ISSUES

  Canadian still being held?

By Ranjit Jayasundera Our Foreign Correspondent 

The Sunday Leader  last week spoke to MP Bob Rae’s Office.  Rae was denied entry into Sri Lanka on June 10,  reportedly because of his criticism of the country’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers. Rae has been elected 10 times to federal and provincial parliaments, winning every election he contested. He currently serves as the foreign affairs critic for the Liberal Party of Canada.

 Excerpts:

 “We don’t in fact know who is in custody, or what anyone is accused of doing. There are thousands of people who have dual citizenship, as well as many who went regularly to the Wanni to visit families and who were trapped in the fighting.

We do not know who were combatants and who were not, and the lack of international access to the camps means it is difficult to assess what may or may not have happened.

Canada has a responsibility to protect the interests of its citizens. The circumstances of the last several months in the north and east of Sri Lanka make it even more incumbent on governments to protect and advance the interests of any citizen in a camp.” 

My sense is things changed on the government side with the election of the Rajakapsa government and the decision to seek a military solution. The LTTE clearly under-estimated the political determination of the government to carry through right to the end.

George Julius came to Sri Lanka in September or October 2007, he said that he had informed the Army when he came to their positions on May 17th that he had been forcibly conscripted by the LTTE. George lived in Toronto, Canada with his family since he was 12 years old.

The Julius family has told the National Post they knew nothing about him having been conscripted by the rebels, and the Canadian Tamil Congress has said such claims should be viewed with skepticism because they could be the product of torture.

Kath Noble, freelancing journalist who met up with one Canadian combatant in an interview with The Sunday Leader said:

Q: When did you first meet George Julius?

A: I’ve met George on only one occasion - June 26th.  I was visiting a location in which people said to be LTTE cadres were being held.  One of the other residents, who claimed to have been a medic with the LTTE for the last nine years, brought him to my attention, because he thought that I might be interested in talking to a foreigner.

Q: When did he come to Sri Lanka and what area was he visiting when he arrived?

A: He told me that he came to Sri Lanka in September or October  2007, to visit some relatives in Kilinochchi.  I understand that he had a one month visa, but I haven’t checked on that or his arrival date with the authorities.

Q: Which area is he being held, and did he say if he had been arrested as a Canadian Combatant?

A: When I met him, he was being held in a school building in Vavuniya town.  He said that he had informed the Army when he came to their positions on May 17th that he had been forcibly conscripted by the LTTE.

Q: What were the conditions of where he was being held, is he being fed daily meals?

A: It was a school building, so there were proper shelter and sanitary facilities.  I imagine that there would be shortcomings, given that it isn’t normally used for accommodation purposes. Unlike the other location that I visited, where female LTTE cadres were being held, there was very little outdoor space, so activities were constrained to the main hall.  I was led to believe that it was only a holding centre, and that after some time the residents would be moved.  There are apparently 9,500 people who have surrendered or been identified as members of the LTTE, which is probably a lot more than was expected. Several residents told me that the conditions were acceptable.  They said that they were being fed properly, and they looked healthy.

Q: How long has he been held for and is there any family where he is being held?

A: He told me that he had surrendered to the Army on May 17th, so he had been held for a little over a month at the time that I met him.  A person that he identified as his cousin was also in the same camp.  He explained that his cousin, who was 24 years old, had been working in a garage in Kilinochchi and had been recruited by the LTTE when they withdrew at the beginning of this year.

Q: Was he scared or is he afraid he will never return home to Canada?

A: From the way he spoke, making a joke about losing his hair at 26 years old because of having to wear a lot of woolly hats in the Canadian winters, and telling a story about a visit that he had made to Cuba with some friends just before coming to Sri Lanka, I would say that he wasn’t scared.  He seemed confident that he would get to go back to Canada, saying that he would be going straight to a therapist to talk through his ordeal.

Q: How long did you get to talk to him, what else did you get to speak about?

A: I probably spoke to him for about fifteen or twenty minutes.  I’ve mentioned some of the things that we talked about in my other answers.  He also told me a little of his family background, that they had moved to the Toronto area when he was 12 years old, and he gave me his home address and telephone number.  He said that one of his relatives in Sri Lanka had been to visit him in the camp the previous week.

Q: Do you happen to have a picture of the Camp?

A: No, photos weren’t allowed in that camp.

Q: How does it look, how is he being treated and do you think he will return home soon?

A: From what I saw, the government isn’t treating George any differently from the others who had surrendered  as LTTE cadres.  They should decide on their approach to rehabilitation as soon as possible.  Obviously what makes sense for Sri Lankans may not be so useful for Canadians, and I don’t know if they have thought about that yet — the number of foreign passport holders is very small.  Sending him back without looking into his story or formulating a coherent policy doesn’t seem to me to be appropriate, but it will be very sad for both George and the others if that process takes much longer.

The search for greener pastures  

By Cassandra Mascarenhas  

Many Sri Lankans fantasise about living the good life in a developed country such as the United States of America or Britain.

After going through some of the strictest of procedures to obtain visas, a handful gets an opportunity to live their dream but which comes at a massive cost. However the US Green Card Lottery is the key to realising this fantasy of some at a minimal cost.

Early this month, the US Embassy in Colombo announced that the Green Card Lottery is now open for applications and have started accepting them on line since October 2. The 2011 Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Programme more commonly known as the Green Card Lottery gives 50,000 randomly selected applicants from across the world a chance to legally live, work or study in the United States every year.

The DV lottery was started in 1990 by the US Congress to give people from countries with low rates of immigration a chance to legally enter the United States with the first visa being issued in 1995. It is partially funded by visa fees and by US tax payers.

Sri Lanka has been eligible for the lottery right from the start with the number of applicants rapidly increasing every year.

Last year’s DV lottery saw around 400,000 applicants from Sri Lanka alone and a stunning 13.6 million applicants worldwide. This year’s estimate places the number of applicants at around 19 million.

“Just last year, one of the winners of the lottery from Sri Lanka was a 17 year old who successfully met all the criteria required,” Joel Wiegert, the Vice Consul of the US Embassy in Sri Lanka told The Sunday Leader.

The lottery has been conducted on line since 2007. People who want to register should visit www.dvlottery.state.gov and fill out the application given there after taking note of the instructions and rules for the lottery.

The candidate must be born in a qualifying country and the only other qualifications required are the completion of 6 GCE O-Level subjects, including mathematics and Sinhala or Tamil or job experience in certain fields specified at the following web site: http://onlineonetcenter.org.  Age is not a restriction as long as the above-mentioned qualifications are met.

The applications are then processed in the US and all the eligible candidates are selected after which the winners are randomly chosen electronically from all across the world.

The winners will then be notified by post, not by e-mail or they can check the status of their entry on line. They have to then prepare for an immigration interview which will determine if the candidate should receive permanent residency in the United States. 

“It must be noted that the DV Lottery is legitimate and registration for it is completely free. There are many false web sites on line that try to con hopeful candidates into paying sums of money to fill out entry forms. Such scams have given many people the impression that the lottery is a sham and this discourages them for applying for it,” the embassy said in a statement.

Each applicant is asked to submit a photograph with their applications which is subjected to face recognition tests during the selection process to make sure that a candidate does not apply more than once. Doing so results in immediate disqualification from the lottery. Candidates who disclose inaccurate information in an application are also disqualified.

Last year alone 29 applicants from Sri Lanka were refused visas but there still has been a steady increase in the number of visas issued to Sri Lankans.

The DV lottery 2005 saw 278 applicants given green cards and the most recent DV lottery had 496 applicants granted visas, a steady increase over the years.

When asked if there would be a notable fall in the number of applicants for the lottery from Sri Lanka now that the war has ended, the Vice Consul said he doubted that would happen as Sri Lankans still seem interested in migrating abroad.

This is proven by the current statistics of DV 2010 which started on  October first, and   already 606 applicants have applied for the lottery.

The US Embassy will also be hosting out reach programmes in several parts of the country to educate the public about the lottery. The applications for the lottery will be accepted from  October  2 to  November 30.  If selected, the candidate will be informed via post between May and July 2010 after which they will have one year to immigrate to the States.

Out reach programmes in Central and Eastern Province:

October 23.

 Ampara – Town Hall – 5.00 p.m.

October, 24.

Hatton – Town Hall – 4.00 p.m.

October, 25.

Nuwara Eliya – Town Hall – 9 a.m.

Out reach programmes in the Southern Province:

October, 30.

Galle – Town Hall – 5.00 p.m.

Out reach programmes in Colombo:

November, 4th.

Town Hall, Negombo – 4.30 p.m.

November 5th.

St. Paul’s Milagiriya Church Hall – 5.30 pm

Fat Controller and doubting Thomases, beware: this train is going to Hollywood

HIT Entertainment is seeking growth for the Thomas the Tank Engine characters with their second foray into celluloid

Sixty four years after he first appeared amid a puff of smoke, Thomas, the small blue railway engine created by a Birmingham clergyman for his son, is to steam into Hollywood for the second time.

HIT Entertainment, Thomas the Tank Engine’s owner, yesterday took the first steps towards making a new feature film, a decade after a previous attempt was panned by critics for Americanising a post-war British brand.

HIT has signed up Josh Klausner, the writer of Shrek the Third, to act as the screenwriter for a movie that the company hopes will lead to a film emerging from the tunnel of produc­tion some time in 2011. Julia Pistor, the head of HIT’s newly created film division, said that it made sense for the company - also home to Bob the Builder and Pingu the Pen­guin - to start its film business with Thomas because the engine is a phe­nomenally successful and versatile brand.

Created by the Rev Wilbert Awdry to comfort his son, who was afflicted with measles during the Second World War, Thomas first appeared to the British public in a 1945 book, The Three Railway Engines. Since then, the adventures of the steam engines have become one of the world’s biggest pre­school children’s businesses.

Fifty million copies of the original 26 stories written by Mr Awdry, and the 13 then written by his son, Christo­pher, have been sold worldwide. The Thomas television series, narrated by the former Beatle Ringo Starr, has gen­erated 45 million DVD sales in the United States alone. Parents and grandparents have bought 30 million replica engines and enough track to lay 1,902 miles of wooden railway.

For all the durability of Thomas, the tank engine has not always enjoyed roaring success. The previous attempt to take Thomas to the big screen re­sulted in a film released in 2000 called Thomas And The Magic Railroad, in which the principal parts were voiced by Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda, the Hollywood stars, in film that strayed far from its UK origins, reviewed bad­ly and fared poorly at the box office.

So disappointing was the film that Britt Allcroft was forced out and the company she founded to exploit the Thomas brand was acquired by HIT Entertainment. HIT, in turn, was taken private by Apax Partners, the private equity firm, in 2005 after the company’s other properties, particu­larly Bob the Builder, began to lose their popularity with the under-Ewes.

 Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot look like they are staying put after talks about a £40 million sale were on the point of collapse last night.

Chorion, the owner of the Agatha Christie estate, publicly contradicted Coolabi, the would-be buyer, which only hours earlier had said that negoti­ations about a sale were continuing.

Coolabi, which owns Purple Ronnie, had told the London market yesterday morning that it was still in “ongoing” negotiations about an unspecified transaction, understood to be the pur­chase of the rights to the Agatha Christie crime books, as it reported full-year results.

Mere hours later, a spokesman for Chorion said: “Coolabi was not able to raise the funding and the deal is defi­nitely off.”

Coolabi’s shares have been sus­pended for the past five months because the company is so small that a £40 million purchase would constitute a “reverse takeover” under Stock Ex­change rules.

Jeremy Banks, the chief executive of Coolabi, insisted that he had checked with Chorion, which is run by Lord Alli, the media entrepreneur, about the statement his company put out in the morning. He added that he was ur­gently trying to clarify the situation.

— Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor

Courtesy The Times