Sri Lanka President, US envoy discuss ties

Daily Mirror Online
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US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asian affairs, Robert Blake met President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the President’s House this morning and examined ways and means of further strengthening bilateral relations, the President’s office said.

Minister of External Affairs Prof G L Peiris, Secretary to the President, Lalith Weerathunga and Treasury Secretary Dr P B Jayasundara also took part in the discussions.

The two sides examined ways and means of further strengthening bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and the United States and identified several areas for the expansion of bilateral cooperation. The US Assistant Secretary offered to increase training facilities for Sri Lankan officials and others in the United States, the President’s office added.

© Daily Mirror Online

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Death threats to journalist’s family in Sri Lanka

Press Release | International Federation of Journalists
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The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is alarmed by threats made against the safety of the family of senior Sri Lankan journalist Gamini Pushpakumara.

“We call upon the Sri Lankan police and security agencies to take immediate measures to investigate the source of the threats and to extend all necessary protection to Pushpakumara’s family,” IFJ General Secretary Aidan White said.

Pushpakumara, who is an executive committee member of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (SLWJA) and secretary of the program producers’ union of the state-owned Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), was summarily dismissed from employment at SLRC after presidential elections in Sri Lanka in January.

The dismissal followed Pushpakumara’s active leadership in the union’s demands that the SLRC follow specified norms of fairness in its coverage of the presidential election campaign.

Pushpakumara has since left his home town of Horana, near Colombo, for safety reasons. But his family remains, and on the evening of July 12, had two visitors who spoke in a threatening manner to his wife Waruni Balasooriya.

They alleged that Pushpakumara was a “Sinhala tiger”, a tacit supporter of the Tamil secessionist movement that was defeated in May 2009 after a quarter-century-long civil war.

Ms Balasooriya was also warned not to report the threat to police for fear of violent retribution. The IFJ has learnt that a complaint was nevertheless filed at the Horana police station on July 14.

“As Sri Lanka faces increasing international scrutiny over its human rights record and the newly re-elected president’s intent to pursue a policy of national reconciliation, the safety and well-being of media personnel will be a crucial benchmark against which progress will be assessed,” White said.

“Unfortunately, recent actions by the Sri Lankan authorities indicate that they remain disinclined to take action against the use of coercion and threats of violence that attempt to silence journalists who courageously speak the truth to power.”

© International Federation of Journalists

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I am every asylum seeker

By Greg Foyster | Eureka Street
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I was born in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I was born in Kashmir, between India and Pakistan. I was born in Iran. I was born in Iraq. I was born in Sri Lanka.

I worked as an architect, building up my business. I worked as a negotiator, liaising with the government. I worked as an engineer. I worked as a veterinarian. I worked as an accountant.

I am a member of the Hazara ethnic group. I am opposed to the government's occupation of Kashmir. I am a firm believer in women's rights. I am a whistleblower for government corruption. I am an ethnic Tamil.

I was held down while I watched my father beaten to death. I was kidnapped by the government and taken to an interrogation room. I was knocked out with the butt of a rifle. I was shot three times. I was arrested and put in a camp.

They kept me in a solitary cell for four days without food or water. They drove a nail through my thumb and put fresh chilli in the wound. They beat the soles of my feet with canes. They pulled out my fingernails. They placed a metal roller on my shins and applied pressure until I screamed.

I bribed a guard to help me escape in the middle of the night. I fled through the mountains and a farmer smuggled me across the border. I hid underground for five months. I sold my property and used the money for a plane ticket. I cut a hole in the wire fence and crawled through the jungle to a safehouse.

I got on the first boat I could, wherever it was going. I paid a man $7000 to take me somewhere safe, but he left with my money. I spent months in Indonesia hiding in the forest. I was dumped in the middle of the ocean and had to swim to shore. I arrived on Ashmore Reef and collapsed from thirst and heat exhaustion.

I was so relieved to be in Australia! I was happy to be safe from the militia! I was alive, I was overjoyed, I was finally free!

I was then locked up on Christmas Island for three years without a lawyer. I was put behind bars and razor wire in the middle of the desert. I was called by a number not a name. I was kept in an isolation cell. I was beaten and abused by the guards.

Why am I locked up if I haven't committed a crime? How can I be in prison without a trial? Why can't they treat me like a human being? Why am I kept here all alone? Why haven't I been told when this will end?

I am depressed and have constant headaches. I am frightened and wake up screaming. I am losing my mind. I have sewn my lips together. I have tried to kill myself.

I didn't want to be a refugee. I didn't want to come to your country. I didn't want to leave my family. I didn't want to lose my house. I didn't want to have to start again.

I am not here to get rich. I am not here to receive charity. I am not here to steal your job. I am not here to cheat the system. I am not here by choice.

I am here because otherwise I would be dead. I am here because the militia threatened to kill me and my family. I am here because I was shot. I am here because my house was burned down. I am here because I have nowhere else to go.

I was born in a dangerous land. I was persecuted for who I am and what I believe. I was tortured in an interrogation room. I was dumped in the ocean. I was locked up in detention.

I am an asylum seeker, every asylum seeker, and this is my story. I am not a 'queue jumper'. I am not an 'illegal arrival'. I am not a 'political issue'.

I am a human being. Please treat me like one.

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Greg Foyster is a freelance journalist who's written for The Age, The Big Issue, Crikey and New Matilda. The above stories are based on letters from asylum seekers in detention.

© Eureka Street

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Sri Lanka Army to construct permanent base in demolished Koappaay LTTE cemetry

Tamil Net
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Jaffna Sri Lanka Army (SLA) high command has requested Sri Lanka Electricity Board Jaffna to supply electricity to the site where Tiger Heroes’ Resting Home had stood in Koappaay before being obliterated by SLA recently as it intends to construct a big permanent base for its 512 Division, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, SLA, constructing several bases in Jaffna in haste, forces the uprooted civilians living in the area around the above site to evacuate their dwellings, the affected civilians complain.

Hundreds of uprooted families from Vanni and Valikaamam North had settled in the area in Koappaay where SLA now wants to construct a building complex for its 512 Division with the intention of occupying the area permanently, the sources added.

SLA says that the presence of the uprooted civilians in the area near their base is unsafe for its personnel, according to the uprooted civilians.

The affected civilians further complained that no politician so far had come forward to solve their problems including the SLA orders to evacuate their dwellings.

Koappaay Raasa Veethi, the main thoroughfare in the area that is to be occupied by SLA, faces the risk of being closed for public use.

SLA is actively engaged in setting up permanent bases in Jaffna with the intention of reducing the number SLA personnel occupying Jaffna town area.

© Tamil Net

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UN panel on Sri Lanka meets with Vijay Nambiar

By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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While the UN Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka war crimes did, the UN confirmed on July 20, have the first of three days of meetings in New York on July 19, the UN now says that the four month clock for the Panel's report will not beginning in these three days. The UN would not say when it would begin.

On June 22, UN Spokesman Nesirky said the Panel would finish "within four months of the commencement of its work." So are these three days of meeting not "work"?

On July 19, Inner City Press observed and exclusively reported on the Panel's three members meeting in the UN's North Lawn building, with Lynn Pascoe, Nicholas Haysom and then across First Avenue in the UN's DC-1 building. Inner City Press quoted panel member Steven Ratner than no further “UN permission” will be needed for the panel to seek to travel to Sri Lanka.

At the UN's July 20 noon briefing, Inner City Press asked Spokesman Martin Nesirky for confirmation, including that the four month reporting clock had started, about who else the Panel met with and how the Panel will be staffed.

Mr. Nesirky, after congratulating Inner City Press for its observation of the panel, add that the members will also meet with the Croatian Assistant Secretary General representing Navi Pillay in New York, with Under Secretaries General John Holmes and Patricia O'Brien and, it emerges, with “chef de cabinet” Vijay Nambiar.

Beyond Mr. Nambiar's controversial involvement in the surrender of Tamil Tiger leaders who were subsequently murdered, Nambiar earlier this week wrote a six page defense of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, saying that he has “led from the front on important political issues from Gaza to Haiti to Sudan.” Interestingly, Sri Lanka was not listed, either because it is not deemed important, or Mr. Ban can't be said to have “led from the front.”

Nambiar's memo makes much of the UN's hiring rules. Inner City Press asked Nesirky whether UN hiring rules will apply to the staffing of the Panel of Experts.

Nesirky replied that the staffing is being done under the aegis of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

Nesirky announced that the top staffer will not be Ms. Pillay's friend Jessica Neuwirth, as Inner City Press was previously told by both well placed UN staff and ambassadors of both Permanent Five Security Council members and impacted member states.

Now, the top staffer will be Richard Barrett, who previously served in Nepal. “Score one against nepotism,” one of the source ambassadors told Inner City Press after Tuesday's noon briefing.

If the Panel's members are only in New York for three days and then leaving, when will they return, and when with the four month reporting clock begin?

Again, on June 22, UN Spokesman Nesirky said the Panel would finish "within four months of the commencement of its work." Some wonder if, just as Ban Ki-moon delayed over 80 days between announcing he would name a panel and actually naming one, now there is unlimited delay in starting the four month reporting clock.

© Inner City Press

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Sri Lanka worried about journalism?

By Sutirtho Patranobis | Hindustan Times
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The Sri Lankan government seems to be worried sick about the state of journalism here. What else could have prompted its sudden longing to introduce a new set of media ethics guidelines to promote professionalism and skills among journalists? The guidelines are to be bunched under the soon-to-be-formed 'media development authority' (MDA), which might sound wholly like a civic body where babus hunch over ageing type-writers, but which could at least partly be inspired by the Media Development Authority of Singapore.

And, which critics said is often used to sue journalists for defamation and help the Singapore government to regulate free speech.

But the media authority here will do no such thing, a minister promised.

"What we intend is to give a professional recognition to journalists in line with other professional bodies in the country. Journalists are the unofficial agents of the masses," media minister K Rambukwella said.

I am happily sure that the first journalists to be given any kind of recognition, official or otherwise, would certainly be the critical ones.

It's also heartening to know how one government can easily emulate another if an aspect of governance suits the first one's definition of best practices in a field.

For example, if the Lankan government was looking at the Singapore MDA model to vigorously promote journalistic ethics, Pakistan in June talked about setting up the 'media coordination committee on defence planning' – which sounded coincidentally like the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) here.

The MCNS, in short, has the job of keeping journalists always embedded psychologically with the government even if not in the flesh every time," he said.

In between these guidelines, some journalists – who need to be most urgently taught the virtues of professionalism – slip, fall and disappear.

Some, like Prageeth Eknaligoda, cartoonist and analyst for a pro-opposition website, seems to have disappeared for ever. Eknaligoda went missing on January 24, 2010; some said he is hiding for publicity, others pointed out that he's seeking asylum abroad.

But the government, for nearly six months, hasn't said anything about him.

In May, well-wishers put together an exhibition of his acerbic political illustrations titled 'Cave Art of the 21st Century'. The ethics symbolised in his works were not from this century but certainly from the cave man's era.

© Hindustan Times

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