Media workers of leading Tamil newspaper locked out

JDS News
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In a major blow to free media staff members of the Colombo based Thinakkural Tamil news paper have been barred from entering the workplace on Tuesday. This follows the News Editor, Editor-in- Chief of the Sunday Thinakkural, Deputy News Editor, Senior Editorial Assistants and several journalist and media workers of Thinakkural news paper being forced to resign by the administration of Thinakural publications taken over recently by Virakesari publications.

However, the Vice President of Sri Lanka Tamil Media Association (SLTMA) has informed media organisations that twenty three staff members have disagreed to resign from Thinakkural.

Thinakkural staff found that they were locked out when they went to office for their routine work on Wednesday morning. Following the shocking incident, staff members lodged a complaint at the Labor Department and the Modera Police station.

Labour Commissioner of Colombo North called Thinakkural editorial staff and Thinakkural administration for an investigation. However, Thinakkural administration did not attend. Therefore, the commissioner who received the complaint from the editorial staff had called for the administration to attend the investigation on Thursday at 10.30 am.

Thinakkural established in 1997, is known to have functioned relatively independently, despite state and state sponsored paramilitary’s threat against its journalists. Recently, Thinakkural’s majority share and good will was bought by Virakeasari, which is another leading Tamil news paper in Sri Lanka. Thinakkural is considered as a prominent voice of Tamil national struggle.

© JDS News

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Sri Lanka: Holy places for minority religions attacked

Photo courtesy: Sri Lanka Mirror

JDS News
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Religious minorities in north western and north central provinces of Sri Lanka were in fear after a powerful minister and Sinhala supremacist organisations attacked Muslim and Hindu holy sites within a week while police were looking on.

On Saturday the 10th of September, a Muslim shrine in the predominantly Buddhist town of Anuradhapura was demolished by a mob led by Sinhala Voice National Organization, Buddhist Defence Foundation and the Dhamma Vijaya Foundation. On Tuesday, the 13th, Public Relations Minister Mervyn Silva along with a group of followers forcibly entered the Munneswaram Bhadrakali Hindu temple in Puttlam district and disrupted an annual religious festival.

Muslims and Hindus targeted

Both attacks were carried on in broad daylight while police teams accompanied by senior police officers looked on. The police spokesman who has told media that the Munneswaram festival has been banned by courts due to the slaughtering of animals as offerings to deities, denies any knowledge of the Anuradhapura attack. In Anuradhapura the mob uprooted the Muslim shrine close to the monument where Sinhala warrior king Dutugemunu's ashes are believed to be cremated.Muslim leaders in Anuradhapura say that the shrine demolished by the Buddhist organisations has been in place for over one and a half centuries.



In Munneswaram, the annual offering of domesticated animals to the temple, has been a centuries old ritual attended by Buddhists as well as Hindus. Minister Silva who came with a group has forcibly taken the animals away with the help of police. While police claim that the magistrate courts in Chilaw has ordered to stop the slaughter, appeal courts in Colombo has refused to ban the ritual.

Police inaction

However, in both incidents police who were present have not intervened to maintain law and order.



Several powerful ministers in the Rajapaksa government from the Hindu and Muslim communities have not made their position public on these attacks. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress leader Rauff Hakim is also the justice minister while the ministry of religious affairs comes under Prime Minister DM Jayaratne

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UN to review its actions during Sri Lanka's war

BBC Sinhala
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United Nations is to review its actions during the war in Sri Lanka and its aftermath.

The Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has appointed Thoraya Obaid, former executive director of the UN population fund to lead this review.

The review will be conducted on the recommendation of the Expert Panel appointed by the Secretary General to advice him on possible war crimes in the last months of the war in 2009.

In a letter to the president of the Human Rights Council, the UN Secretary General said “on my Expert Panel’s recommendation that I should conduct a review of actions by the United Nations system during the war in Sri Lanka and its aftermath regarding the implementation of its humanitarian and protection mandates”.

The report released in April 2011 by the Expert Panel, recommended that the Secretary should conduct a comprehensive review of actions by the UN system during the war.

© BBC Sinhala

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Urban legend causing problems in Sri Lanka

Photo courtesy: Tamilnet

By Devi Boerema | Radio Netherlands
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The North Eastern part of Sri Lanka is gripped by a mythical creature. The so-called Grease Devil attacks have sparked outraged among locals. But the Sri Lankan government refuses to seriously investigate the attacks of what they claim to be ‘only a myth’. Over the past few months this has led to clashes between protesters and government officials. In one case a policeman was lynched by the angry mob.

According to legend, Grease Devils are men covered in oil and grease who wander the streets at night looking for women. The grease and oil makes the devils too slippery to catch on their nocturnal escapades. Sri Lankan folk tales specifically warn widows and single women to lock their doors at night.

The myth

Even without the slippery fluids these men, or devils rather, have been getting away with the nightly attacks. Women from the Tamil and Muslim communities have filed assault cases against what they believe are “Grease Devils”. The creatures seem to wander mostly around military bases.

In Kinniya villagers claim to have seen men fleeing back to the base after an attack. But the Sri Lankan navy has been reluctant to make any arrests. This led to violent clashes between civilians and the navy, in which over 25 civilians were arrested. Similar clashes have taken place in Navanthurai in the Jaffna District and the town of Puttalam in the North West.

“The government of Sri Lanka is very keen to dissuade anyone who wants to investigate the attacks properly and thoroughly or do anything that shows the Sri Lankan military in a bad light. In particular anything that confirms the increased militarisation of the North and the East”, says Fred Carver, who is the director of the Peace & Justice Campaign.

The attacks

It seems that the locals are playing right into the government’s attempt to brush off these claims, by attributing the attacks to the Grease Devils.

Over the years the term Grease Devil has become a common name for men who assault women. Clearly a lot less mythical then vague visitors in the night, but the myth surrounding the name still prohibits the victims from being taken seriously.

“There is clearly something going on, there are people being attacked. To be honest it’s a problem that Sri Lanka has always had [sexual harassment], which is basically what we are talking about here”, says Mr Carver.

“It seems to have gotten worse in recent years and in particular in the North and the East in the aftermath of the war ending.”

Evidence gathered from witness reports all show a connection between the military compounds and the attacks. Women who fall victim to these attacks are mostly from minority groups, not the predominant Sinhalese community.

Fred Carver believes this tells us something about the attackers.

“Most likely they are fairly bored young millitary men who have been trained to believe that the minorities from the local surroundings should not be given any respect. Therefore the number of attacks in these areas has gone up”.

Critique

The Grease Devils sightings tie in with general reluctance in South Asia to report molestation cases. In Sri Lanka, where media is self-censored and critique is met with violence, it’s not easy to accuse government employees of sexual harassment. The myth of the Grease Devil offers locals a way to indirectly vent criticism.

Both parties have their own reasons for keeping the myth of the Grease Devils alive. Meanwhile the tension between civilians and the government is growing stronger and victims have nowhere to go.

“This is the kind of thing that the government’s human rights commission should look into, but the commission is apparently toothless. Also the government shows no interest in investigating these things. You have quotes from various government ministers saying: We’re not going to investigated this, because there is nothing to investigate.”

A new approach

It’s almost unheard of for Sri Lankans to march the streets like they have been doing recently. Over the last few months they have openly showed their discomfort towards the government on many occasions. Some of these protests led to violent outbreaks.

People are genuinely angry about what has been happening in the Northern and Eastern part of Sri Lanka. Another clue that suggests it’s not just a mythical creature from an urban legend which is roaming the streets.

© Radio Netherlands

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Pressure mounts on accountability process

IRIN
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The failure of a national accountability commission into human rights abuses in the last days of the civil war could add to calls for an international inquiry, a top US diplomat warned on 14 September in Sri Lanka.

“If it [a national inquiry] is not a credible process, there will be pressure for some sort of alternate mechanism,” Robert Blake, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, said at the conclusion of a three-day visit to the island nation.

Blake, who met President Mahinda Rajapaksa and ministers, noted, however, that Washington would wait for the release of the final report of the government's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), appointed by the president in May 2010 to investigate the final days of the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), before passing judgment. The report is due in November.

According to a UN panel report, released in April, both government forces and the separatist LTTE conducted military operations with flagrant disregard for the protection, rights, welfare and lives of civilians and international law during the final months of the war.

Tens of thousands died between January and May 2009, many anonymously, the 196-page report said.

"There needs to be a full credible, independent accounting and accountability of all those individuals who violated international humanitarian law," Blake said.

Earlier, US diplomats said the failure of a national inquiry would increase pressure for an international inquiry that Sri Lanka has so far resisted.

"The LLRC is inquiring into the conflict and its causes and is evolving recommendations to ensure that such a situation never arises again in Sri Lanka. It is critical to wait for that body to finish its deliberations and come up with its conclusions," Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, head of the Sri Lanka delegation, told the 18th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 12 September.

Just two days before Blake's announcement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he would be forwarding an Advisory Panel report on Sri Lanka to the UN Human Rights Council, a move strongly criticized by Sri Lanka, which said it was only told on 9 September.

"The failure on the part of the High Commissioner to inform the concerned state - Sri Lanka - was wholly inappropriate to say the very least. This, regrettably, may lead to a loss of confidence in the Office of the High Commissioner," Samarasinghe told the Council on 12 September.

Samarasinghe questioned the impartiality of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. "Today it may be Sri Lanka, but tomorrow it could be any other member state faced with this predicament," he said.

Implementation

Local rights activists say that despite the government's identification of the LLRC as the main mechanism for accountability, many of its interim recommendations had yet to be implemented.

"Significant is that exactly a year after the LLRC made some interim recommendations, they have not been implemented by the government, despite attempts to indicate otherwise by Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe," Ruki Fernando, head of the Human Rights in Conflict Programme at the Law and Society Trust, told IRIN.

Moreover, Fernando pointed out that many of the witnesses giving evidence at the LLRC spoke of the same allegations contained in the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Panel report.

"Many of the testimonies put forward to the LLRC are similar to the allegations contained in the UNSG's panel of experts report."

In April, Ban said he would welcome a mandate from the Human Rights Council, the Security Council or the General Assembly to establish an international inquiry into allegations of possible war crimes.

© IRIN News

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