Sri Lankan journalist’s disappearance remains unexplained

Committee to Protect Journalists
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Six months after the unexplained disappearance of Sri Lankan journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda, the government has refused to offer any assistance or provide answers to his wife, Sandhya. The government’s attitude is a clear indicator of the anti-media polices of President Mahindra Rajapaksa, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Eknelygoda, a political reporter and cartoonist for Lanka eNews, disappeared on the night of January 24, two days before the presidential elections that gave the incumbent president a sweeping victory that will keep him power for six more years.

“The media under Rajapaksa have been under tremendous pressure,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “The government’s silence over Prageeth Eknelygoda’s disappearance represents the continuation of policies that have allowed journalists killers’ to go unprosecuted, and driven scores of others into exile. The government must offer Sandhya Eknelygoda all its support in finding her husband.”

Sandhya Eknelygoda told CPJ she last saw her husband when he left for work around 7:30 a.m. on the morning of January 24. Since then, repeated visits to police stations, appeals to members of parliament, and personal requests to Rajapaksa and other members of his government have been met with silence.

With no answers forthcoming from the government, Sandhya Eknelygoda says she will start organizing prayer vigils at temples across the country. The first will be at the Kaali Amma Kovil Hindu temple in Colombo at 5 p.m. Saturday.

In a report released in May, In Sri Lanka, no peace dividend for press, CPJ highlighted Eknelygoda’s case, noting that even with the end of Sri Lanka’s war with Tamil rebels, repression of independent media has not eased, and journalists still face violence, harassment, and detention.

CPJ reported extensively on attacks on journalists in its special report Sri Lanka: Failure to Investigate and recently ranked Sri Lanka as the fourth-worst country in the world for impunity in attacks on journalists. Twelve journalists have been killed and scores of others attacked since the Rajapaksa government came to power in 2004, with no convictions in any of the cases.

CPJ’s Journalists Assistance program counts more than 40 Sri Lankan journalists living outside of the country who left out of fear for their safety.

© Committee to Protect Journalists

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Ban Ki-moon's UN Called Secret on Corruption, Silent on Torture from Sri Lanka to Sudan

By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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The widening gap between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's rhetoric and what his administration actually thinks and does was on display on July 22. Ban preaches about transparency and accountability, but he was represented Thursday by a person who opaquely demanded to be identified as a “senior UN official” - that is, without accountability.

Ban's “senior UN official,” when asked by Inner City Press why under Ban moves toward a UN Freedom of Information Act were curtailed, replied, “ask the member states, let them legislate, then we'll do it.” He paused. “If the member states insist, our way of decision making would have to be modified” for “this kind of perfect transparency.”

But back on May 3, Ban intoned that “I welcome the global trend towards new laws which recognize the universal right to publicly held information. Unfortunately, these new laws do not always translate into action. Requests for official information are often refused, or delayed, sometimes for years... Too often, this happens because of a culture of secrecy and a lack of accountability” Ya don't say.

Inner City Press asked Ban's senior UN official to explain what if anything he has done about the military dictatorship and impending scam election in Myanmar, a country where Ban's administration allowed and covered by the theft of over 20% of UN aid funds by the Than Shwe regime using foreign exchange requirement the UN never complained about until exposed by this publication.

The official declined to give any specifics, but said

“If you are leading on several fronts, you are not leading on any. Things take time; some things take time. Effort for us is a great thing. The kind of effort you make on particular issues is important. There is a definition of bureaucratic action: it is like elephants mating. There’s a lot of noise, and it take years to see the result.”

But Ban has had more than three years, and in the next six months on elections in not only Myanmar but also South Sudan, leadership is sorely lacking. Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky this week why the UN has said nothing about reported torture of South Sudan referendum supporters. Nesirky said, it's “not our job to police the police.”

The senior UN official on Thursday, speaking more general of Ban, said that

“He has called himself a carpenter, not an architect. The way he handled climate change was to take on the larger role. But on other issues – DRC, Sudan – he’s taken the nuts and bolts role. He has generally had a predisposition to look to practical aspects; he has taken a practical approach. That is part of his training.”

Apparently, “practical” means staying silent in the face of torture. Ban's training was as South Korea's minister of trade and foreign affairs. In this role, he praised a joint Daewoo and Indian pipeline across Myanmar as a “win - win.”

Ban also befriended Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, such that he remained sickeningly silent as Rajapaksa's forces killed tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in 2009, and imprisoned hundreds of thousands more, using UN funds.

Ban visited the prison camps and smiled as Tamil children as gunpoint sang his name. That's not nuts and bolts, one wag said: that's just nuts.

But who will tell him? The senior UN official continued:

“He has a wide spectrum of senior managers; not all yes-men as such. In every management team you have ones who prefer the subrosa approach, and ones who prefer the public approach. There is a necessity for the SG to insist on a certain modicum of discipline. That’s not very different than what would happen in any governmental or private sector management team.”

Not all yes-man as such. No, it is a multi-cultural and multi-lingual Organization, so there are also the men and women of Si and Oui and iwa. Ban himself should have, and some say soon will have to, deliver his own defense.

© Inner City Press

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Related articles

• UN official blasts Ban Ki-moon on accountability (Daily Caller)
• UN official blasts Ban Ki-moon on accountability (Seattle Times)
• Fallout continues over bashing of U.N. chief (CNN)

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Sri Lanka: Five senior journalists to be recognized

By Rifthi Ali | Daily Mirror
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Five senior journalists in the country are to be honoured for their commitment towards press freedom by the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka (EGSL) and the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) at their annual Journalism Awards Ceremony to be held next Tuesday.

Among those being recognized for their brave efforts to defend press freedom would be slain Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickramathunga who will be given this award posthumously. Others receiving awards on this day would be former Suder Oli Editor N.Vidyatharan, Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association General Secretary Poddala Jayantha, former Rivira Editor Upali Thennakoon and former Outreach Magazine Editor J.S Tissainayagam, who will receive Merit Awards.

© Daily Mirror

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Sri Lanka Army personnel to be settled on uprooted civilians’ land in Ki’linochchi district

Tamil Net
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Five thousand houses constructed in Mu’ruka’ndi area in Ki’linochchi district including Skanthapuram along A9 road are to be settled in August with Sri Lanka Army (SLA) senior and junior officials and their families permanently while the uprooted civilians brought to be resettled in Skanthapuram are left in a school building by Sri Lanka government officials, sources in Ki’linochchi said.

The above prefabricated houses bought with international funds donated for resettlement in Vanni are being transported to Ki’linochchi in heavy vehicles and are assembled on cement foundation and flooring on selected places, NGO circles said.

Sri Lanka government, with its scheme to construct 12,000 prefabricated houses in the above area intends to settle the SLA personnel with their families permanently.

In the first stage of this scheme of Sinhalicization, 5,000 houses are to be settled with SLA personnel and their families in the first weeks of August.

No one except SLA personnel and labourers is allowed into this housing scheme that is being constructed in haste.

Sinhalese building masons are working along with SLA personnel in constructing the houses, sources in Ki'linochchi who had taken the snaps of the houses said.

© Tamil Net

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Remembering “Black July” to encourage Sri Lankan reconciliation

By Melani Manel Perera | Asia News
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Catholic communities and NGOs are marking today the 27th anniversary of the Black July riots that left thousands of Tamil civilians dead at the hands of ethnic Sinhalese on 23 July 1983. Remembrance ceremonies are being held in the hope that reconciliation might come to the people of Sri Lanka.

After Tamil Tiger fighters ambushed and killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers on that tragic day, 27 years ago, ethnic Sinhalese attacked ethnic Tamils. Up to 3,000 Tamils are thought to have died in the violence, 18,000 Tamil homes and 5,000 shops were destroyed, whilst more than 100,000 Tamils fled to India, setting off a civil war that ended only last year with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers.

“Eyewitnesses and victims reported that on the streets cars were stopped by gangs and the people inside were asked whether they were Sinhalese or Tamil,” wrote Patricia Hyndman, senior lecturer in Law at the University of New South Wales, in Democracy in peril : Sri Lanka : a country in crisis : report to the LAWASIA Human Rights Standing Committee (1985).

“Some Sinhalese words are extremely difficult for people who do not speak the language fluently to pronounce,” she explained. Hence, “people were tested by being made to pronounce these words. The mobs were also demanding to see identity cards to establish whether or not people were Tamils . . . . People identified as Tamils as a result of the questioning were told to get out of their cars and their cars were set alight . . . . In cases where any resistance was offered, killings were likely to take place.”

AsiaNews has spoken to people, including ordinary people as well as Sinhalese Buddhist monks, who are involved in Colombo in activities designed to encourage national reconciliation.

“Tragic events like those of Black July can be an opportunity for genuine national reconciliation,” said Rukshan Fernando, head of the Lawyers and Society Trust. “Sadly, Sri Lankan society seems far from” that goal. “Not only July but every month of the year continues to be black for thousands of people who have had family members killed, missing or detained without charges . . . . Instead of recognizing wrongs, the authorities seem eager to deny and cover them up.”

Fr Sarath Iddamalgoda, a human rights activist, has also not seen any steps towards reconciliation. “Black July was one of the greatest mistakes committed by Sinhalese fanatics,” he said. “Even now, that the war is over, Sinhalese leaders do not seem interested in power sharing. What they want is to control Tamil areas. Genuine reconciliation will only occur by seeking a shared political solution.”

© Asia News

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Sri Lanka: returning home to nothing

By Olav A. Saltbones | Norwegian Red Cross
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The physical scars left by the war in north Sri Lanka run as deep as the emotional ones. There are ruins where homes once stood, and 25 years of war have stopped development and destroyed livelihoods.

Ouvurasa Anuba, 32, is the mother of two young children. She lost her husband in the final weeks of the war between the army and the ‘Tamil Tigers’ (LTTE). She also lost her mother and father-in-law during the conflict. Her youngest child, Varmina, is two and a half – old enough to have memories of the war, but too young to understand it. At five, her older brother, Thanashi, understands that he lost his father to the
war.

The conflict saw hundreds of thousands of Tamils flee the country – many of them to Norway – but a similar number fled to other parts of Sri Lanka. Now, they are returning home to rebuild what the war destroyed.

Ouvurasa and the children returned to their home in February this year. Her husband used to earn a living by selling goods at the local market. Now she doesn’t know what the family will live on as she is worried she won’t be able to find a job. For now, she is focusing on rebuilding the family home.

“My house was destroyed and there is only one wall left. I want to keep the one wall that is still standing, and use it as a part of the new house,” she says.

Ouvurasa is receiving support from the Red Cross to build the new house on the plot of the old house.

Loss of livelihood

On the other side of town, another family is also rebuilding their house.

S. Ranganathan and his family have so far rebuilt the foundation wall. Whilst the construction is ongoing, they are living in a makeshift shelter with a corrugated iron roof.

Ranganathan was badly injured in a bomb attack. He received first aid from the Red Cross, and fortunately they managed to save both his foot and his life. Sadly, he lost six members of his family in a bomb attack as he was fleeing to safety with his family. Some of his other relatives live in the house across the road where they have put up a memorial altar with a picture of the six dead family members.

His injuries prevent him from doing physical labour. He shows the scar that runs up his thigh.

“I am a farmer, but now I need help to till the land. I hope we never have to experience war again. I hope for peace and harmony around the world,” he says.

New homes desperately needed

The Red Cross estimates that more than a 100,000 new homes are needed in northern Sri Lanka, but there are not enough resources. It is expected that only a few hundred homes will be completed before the monsoon season starts in October.

“The internally displaced people, who are returning to their villages, are coming home to nothing. More than 300,000 people are in a desperate humanitarian situation,” says Børge Brende, Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross.

“When they come back to their villages, they must prove ownership of the house or land, and not everyone can do that. So they are given sheets of corrugated iron and they use whatever they can find – sticks, planks and bricks to try to build a house. In the meantime, they live in school buildings, public buildings or under tents and tarpaulins next to their destroyed houses,” explains Brende.

Working with the The Sri Lanka Red Cross Society and IFRC, the German Red Cross is also working to build new homes and repair damage to others.

“The need is huge. As many as perhaps over 100,000 homes must be built for those who are returning from other parts of Sri Lanka and from abroad. This is not a task either we or others can ignore,” says Brende.

“The Norwegian Red Cross made a major effort in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. We are about to complete that operation now, but we cannot leave Sri Lanka with the challenges the country still faces in the northern areas,” says Brende.

In recent months, several thousand people have been forced to flee again, either back to host families in other parts of the country, or to camps for internally displaced people.

“In the largest of them, Mannik Farm, where more than 280,000 people stayed at the peak, more than 40,000 people remain. Some of these have been forced back there because they have nothing to return to or rebuild in their original villages. Some have lost all their papers and documents of ownership. Some had nothing before they fled and they have nothing now. So we must help these people”, says Brende.

© International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies

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