Sri Lanka's former army chief faces court martial
Updated
The court martial of Sri Lanka's former army chief Sarath Fonseka has been adjourned until next month. General Fonseka, who ran against President Mahinda Rajapakse in January's poll, faces one set of charges that he interfered in politics, while still military chief, and also charges that he was allegedly involved in corrupt arms deals. The court martial has been denounced in some quarters as a political trial, given that General Fonseka and Mr Rajapakse had a spectacular falling out, after the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels last year.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Larry Marshall, Project Manager Centre for Dialogue, Melbourne's La Trobe University
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MARSHALL: The charges that the government has laid, a very slow process by the way, that's taken over a month, is a far cry from what they first spoke of. They spoke of a possible coup attempt and assassination attempt against the President. Those charges have disappeared curiously, and what we have is that this man who was the head of the army and then retired to run in the presidential elections in January against the current President and his partner in the victory last May against the LTTE, that this man somehow has done something untoward by involving himself in politics. And the details of this are very strange, so here we have the general being charged only in the military court, which is closed, and not in a civilian court which would be open. And we have the former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Sarath Silva analysing the charges and the procedures in saying that Fonseca is a political prisoner.
LAM: Indeed and Fonseca's legal team I notice also alleges bias against the current bench of army judges hearing the trial. Do you think the trial itself given that Sarath Fonseca was the former military chief, that the trial itself could polarise the Sri Lankan military?
MARSHALL: I think that's part of the style it seems sadly of this government, that Rajapakse's strategy has been to rule by division, and he has very cleverly divided the opposition. But what I think scared this President was that in the election for the presidency, Fonseca managed to be an unusual form of coalition for the personality that could match the President's hubris, and brought together the UNP on the right, the JVP on the left and the ethnic minority parties representing the Tamils and the Muslims. And that worried the President, therefore I think we have seen the head being lopped off the opposition coming up to the April 8th parliamentary elections. And the fact that they've now put off the court martial until the 6th of, the next hearing will be on the 6th of April, means the opposition is headless and divided and will be I think beaten quite well at the next elections.
LAM: And Larry as a long time watcher of Sri Lanka, do you think President Rajapakse might be playing a dangerous game here, that this Rajapakse-Fonseca feud could split Sri Lankan society right in the middle?
MARSHALL: I think what we are worrying about analysing things from a distance is that the President is failing in a major task, and that is to win the peace. The peace is a difficult to win given that this has been a fractured community for 30 years, a lot of blood has spilled, 100-thousand dead. And there are questions to be answered about human rights, which the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has spoken of recently. He's mooted a human rights commission. And what we are seeing I think is still division and fear being pushed at the people, in fact the parliament was called back just last week to pass the emergency laws continuing, even though the war has ended. And so there is this continual fear that the Tamils might rise again, that the Tamils are not to be trusted, and that does not make for reconciliation and peace.
LAM: And the Rajapakse administration also doesn't seem to be presenting itself well in the international arena. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon as you mentioned has now rejected Rajapakse's objections to a UN panel to investigate possible human rights abuses. If the Rajapakse administration is opposed to scrutiny it implies therefore that it has something to hide?
MARSHALL: I think that's a reasonable sort of a case, and we are talking about the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the human rights allegations on both sides; on the LTTE for using human beings as human shields, their own community, and for indiscriminate bombings supposedly allegations by the government when they were at the final stages of the war, which may have killed tens of thousands of people. So there certainly is a case to be answered. But to claim as Gotabaya Rajapakse, Defence Secretary and brother of the President says, this international community keeps imposing these issues of human rights on us and media freedom, is really a bit nonsensical when you have a country as old a democracy as Sri Lanka.
