posted February 19, 2005 03:32 PM         

The Attorney General yesterday indicted controversial Police Superintendent Kulasiri Udugampola on 19 charges connected to the raid on the military safe house at Millennium City in Athurugiriya.

In the indictment filed before the High Court SP Udugampola is accused of violating the Official Secrets Act and the wrongful confinement and filing a false case against Senior Army officials including former Army Commander Lionel Balagalle.

According to the indictment SP Udugampola had arrested Army personnel on January 2, 2002 despite their claim that they were performing army duties with the approval of the Army Commander. The accused had later brought these army officials including some senior Army Officials to the Narahenpita Military Police station.

posted February 19, 2005 04:26 PM            

By: Frederica Jansz

The mystery surrounding the army unit operating from a house at millennium city in Athurugiriya has deepened after revelations that Lohan Ratwatte has connections with a key member of the group and was in and out of the house.

The man in charge of the Tamil men found working out of this house with a unit of the Military Intelligence Directorate is a former PLOTE member by the name of Mohan alias Pillai - better known as 'PLOTE Mohan.'

A para military member working with the Sri Lanka Army has confirmed to The Sunday Leader that 'PLOTE Mohan' and Lohan Ratwatte have shared a close friendship for a considerable period of time.

Lohan Ratwatte frequently visited the house at Athurugiriya after it was rented on December 7, last year, in the company of Mohan. The visits were all done with the full knowledge of Captain Shahul Hameed Nilam who was in charge of the unit. The house was rented from Captain Nilam's wife, violating procedure laid down by the army.

Working on a tip-off

It was due to Lohan Ratwatte's frequent visits to the safe house and the close connection to Mohan that Superintendent of Police Kulasiri Udugampola, was tipped off that one of the Ratwatte sons could be hiding there. When SP Udugampola raided the house in search of the Ratwatte brothers who were evading arrest, he came across a cache of weapons including highly destructive thermobaric flame throwers.

The whole incident would have passed off without much notice if not for the abortive cover up by the Army Commander Lt. General Lionel Balagalle. General Balagalle claimed that this safe house was used by the top secret long range recce patrol unit, and those arrested were members of this unit who have been credited with successful assassinations of LTTE leaders in the north and east.

The army commander, calling them 'National Heroes,' complained that the police had exposed the identity of this unit. This false story was also 'sold' to the newly appointed Defence Minister Thilak Marapona, who ordered an end to the police investigation. This however was anything but the truth.

Mohan, a close friend of Lohan Ratwatte, was originally a member of PLOTE. He has been named by the Human Rights Commission as one of the people responsible for massacre of civilians in Vandaramulla. After leaving PLOTE in the early 1990s, Mohan and some other Tamil cadres belonging to the PLOTE, began free-lancing for the army's military intelligence unit. Mohan began carrying out various contract jobs in coordination with the army. The group of former rebels under 'PLOTE Mohan's' command has always operated out of Batticaloa town.

Turning a blind eye on lavish lifestyles

Mohan was enlisted as a private in the army later that year and he and his group were paid cash rewards by the SLA. The amount of money paid depended on the importance of the LTTE member assassinated. In the mid 1990s, the Mohan group began to earn a reputation for being involved in extorting and blackmailing traders in Batticaloa. Members of this group also began to lead lavish lifestyles that superseded the money they were paid by the army. The army, for reasons best known to themselves, decided to turn a blind eye on these activities by the Mohan group.

Some members of Tamil group's group told The Sunday Leader that they had met both Mohan and Lohan Ratwatte together. They said there were stories that Lohan Ratwatte and Mohan were involved in a protection racket and that the house in Athurugiriya was one such of the locations the protection racket was been operated.

One of the key players in the cover up of the Athurugiriya incident is Brigadier Kapila Hendawitharane, director of the military intelligence directorate of the army. Brigadier Hendawitharane was first introduced to Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatte by Lt. Col. M. D. Fernando. Fernando was sacked from the army in the 1970s by former president J. R. Jayewardene for allegedly attempting to do politics in the army. He was reinstated by the PA government in 1995. He wielded immense influence with General Ratwatte.

Brigadier Hendawitharane's close relationship to Lt. Col. Fernando helped matters. The brigadier is married to a niece of Colonel Fernando. Brigadier Hendawitharane was fully aware of what was going on at the house at Athurugiriya. The director, MI, has known Mohan for a period of over ten years and is aware that Mohan's group was never involved in the operations carried out by the long range recce patrol units of the special forces.

Brigadier H. K. G. Hendawitharane, on January 4, 2002, (two days after the police raid at Athurugiriya), wrote to the Investigating Officer of the Army, Gen. Ivan Dassanayake, stating that, "The arms, ammunition and other equipment issued to captain S. H. M. Nilam have been officially authorized by the director operations and the director military intelligence for the purpose of using them in covert operations in the uncleared areas of Batticaloa."

In the letter, the head of military intelligence further claims that captain Nilam has already returned part of the weapons, and was in the process of handing over the balance at the time of his arrest by the police on January 2, 2002. For added measure, he states that the commander of the army is of the opinion that exposing this officer and soldiers and their activities to the media would lead to a threat to their lives and will discourage army personnel from undertaking such operations in the future.

Hendawitharane asserts that this letter is being submitted on the directions of the commander of the army, in order to assist the investigating officers in the ongoing investigations. What is interesting in this letter is the information that has not been divulged to General Dassanayake. For instance, when were the weapons released to Captain Nilam? When were they taken to Batticaloa? When were they brought back to Colombo and when was the first batch of weapons handed back to the army from the alleged safe house? Common sense would dictate that Captain Nilam would have handed back the thermobaric launcher immediately, knowing fully well the strict controls imposed by the army on its use based on worries that it would fall into the hands of the LTTE.

Obviously, the letter was intended to block any serious investigation by General Ivan Dassanayake into the activities of the Athurugiriya unit. This tantamounts to interfering with the investigation and influencing the investigating officer even before he had begun his inquiry. (See box for letter).

The blatant lies and official pressure exerted on General Dassanayake not to proceed with any investigation raises the question as to what the army commander and the military intelligence chief are trying to hide. What needs to be ascertained is what exactly these men were doing at the Athurugiriya house fully armed with thermobaric and other arsenal sufficient to cause massive destruction.

The Sunday Leader has found that this was the first time four thermobaric weapons have been issued to members of the army outside an operational area. Not only was it issued to Captain Shahul Hameed Nilam's group to be stored at the house at Athurugiriya, one weapon had been fired at the army camp at Panaluwa, where three former LTTE members now working for the military intelligence were trained by the army to fire the weapon.

Thermobaric weapons target

The men had been told their target would be a large motorcade including a bus. However senior military officers in Batticaloa point out that the LTTE in the east travel solely by motorbike and double cabs. They do not travel in motor. March 4th, 2002

Courtesy : Sunday Leader(SLK)

http://www.news.tamilcanadian.com/news/2002/03/20020304_1.shtml

posted February 20, 2005 02:32 AM         

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20050220/politics.htm

Interestingly, Marxist Wimal Weerawansa's mobile phone is state-of-the-art and merits description. It costs around Rs. 150,000 and has an in built video camera, MMS technology and is WAP compatible. In short, Weerawansa walks around with a mini computer and fax machine including a very powerful digital video and still camera.

With the conversation over, the Prime Minister handed the mobile back to Weerawansa and began to question him on the sophisticated gadget.

Weerawansa happily briefed the Premier on all the features of the phone including its cost and said, "Its not too expensive, you should also buy one."

posted February 20, 2005 07:14 AM         

More importantly, it is good to see Marxist enjoying democratic rights. Some people claim that JVP are primitive and against modernization of Sri Lanka. If you look at how JVP use advanced technology for their work, so-called pro western politicians should be ashamed. After all modernizations is thousand times better than westernization policies of some of our politicians especially of some UNP people headed by Ranil.

More over failing to acquire modern technology by our governments before our enemy have proven disastrous especially to our military. Now LTTE have developed an air defense system. LTTE started using GPS, surface to air missiles and more high tech stuff to challenge us. They use internet effectively for their propaganda.

All this is because of some stupid people including one who posted this complaint and some stupid politicians who are confused with westernization for modernization.

posted February 20, 2005 08:45 AM         

You are again playing a big dumb SLpatriot. If your uncle Ranil’s UNP (I do not consider all UNP people as traitors) did not exposed those people, who knows, we could have defeated LTTE some times back. It is not the quantity that matters, what matters is quality. Betrayal of this caliber caused by Udugampla with the blessing from your uncle (Who knows may be you are Ranil) cannot be forgiven ever. One big single deed like this worth almost all the bad deeds all our other politicians have ever done.

The most efficient way of defeating guerrillas is to carryout those kinds of covert operations along with good intelligence and it has proven very much effective repeatedly. I am sure if they were allowed to carry on without being exposed, they could make a big difference. See how Kousalyan's death has affected LTTE.

This shows your uncles commitment towards fulfilling LTTE hunger than saving Sri Lankans from the enemy. It was not the strength of LTTE which prevented us from defeating them (you repeatedly say that we cannot win this war) it is the traitors like you who did the damage.

Soon after committing one crime Ranil went on to sign MOU with LTTE witch not only made them to recover but also to be stronger to an extent that they can bargain swith Sri Lanka single sided . MOU gave them much needed international recognition, time to recover and rebuild, collect funds and to develop an air force with an air defense system, a high tech communication system and so on.

We could see more disastrous effects of Ranil's betrayal to this nation, if tsunami had not struck Sri Lank and karuna had not leave LTTE.

For some reason nature had decided to intervene!

In addition, thanks to Nature Ranil is still able to walk around wearing cloths or otherwise people would have striped him naked!

posted February 20, 2005 12:22 PM            

"Hailed by the Norwegian facilitators as exceedingly successful , the turning point came about largely, if not solely, due to the rare spirit of flexibility and compromise adopted by the LTTE from the outset of the negotiations in Thailand in September. Different federal models are to be analysed in the upcoming rounds, The anti-peace, chauvinist forces could be slowly but surely girding up their loins to campaign against the proposed federal solution as a betrayal of the Sinhala people. In the 1950s and 1960s when the Federal Party leader S J V Chelvanayakam led a campaign for such a solution, it was foolishly misrepresented by Sinhala hardliners in southern Sri Lanka as separatist poison. That is how the Bandaranaike - Chelvanayakam pact(1957) and the Dudley - Chelvanayakam pact(1965) came to be unilaterally abrogated by the then Prime Ministers, Bandaranaike and Dudley Senanayake. J.R.Jayawardena's infamous Kandy march against the B-C pact must also be mentioned.

In this context it shoul be proudly racalled that a former M.P. for Gampaha, S.D.Bandaranaike, now 86, cried halt at Imbulgoda to that March. The maverick has lived long enough to witness the gross disaster that opportunist,racist party politics has plunged this country into. One can only nostalgically reminisce the courage,wisdom and will that the likes of SDB summoned to counter such campagns.

The name of this game is party politics which, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe said in Japan the other day, has ruined Sri Lanka, while answering a question as to why Sri Lanka had lagged so far behind in economic development compared to the phenomenal rise of Japan which was behind Sri Lanka in the 1950s."

http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items02/171202-6.html

posted February 20, 2005 01:15 PM         

The most important types of such indices included sociodemographic, structural, cultural, and psychological characteristics. Among the major sociodemographic indices were urbanization, industrialization, levels of literacy and education, as well as openness to modern modes of communication. Structural characteristics were identified as a high degree of role specialization and differentiation; the availability of resources not committed to fixed ascriptive groups (such as kinship or territoriality); the predominance of achievement criteria rather than ascription in the allocation of the major social roles; and the development of and differentiation between large-scale, diverse, and functionally specific organizations, on the one hand, and more informal interest-based groups, on the other.

Culturally, the process of modernization was said to involve a growing differentiation of the major arenas of cultural activity such as religion, philosophy, and education; the development of specialized intellectual and cultural roles; the spread of education and communications; and wider mass participation in the cultural arena. Finally, on the individual level, modernization was seen as giving rise to a new cultural-psychological outlook characterized by greater ego flexibility; the ability to adjust to wider societal horizons; a broadening of the spheres of interest; growing potential empathy toward other people and situations; and more emphasis on self-advancement and mobility.

In most of these studies modern and traditional societies were depicted as juxtaposed. Traditional societies were defined as basically restrictive and limited, whereas modern societies were seen as much more expansive and able to cope with a continually widening range of problems in their internal and external environments alike. Societies on the move from traditional to modern were designated as transitional.

Behind these theories there loomed a vision of the inevitability of progress toward modernity, toward the development of a universal modern civilization, and toward the convergence of industrial societies. Most of these theories implicitly took for granted that the Western European and U.S. experiences constituted the major paradigm of modern society and civilization. The institutional and ideological developments in the contemporary world, however, have not upheld this vision. The great institutional variability of different modern and modernizing societies—not only among the transitional but also among the more developed societies such as the United States, Western Europe, and Japan—became more and more apparent, giving rise by the late 1960s to new models of modernization.

Two major approaches to the problem may be identified. The first approach stressed the importance of the traditions of different societies for understanding the variability of modern or modernizing societies; this approach negated the dichotomy between modern and traditional societies and their dynamics. The second approach emphasized international factors, especially the global capitalist system, as the major explanatory variables in the process of modernization.

These approaches have certainly pointed to some important influences on the dynamics of modernization. They are not able, however, to explain all the patterns of change which have been taking place in different traditional and transitional societies in the contemporary world. These approaches have not faced squarely the problem of how different patterns of change arise in response to the sociodemographic, structural, and ideological aspects of modernization enumerated above. Accordingly, some of the assumptions of these approaches need reappraisal as did those of the initial model of modernization.

The starting point of such a reappraisal is the historical fact that modernization, or rather modernity in its basic institutional and cultural aspects, crystallized first in the West—in Europe and in the United States—from the sixteenth century on. This modernization then expanded by economic, military, political, and ideological means throughout the world and created a series of continually changing world systems. The original institutional formations and cultural contours of modernity as they developed in the West were closely related to the capitalist economy and civilization, which were characterized by the bureaucratization of different aspects of social life, a secular worldview, and the development of a distinctive cultural orientation toward modernity. This orientation emphasizes a scientific outlook (including the radical tendency to critique the world), individual autonomy and emancipation, an ideology of equality, and a conception of society as an object of active construction by conscious human action.

The construction of modern society gave rise in the West, especially in Europe, to nation-states and class societies and to a strong emphasis on economic development. The expansion of modernity beyond Europe gave rise to the development of different types of modern societies and to a great variety of institutional constellations, as well as of cultural orientations toward modernity. This variety indicates the necessity to go beyond some of the assumptions of the initial studies of modernization, without however forgetting that such variety developed out of the interaction between the institutional forces and ideological premises of the first examples of modernity as developed in the West and the various societies on which they impinged.

The varieties of modernization suggest that different aspects of the process such as industrialization, urbanization, and political modernization are not necessarily interlinked. Furthermore, such variability can be seen not only, or even mainly, in different institutional patterns but in the combination of these with the different cultural contours of modernity. Such programs may entail different interpretations of many of the basic premises of modern civilization: the nature of equality; the extent of participation by wider social sectors in various aspects of public life; the relative importance of economic development in the panorama of human goals; the balance between productive and distributive economic priorities; the construction of new symbols and collective identities; and negative or positive attitudes toward modernity in general and to the West in particular.

These different orientations toward modernity were shaped by the continuous interaction between the “point of entry” of any society into the modern international system and specific aspects of the society's traditional order, including the social, political, and economic formations already existing in these societies, the basic values of these civilizations, and the patterns of authority, hierarchy, and equality that prevailed in them. These varieties of modernization were the product of actions by elites and major counterelites, protest movements, and the overall historical experience of social change in these societies.

The multiplicity of types of modern societies does not negate the obvious fact that, in many central aspects of their institutional forms, such as occupational patterns and industrial structures, or in the organization of education and cities, very strong convergences are apparent in different modern societies. These convergences have indeed generated common problems. However, the means of coping with these problems differ greatly among nations, which again reflects how these different modern societies have been shaped by their specific institutional development and cultural contours and by their historical experiences.

(From The Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World in Politics & Social Sciences)

-Westernization Refers to economic, legal, social, cultural, and political modernization and development following Western models of law, political systems, finance, dress, language, education, ideas, and behavior. Typically accompanied European colonial activities throughout the Islamic world and resulted in the devaluation of local languages, culture, and economic and social structures, as well as alienation, marginalization, and the perceived loss of cultural identity. Political failures as well as the failure to achieve development, public order, and modernization led some to conclude that Western models had failed and to call for religio-cultural revival, returning to Islam and its accompanying cultural values as a more authentic and historically powerful identity
(From The Oxford Dictionary of Islam in Religion & Philosophy)

westernization The process by which a country or society adopts the customs and institutions that are said to characterize the Western world. For some governments and élites in DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, westernization has been seen as synonymous with modernization and development and therefore as a desirable goal. Another more recent tendency, however, is to regard westernization as a pernicious process equated with the negative aspects of CAPITALISM, which undermines local customs and values and which should therefore be strongly opposed. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was, at least in part, a reaction to the westernizing policies of MUHAMMAD REZA SHAH PAHLAVI (1919–80), which neglected the traditional, particularly religious, values in Iranian society, and the anti-Western theme has, to a greater or lesser degree, been taken up by Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the Muslim world.

posted February 20, 2005 01:54 PM         

-You STILL haven't given me any solid facts about what mistakes ranil made...unless you are saying that the ceasefire was a mistake!

I do not understand what you mean by solid facts. If you could be more specific and define me what do you mean my solid facts, may be I could be more specific next time. I have summarized in one of my previous post how did Athurugiriya exposure affected the process of weakening of LTTE. Its fact that exposed special unit have killed number of top ranking LTTE personalities by carrying out special operation and exposure completely paralyzed the military intelligence unit and their operations.
LTTE having air base, an air force and an air defense system, high tech communications systems are facts in my understanding and acquisitions were facilitated by signing MOU.

Just as you are confusing modernizations with westernization, you are confusing MOU with a ceasefire. MOU and ceasefire are two different things. MOU provided more legal rights to LTTE in expanding their domination beyond LTTE held areas in the guise of LTTE political division where as a ceasefire is a ceasefire. MOU one-step behind ISGA and ISGA is one-step behind EELAM.
I am not against a ceasefire but oppose MOU. Please make it clear!

posted February 20, 2005 04:19 PM         

Funny, I only counted 18 times

By the way, my friend has given you a good answer....
"You are again playing a big dumb SLpatriot."

Try to answer this question if you don't know what that mean:

"Why did your UNP loose the last election badly?"

Don't tell me since I contributed few hundred dollars to anti Ranil/UNP propaganda during last election.

posted February 20, 2005 04:35 PM         

Are you getting a pretty lame education from UNP money in USA?

posted February 20, 2005 04:44 PM         

He was planning on making a small bridge by burning a big one. The guy who couldn't make peace with CBK wanted to make love to Prabha.
Call it fear or scapegoat. They guy was out of his mind. Ranil work hard to convince that Sinhalese can’t win this war against LTTE and to make this point, he systematically weakened SLA.