how it knew there were weapons on board the vessel.

The were no reports of violence on Monday.

Peace broker Norway announced last week that the government and the Tigers had agreed to meet for talks for the first time since the rebels pulled out of negotiations in April, and is aiming to arrange a meeting in Oslo next month.

However both sides have imposed conditions few expect either to honour. Petty squabbling has sunk previous talks, and some analysts fear renewed fighting could escalate.

“It’s certainly not clear what talks are going to lead to,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. “They both at the end of the day would prefer to be in positions of strength as far as the ground situation is concerned before they engage in serious negotiations.”

The Tigers insist the army must end offensive operations and give back captured territory on the southern lip of the strategic northeastern harbour of Trincomalee.

The government wants a written guarantee from the Tigers that they will halt attacks, and have also urged them to lay down arms.

Analysts and diplomats say none of the demands are likely to be met, and that talks will yield little aside from a breather in the fighting until both sides sit down and address the central issue: the Tigers’ demands for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils.

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Purchase torsemide vs lasix Sri Lankan police shoot 14 Muslim civilians during protest

Colombo, Sept 21. (AP): Police opened fire on Muslim protesters in eastern Sri Lanka, wounding 14 civilians, officials have said.

The protesters, who were demanding the transfer of a local police chief following the murder of 10 Muslim labourers, allegedly by an elite police force, shut down shops and offices in Pottuvil town and surrounding villages, 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Colombo yesterday, said Mohammad Mustafa, who represents the region in the Parliament.

The shooting began as protesters tried to prevent officers of the elite police Special Task Force from entering Ullai village, Mustafa said.

Fourteen protesters were injured in the shooting yesterday, according to Rauff Hakeem, a lawmaker and leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the largest political party representing the Muslims.

The demonstrators claimed police were involved in the slaying of 10 Muslim laborers whose mutilated bodies were recovered in the area on Monday.

Government troops have been deployed to the Tamil homeland.

The guerrillas accuse Muslims of supporting the government, which is dominated by the country’s majority ethnic Sinhalese. The rebels also oppose Muslims cultivating land in areas they consider Tamil territory.

Gasex delivery Meanwhile, the military said yesterday it recovered a large haul of arms and ammunition left behind by the rebels retreating from Sampur, a strategic eastern village captured by the military early this month.

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