Sri Lanka: War long over, media still muzzled

By Amantha Perera | Inter Press Service
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It has been two years since the end of Sri Lanka’s decades long war, and life in general has begun to slowly edge back towards normalcy here. Not so for the country’s besieged media community, according to observers and journalists alike - reporting still feels hemmed in and muzzled, they say.

"Don’t forget that this is a nation that is wounded at its heart, the media reflects that psyche. The healing has not even begun," Sunil Jayasekara, the convenor of the Free Media Movement (FMM), the country’s foremost media rights group told IPS.

Jayasekara observed that as the war reached its climax in late 2008, journalists found it hard to report objectively.

"The media became a part of the military operation," Jayasekara said. "No one was able to report objectively, there was pressure on them from all parties." That pressure, Jayasekara says, has not eased.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) lists 24 Sri Lankan journalists killed since 2006.

One of the most frightening examples of intimidation - the January 2009 murder of prominent opposition editor Lasantha Wickrematunge still remains a mystery.

Last week, the pro-opposition website lankaenews.com was temporarily banned while a case against it for contempt was tried.

"All these things together have made the media community fearful and doubting every move they make," Jayasekara said, stressing that the climate of fear has prevented journalists from carrying out their work independently.

Coercion also comes in the form of government issued licences, especially for electronic media and by way of advertising revenue, Jayasekara said. Officials at very high levels and media owners have also been co-opted by political parties - diluting independence even further, he added.

"What you get is an industry that is deeply scarred," Jayasekara said.

Other media observers feel that the situation has been aggravated by talented and experienced journalists leaving the country.

Namini Wijedasa, who was feted by peers as the ‘Best Journalist of the Year’ at the 2010 Journalism Awards organised by industry bodies including the Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka, told IPS that she is simply stunned by the steep drop in standards.

"I feel that the dedication to journalism as a craft is waning," she said. "It is being replaced by a job ethic to produce as much copy as you can."

Wijedasa told IPS that the media has been fighting too many battles on too many fronts, that it simply does not have the stamina to make sure professional standards are met. Today’s media here does not have the resources and will to chase after important stories on issues like poverty, gender, governance and corruption, she said.

"You have to get out of that mentality of just churning out copy. You have to feel that what you do impacts the society you live in," Wijedasa said.

Sanjay Senanayake, a media educator here, has tried to raise these issues with publishing houses on several occasions. Senanayake told IPS that editorial boards and management did not show any interest in improving standards.

"I don’t know where the real problem lies, but there is very big lack of willingness to make sure what we do, we do it right, despite the tiring conditions," Senanayake said.

Jayasekara, Wijedasa and Senanayake all agree that the combination of fear and slacking professional standards have created a vicious cycle eroding public trust in the media.

"How on earth can you question accountability in government when you yourself are not accountable," Senanayake laments.

Jayasekara feels the problem goes deeper than slacking copy. He told IPS that the media has to somehow begin to raise its voice as an independent force. A similar scenario arose in the late 1980s - when government pressure on the media was overbearing - leading to the formation of organisations like the FMM. "So far we have not seen those types of movements, that is why we feel the pressure so much," he told IPS.

For Senanayake the little bit of hope there is, lies in media not concentrated in the capital Colombo. He points to two regional radio stations Uva and Kotamale, where journalists have been building community trust by working on stories that matter locally. "When people realise that these stories can make a change, they look at media differently," he told IPS.

"When people trust the media more, it is difficult to muzzle it," Jayasekara said.

But he feels that breaking political and other systemic pressures is vital for this. " We have to get out of this cycle, they only way to do that is for the media to keep resisting the pressure."

© IPS

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Sri Lanka needs truth, not a national forgetting

By Dilan Thampapillai | ABC
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Like most children of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora I have almost no experience of the Sinhalese as human beings. The breadth of my experience has been confined to a friend here, an acquaintance there, but no widespread human contact with a range of people in Sinhalese society. I suspect that many Sinhalese people, particularly here in Australia, are in a similar situation regarding the Tamils.

The situation in Sri Lanka itself seems much the same from some accounts.

I raise the point about human contact because it is so vital to empathy and understanding. It is the absence of empathy that has given both sides a fairly vitriolic view of each other. The lack of real contact as equal human beings allows unhelpful stereotypes to prevail. An entire generation of Tamils brought up on the news reports that they have seen from Sri Lanka and the commentaries that they receive from the Tamil community might likely perceive the Sinhalese as violent and criminal. Similarly, the Sinhalese fed a diet of stories from government media about the Tamil Tigers might view the Tamils as terrorists and troublemakers. Racism grows in the absence of understanding.

None of that excuses or fully explains the violence in Sri Lanka. But it is relevant to the war crimes that were likely committed in Sri Lanka in the last stages of the civil war. But why else would Sinhalese soldiers, many of whom likely couldn't speak Tamil and who hadn't met Tamils before, commit atrocities against Tamil civilians? Why else did Tamil insurgents, many of whom would never have known a Sinhalese person other than as a soldier, go and kill Sinhalese civilians during the war?

The Sri Lankan Government is eager to deny that crimes were committed and has done everything that it can do to stymie an investigation. The United Nations Panel that released a recent report on war crimes in Sri Lanka was not even allowed into the country. The Sri Lankan Government has also done everything it can do to erase the conflict by demolishing Tamil Tiger cemeteries (despite their clear historical value) and resettling Sinhalese people in the North and East of Sri Lanka onto properties owned by Tamils.

The Sri Lankan Government wants to forget the Tamil Tigers. This is understandable – the Tigers came close to breaking Sri Lanka as a nation. Bear in mind that the Tamil Tigers, who at any one time had a fighting strength of just about 6000 soldiers, were able to fight the Sri Lankan Army and control swathes of territory for over 26 years. In military terms it was an extraordinary achievement. They were outnumbered 20:1 but they beat back the Sri Lankan Army invasions time and again. Sri Lanka was forced to launch a massive invasion into its own country to defeat them and even then it only managed it with substantial assistance from China and Pakistan in 2009.

However, in trying to forget the Tigers, Sri Lanka is forgetting the lessons of its own history. It is worth remembering that the Tamil Tigers existed because of the injustices perpetrated by the Sri Lankan Government. The Tigers were a violent and flawed organization, to say the least, but they enjoyed popular support amongst the Tamils because they provided armed resistance to a brutal government.

Instead of denying the truth Sri Lanka as a country needs a full investigation of the war crimes that took place in the last stages of the war.

Both communities are too big to ignore. Both sides suffered horrible losses in the war. Virtually every family was affected in some way or another. There are 14 million Sinhalese. There are about 2.5 million Tamils left in Sri Lanka and the diaspora, with children, likely matches that number. There are about 80 million Tamils worldwide. You can’t throw a stone in Asia without hitting a Tamil – and knowing our culture he’ll likely throw it back. So this issue isn’t going to go away.

With the truth comes closure.

It won’t suit Rajapakse, it definitely won’t suit Palitha Kohona and a host of other Sri Lankan politicians and military leaders, so it probably will not happen. But it would not suit the Tigers either.

The reason for that is that a full and proper investigation would disclose the true extent of the crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers. In doing so, it would explode the heroic warrior myth that currently sits around both camps.

It would raise some very difficult questions about the Tigers. For example, when it was clear that the war was lost why did LTTE recruiters feel that it was necessary to round up children to serve in combat? Why did the Tigers shoot at fleeing Tamil civilians?

An investigation would temper the triumphalism in Sri Lanka. After all, how many rapes occurred whilst women were in Sri Lankan custody and why did they occur? Why did Sri Lankan Government officials fail to investigate? How many executions took place? Who took part in them and how much did the Sri Lankan leadership know? What about the shelling of civilians?

In the absence of truth the myths and the suspicions will grow. It is better that the full horror of the war be investigated and discussed. That would be way better than maintaining these polarized positions of ethnic hate. I suspect that if the full and detailed truth came out we would see a picture of deeply flawed individuals committing terrible acts in a horrific conflict. As bad as it would be, it would share a commonality with so many other military conflicts.

Both communities need the truth. With the truth comes closure and with closure comes the prospect of a real reconciliation. It’s an issue that is bigger than the perpetrators.

Dilan Thampapillai is a Lecturer with the School of Law at Deakin University.

© ABC

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Sri Lanka's May Day rallies reject UN war report

AFP | Daily Times
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The Sri Lankan government used May Day rallies on Sunday to reject a United Nations report that alleged the military may have been guilty of atrocities during the island’s civil war.

The UN report released last Monday highlighted “credible allegations” that both the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels had been involved in violations that could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The allegations referred to the final months of the government’s ultimately successful 2009 offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in which tens of thousands of civilians are estimated to have died.n “The report violates the UN charter, undermines the fight against global terrorism, and hijacks Sri Lanka’s reconciliation process,” senior minister Nimal Siripala de Silva told public radio on Sunday. He said the May Day theme was the “people’s power to protect the country”, adding that “the rallies are held to protest against (UN secretary general) Ban Ki-moon.”

Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to attend several demonstrations in Colombo, with President Mahinda Rajapakse due to address followers of his United Peoples Freedom Alliance in the evening.

Roads were decorated in the party colours of blue, red and maroon, while billboards were erected showing the president and recently-completed development work. “We want to send a clear message to the international community that no imperialist interventions are possible in Sri Lanka,” said petroleum minister Susil Premajayantha, who is also the ruling party’s general secretary.

More 8,000 police officers and hundreds of army personnel were deployed around the capital to maintain security on May Day, which is traditionally a day of workers’ demonstrations across the world.

© Daily Times

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'Probe war crimes by Sri Lankan armed forces' demands CPI (M)

By a Special Correspondent | The Hindu
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The Communist Party of India (Marxist) will organise demonstrations in major cities of the State, demanding an enquiry into “war crimes” committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the final phase of the civil war.

In a statement, CPI (M) State secretary G. Ramakrishnan said the report of a United Nations committee has indicted the Sri Lankan armed forces for killing thousands of civilians in the armed struggle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and of other human rights violations. The party's state executive committee has already passed a resolution seeking punishment against the war criminals.

The UN report has stated that over 40,000 civilians were killed in the last month of the battle and prisoners of war were shot dead at point blank range. The Sri Lankan government was responsible for the loss of lives of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils and human rights violations, he said.

The party would hold demonstrations in the first week of May demanding a detailed enquiry into such human rights violations, punishment to war criminals, rehabilitation of those affected and provincial autonomy for the Tamils in the island nation, Mr. Ramakrishnan said.

BJP stir

The State unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) staged a demonstration in Chennai on Friday (29)demanding the arrest of war criminals in Sri Lanka.

© The Hindu

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