Targeting media: A serious threat to already worsened democracy in Jaffna

JDS Features
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The latest attack on the news editor of the Jaffna-based Uthayan newspaper, Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan should not be understood merely as an isolated attack on media freedom and freedom of speech in Sri Lanka. It undoubtedly bears far reaching implications and reveals the vicious nature of the renewed and accelerated violent attacks on democratic rights of Sri Lanka's Tamil people. This cowardly act on unarmed media man has been carried out by sinister elements that have got the full blessings and backings of the political and military authorities in the country.

The 59-year old news editor was on his way home from the office after work when the two armed men attacked him from behind using sharp iron rods and cables.

He was rushed to the Jaffna Teaching hospital with serious injuries to his head. Kuhanathan’s house is located within 200 meters from the office and the attack on him has notably taken place barely 30 meters away from a military check-point on the Kasturiar road-Navalar road junction.

Reports from Jaffna now reveal that the attack has been pre-planned as the neighbours of Kuhanathan have noticed three unknown men lingering suspiciously around the neighbourhood for several hours on the previous night.

This is the second attack on Uthayan journalists within the past two months. On May 28, 2011 one of its reporters S. Kavitharan was attacked by armed thugs in a similar style when he was on his way to work.

The Uthayan newspaper and its staff, including its editor, have been under numerous attacks in the past few years. Several of its journalists and even the newspaper distributors have been killed and more have been threatened with death.

No one has been brought to book to date and the culture of impunity continues to prevail. Undeterred by such threats and attacks, the Uthayan newspaper continues to print daily tabloid and publish articles and news items that even the mainstream newspapers choose to censor for fear of reprisals.

The attack on the top journalist immediately after the conclusion of the local government elections amidst disproportionate military presence in the northern Jaffna peninsula, has made one thing repeatedly clear -- that the government’s war on media and democracy is still actively on.

The government, coming under ever increasing international pressure over the wide-spread war crime allegations during the final weeks of the war in May 2009, hurriedly conducted the elections for the local councils even without resettling the war-displaced civilians in the north. This was mainly aimed at hoodwinking the international community that the democracy has been fully restored in the former rebel heartlands.

The government overtly used state resources, including the military and police force, for election propaganda purposes during the run upto the local poll that was held on July 23.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa flanked by many top cabinet ministers camped in the north and addressed not less than five election rallies there, persuading the war-ravaged people using all the tactics at his disposal to vote for his party. Attacking an opposition rally in Alaveddy in Valikamam north, using military personnel in civvies was one such tactic.

This shows how desperately the government wanted to win this election.

If it promised the people with various development projects to rebuild the north, it also threatened the people that the victory for the government’s coalition would be inevitable for release of thousands of their beloved Tamil youth currently held in the detention and torture camps in the south.

The conduct of the very election was widely criticized and condemned. The soldiers both in military uniform and civvies went to the extent of intimidating and threatening the voters either to vote for the government coalition or to stay away from exercising their franchise. Voters were intimidated and their ballot papers were forcibly taken away at gun-pint by elements supportive of the government.

Still, the people of the north took the risk and voted for the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which has won 18 of the 23 local councils, dealing a humiliating defeat to the hawkish Rajapaksa government.

Despite wining the local election hands down, the TNA, which was once close to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has urged the Election Commissioner to annul the poll in many areas, citing the scale of poll-related violence during and in the run up to the poll.

Angered and humiliated by the verdict of the people, the government appears to have reactivated its paramilitary groups and killings squads to intimidate and carry out attack on local leaders and media as means of political reprisals.

Unable to stomach the election defeat in the hands of the TNA, the government’s election propaganda in-charge Minister Basil Rajapaksa has sarcastically remarked that the people in the north has given the mandate to the TNA just to fix the street lights and water pipes.

In the above context the attack on Kuhanathan should not be seen in isolation. It is a clear indication of how things are unfolding systematically in the north, which is heavily guarded by over 40,000 troops. The attack has also proved beyond any reasonable doubt that mere statements of condemnation and appeal for good governance by the all powerful international community are nothing but futile exercise.

Holding an election is only an aspect of democracy and will not reflect the full restoration of democracy or normalcy as the government is desperately trying to make it out to be.

Therefore, immediate demilitarisation of the north is a key to any meaningful exercise to restore democracy and normalcy as the disproportionate military presence in the north is a serious threat to the will and the independence of the people in the area.

Until then the so-called democracy will inevitably be at the mercy of the heavily armed military personnel and paramilitary outfits, which are obviously groomed and controlled by the political authorities in the island nation.

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SRI LANKA: SENIOR TAMIL JOURNALIST BRUTALLY ATTACKED BY ARMED MEN IN JAFFNA

Photo courtesy: Tamilnet

JDS News
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A top editor of the Jaffna-based 'Uthayan' newspaper has been brutally attacked and seriously wounded by unknown armed men on Friday (29) in the heart of the heavily-guarded northern Jaffna town.

According to media sources in Jaffna, the news editor of 'Uthayan', Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan (59) was on his way home by foot from the office after work when the two armed men unleashed their brutal attack on him using iron rods and cables.

He was rushed to the Jaffna teaching hospital with serious injuries. The attack has come within a week after the local government election, in which the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 18 of the 23 local councils.

Kuhanathan’s house is located within 200 meters from the office and according to eye-witnesses, the assault on him has taken place barely 30 meters away from a military check-point on the Kasturiar road-Navalar road junction.

This is the second attack on Uthayan journalist within the past two months. On May 28, 2011 one of its reporters S. Kavitharan was attacked by armed thugs when he was on his way to work in a similar style of attack.

The attack is the latest in a long line of unsolved provocations against the newspaper, which prides itself on reporting matters that are usually shunned by other news organizations elsewhere in the country.

'Uthayan' is the only Tamil tabloid which has not ceased publication in the war-ravaged northern peninsula despite a three-decade long civil war, which came to an end in May 2009.

The tabloid newspaper, celebrated its silver jubilee in February this year, has come under attack several times in the previous years and journalists and other staff were killed by paramilitary and other forces.

Kuhanathan survived several attacks in the past, the worst being the attack on 'Uthayan' office on 02 May, 2006, a day before the World Press Freedom day.

On that day, an armed gang, believed to be the members of a government backed para military, forced their way into 'Uthayan' office at 8.00 pm, calling out for Kuhanathan before spraying volleys of bullet at random.

Kuhanathan narrowly survived in the attack hiding in the washroom, but two 'Uthayan' employees were killed and two more wounded in the attack. The wounded are now permanently maimed.

This targeted attack has resulted in Kuhanathan to stay put in the office for several years, fearing persecution.

On 24 January, 2006 'Uthayan's' Trincomalee reporter, S.S.Suhirtharajan was killed by unknown gunmen after the newspaper published photographs of the five students, who were killed by government forces in a close-range shooting in the eastern port city.

On 15, May, 2006 Uthayan delivery driver named S. Baskaran was killed and another Uthayan journalist S. Rajeevarman was shot dead on 29 April 2007.

No one has been brought to justice to date.

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Body of missing Sri Lankan human rights activist 'found': UN

AFP | Google News
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The body of a prominent Sri Lankan human rights activist missing since February last year has been found, the United Nations said Friday (29).

Pattani Razeek, managing trustee of non-governmental organisation the Community Trust Fund, was exhumed by police on Thursday after a tip-off from two suspects arrested in relation to the case, the UN said in a statement.

Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Sri Lankan authorities to "expedite" investigations and prosecute those involved in the crime.

UN records show that there are 5,653 outstanding enforced and involuntary disappearances in Sri Lanka, the statement said.

"We hope that similar progress will be made in uncovering the truth behind the disappearance of several thousand individuals both during and since Sri Lanka?s conflict," Shamdasani said.

Among those missing is a freelance journalist and cartoonist, Prageeth Ekneligoda, who vanished on the eve of the January 2010 presidential election.

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Sri Lanka 'War Crimes': Soldiers ordered to 'finish the job'

Channel 4
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Two Sri Lankans who witnessed the violent final showdown of the country's 26-year civil war claim a top military commander and Sri Lanka's defence secretary ordered war crimes.

One of these eyewitnesses, an army officer, accuses Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa - the president's brother - of ordering Brigadier Shavendra Silva to execute Tamil rebel leaders, whose safe surrender had been guaranteed by the president.

The other new witness, who was also operating with Brigadier Shavendra Silva's 58 Division on the front line during the final assault, claims the Brigadier was ordered by the defence secretary "to finish the job by whatever means necessary."

'Licence to kill'

He said this was interpreted by the soldiers as a licence to kill. He described how he had watched as Sri Lankan forces shot dead unarmed Tamil women and children. It is the first time this allegation has been made.

The war was won by Sri Lankan government soldiers two years ago. The rebel leadership was virtually wiped out.

As the army closed in, around 130,000 Tamil civilians had been trapped on an ever-shrinking shard of land on the north-east of the island alongside the besieged rebel fighters, who are accused of using them as human shields.

The Sri Lankan president said no civilians were killed by the army during the final assault. But the United Nations now believes that up 40,000 civilians were killed during the last few weeks of the conflict. Others estimate the toll to be higher.

Most are thought to have died as a result of gun and mortar fire allegedly directed on them deliberately by government forces.

After repeated requests for an interview with Shavendra Silva - now retired and promoted to the rank of major-general - Channel 4 News went to confront him with these allegations in New York, where he serves as Sri Lanka's deputy ambassador to the UN.

© Channel 4

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Sri Lanka's deaf march for equal rights, jobs

By Bharatha MallawarachiHARATHA | Associated Press
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About 1,000 deaf Sri Lankans took to the streets of capital Colombo on Friday to demand equal rights, social recognition and more sign language translators, with an official saying only about four are currently qualified.

The protesters from the Sri Lanka Central Federation of the Deaf held a rally opposite Colombo's main railroad station to highlight their plight in a country still struggling to return to normalcy after a 25-year brutal civil war that ended in 2009.

The federation's Vice President Anil Jayawardena said the community of 73,843 people, according to a 2001 survey, is facing hardships in daily life because sign language is not properly recognized.

"As a result, we face severe difficulties when we go to a bank, courts or to get medical treatment," Jayawardena told The Associated Press, speaking through a translator.

He said the situation is further aggravated because of the shortage of qualified sign language translators.

"There are only three or four such translators and besides, no meaningful steps have been taken to help the deaf people carry out their work in the society," he said.

Sri Lanka has a population of 20 million.

He urged the government to take effective measures to see that "sign language is given proper place and ensure the deaf people equal access to education, jobs and health care."

The protesters displayed a huge banner reading "Ensure rights of deaf community" and carried placards with words "Deaf won't take no, Honk 4 Deaf" and "No more negative attitude."

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Sri Lanka's ethnic polarization persists strongly despite peace

By Shihar Aneez | Reuters
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Sri Lanka's old war zone has been at peace for two years but the minority Tamils who populate it say they are hungry for jobs, despite the economic revival the government has offered instead of the political powers for which Tamils first took up arms.

In Sri Lanka's north and east, people last week voted for the first time in at least 12 years and as many as 29 to elect local councils, two years after the military wiped out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end a 25-year war.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) swept 250 councils out of 299, but lost miserably in predominantly Tamil electorates, in areas the Tigers wanted to turn into a Tamil-only nation.

Tamils backed a former Tiger proxy political party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), with a convincing win.

The elections, analysts said, clearly showed that ethnic polarization between Rajapaksa's Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority remains a fact of Sri Lankan life. Many have warned the tension could spark into conflict again.

"Since the war ended, we feel Tamils are being treated like slaves," Thangarajah Pushparajah, a 60-year old condiment seller in the northern city of Jaffna, told Reuters. "I am not saying the LTTE did better, but we are not comfortable now."

He lost his son, whom he says was forcibly recruited by the LTTE for his swimming skill, in 2000 during a battle with the Sri Lanka navy. He was 17.

Since independence in 1948, Sri Lanka's Tamils have suffered various forms of discrimination, violence and killing under successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority, and oppression under the violently authoritarian Tigers.

E. Saravanapavan, a Jaffna district TNA legislator and a newspaper publisher who has been attacked in the past by pro-government elements, said there are about 100,000 unemployed youth in his constituency alone, in the Northern Province.

"The government has failed to create a single job for these Tamils," he said. "This government is creating room for Tamil people to resort to other ways, like an armed struggle or to bring pressure through the international community."

VIOLENCE TURNS VOTE TIDE

The Northern Province's economy grew 22.9 year-on-year in 2010, but still had the lowest per-capita income in the nation of 21 million, according to central bank figures.

Rajapaksa prioritised economic growth there under a $2 billion plan dubbed "The Northern Spring", mostly focused on infrastructure, but has been slow to give political concessions to Tamils, which could alienate some of his Sinhalese vote base.

However, he is increasingly under pressure as the TNA is backed by India and the United States in its call for an amicable political solution to avert renewed conflict, with calls for a war crimes investigation the leverage.

Many Tamils Reuters spoke to said they were reluctant to vote because they were not confident the government was genuine about reconciliation, in spite of the economic development work.

Others said they opted to vote for the opposition after the government failed to stop elements linked to the military and a militant pro-government Tamil party from carrying out pre-poll violence and intimidation.

But voting for the former Tiger-backed the TNA does not offer much hope for political influence: it has only 14 members in a 225-seat parliament dominated by the president's alliance.

Without the slain LTTE founder Veluplillai Prabhakaran's iron-fisted rule, many of the Tamils Reuters spoke to feel there is still a leadership vacuum.

"I doubt if TNA could win what we want through negotiations with this government," a 32-year old man told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Others were just happy for the end of violence.

"We need freedom to live," 60-year-old Selvam Vallipillai, told Reuters in Killinochchi, the LTTE's former self-declared capital city.

Born in Rajapaksa's native Hambantota in the south of the island, she fled to Kilinochchi in 1958 after ethnic clashes. But the LTTE executed her son publicly on March 18, 2007, accusing him of prostitution and burglary.

"Now at least we have freedom. We don't need the LTTE here after. We all like to live with unity with other communities."

© The Vancouver Sun

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Former Sri Lankan President speaks out on 'Killing Fields'

Channel 4
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Former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga delivered a landmark speech in Colombo on Sunday in which she spoke of the horror her children expressed after viewing Sri Lanka's Killing Fields.

Jon Snow's critically-acclaimed investigation into the final weeks of the quarter-century-long civil war between the government and the secessionist rebels, the Tamil Tigers, featured devastating new video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity - some of the most horrific footage Channel 4 has ever broadcast.

Kumaratunga became the world's first female president in1994, governing Sri Lanka until 2005. Both of her parents had formerly held the office of Prime Minister in Sri Lanka.

In her address at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute entitled ‘Economic Development, Inclusive Societies and Peace' she spoke of the battle for peace in the country and her dismay over the failure of successive governments to resolve the treatment of the Tamil minority which led to the formation of the armed separatist group, the Tiger Tamils LTTE.

Kumaratunga called for Sri Lanka's to have the humility to admit that they have failed as a nation, to accept their mistakes, make amendments and she criticised the, "continued denial of proven facts and abuse of our honest critics will not resolve the problem for anyone." She went on to say: "I shall remember till the end of my days the morning when my 28 year-old son called me, sobbing on the phone to say how ashamed he was to call himself as Sinhalese and a Lankan, after he saw on the UK television a 50 minute documentary called Killing Fields of Sri Lanka which I also had the great misfortune of seeing. My daughter followed suit, saying similar things and expressing shock and horror that our countrymen could indulge in such horrific acts. I was proud of my son and daughter, proud that they cared for the others, proud that they have grown up to be the man and woman their father and mother wanted them to be."

An edited report on the speech is available to be viewed here, on a Colombo-based news website.

Kumaratunga's speech follows other politicians who have spoken out about Sri Lanka's Killing Fields. After it was screened in Australia, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described it as, "deeply disturbing" and said: "(The) Human Rights Council can't simply push this to one side. Action needed." When asked about the film at Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron told MPs that the Sri Lanka government, "does need to be investigated" and, "lessons need to be learned." And in a statement issued after the film aired in the UK, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt said he was "shocked by the horrific scenes" in Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, and "if the Sri Lankan government does not respond we will support the international community in revisiting all options available to press the Sri Lankan Government to fulfil its obligations."

© Channel 4

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Tamil parties make strong showing in Sri Lanka

By Lydia Polgreen | The New York Times
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Voters in northern and eastern Sri Lanka gave an alliance of parties closely linked to the defeated Tamil Tiger insurgency majorities in 18 of 26 local council elections, according to results released Sunday.

The elections allowed residents in many areas the first chance in years to vote after bearing the brunt of two decades of ethnic conflict, and the results underscored just how deeply divided the country remains two years after the fighting ended.

The Tamil National Alliance, a collection of political parties that long served as the political wing of the Tamil Tigers, won control of nearly two-thirds of the local councils in the north and east, according to election commission figures. The party led by Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, swept the council elections elsewhere in the country.

The local elections were billed as an essential step toward healing Sri Lanka’s wounds from years of civil war. Sri Lanka’s government has pledged to rebuild the north and east, which were devastated in the war, and promised greater autonomy to regional and local governments.

Tamil insurgents rose up in part because they felt that the central government, controlled by the Sinhalese majority, discriminated against minorities. The Tamil language was suppressed for decades, and thousands of Tamils were killed in ethnic violence, culminating in a series of bloody pogroms in 1983.

The war ended in May 2009, but reconciliation remains a long way off, according to a report released last week by the International Crisis Group that assessed Sri Lanka’s progress.

“The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has refused to acknowledge, let alone address, the Tamil minority’s legitimate grievances against the state,” the report said. “The government has increasingly cut minorities and opponents out of decisions on their economic and political futures rather than work toward reconciliation.”

Government officials said that the largely peaceful elections were a victory in themselves.

“The people had used ballots instead of bullets,” Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena told a local radio station on Sunday, according to Reuters. “That’s a great victory for us.”

Sri Lanka’s government has come under harsh scrutiny for its handling of the war against the Tamil Tigers, a ruthless insurgency that pioneered tactics like using children as soldiers and women as suicide bombers.

In the last weeks of the war, hundreds of thousands of civilians were stuck between the rebels and government forces, and the United Nations later found credible evidence that during that period the government indiscriminately shelled unarmed people, hospitals and aid workers.

The United Nations concluded that tens of thousands of people had died in the final weeks of the conflict. It also accused the Tamil Tigers of forcing children to fight and using civilians as human shields.

A documentary released by Britain’s Channel 4 featured graphic video of what were said to be army atrocities against civilians, including summary executions. The documentary, which was broadcast in June, prompted new calls for an international war crimes investigation.

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Tamils sceptical of development, voting in Sri Lanka's war-weary north

By Shihar Aneez | Reuters
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Sri Lanka's minority Tamils say President Mahinda Rajapaksa's post-war development and infrastructure projects in the former war zone in the island's north have yet to address their real concerns and have not excluded their participation.

Sri Lanka's northern cities hold local polls for the first time in many years on Saturday amid opposition and poll monitor complaints of intimidation.

Healing after a 25-year war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in May 2009, Tamils in the northern city of Jaffna, long the centre of Sri Lanka's Tamil culture, feel there is little to gain from voting.

"There were a number of elections like this and a change has never happened. I have little doubt that this is also going to be the same," said Thuvaraki Nakeswaran, 22, a journalism student who will vote for the first time in her life.

"I will vote for those who think to help Tamils."

She is among 350,000 voters in 16 constituencies registered to elect local leaders. But voting in Jaffna, as it did in war time, will take place with a heavy military presence.

Tamils in Jaffna are reluctant to speak in public due to the presence of government intelligence officers and soldiers, and many Reuters approached gave a brusque "No comment."

Free expression has not been a way of life for decades: either the government or the LTTE routinely killed, beat, harassed or otherwise punished critics via unidentified gangs.

Rajapaksa has launched many infrastructure projects under a rebuilding programme he has dubbed the "The Northern Spring", some of which are rejuvenating roads and railways that fell into neglect during the war.

But building trust between Rajapaksa, who is from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese ethnic majority, and Tamils is a difficult task. No government since independence in 1948 has given Tamils much confidence, and many have grown up around the LTTE's rabidly separatist and anti-Sinhalese doctrine.

"I am your friend; I am your relative; You can trust me," one poster of Rajapaksa says. "We will build our villages together."

The campaign posters of Rajapaksa and candidates from his ally, the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), were all over Jaffna, but those of the opposition were scarce.

SELFISH MOTIVE

The evidence of development and economic revival, which Rajapaksa has said will help Tamils rebuild their lives, are ample in Jaffna. Numerous private banks have opened up in the town and many roads are under construction.

"There is a selfish motive behind the government's development programme and it's Sinhalisation that really has been taking place," a 59-year old man told Reuters on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal.

Sinhalisation, a term espoused by the LTTE, refers to the moving of Sinhalese people into areas the separatist group said were traditionally Tamil-majority, throughout Sri Lanka's nearly three millennia of history.

"All the jobs created through these projects are given to Sinhalese people," the man said. "The government has never involved us in the development projects either through providing job opportunities or giving the contracts to Tamils here."

Thambithurai Hariharan, a 55-year-old farmer, complained that the development has not helped bring down the high cost of living or created jobs for the unemployed.

"Now some agricultural produce is brought here from the rest of the country despite being grown here. That has reduced our profit margins," he said.

© Reuters

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Sri Lanka local polls get underway

Xinhua
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Voting in the second stage of Sri Lanka's local elections was underway on Saturday.

Two and a half million people are to vote at more than 2200 polling stations with some 20 political parties and independent groups contesting the elections.

Sri Lankan Tamils in the former rebel held town of Kilinochchi in the north of the country turned up in small numbers early Saturday to cast their votes and select a local council representative after more than 25 years.

The local council elections are being conducted in several parts of Sri Lanka but the focus is on Kilinochchi as well as Jaffna in the north where former war displaced minority Tamil communities will vote, two years after a 30 years war came to a bloody end.

Most of the displaced people were in temporary camps since the end of the war, in conditions which drew criticism from international human rights groups, and were later resettled over the past several months.

Saturday's elections were already marred by reports that some Tamil voters were intimidated or had their voting cards forcefully taken away by unidentified groups.

"We have received complaints of unidentified groups visiting the homes of some people in Kilinochchi and forcefully taking away their voting cards last night," Rohana Hettiarachchi from a local election monitoring group told Xinhua.

There were also reports of a house belonging to a supporter of a Tamil political party being set on fire in Killinochchi.

The election was going ahead with one death reported so far in Anuradhapura, in north-central Sri Lanka.

A police unit tasked with monitoring election related violence also said that the polls were so far being conducted in a peaceful manner.

Gamini Navaratne of the police elections unit said that they have been given strict instructions to take stern action on anyone attempting to disrupt the polls.

The election results are expected to be announced Sunday and the ruling party led by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is expected to win the ongoing elections.

In the first stage of the elections held in over 200 local councils in March, the ruling party recorded a landslide victory.

© Xinhua

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Colombo uses white-van to harass, threaten Radio Netherlands journalists

JDS News
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The Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) said on Thursday that two of its undercover journalists to Sri Lanka have been harassed and threatened using white-van, forcing them to abandon their mission half-way and return home for safety.

“Radio Netherlands Worldwide recently sent two undercover journalists to Sri Lanka. They wanted to see the post-conflict situation in the north and east two years after the bloody defeat of the Tamil Tigers. However they were “white-vanned” and forced to abort their trip and return to the Netherlands,” the RNW said on Thursday.

On an interview by the staff presenter Dheera Sujan after their return to Netherlands, the two journalists, who have faced the white-van threat, said on Thursday that their motive behind the visit to Sri Lanka was to find out the truth of the widespread claims “that the Tamils are still living under a lot of pressure and there are a lot of human rights abuses in the North and the East of the country”.

Police raid

They said that a team of ten police personnel, including the regional chief of police, has visited their hotel room on a late midnight and interrogated them at length in a threatening manner, after receiving a tip of their presence there.

“You can imagine, ten people coming into the hotel room in the middle of the night and interrogating -- it is quite intimidating,” said the male journalist, who is called as Philip considering the safety of the people they talked to in Sri Lanka.

White van

Another journalist, called here as Olivia said that a group of men in a white van have followed the bus they were travelling to another part of the country and waylaid them.

“They tried to rob and they succeeded partly in that. It was very scary,” she said.

Philip said that one of the four men has stolen their larger bag while the other man attacked Olivia and tried to rip the bag off her back.

“Whilst this was going on, another man jumped in front of the van wielding a gun waving it around. We wondered if this is just a straight forward piece of criminality. But everybody we’ve spoken to since then including embassy staff and NGO staff and journalists who have experience having lived in Sri Lanka - everybody says ‘you have been white-vanned’,” he said.

“This is an expression in Sri Lanka. This is how the authorities intimidate people, especially journalists. A gang of thugs who come along and either kidnap or in this case stage a robbery to make you feel very unsafe,” journalist Philip said.

Impact of Channel 4 documentary

“Anybody talking about the UN in Sri Lanka today run the risk of alerting the police to them, because the Sri Lankan government is very sensitive of any accusation of war crimes following the Channel 4 documentary which was telecast a few weeks ago,” he said.

Sri Lankan authorities have been routinely threatening, intimidating, harassing, kidnapping, torturing and killing local journalists in the past, but this is for the first time that they have targeted foreign journalists, that too using the notorious white van.

“We are coming into a new period in Sri Lanka. For the last few months, what is happening is a dossier being built by the international media, which could potentially lead to an international tribunal that will bring senior politicians and senior figures from the war and from the present day to book. I think that the powerful people in Sri Lanka fear that,” he said.

Rubbishing the government’s claim of successful progress of resettlement and rehabilitation, the Netherlands journalists said that the actual situation on the ground does not reflect any of that sort.

Ready to fight again

They said they managed to speak to at least nine former Tamil Tiger rebels who have been under “rehabilitation” and that they were “ready to take up arms again if the conditions under which Tamils have to live in the North and the East continued into the year ahead”.

“They said even though, they have no organisation and the Tamil Tigers or LTTE infrastructure that ran much of the north and east of the country for many years till the end of the war in May 2009 does not exist anymore, they still maintain that they would look to fight again without the support of the leadership and without Velupillai Prabhakaran,” Philip said.

“That spoke volumes of the state of despair that a lot of Tamils are still living in,” he said, adding that the victims were mainly expecting an international investigation.

He said that the ex-Tamil Tiger rebels have expressed willingness to face any such international investigation, which in contrast, was not the case for the Tamil Tiger leadership in the past. They refute liability on their side in the past.

Scared to talk

Commenting on her take on the plight of the people they have met, Olivia said that they were “very scared of the authorities, very careful of what they want to say and that’s why we also have to be careful in what we say about what we saw there”.

“The people are still in danger for meeting us and that says a lot about the state of the country at the moment,” she said.

“What happened to us and what we have been told that keeps happening to reporters who dig a little bit, who criticise the government little bit, show clearly that there has been a culture of impunity for a long time. Justice is something that we are used to in the west. We have a procedure. We can pursue people who do wrong to us but that does not exist in Sri Lanka,” Philip said.

Quoting various Human Rights reports including the one that was released last week, Philip said that there were hundreds of cases of torture, kidnap and murder by the Sri Lankan police.

“It is not going anywhere, nobody is looking at it. Nobody does anything about it and nobody takes it seriously. The culture of impunity is the biggest danger for a long lasting peace in Sri Lanka now,” said Netherlands journalist who has faced a very strange experience in Sri Lanka.

For more details: RNW team threatened in Sri Lanka

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War over, fear still stalks polls in north Sri Lanka

By Shihar Aneez | Reuters
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Sri Lanka's northern cities hold local polls for the first time in many years on Saturday and though the civil war is over, fear and intimidation remain rife, poll monitors and opposition politicians say.

Voters in the separatist Tamil Tigers' self-declared capital of Kilinochchi, and in Mullaittivu where they were defeated by government forces in May 2009, will elect local councilors for the first time in 29 years.

The northern Jaffna district, under military control in the latter half of the 26-year civil war, will be holding its first local government election in 12 years.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, eager to gain support in the north, toured the area this week to launch development projects and promised more of them, in a war-ravaged region that remains firmly under military control.

"More money has been allocated to your province than the other provinces. There is no place for communal politics in Sri Lanka in the future and narrow-minded politics is unwanted in the future," Rajapaksa, who is from the Sinhalese ethnic majority, told a crowd in mostly rote Tamil this week.

Rajapaksa's government led the offensive to destroy the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), culminating in a final battle in May 2009 that ended the guerrilla group's campaign for a separate state for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority.

Since then Rajapaksa has promised to rebuild the north, shunning calls for political reconciliation in favor of economic development under what he calls "The Northern Spring."

But violence has persisted, and militias who fought for the government have used force to retain their influence. Election monitors have catalogued many violations, including the use of state resources for campaigning, and the use of violence.

"Everyone knows certain sections of the military and the political groups operating in Jaffna are behind these (violations)," Keerthi Thennakoon, executive director of the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), told Reuters.

"A well-calculated fear psychosis has been created among Jaffna and Killinochchi voters."

Dead dogs and funeral wreaths

Opposition politicians, including those elected from the north, have complained they have little access to the area and say they expect intimidation to keep turnout low.

"Unknown people have placed a killed dog in front of one candidate's house while other candidates have seen a funeral wreath on their front doors," parliamentarian M.A Sumathiran, from the former LTTE political proxy the Tamil National Alliance, told Reuters.

He said soldiers are going from house to house "insisting people must vote for the government party, and with all this intimidation of our candidates and the public, no action has been taken so far."

The government has denied any wrongdoing.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a Sinhalese Marxist party which in past decades led two violent insurgencies, said the military would not let them put up campaign posters and followed candidates during canvassing.

"The government badly needs to win this election at any cost to show the international community that their undemocratic and controlled governance in the north has resulted in development and thus people are supporting them," JVP parliamentarian Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Reuters.

Rajapsksa is under heavy pressure from the West to engage in political reconciliation of a sort acceptable to the TNA, and to investigate accusations of war crimes during the war's final phases to which a U.N.-sponsored report has drawn attention.

© Reuters

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Hard times in Sri Lanka's war-ravaged north

By Charles Haviland | BBC News
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The dirt road leading south-west from Kilinochchi town is pale red, the colour of the soil of the Vanni, the northerly extreme of the Sri Lankan mainland.

It is a land that lost all its people. They retreated with the Tamil Tigers as the civil war swept through Kilinochchi more than two years ago. There are burnt-out husks of houses.

But new huts are now scattered among the trees. There is a bonfire by the roadside and small shops that returnees have opened.

A few soldiers pass on bicycles. People walk by the roadside like strangers rediscovering the land of their roots. Hundreds of thousands have left army-run camps to come home.

Entry to this region has been heavily restricted for years. But the BBC was given unconfined, though temporary, access to Kilinochchi district.

Tempered by tragedy

Chandrasegaran Thayakaran, his wife Vinodha and their four-year-old son Dhanushan are working together to put up a modest wooden-framed house in Unionkulam village.

The boy scoops up sand and carries it to the building site, patting it down carefully.

Chandrasegaran, now 22, married at 17 to escape being recruited by the Tigers.

The family lived through months under bombardment in the war zone and a year in a camp. They got a UN grant equivalent to $230 (£143) when they came out.

Since then they have had some cash help from the Save the Children charity and pawned their possessions to get by. Chandrasegaran gets some casual labour work.

Any gladness at returning to his village is heavily tempered by tragedy.

"I lost my mother, my little brother and my elder sister and brother in the war," he tells me. "We've come here without our family. So we're not really living happily."

At least people in this newly resettled community are supporting each other.

Chandrasegaran's two friends were both wounded in the war. Now they are helping the family build. The three laugh and joke as they go off by motorbike.

Everyone has had a difficult homecoming, haunted by trauma and loss.

Nagamma Chandran, a widow of about 50, lives with her mother and teenage son in a shack of tin and tarpaulin built with help from the Dutch refugee organisation ZOA and the UNHCR.

She lost her brother in the war. She and her mother are sick and she cannot find work; nor can they afford transport to a hospital.

"We've been here almost three months. Since then we have got nothing, no help. We get 100 rupees ($1) per month each in aid money," she says.

"The government is not helping us. I have sent a lot of letters, but there's no reply."

In Kilinochchi town - once the Tamil Tiger headquarters, now a government garrison town - I meet the chief local government officer, R Jegathiswaran.

She says the government is doing all it can to help the displaced people returning home.

They extend livelihood assistance - support for home gardening, livestock development or small businesses.

But she admits that some people "could not get" it - perhaps an acknowledgement that some, like the landless villagers we met, fall through the safety net.

'Bombastic monument'

"I can say the government has provided enough assistance to the people. Although they've received all the things provided by the government and some of their livelihood assistance we have provided through NGOs, they want to get more and more.

"Whatever they get, they have to be satisfied with that."

he town centre of Kilinochchi is very different from the hinterland around it.

Half a dozen soldiers, supervised by an officer, lovingly tend a huge - some say bombastic - monument to the government's war victory.

One soldier snips the grass with scissors to keep it neat. They are on duty here around the clock.

Its centrepiece is a massive concrete cube representing the Tamil Tigers' violent insurrection.

It is pierced and cracked by a big bullet, said to symbolise the "sturdiness of the invincible Sri Lankan army", and topped with a flower of peace.

The adjacent tablet says President Mahinda Rajapaksa was "born for the grace of the nation".

Not many local Tamil people seem to visit. One man tells us he finds the monument insulting.

But others flock to admire it, including a busload of Sri Lankan tourists, among them a Buddhist monk from the central highlands.

As in the countryside, everyone in town is newly returned.

Almost all have lived through terrible war experiences.

Yet Kilinochchi is now achieving a kind of normality, though under the ever watchful eyes of soldiers on every corner.

At the main bus stand, people buy transport and lottery tickets. Children eat ice-cream. There is even a souvenir shop selling T-shirts saying "Reawakening Kilinochchi", situated by a huge water tower dynamited and toppled by the Tigers.

Back in her village, Nagamma makes tea. She, like other destitute returning refugees, struggles to afford the basics of life.

I ask her if she wants punishment for those responsible for her brother's death.

"We don't need another war or fight," she says.

"We've lost a lot because of the war and it mustn't happen again. Our time is finished now, but at least the remaining children must be happy.

"Every day I pray to God for a peaceful country, where every person of every race can live in peace."

© BBC News

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Sri Lanka, human rights and foreign policy in a tweet

By Phil Lynch | ABC.Net
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Kevin Rudd, or @kruddmp to his online followers, likes to tweet. I strongly support his use of Twitter - social media is an important new tool in the world of digital diplomacy - but I was struck by one message from the Foreign Minister on July 4.

It read "4 corners tonight on Sri Lanka deeply disturbing. UN Human Rights Council can't simply push this to one side. Action needed. KRudd".

The program, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, was indeed deeply disturbing. It documents serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law against Tamil civilians by Sri Lanka's military, including systemic rape, murder and the targeting of hospitals and health care clinics. The allegations are not new, however. The program aired in the UK on June 14. Both the US State Department and Human Rights Watch issued reports on possible war crimes in Sri Lanka as far back as 2009.

What struck me about the Foreign Minister's tweet was the implication that the UN Human Rights Council has failed to act with sufficient resolve or urgency on Sri Lanka. It struck me because, at the council's last session on June 15, Australia failed to even identify Sri Lanka as a 'situation requiring the council's attention'. Australia did make a strong statement calling for the council to act on Syria, Libya, Iran and Fiji. Unlike states such as the US, the UK, France, Spain, Sweden and Denmark, however, we were resolutely silent on Sri Lanka. Each of those countries and many others, by contrast, called for 'immediate action' to 'ensure accountability' for 'grave allegations' as to breaches of human rights and international law in Sri Lanka.

A critical analysis could attribute this silence to Sri Lanka's cooperation with Australia to prevent the flow of asylum seekers. The 2011/12 federal budget included $10.8 million to deploy Australian Federal Police liaison officers to Sri Lanka (as well as to Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand) to 'combat people smuggling'. The Sri Lankan Department of Immigration and Emigration is a recipient of Australian aid dollars.

A more generous analysis, to which I am inclined, attributes the disjunct between Australia's statement in Geneva and the Foreign Minister's tweet to our lack of a comprehensive strategy on human rights and foreign policy. Without such a strategy, Australia's action on international human rights often lacks coherence or clear priorities for action. This was evident again just a few days ago, when the Foreign Minister, in announcing a new aid and development strategy, said 'for the first time, human rights has been formally included within the core development objectives of the Australian aid portfolio'.

This is a positive development. It will come as some surprise, however, to the UN's Independent Expert on Human Rights and Foreign Debt, Cephas Lumina, who just three weeks earlier, was lambasted by Australia for his 'inaccuracy' in 'asserting that AusAID does not have an overarching human rights-based approach guiding its policies and programs'.

Kevin Rudd is a highly capable, energetic and ambitious Foreign Minister who professes a strong commitment to human rights. Australia's candidacy for a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, conceived and actively and appropriately pursued by the Foreign Minister, pitches us as a 'principled advocate of human rights for all'. And so should we be. The realisation of human rights should be a primary goal and instrument of Australian foreign policy. As a goal, we should commit to promoting human rights and the rule of law as a key foreign policy priority. And as an instrument, we should protect human rights to secure related goals such as peace, security and sustainable development.

If Australia's human rights rhetoric is to translate into effective outcomes, however, we need to develop a more principled and coordinated approach. A comprehensive strategy, similar to those developed by the Netherlands and Sweden, could integrate human rights in all areas of Australian foreign policy and, like those countries, capitalise on the benefits of doing so. Those countries have also appointed permanent Human Rights Ambassadors - a post which does not exist in Australia - to ensure an active and consistent approach to human rights at the international level.

With an ever-shrinking foreign service, the Foreign Minister should also establish a Human Rights Advisory Group, comprising experts from NGOs, academia and human rights bodies, to provide external advice on foreign policy and options for addressing human rights problems. Mr Rudd's UK counterpart, foreign secretary William Hague, established just such a group in 2010 and tweeted only a few days ago that 'the Group's expertise has already proved valuable in informing our human rights policies'. It is imperative, he wrote, for governments to 'hear from experts at forefront of reporting and documenting human rights abuses'.

Mr Rudd, I look forward to the tweet that reads 'Just announced comprehensive human rights strategy & 100 concrete actions Australia will take to advance human rights around world. KRudd'. That would be 140 characters worth far more than 1,000 words.

Phil Lynch is executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre.

© ABC - Drum TV

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