The Peace Secretariat profoundly regrets the murder of Ms Maheswary Velautham during a visit to Jaffna to see her sick mother. Given the plethora of deaths this country suffers from, the Secretariat has not been accustomed to issuing statements of sympathy and sorrow for individual cases.

Sivageetha Prabhakaran, alias Padmini, is a quiet, soft spoken person, polite yet firm, deeply confident, knowledgeable and diplomatic. She is the first female Mayor of the Batticaloa Municipal Council. She is 26 years of age.

The Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process welcomes the conclusion of the Eastern Provincial Election, and the possibility now of establishing an Eastern Provincial Administration that will be able to fulfil the spirit of devolution as required in Sri Lanka.

With the prices of food across the world increasing drastically in many markets in Asia, producing it has become a challenge for governments and Central Banks to manage the terms of trade deficits which is widening monthly. The phenomenon of the local currency depreciating in Sri Lanka is no exception to this problem.

The Peace Secretariat welcomes the establishment of hotlines on which disappearances and related problems can be reported immediately for investigation. The Policy Unit of SCOPP had discussed this problem with the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights and notes the swift implementation of suggestions in this regard.

The Ministry launched hotlines (011-2676513 and 060-2119246) to report disappearances, at the Disaster Management Centre at the BMICH premises this week.

On the very first day 17 queries via these hotline numbers to the Disaster Management Centre were received.

Preamble

Last week the Peace Secretariat sent the following letter to the Sunday Leader as a reply to the article entitled 'Rajiva and Vaiko clash in Oslo' which appeared in the ‘Sunday Leader’ on May 4th. The reply has been published in the ‘Sunday Leader’ (May 11, 2008) but it is again reproduced here since it is important to note the sleight of hand employed by, not necessarily the ‘Leader’, but whoever served as its informant - particular given the manner in which such equations, of words and weaponry, are used by the LTTE to justify its extravagant violence.

The Peace Secretariat has often noted that perhaps the most insidious threat to the efforts of the Sri Lankan government to promote peace through pluralism and democracy comes from political opponents who will say or do anything to promote their own agendas.

The latest Human Rights Watch report on Sri Lanka, issued as a submission to the UN Human Rights Council in connection with the Universal Periodic Review of Sri Lanka, repeats several canards that have been refuted in the past, with no response from HRW to the detailed rebuttal of their falsehoods. In particular it begins its offensive by claiming that ‘Sri Lanka security forces have conducted indiscriminate bombing and shelling resulting in civilian casualties’.

I was sent recently an essay entitled ‘Pax Americana, the EU, and the Tamil Resistance Movement (TRM), written by Peter Schalk of Uppsala University. Prof Schalk has been concerned with Sri Lankan affairs for many years now, and this shows, in his rather dogged adherence to the battles of the seventies. His view is that the EU ban on the LTTE is ‘part of a falling in line with a worldwide pax americana’ which the man explains as analogous to the pax romana, which he also then has to explain.

Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission has finally gone over the top in attacking the Head of the Peace Secretariat in scatological terms, though clothed in impeccable literary references as befits a former scholar.

He is upset that I am amused by much, but doubtless he intends everyone to be amused by this latest effusion, which suggests the direction in which he is taking the poor Asian Human   Commission. Certainly I am amused, but there is room for sadness too, in his failure to think, which is unusual in the man and suggests that he is very deeply involved emotionally.

The Peace Secretariat is amused at the intemperate reaction of Sir Nigel Rodley, ‘an eminent person from Britain’ as he was described, to the revelation that the eminent Indian head of the IIGEP Justice P N Bhagwati has made it clear that he does not accuse the government of lacking political will with regard to the Commission of Inquiry into several cases concerning Human Rights. Such blustering on Sir Nigel’s part simply confirms the impression some elements in the IIGEP had helped to create, that their prime motive was to engage in confrontation with the government of Sri Lanka, without regard to propriety or the truth.

The Peace Secretariat welcomes the extremely dignified manner in which Sri Lankan forces regained control of the Madhu Church premises on behalf of the people of Sri Lanka. Whilst anti-governmental organizations persist in talking about indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the record of the forces, in which not one civilian life has been lost in the course of army offensives, speaks for itself.