'Black January' marked amidst rival protests

Photo courtesy: vikalpa.org

BBC Sinhala
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Media organisations in Sri Lanka have been marking 'Black January' while an international watchdog has downgraded the country's rank in Press Freedom Index (PFI).

The annual Press Freedom Index issued by Paris based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has ranked Sri Lanka 163 out of 178 countries ranked. Sri Lanka was ranked 158 in 2010.

The campaign in Colombo, organised by Sri Lanka's Alliance of Media Organizations, to mark killings of journalists and threats and intimidation against media personnel in January, is also supported by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

The protest marks recent attacks in January including the murder of Sunday Leader editor, Lasantha wickrematunga in 2009, the disappearance of political columnist Prageeth Ekneligoda in 2010, the attack on Sirasa media network in 2009 and the brutal attack on television producer Lal Hemantha Mawalage in 2008.

Press Freedom Index

The protest that was to be held in front of Colombo fort railway station was forced to shift to Lipton Roundabout as pro-government groups staged a protest at the railway station hours before 'Black January' protest.

Sarath Kumara Perera, the convener of Free Media Association (FMA) which staged the pro-government protest accused the 'Black January' protesters of being "traitors" and "trying to create unrest in the country" using foreign funding.

Traffic in front of the railway station was disrupted by the protest, co-organised by the FMA and Organisation of Self-Employed.

Chandana Sirimalwatta of Journalists Against Oppression, categorically rejected FMA views.

Media in Sri Lanka has a right to reveal what is actually happening in the country, he said, and accused the pro-government protesters of being involved in media oppression.

Releasing the PFI, the RSF said: "The stranglehold of the Rajapakse clan forced the last few opposition journalists to flee the country. Any that stayed behind were regularly subjected to harassment and threats."

It added though attacks were less common, impunity contributed to self-censorship “by almost all media outlets”.

© BBC Sinhala

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Families and activists demand information on Sri Lanka's disappeared journalist, civilians

Photo courtesy: vikalpa.org

By Krishan Francis | Winnipeg Free Press
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Families, activists and opposition politicians marched in the capital Tuesday demanding information about the disappearances of a journalist and abducted civilians.

The civilians disappeared after they allegedly were abducted by a pro-government militia, and columnist and cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda had criticized the government before he went missing two years ago Tuesday.

The protesters carrying candles and photographs of the missing marched to a church where they prayed for freedom for the victims.

"I have gone everywhere possible over the past two years to know the whereabouts of Prageeth," said Sandhya Ekneligoda, the journalist's wife. "We must join hands and take this struggle together," she told other women who participated in the campaign.

Last year Sandhya sought the help of the United Nations to help trace the journalist, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon announced that the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNESCO the world's body's educational organization are looking into the case.

However, there has been no information on Prageeth.

Sandhya chanted prayers at the church calling for "strength and freedom" for her children and husband.

"Give me a family, find my husband and children," read banners carried by the protesters.

Opposition politician and activist Mano Ganeshan accused the government of abductions.

"There is no one else to do it but the government," he said. "We tell the government to explain what happened to these people before trying to defend yourselves internationally."

Foreign governments and human rights groups have heavily criticized Sri Lanka's human rights record, especially during the final stages of the civil war that ended with the defeat of the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

Scores of ethnic Tamils suspected of having links with the rebels disappeared after being abducted. Journalists were killed, some imprisoned and others were taken away and severely beaten.

© AP

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‘In ravaged times, poets become the voice of the voiceless’ - Tamil Poet Cheran

By Bhamati Sivapalan | Tehelka
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R.Cheran is a Sri Lankan Tamil poet and academician, born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He published his first collection of poems Irandaavathu Suriya Uthayam (The Second Sunrise) in 1982. His other titles include Yaman (God of Death) (1984), together with an anthology of Tamil resistance poems, Maranatthul Vaalvom (Amidst Death, We Live), which he edited in 1985, and Miindum Kadalukku (Once More, The Sea), published in 2004. He is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Windsor, Canada.

A lot of your literature deals with the Sri Lankan Tamil experience. In places caught in ethnic conflicts, we witnesses destruction of cultural identity. In this context, how do you position your work?

My first collection of poetry was titled The Second Sunrise in English. It was written in 1981 after the burning of the Jaffna public library. When I look back, I am reminded of a saying by a German writer and intellectual: “First you burn books, then you end up burning human beings.”

That's very pertinent to what you're asking. I was very close to that library. Every Saturday my father would take us to the library. I would spend 4-5 hours there. I was a young university student in Jaffna at the time of the burning. We couldn't go to the library when it was being burnt but we went the next day. We saw a large number of Sri Lankan soldiers and other agents of the state stationed next to it in a huge stadium. They were laughing and mocking us. That is my very first memory of the library being burnt.

My poem was symbolic. It simply depicts the burning of the library as the second rise, which is unimaginably ironic, right? It’s a second sunrise in the sense that the Tamils were about to resist the cultural genocide. And this was the time when various Tamil militant movements emerged.

In the past 30 years, there has been a systematic attempt by the state of Sri Lanka to ethnically cleanse and culturally subjugate the entire Tamil population. And the culmination of that particular project, ethnic cleansing and pogrom, is the May 2009 genocide of Tamils.

How does your work counter this narrative of cultural genocide?

Well in one sense, in the past 30 years, my eight collections of poetry have been a witness to the ongoing resistance of the Tamils and the genocidal massacres of the Tamils by the Sri Lankan state. So in that sense I became a witness to that history. My witnessing is not just as a historian or an archaeologist or a social scientist. It’s the poet as the witness, which involves a different kind of sensibility. It’s a different kind of imagination that is involved in this particular kind of being a witness, which you can very clearly see in my work.

A lot of poetry that comes out of conflict spaces often tends to be primarily valued as a sociological document. Does its value then, as a craft for the literary devices, run the risk of going unnoticed?

That’s an interesting observation… I would like to mention that the cultural theorist Leo Lowenthal who said that historians, social scientists and sociologists should be prevented or banned from using poetry as raw material for their works. But on the other hand, when public intellectuals like journalists, politicians and academicians are silent to this kind of genocide or ethnic cleansing, the poets step in and articulate a particular kind of resistance. That shouldn't be the primary work of a poet. However, in the absence of all other voices of resistance, in the absence of counter narratives, sometimes it happens that the poets become the voice of the voiceless.

The second point is that, it is not that the poetry I wrote or the ones that my colleagues wrote were simply agitprop poetry. It’s not ‘kavitai koshum’ (sloganeering poetry) as we say in Tamil. But rather this is a different kind of poetry with a different sensibility and speaks to a particular kind of nuance at times of conflict, war, disappearances and genocide. The particular poetic movement that emerged in the north east of Sri Lanka in Tamil greatly impacted the Tamil poetry in Tamil Nadu and in various other parts of the world. When my poetry was translated to Kannada, some of the key Kannada literary critics and poets felt that the poetry from north eastern Sri Lanka had an organic combination of poetry, protest, resistance and aesthetics that was unique. So that is what I think differentiates the kind of poetry that I wrote and my colleagues wrote. That's a very important distinction. We can't simply say that this is a kind of poetry that witnesses an agony and resistance but there is more to it.

Bhamati Sivapalan is a Video Correspondent with Tehelka.com

© Tehelka

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Sri Lanka jail riot 'injures 31' in Colombo

BBC News
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At least 31 people have been injured in clashes between guards and rioting inmates at a prison in the Sri Lankan capital, hospital officials say.

Most of the injured are prisoners who were shot by guards. Police deny claims that three inmates were killed.

Several buildings were set alight in the remand wing of Colombo's main prison before order was restored.

Prisoners say they want better food and conditions. Police said inmates were angry at moves to curb drug smuggling.

The head of Sri Lanka's prisons department admitted that the treatment of prisoners in the jail fell short of acceptable standards.

A local resident told the Associated Press news agency that disturbances had been going on for several days.
Wounds 'not serious'

Throughout Tuesday smoke billowed from the Welikada (Magazine) prison as dozens of inmates demonstrated on the rooftops. Some held up a banner calling for the head of the prison to be removed.

The BBC's Charles Haviland says the air outside the jail was acrid with tear gas and smoke - inside the barrier gate the prison is teeming with police and armed military.

Ambulances have been taking the wounded to Colombo's National Hospital. A senior staff member there told the BBC that 26 inmates and five officers were being treated, although the injuries were not serious.

The prisoners had gunshot wounds, mostly below the knee. The officers had head or leg injuries after being assaulted.

Earlier, one of the inmates told the BBC Sinhala service that three prisoners had been killed when officers at the gates shot at a large group in the compound.

The deaths are unconfirmed and exactly what happened is unclear.

Police spokesman Ajith Rohana said gunfire and tear gas had been used after prisoners rioted over new regulations.

"The new prison administration have launched a massive programme in order to curtail the drugs inside the prison and apart from that to prevent drugs going inside the prison," he said.

"I think this is the reason for this protest."

But the prisoners said the new rules in fact banned food from outside.

Later the head of the prisons department told BBC Sinhala that the treatment of the prisoners was less than ideal and that this would be corrected.

Prisons Commissioner PW Kodippili said food had been sent in but there was no immediate confirmation of this from the prisoners.

He also said that 180 remand prisoners suspected of links with the Tamil Tigers had now been transferred to another jail.

© BBC News

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