By Alok Bhatt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – General Sarath Fonseka, a former commander of Sri Lanka’s armof Sri Lanka’s arm and a significant player in Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam, has recently undertaken a hunger strike.  The General’s hunger strike signifies his protest against unfair detention by the Sri Lankan government.  The strike also follows the deprivation of the General’s phone rights to communicate with his wife.  General Fonseka had already invoked numerous concerns regarding his health because he refused to eat anything other than the food his wife delivered to him during allowed visits.

The denial of the General’s telephone rights coincides with what could have been a significant step towards exposing humanitarian violations in Sri Lanka.  The General’s continued denial of rights comes after Sri Lankan government’s vehement rejection of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s idea to establish an expert panel to review alleged human rights violations perpetrated during the quarter-century long war against the Tamil Tigers.  The UN and various human rights groups have consistently accused Sri Lanka of denying the Tamil ethnic minorities, who are regarded internally displaced persons subsequent to  the end of Sri Lanka’s bloody conflict, essential necessities while housing them in derisory, unsanitary refugee camps.  The government was more recently accused of extra-judicial killing of suspected Tamil Tigers, but claimed that the video evidence depicting these illegal executions had been doctored to create false allegations.

General Fonseka’s arrest was suspiciously predicated upon human rights violations during the struggle against the Tamil Tigers.  However, it has become clear that the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, ordered the arrest because General Fonseka opposed him in Sri Lanka’s post-war elections.  Both men were considered heroes by Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese ethnic majority following the end of the war.  However, General Fonseka’s resignation from Sri Lanka’s army in November 2009 and his subsequent participation in the elections to run against Rajapaksa caused a fall-out between two men.

Initially, General Fonseka had access to his wife, lawyer, and doctor.  However, the Sri Lankan government appears to have become concerned that the General may divulge to the UN information regarding human rights violations and the deaths of over 20,000 civilians.  The government’s actions, however, only raise further suspicions and represents a continuation of Sri Lanka’s history of human rights violations.

For more information, please see:

Al-Jazeera – Fonseka begins hunger strike – 07 March 2010

Sify News – General Fonseka starts hunger strike – 07 March 2010

Times Online – General Sarath Fonseka on a hunger strike… – 07 March 2010