Prageeth's wife latest victim of Sri Lankan intolerance

By Bob Dietz/Committee to Protect Journalists
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On Thursday and Friday, we wrote about the ugly government backlash to last week's U.N. Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into Sri Lanka's alleged abuses of international humanitarian law during its war with Tamil separatists.

That campaign of intimidation continues: In the magistrate's court where Sandhya Eknelygoda has been trying to gain any information about the whereabouts of her husband, Prageeth, who disappeared on January 24, 2010, she came under harsh questioning -- observers at the court called it intentionally intimidating -- from government lawyers about her presence at the UNHRC in Geneva. Before she returned home from Switzerland, her name had been denounced in the government-controlled media as one of the government's critics -- several of whom have been denounced as "traitors."

Eknelygoda told colleagues in Colombo that Monday's entire court session was about how she went to Geneva, who funded her trip, why she betrayed her country, and how much she was paid to do that. Her lawyer objected to the line of questioning, but was overruled, she said.

When she had returned home on Sunday from Geneva, she told reporters, "I only wanted to bring the disappearance of my husband to the notice of the international community. But, those who are allied with the government insulted me, saying I went there to betray the country," she said. You can see a video report of her statement on YouTube.

Eknelygoda and her two teenage sons have been waging a quiet but steadfast campaign to pressure the government for information about their husband and father. CPJ and four other media support groups wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in March 2011, asking for his intervention in the case. Ban referred the issue to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNESCO, where it has been allowed to languish, despite pleas from Eknelygoda and her supporters.

Nor has a January 2012 ruling by Sri Lanka's Appeal Court that former Attorney General Mohan Peiris could be called in as a witness into the disappearance of Eknelygoda been acted on. In a November 2011 posting, "Sri Lanka's savage smokescreen," CPJ reported that Peiris told the Asian Human Rights Commission that Eknelygoda had taken refuge in a foreign country and that the campaign against his disappearance is a hoax, although he failed then and ever since to provide detailed information about where Eknelygoda had fled.

At the time, CPJ said that Peiris's statements "do more than point up the government's indifference to Eknelygoda's fate and the mental anguish of his wife and two sons. Peiris's statements highlight the disregard with which the government views international opinion."

Given the response in the government-controlled media following last week's Geneva vote, that indifference and disregard have moved on to outright hostility.

© CPJ

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Dying for the truth in Sri Lanka

By Richard Lindell |ABC News
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While the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka appear willing to give up some democratic rights to the government that ended the civil war, others aren't. And for those activists and members of the media getting the truth out can be a deadly business. Activists and reporters continue to disappear, and dissenting voices are silenced in a climate of fear and intimidation.

Elizabeth Jackson: In a rare opportunity, correspondent Richard Lindell was recently granted a visa to Sri Lanka.

There he saw first hand a government intent on intimidation and a population cowered into submission. That includes the country's journalists. Richard Lindell spoke to Frederica Jansz, the editor of Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader.

Fredrica Jansz: We have been attacked nine times, we are 18-years-old and our presses have been burnt down twice. And of course we paid the ultimate price when our founder, editor-in-chief Lasanthe Wickrematunge, was murdered in January 2009.

Even after that murder, I myself continue to receive death threats. So yes it's a huge challenge to remain independent.

And more recently we even had the president himself calling my chairman and the owner of the newspaper and yelling at him, literally yelling, for a front page news item that we had carried exposing that he had siphoned off a billion rupees into a private account from a Chinese grant.

Richard Lindell: What you've just talked about seems to back the Reporters Without Borders report that says journalists, even now three years after the war, continue to be attacked, beaten, harassed and labelled as traitors if they speak up against the government.

Fredrica Jansz: Oh yes. And at the Sunday Leader that is a term that has been, we have been consistently called just that, traitors. Again by the defence secretary himself on the Defence Ministry website where he labelled not only us but also our lawyers, who were appearing for us in court cases, as traitors and terrorists.

Richard Lindell: Given the considerable personal risk, why do you continue to do it?

Fredrica Jansz: I believe in what I am doing. Someone has to do it. And I believe that at the Sunday Leader we have contributed somewhat to make some change, even if it is in the way people think in this country, and that by itself is a huge step.

Richard Lindell: When I read the Sri Lankan media it appears that the government is winning the propaganda war. Most of the media coverage is very favourable to the government. It does address the issues of the day but very much from the government's standpoint.

Fredrica Jansz: It is indeed. It's pathetic really, the current situation where the media is concerned in this country. Everybody - yes the government has been extremely successful in forcing the media into submission.

Richard Lindell: What about the general population, the readers, the viewers, do they buy what they're watching? Do they really think this is a fair and accurate depiction of what's going on in Sri Lanka?

Fredrica Jansz: I don't think readers actually think that it's a fair and accurate. Having said that, civil society in Sri Lanka is lethargic and dormant. So unfortunately, even with a newspaper like ours, we can only write it as it is, but there is nobody out there in terms of a civil society organisation or even the main opposition party to take forward those issues.

Richard Lindell: In the final editorial written by the former editor, Lasanthe Wickrematunge, he asked whether the readers, whether the general population, deserved the sacrifices Sri Lankan journalists were making and implored people not to take that commitment for granted. Do you think people, do you think the general population does care enough today?

Fredrica Jansz: No. I don't think so. And yes I agree with those words. We are taken for granted and we seem to be lone crusaders out there and that really is the tragedy for society here in Sri Lanka today.

Richard Lindell: So again I need to ask you the question, why do you continue to do it if most of the population really doesn't seem to be engaging in the issues, in the fight against the politics and the policies of the government?

Fredrica Jansz: Because I, as a newspaper editor, if I lose hope then I shouldn't be sitting here or doing what I'm doing. I still have hope that I can make that change.

Elizabeth Jackson: That's Frederica Jansz the editor of Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader and she was speaking to our South Asia correspondent Richard Lindell.

© ABC News

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Why the UN acts to hold Sri Lanka accountable for war crimes

By J.S. Tissainayagam | Global Post
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A resolution on Sri Lanka was passed in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Thursday. Human rights activists hailed the resolution as a hopeful first step by the international community in holding Sri Lanka accountable to war crimes. It is significant that this resolution was sponsored by the United States which became a full member of the UNHRC only in 2009.

The 27-year civil war in Sri Lanka between the Sinhala and Tamil communities ended in May 2009 with the government defeating the Tamil guerrilla group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The aftermath of the war saw increasing evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Government and LTTE during the final months of fighting.

The resolution in Geneva calls upon the Government of Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The LLRC was appointed by Sri Lanka in the wake of sustained international censure for war crimes.

The LLRC’s recommendations, which were made public in December 2011, while acknowledging that civilians had been killed by the Sri Lanka military, exonerated its actions by saying that such deaths were not widespread and systematic. The LLRC, however, unambiguously accused the LTTE of war crimes. Its report recommended the Sri Lanka government appoint a domestic body to investigate these acts and punish the wrongdoers.

The recommendations of the LLRC were met with a robust pushback by the international community, Tamil groups and human rights organisations. They emphasised that only an international body, and not a domestic one, would have the stature and power to hold an impartial investigation free of government interference.

But while they called for an international investigation, Sri Lanka was reluctant to implement even the recommendations of its own commission, the LLRC. This resulted in the international community finally moving as a compromise in Geneva, a resolution which only called for implementing the LLRC recommendations and not for an international investigation.

The human rights community is reasonably satisfied that a clause in the resolution, asking the UNHRC to monitor progress in the implementation of the LLRC, will ensure compliance by Sri Lanka. But, at the same time, rights activists are cognisant that the UN’s institutional drawbacks in Sri Lanka could be an impediment in achieving this.

Rights activists are worried that the UNHRC will have to work through the UN office in Sri Lanka to monitor the progress of the implementation. Unfortunately, while the UN’s office there has a functioning human rights desk, it has been completely overshadowed by the UN’s role as a donor and implementer of economic development programmes. The question is: will the UN have the resources and more than that the will to make the necessary transformation?

If the past is anything to go by, the UN has not shown the will. For instance, just before the Sri Lankan military launched its final assault on the LTTE under whose control were at least 300,000 Tamil civilians, the Government made an announcement that all international organisations and NGOs should leave the conflict area. Despite fervent pleas by the civilian population not abandon them, the UN left without any attempt to negotiate with the government to remain. Gordon Weiss the then UN spokesman in Sri Lanka described this as “a mistake.” Leaving without attempting to negotiate runs contrary to the UN’s usual practice as was amply demonstrated in Darfur.

Another controversy was the UN’s refusal to release casualty figures in the final months of fighting in Sri Lanka. The UN initially maintained “we do not count bodies.” However, the Inner City Press said on March, 18, 2009 that leaked documents revealed the UN’s Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) did have the numbers, which were deliberately withheld. The Inner City Press observed that “unlike in other conflicts from Darfur to Gaza, the UN withheld the Sri Lanka figures, in effect protecting the Sri Lankan government.”

These are but a few incidents that have led to commentators voicing doubts on the impartiality of the UN’s role in Sri Lanka.

If so, how are the gains in Geneva to be preserved? One way out might be for the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Department of Political Affairs to play more pivotal roles in Sri Lanka than they do today. If the UN is to “take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace” as is mandated in its Charter, its headquarters needs to work more closely with its Sri Lanka mission.

This could be accomplished is by the countries that voted in favour of the Geneva resolution taking the lead in making the UN strengthen its political and human rights mandates in its Sri Lanka mission. Negligence in this task might find Sri Lanka slipping out of its obligations.

J. S. Tissainayagam is a Weatherhead Fellow in International Affairs at Harvard University. He was Nieman Fellow in Journalism (2010-11) also at Harvard. Previously, he worked for a number of English national newspapers in Sri Lanka.

© Global Post

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Journalists are 'traitors', says Sri Lanka's state TV

By Roy Greenslade | The Guardian
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Sri Lanka's state-controlled media has described journalists as "traitors" following the UN human rights council's call for an investigation into the country's alleged abuses during its war against Tamil separatists.

In an attack on Sri Lankan journalists, both at home and in exile, state television accused them of "betraying the motherland."

Although the broadcaster did not name the journalists who had participated in the human rights council sessions, it screened "thinly disguised photographs of them" and said it would reveal their names soon.

Journalists in the capital, Colombo, told the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) they were concerned about the campaign against them.

The CPJ responded by calling on the Sri Lankan government to halt its intimidation of journalists.

"The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has a long and alarming record of intolerance to criticism," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia programme coordinator.

"The international community must be extra vigilant in ensuring that Sri Lankan journalists are not subjected to reprisals for voicing their concerns to the human rights council."

The UN resolution called on Sri Lanka to investigate abuses carried out by its military in 2009, at the end of the decades-long war with separatists known as the Tamil Tigers.

© The Guardian

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