Word: gotabaya
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Fonseka's own reasons for entering politics are much more personal. In an interview with TIME on Dec. 13 in Colombo, Fonseka explained that just two months after the war ended in May, President Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, sidelined him. He says he was given a prestigious new post - Chief of Defense Staff - without any operational authority. "Even to get a corporal to the CDS office I had to get the Defense Secretary's approval," Fonseka says. "So then I was not happy with the job there. Then I also realised that they were not trusting...
...military analysts say the last push on land would not have been effective without the Navy, who cut off the Tigers? vital supply line and escape route by sea. "Sarath Fonseka could not have won the war, if not for the crucial support he received from Secretary Defense Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the other service chiefs, especially the navy and air chiefs and the intelligence agencies," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore...
Politics have unraveled the Fonseka-Rajapaksa alliance. In his interview with TIME, Fonseka repeated charges, first published in a Sri Lankan newspaper, the Sunday Leader, that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had given orders that top LTTE commanders not be allowed to surrender. "This is well known to all those who were there in the field," Fonseka said. "[The Defenwe Secretary] was supposed to have said, 'Whether anybody comes with white flags or no, finish off everybody.' I was the Army Commander, they never passed that message to me, never even consulted me. I only came to know this after two days after...
...been unmoved by entreaties from Western countries to allow aid agencies to enter the war zone to help them. On April 28, the government denied a visa to a Swedish diplomat who was supposed to be part of a European mission to Sri Lanka. On April 29, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President's brother, met with the British and French foreign secretaries and upbraided them for being "duped by the misinformation campaign the LTTE was carrying out," according to a report of the meeting published on the Defense Ministry's website. The Red Cross and U.N. agencies have raised...
...Lankan government suggest that the success of the military campaign has spawned a bellicose nationalism that brooks little dissent, and as such has heightened unease within the country's civil society. Journalists and dissidents have felt pressure to remain silent, and the President's brother, tough-talking Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, told local press that he would "chase away" any foreign media deemed to be offering a sympathetic ear to the rebels. Outspoken newspaper editor (and freelance TIME contributor) Lasantha Wickrematunge, whose paper accused the Defense Minister and other prominent politicians of corruption, was last month gunned down by unknown...