By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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Inner City Press: This is just a factual question that somebody has raised. That report of the Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka… I mean, rather, has the Secretary-General transmitted this report in some sort of a type of a formal fashion to either the High Commissioner on Human Rights or to the Human Rights Council in the run-up to its June session?
Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: As you know, we have said that the Secretary-General is studying the recommendations in the report that was submitted to him. That’s the first thing. The second is that he is also awaiting a response from the Sri Lankan authorities, an official response. In the meantime, he has already said that he will take up the recommendation that was made with regard to looking at what there is to learn internally about the UN’s response to what happened in Sri Lanka. And that mechanism of whatever form it takes will be going ahead in due course. With regard to the specific points you’ve made, the report is publicly available, in its entirety. It was published as you know, and is available for Member States and for the different parts of the UN system to see.
Inner City Press: I don’t know why the UN works that way, but there seems to be some expectation of a formal transmittal from New York to Geneva, and I just wanted to know… I mean, maybe I am wrong, but has that… has that taken place or will it be taking place?
Spokesperson: Well, as I say, it’s in the public domain. It’s publicly available and many Member States and others have seen it and I am sure that they are taking it rather seriously.
Meanwhile Sri Lanka has invited countries to come and learn its counter terrorism techniques, which are described in the UN Report.
© Inner City Press
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
UN report on Sri Lanka not transmitted to Geneva
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Sri Lanka: Confronting the killing fields
By Steve Crawshaw | The Jakarta Post
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In the face of repeated government denials, the report’s authors reckon that up to 40,000 died in just a few terrible months in spring 2009 — kept out of the sight of television cameras, and out of the politicians’ minds. The report calls for an international investigation, which could have far-reaching consequences.
Members of the Non-Aligned Movement, as they meet in Bali this week, have a critical part to play in ensuring these terrible abuses never happen again and that survivors of the conflict can seek justice, thus laying the groundwork for reconciliation.
They should encourage the UN and the government of Sri Lanka to implement the panel’s recommendations on accountability, including the panel’s call for the Secretary General to establish an independent mechanism to investigate these allegations.
In the lead-up to second anniversary of the end of the conflict on May 19, governments have praised the report — and then seemed ready to bury it. A different ending can, however, still be achieved.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commissioned the report, but he and governments alike have so far failed to act on its main recommendation, a commission of inquiry — despite the fact that Ban and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa jointly promised accountability.
The report, which talks of “a grave assault on the entire regime of international law”, provides a chance to achieve reconciliation through truth and accountability, providing the stability that post-conflict Sri Lanka badly needs. It corroborates the evidence that human rights groups have been putting forward for the past two years.
If its recommendations are acted on, it may be possible to ensure accountability for the crimes committed by both sides. Conversely, the failure to act would be a missed opportunity on a grand scale.
The authors document violations by the rebel Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces alike. The UN Panel of Experts, who wrote the report, comprise a strong body of experience and expertise: Marzuki Darusman, former Indonesian attorney-general; Steven Ratner, professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on the laws of war; and Yasmin Sooka, who was a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Crimes included the Tamil Tigers’ use of human shields and the shooting of civilians who tried to escape the deadly trap in which they were caught, and the targeted shelling by Sri Lankan forces of crowded hospitals and civilian encampments inside an area which the authorities macabrely called a “no-fire zone”.
Despite all this, governments have stood back. Robert Blake, US assistant secretary of state, argues for an internal Sri Lankan inquiry instead of the international investigation that the report calls for. Others have not even gone that far.
A credible domestic investigation would be welcome — but the word “credible” is the sticking point. The UN report concludes that the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, which the government set up to look into the war and its aftermath, is “deeply flawed” — in short, a continuation of what a 2009 Amnesty International report described as twenty years of make-believe.
An international inquiry, by contrast, would help Tamils and Sinhalese alike accept the reality of the charges leveled against the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces, where there is currently too much denial.
In different contexts around the world, we have seen that acknowledging the truth of violations on both sides is a first step towards reconciliation.
The Sri Lankan government talked of “zero civilian casualties”, even while the bloodbath (to quote UN on-the-ground spokesman Gordon Weiss) was under way.
Some took the Sri Lankan declarations at face value, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. As a human rights advocate in New York at that time, I remember a Security Council ambassador explaining that he hoped Sri Lanka would “continue” its policy of minimizing civilian casualties — a policy which, he implied, had enjoyed success so far.
Ban Ki-moon, contradicting his own panel of independent experts, suggests he can only establish an investigation with the consent of the government concerned.
That would set a sad precedent in terms of diminishing the moral authority of the Secretary-General’s post. Ban, who faces re-election later this year, can still show leadership on the issue (just as he did by creating the Panel in the first place), not least by urging that the UN Security Council should act on the report’s recommendations.
Some conclude that the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians somehow don’t matter, as long as the Tamil Tigers — a group which was listed as a terrorist organization in many countries — were defeated.
The world’s generals and politicians alike must understand, however, that there can be no justification for war crimes and crimes against humanity. What the UN report describes as the “discourse of triumphalism” finally needs to be confronted.
The UN report is not published in isolation. A Channel 4 television documentary, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, will be broadcast early in June in the UK.
The one-hour program looks set to include footage not previously broadcast, as well as a shocking video of summary execution and rape-murder which Channel 4 News already aired (the video was denounced by the Sri Lankan government as a fake, and later authenticated by UN experts).
The UN report gives governments — at the Security Council in New York, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and at the gathering of the Non Aligned Movement in Indonesia on May 23-27 — a wake-up call to ensure a measure of accountability. That historic opportunity must be seized.
The writer is international advocacy director of Amnesty International.
© The Jakarta Post
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Militarization of Sri Lankan society?
By Feizal Samath | Saudi Gazette
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“Militarization of society? That is already happening,” noted Prof. S.I. Keethaponcalan, Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Colombo, echoing the views of many civil society leaders.
Sajith Premadasa, co-Deputy Leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) accused the government of “further” militarizing the society despite the conclusion of the war in May, two years ago. Soldiers have been rehearsing for a “victory” celebration to be held in Colombo on Friday, May 27 to mark two years of the end of a nearly three-decades battle with the rebels in which thousands of combatants and civilians died.
Two weeks ago the government said the 22,000 students, whose university career starts around August, would be asked to follow a compulsory leadership and “positive development” course at 28 army camps aimed at instilling discipline and to wean them away from violence, ragging and political activity on campus.
Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake, who handles the universities, and his officials have been at pains to explain that this is not a political program and not any kind of military training. Higher Education Ministry Secretary Sunil J. Navaratne denied that the students were being forced into military training saying the army camps were selected for this purpose because they had the space and accommodation facilities for large groups of students.
However the increasing influence of the military in the governance of Sri Lanka with senior military officers being appointed as ambassadors, handling urban development and to various government institutions, has led many people to infer that the latest scheme is an attempt to instill military-type discipline into university students and that similar training for students in national schools could be the next step in the militarization of institutionalized structures.
This is the first time university entrants are receiving this kind of pre-entry training. According to Prof. Siripala Hettige, a senior sociologist attached to the Colombo University, the Colombo campus has always had its own orientation training for new entrants. “We provide them guidance on various aspects of university life and also career guidance,” he said.
Responding to the military-type training scheme, he said very little is known about this scheme “other than what has been reported in the newspapers”. He said, “It’s not right to comment on a program that we have little knowledge about. What should have happened is that there should have been transparency in this scheme which has not been discussed, as far as I am aware, with the university and its staff.”
Political affairs Professor Keethaponcalan looks at it at two levels. “One is that at a national level, political parties have been competing with each other for the support of university students. With this move the government appears to be taking everyone to their side and wants them on their side. Secondly there is little resistance within the majority Sinhala community,” he said adding that this is an issue for students from the minority Tamil community.
“This may be an ethnic agenda because I’m positive that many Tamil students will drop out since going to army camps is an issue for them,” he added. Over the 30-odd years of conflict, scores of Tamil youth and other Tamils have been questioned or detained in military camps mainly in the northern province where the Tamils mostly live.
Army camps in the north, in those days, instilled a sense of fear, as parents often spent endless hours or days at these camps trying to locate a son or daughter who had gone missing, only to be told that the missing person was not there.
However in this case, even Sinhala parents are reluctant to send their university-entrant children to army camps. “By making this training mandatory, Higher Education Ministry authorities are being unjust to the parents and students. My youngest daughter has to travel far away for the training program,” Nalani Ganegoda, a concerned parent from the north-central district of Anuradhapura was quoted as saying in the Sunday Times newspaper.
Another parent was quoted in the same newspaper as saying he feared sending his daughter to the training camp. “My daughter was not into sports and physical activities; she was only interested in studies. We come from a conservative family and my concern is that the ministry does not explain the type of outdoor activities,” he said.
Residents in the northern town of Jaffna, the former seat of the Tamil insurgency, said many of the university entrants headed to their training camps over the weekend. “There doesn’t seem to be any worries among the students and parents over this kind of training,” one resident said.
The People’s Liberation Front or JVP, a former revolutionary group-turned political party, also urged parents not to send their children to army camps to undergo what it described as military training. JVP Parliamentarian Anura Kumara Dissanayake told reporters that the government could not take legal action against students who do not take part in the training as there is no legal provision to bar them from university if they do not attend the program.
On Friday, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court challenging the program and the court requested the government to consider postponing the program for a week till this case is concluded. But the government went ahead with the program saying students were already heading for the camps and millions of rupees have been already been spent on the plan.
© Saudi Gazette
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Sri Lanka anti-terror seminar faces boycott call
AFP | Lanka Business Report
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Sri Lanka will host the three-day meeting "Defeating Terrorism - Sri Lanka Experience" in the capital Colombo next Tuesday and has invited 54 countries of which 42 have agreed to attend.
China, Russia and South Asian nations Bangladesh, India, Maldives and Pakistan are among those who will send military delegations, while Western nations have decided to stay away, Sri Lanka's army chief said on Monday.
"This conference is nothing more than a public relations exercise to whitewash abuses," Human Rights Watch's Asia Director Brad Adams said in a statement.
"No professional, law-abiding military should take part in this farce," he added.
International rights groups have accused Sri Lankan forces of killing thousands of civilians and blocking humanitarian access to the affected population during the climax of its battle with Tamil separatists in 2009.
The outlawed Tamil Tiger group fought for 37 years for a homeland for ethnic Tamils before being crushed in a giant government offensive that has since been dogged by war crimes allegations.
Among those who declined to send military delegations were the United States, Britain, France, Australia and Switzerland -- all of whom have criticised Colombo over alleged rights abuses.
Sri Lanka's top arms supplier, China, is co-sponsoring the conference and two Chinese companies will also exhibit military hardware on the sidelines.
The meeting is being held amid mounting pressure for a war crimes investigation after a panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said last month that there were "credible allegations" against Sri Lankan troops.
The UN estimates up to 100,000 people were killed in fighting between 1972 and 2009 while at least 7,000 civilians perished in the final months of the war.
© LBR
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Global powers to participate in Sri Lanka defence seminar on defeating terrorism
Colombo Page
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Sri Lanka Army will host a three-day seminar from May 31 to June 2 on 'Defeating Terrorism - The Sri Lanka Experience' at Colombo Galadari Hotel.
The Russian Federation, plagued with terrorism in Chechnya will send six delegates, the highest number of participants from one country, to the seminar.
India will send three Colonels to take part in the seminar while a Major General will lead the Pakistan delegation. A Lieutenant General is to lead the Bangladesh delegation.
China, the emerging global power will have two of its defence companies Chinese Poly technologies and China Electrical and Technologies Corporation displaying their products at the three-day event.
The two Chinese companies have sponsored a major portion of the cost of the seminar which is about 45 million rupees, the Army Commander Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya has said.
As many as 54 countries have been invited initially and 42 of them are sending over 300 delegates including defence personnel, commanders, experts, professionals, academics and senior military officials, the Army Commander said at a press conference held today.
"To date, a total of 42 countries have so far confirmed their participation. More are expected to respond within the next few days," he added.
Several eminent speakers including terrorism experts are scheduled to address the seminar. During these sessions Sri Lanka Army will elaborate how it conducted the Humanitarian Operation with all the field commanders at hand.
Over 25 international media organizations have already confirmed their participation to cover the event.
"Everything is transparent and media is at liberty to meet any of those contributors on the sidelines of the seminar," the Commander added.
Lieutenant General Jayasuriya said the sessions would contribute to broaden understanding and exchange of knowledge among delegates with relevance to the Sri Lankan perspective.
"The speakers will elaborate on lessons learnt and reasons that led to the military success," he added.
Some topics of the sessions will be themed on 'Challenges and Prospects of Counter Terrorism', 'Evolution of LTTE and International Networking', 'Overview of Counter Terrorism in Sri Lanka', 'Humanitarian Operations', 'Force Multipliers in Counter Terrorism', 'Combat Service Support and Evolution of Training', 'IDPs Resettlement', and 'Rehabilitation, Reintegration and De-mining'.
© Colombo Page
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sri Lanka: Thousands of workers take to street over proposed pension scheme
News First
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Police said that nearly 2,000 employees had engaged in a protest near the Katunayake police at around 8 a.m. this morning and then marched towards the 18th mile post.
While this had resulted in severe traffic congestion, the Police are taking measures to ease this situation at present, according to police sources.
Meanwhile, General Secretary of the Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees Union Anton Marcus said that members of his union will be the most affected by the proposed bill.
When Newsfirst made inquiries in this regard Minister of Labour and Labour Relations Gamini Lokuge said that certain groups are engaging in such protests due to a lack of understanding of the bill in question.
© News First
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
‘Defeating terrorism - Lankan experience’ : Forty-two countries confirm participation
By Sandasen Marasinghe | Daily News
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Addressing the media at a press conference held at the Army Headquarters yesterday, the Army Commander said that the Army also has sent invitations to the Defence Minister of Senagal and the Army Commander after they made a request for participation in the three-day seminar which is to commence on May 31.
Army Commander Jayasuriya further said that preparations for the seminar under the guidance of Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa organized to share Sri Lanka’s experience on the road to military defeat of the LTTE which was identified as the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization.
He added that the seminar will pay special focus on global terrorism, terrorist trends, predominance of both political and military efforts, reconciliation, threats to national and international security concerns, nation building, resettlement, effective counter mechanism, prevention of resurgence of violence, re-evaluation of traditional approaches etc.
Army Commander Jagath Jayasuriya also stated that the seminar, the first of its kind to be held in Sri Lanka will be attended by delegates including several world renowned experts, professionals, academics and military officials. Although military participants of few countries such as Australia, France, Japan, Netherlands etc have regretted their non participation, delegates such as their ambassadors and researchers have confirmed their participation.
Sri Lanka Army during these sessions is to elaborate how it conducted the humanitarian operation, with all minute details, while contributing to broaden understanding and exchange of knowledge among delegates with relevance to the Sri Lankan perspective.
The speakers will elaborate on lessons learnt and reasons that led to the military success. The keynote address will be delivered by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.
Dr David Killcullen the author of Accidental Guerrilla, Dr Ahamed Hasheem, Dr Rohan Gunaratne, External Affairs Minister Professor G L Peiris and many other experts will deliver lectures.
© Daily News
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sri Lanka begins military-led training for university entrants
By Ranga Sirilal | Reuters
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President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government has ordered 22,000 university entrants to attend what it calls "leadership and positive-thinking training" for three weeks at 28 military camps islandwide. The first 12,000 began on Monday.
Sri Lanka's traditionally influential student unions have long been bellwethers of political unrest. They were key parts of the deadly 1971 and 1988-89 insurrections led by the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People's Freedom Party.
"We commenced these theoretical and practical training courses to develop leadership ability and positive attitudes," Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake told Reuters.
The largest student union, the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF), rejected the training as a government method of coercing political support. The IUSF has long been seen as the student wing of the JVP, which is now in opposition.
"This is another step of this dictatorial government's agenda of militarising the society," IUSF leader Sanjeewa Bandara told Reuters.
He said the IUSF did not mind receiving training, but said it should be given by mutual consent and not by force.
"They are trying to terrify and suppress students by conducting the training forcibly in military camps so they can have a loyal group of students to fulfil their political agendas," Bandara said.
The IUSF has filed a Supreme Court challenge against the training. The court asked if the programme could be delayed by a week to give it time to rule, but the government refused.
Rights groups and opposition critics have said the Rajapaksa administration has spread military influence into every corner of government since defeating the Tamil Tigers' three-decade separatist insurgency two years ago.
Most of the top military commanders have been given diplomatic or other influential government posts since the war's end. Soldiers are being used in post-war rebuilding efforts and even sold vegetables after floods in January and February ruined crops and prompted hoarding by private vendors.
Dissanayake defended the programme as aimed at giving students skills they need to succeed in the private sector.
"This training course is not a weapons training or military training. We think that university students should be fortified with the weapon of knowledge," he said. "This is only one programme aimed at creating a disciplined generation."
© Reuters
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sri Lanka: Continuing the struggle
By Gena Chung | American Journalism Review
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On January 8, 2009, Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor-in-chief of the Sri Lankan paper the Sunday Leader, was murdered in what witnesses described as a "commando-style assassination." Witnesses said that eight men clad in black helmets and fatigues, riding four identical black motorcycles, surrounded Wickrematunge's car.
They shattered the windows and the windshield with a steel pole, pulled Wickrematunge from the car and beat him with the pole. He was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after the attack.
Samarasinghe didn't receive news of the attack in her capacity as a newspaper editor. It was as Wickrematunge's wife.
"No, you're not leaving," Samarasinghe had told her husband a little more than an hour before he was attacked.
They had just safely made it inside their home after being followed by four men on motorcycles. Driving home together from the pharmacy, her husband received a phone call from the office informing him that he was being followed. Samarasinghe says she looked around in an attempt to spot the pursuers, to no avail. Then, as she and her husband pulled alongside their home, she saw them― four men clad in black, riding large black motorcycles in pairs.
Their house was situated on a private lane in a high security zone right next to Parliament, Samarasinghe says. She demonstrates her belief that the government had a hand in her husband's death by implying that somehow these men possessed authorization to pass through the checkpoints that she says were "everywhere." "Anyone cannot just get through," she says.
When they parked the car, Samarasinghe convinced her husband to abandon his instinctively bold impulse to confront the men. Once inside the house, Wickrematunge assessed the threat by making a few phone calls to trusted colleagues and political friends he had made over the years as both private secretary to former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike and as a newspaper editor.
After consulting with his friends and colleagues, Wickrematunge concluded that these were just scare tactics. It was Thursday, and he had to write his influential political column, Suranimala, described by Samarasinghe as the last word on the Sri Lankan political scene.
"He went," Samarasinghe says. "When he said, 'it's under control,' I believed him."
As was customary when her husband was out of the country, Samarasinghe took over the Sunday Leader as editor-in-chief. But this time, he wasn't coming back. Wickrematunge's remains rested in the home that he and Samarasinghe had created together. Hundreds of people came in mourning to pay their last respects, says Samarasinghe, when just thirteen days earlier some of the very same people had gathered in celebration at their wedding reception.
Samarasinghe, the wife, was devastated. But Samarasinghe, the journalist, was undeterred. Three days after her husband's murder, Samarasinghe published the Sunday Leader. In it she printed an editorial written by her husband intended for posthumous publication, in which he anticipated his own death. It was titled, "And then they came for me."
Wickrematunge wrote: "No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last...When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me."
In the days after Wickrematunge's death, it became apparent that Samarasinghe intended on running the Sunday Leader just as her husband had when he publicly declared his motto, "unbowed and unafraid." Threats and intimidation were nothing new to her. In 2005 and in 2007, the presses of the Sunday Leader and her own paper, the mid-week national newspaper, the Morning Leader, were burned down. Also in 2007, she was held for several hours of interrogation by the Criminal Investigative Department of the police, in connection with a series of investigative reports she wrote regarding possible collusion between the country's Central Bank and a fraudulent corporate pyramid scheme.
In the days immediately following her husband's death, Samarasinghe was told that she was unsafe, that the motorcyclists were back, skulking outsider her home. Two men burst into her home despite the protestations of her elderly mother and took pictures of the family and the layout of the home. She began varying her routes to and from the office. But things weren't getting any better, and the people she knew and trusted told her that she was in grave danger, that she must leave the South Asian island nation.
"I was prevailed upon to leave by friends, by diplomats, and by Lasantha's own brother," Samarasinghe says. "You realize that the culture of impunity is too widespread and democratic mechanisms have broken down and are constantly being undermined, and you realize this is the tipping point. Do you stay? Do you compromise your ideals and your principles to survive? Because that's the only way you're going to stay alive? Or do you leave and do your best from outside."
On January 24, 2009, Samarasinghe fled to Europe with one suitcase, leaving behind all that she had known for 40 years. This included the Morning Leader, which shut down a week after she left, and the Sunday Leader, which she characterizes now as "a flaccid shell of its former self.. not anything like how Lasantha and I envisaged it would be."
"Everything stops," she says. "You've built up a career. You've built up a name. You've built up a life. And suddenly it's destroyed. There comes a time when you are no longer able to have such destruction in your life."
Samarasinghe says the plight of exiled journalists is often mollified by the notion that they are "going to a better place," akin to the spiritual salve of the terminally ill.
She disagrees.
"It's not true. It's just so not true... It's not true for me," Samarasinghe says. "We had a great life. We had a great life."
"I think Sonali is one of the most courageous, and smartest and most determined people I have ever met," says Lonnie Isabel, director of the International Reporting Program at City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. The program is a joint initiative between CUNY and the Committee to Protect Journalists, designed to "find a way to incorporate exiled journalists into the fiber of American journalists," Isabel says.
Samarasinghe is its fourth International Journalist in Residence. Isabel says that Samarasinghe was the ideal candidate: she cannot practice journalism in her country, she had to flee "and she's a remarkable leader and amazing journalist who needs to practice and needs to contribute to the world of journalism."
At CUNY, Samarasinghe is enrolled in the entrepreneurial journalism certificate program, though she already has a master's in international affairs from the Australian National University and a law degree from the University of London.
Jeremy Caplan, director of education for CUNY's Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, teaches Samarasinghe in the certificate program. He also has advised her on the Web site she is set to launch soon, www.lankaindependent.com, which she says will be an exiled journalist-run news site where "unadulterated, uncensored" voices can speak up about what's happening in Sri Lanka, "where media freedom is nonexistent and impunity is rampant."
She says that when her husband was killed, "the backbone of independent media was broken" in Sri Lanka. With her Web site, she hopes to rebuild it from afar, so that change can occur from within the country.
"It's so important that not only Sri Lankans but those people from outside pressurize Sri Lanka to get back to itself, and to get back to what it was, which was a legitimate democracy," Samarasinghe says.
Caplan praises Samarasinghe not only for her journalism skills and passion, but for her enterprising spirit that allows her to embrace new storytelling methods in the digital age which, he hopes, "will enable her to hopefully reach a lot of people who are interested in the subject and need to know about what she's covering."
"For someone like Sonali, she's reporting and writing about subjects that are very close to her heart that the she cares a great deal about," Caplan says, "and I think that gives her spark, an extra catalyst, extra motivation to do a very thorough job of reporting, to do a very careful job of gathering information, and to do a very passionate job of communicating the important stories that are often otherwise going untold."
Samarasinghe says that the past two-and-a-half years of her life have simply increased the intensity of the drive that she has possessed since her childhood, to fight for justice and human rights.
She singles out her father, a high-ranking police official, for teaching her about human rights and community building. Civil war broke out in 1983 between the majority Sinhalese Sri Lankan government and the separatist Tamil movement. Samarasinghe says that indiscriminate killing resulted, in any number of forms: terrorist bombings, random fires and shootings, planned massacres. According to Samarasinghe, after one particularly bloody killing spree, where Sinhalese set fire to any known Tamil home, her father, a Sinhalese, closed the district, imposed a curfew and went to each and every destroyed home in an attempt to assess the situation and offer help to the Tamil people. He took his young daughter with him.
"I suppose when you see that, you tend to realize that there's nothing more important than to bring the communities together," Samarasinghe says. "I know that giving a voice to the voiceless is kind of cliché, but in the end, that's what it became."
As a witness to war, she says, she was emboldened. And one particular incident was instrumental in steeling her resolve to demand freedom of the press.
In 1999, about a year after Samarasinghe pared down her practice of law to become a full-time reporter, Richard de Zoysa, the regional director of a nonprofit news agency, an actor and a human rights activist, was found washed up on the shores of the beach at Moratuwa, twelve miles from Colombo, Sri Lanka's largest city. His jaw was fractured, and he had been shot in the head and throat. Despite his mother's identification of the abductors, one of whom was a prominent police officer, no one was ever prosecuted for his murder. The man who helped identify him, journalist Taraki Sivaram, was beaten and shot to death in 2005. Samarasinghe says that when she joined her husband's newspaper as an investigative journalist, these were the types of injustices against the press that they were both fully committed to fighting. Samarasinghe stands determined to continue the fight on his behalf.
"I mean when you think of it, what she faced, after a month of marriage and massive repression," CUNY's Isabel says, "still to this day a cover-up of the murder of her husband, and the inability to continue her career, where she was a very prominent journalist, is a shattering kind of thing to happen to someone, such terrible loss."
The "cover-up" Isabel refers to is prominent in Samarasinghe's mind.
"It is still very much a part of what I will do to continue to fight for justice for Lasantha," Samarasinghe says, "because it is his case that has now become emblematic of the culture of impunity that prevails."
The case against Sri Lanka for abusing freedom of the press and human rights is considerable. In its 2010 report on the country, Reporters Without Borders concluded that "of the world's democratically-elected governments, Sri Lanka's is the one that respects press freedom least." It continued: "the most senior government officials, including the defense secretary, are directly implicated in serious press freedom violations."
The United Nations commissioned a report that concluded that both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil opposition might be responsible for war crimes committed near the end of the civil war in 2008. Tens of thousands of civilians died, most as a result of government shelling, according to the U.N. report.
Near the end of April, Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Gamini Peiris told reporters that releasing the report would be a detriment to postwar reconciliation, adding that the document was "preposterous."
"It's wrong to publish the report," Peiris said. "It's equally wrong and unacceptable to take any steps at all on the basis of any findings or recommendations contained in the report."
Despite the Sri Lankan government's vociferous objections, the U.N. released the report on April 25. In a statement to the press, U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon said, "The decision to release the report was made as a matter of transparency and in the broader public interest." He also wrote that he "regrets the inflammatory tone of some of the recent public statements emanating from Sri Lanka."
Sri Lanka was ranked No. 4 on the Committee to Protect Journalist's 2010 Impunity Index, which ranks countries where journalists are killed regularly and the government makes no effort to prosecute those responsible. According to the report, 10 journalists have been killed in the last decade in Sri Lanka, without a single conviction.
Wickrematunge was one of them.
Maria Salazar-Ferro, who is coordinator of both the impunity campaign and the journalist assistance program at CPJ, calls Wickrematunge's murder an "iconic case of the culture of impunity in Sri Lanka."
Salazar-Ferro has been working with Samarasinghe on seeking justice for his assassination. "She's incredibly strong. Incredibly strong," Salazar-Ferro says. "I've worked with many other journalists in her type of situation, and it's very rare to meet someone who is so persevering."
Samarasinge's resolve shows no signs of wearing down. She continues to write updates about the fight for justice in her husband's case. In one such article for CPJ, Samarasinghe mentioned that on January 13, President Mahinda Rajapaksa told the Sri Lankan media that there was "no evidence to continue an investigation." Samarasinghe says that this is a continuation of the stonewalling that the government has engaged in from the very beginning.
Several news items and the coroner's report stated that Wickrematunge died of a gunshot wound to the head. However, Wickrematunge's brother, a physician, was allowed into the post-mortem exam room, where he discovered that there was neither gunshot wound nor bullet track. According to Samarasinghe, later on coroner admitted that her husband did not die of gunshot wound.
Most recently, police took custody of five mobile phones that showed the same location patterns as Wickrematunge's phone, according to Samarasinghe. What is even more peculiar about these phones is that they were not used before or after January 8, 2009, the day of Wickrematunge's murder. According to police, tracking of the phones reveals that they all communicated regularly with each other that day, and that one of the five numbers shows having made a call from the spot where Wickrematunge was killed. A spot, Samarasinghe points out, was also in a high security zone, just 15 yards from one of the largest Sri Lankan Air Force bases.
"I hold President Rajapaksa personally responsible for my husband's murder," Samarasinghe says, "because even if it was not he who gave the order, he, as minister of defense, overall commander of the army, has seen to it from day one that no effective investigation has taken place."
The Sri Lanka embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment about the case.
Salazar-Ferro says that there is a pattern to the challenges that usually emerge for journalists in exile, beginning with language and professional training issues that prevent them from practicing journalism in the countries where they receive asylum.
"It is a very competitive industry and they are just not able to penetrate," Salazar-Ferro said.
She estimates that 90 percent of the exiled journalists CPJ is currently tracking are no longer working in the field. Instead, they are janitors, guards or convenience store clerks.
Isabel of CUNY laments the dissolution of exiled journalists' careers as they enter the United States, which is why he hopes that CUNY's program can serve as a model for other journalism schools and institutions across the country. Isabel admits that helping only one persecuted journalist a year is "an amazingly paltry reaction," but adds that, with limited funding and resources, it is doing the best it can "for the overwhelming tide of people who have to leave hostile situations." He adds, it's "one of the things that I'm most proud of."
According to Salazar-Ferro, Samarasinghe is a rarity, an exiled journalists who has stayed in the field. Salazar-Ferro attributes this both to Samarasinghe's proficiency with English and the breadth of her professional skills. But, she says, the emotional challenges can be just as debilitating to a career, and that Samarsinghe wasn't able to escape these as easily.
"It's one of the few professions where you are constantly on your toes," Salazar-Ferro says. She mentions that when she first met Samarasinghe, "I could still feel that she was deeply scarred not only by her husband's murder, but also by the years of threat and intimidation."
Salazar-Ferro continues. "I've met very few people who are as strong and determined as Sonali is. She's had to give up her country, her family, her friends... But she won't give up her career. I've never seen anybody move so fast to be able to get a grip on things the way that she has."
Samarasinghe says that she felt abandoned and betrayed by her country after her husband's murder. This became the impetus for the work she is doing now in the U.S. "It's a force that propels you because you just know you have to do it; there's no choice," Samarasinghe says. "Once it happens to you, you have no choice."
Isabel believes that Samarasinghe―and exiled journalists like her―are indispensable are an inspiration for others in the field. "I think the most remarkable thing about them all is that they are determined to continue to practice journalism, even though they have faced prison and exile and murder and all kinds of things," Isabel says. "It's so wonderful to sit next to someone like Sonali and think of what a privilege it is to be a reporter, and it inspires our students."
Samarasinghe feels a measure of gratitude and inspiration from the opportunities she has had in the United States. She says that receiving help from the U.S. at a time when she felt completely abandoned has earned the country a permanent place in her heart.
But what Salazar-Ferro says about most exiled journalists is also true of Samarasinghe.
"I would say that most of them have, if not one foot, one toe back at home, especially when it comes to journalism," Salazar-Ferro says. "They still feel very attached to reporting the news of their home, and they still feel very attached to making sure it gets reported."
Samarasinghe agrees. "Yes, my heart is still in Sri Lanka," she says, despite the assassination of her husband, the lack of an effective investigation and the continued repression of journalists. "I think that we have great hope as much as we've had great devastation, and I really hope and pray that the country will return to itself, because I know how beautiful that country can be."
The sentiment sounds much like another Sri Lankan journalist who wrote before his death: "I hope my assassination will be seen not as a defeat of freedom but an inspiration for those who survive to step up their efforts. Indeed, I hope that it will help galvanise forces that will usher in a new era of human liberty in our beloved motherland."
It seems inarguable that the author of these words, Lasantha Wickrematunge, would be proud that it is his wife, Sonali Samarasinghe, who continues to hope and fight during his prolonged wake .
© AJR
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Reckoning: Press Freedom in Sri Lanka
Photo courtesy: vikalpa.org
By Nirmanusan Balasundaram | Groundviews
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
“The freedom to speak and the freedom to write are essential preconditions for the transition towards democracy and good governance” – Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO.
Journalists were murdered not for anything, but simply as the cruel reward for their courage and dedication in bringing the hidden reality out. The threat against press freedom in Sri Lanka became a vicious circle. The present regime, who proclaimed that they are the only government in the world, who completely defeated the “terrorism”, could not arrest single perpetrators, who are behind these murders. “Due to international pressure, there are few exceptional cases that the government is trying to portraying that there is an investigation going on particular cases, such as assassinations of Dharmeratnam Sivaram and Lasantha Wickrematunge or they are attempting to put the blame on other elements” a Colombo based journalist told.
Apart from three killings, which were reported in linking the LTTE, all most all other murders being depicted as killed by “unidentified men”. Talking to another journalist on the sixth year memorial of late Dharmeratnam Sivaram, he pointed out that “we know who the killers are or who are behind the killings like this, not only for Sivaram’s killing, but for other as well, but we also aware, what will happen for us, if we tell or talk about it openly. In Sri Lanka case, unidentified men became synonyms for “government is responsible”.
Just before the regime started the full scale offensive war, they deeply carried out a law intensified and shadow/proxy war. During this period one of their main targets were the Tamil journalists who became the unfortunate victim of a tactic used to hide the mass human rights violations, which were widely escalated in the northeast part of the island nation and to stop truth being reported out. They constantly shot the messengers of truth. The report of the UN Secretary General’s Panel on accountability in Sri Lanka precisely highlights as follow, “The Government sought to intimidate and silence the media and other critics of the war through a variety of threats and actions, including the use of white vans to abduct and to make people disappear. “ [2]In other contexts of conflicts , situation is such that the international media being allowed to do the coverage such as in Middle-East and North-Africa, despite of indirect threat and intimidation, but in Sri Lanka, no any single independent journalists were allowed. Though the second year remembrance of the brutally ended war approaches, restrictions on the independent journalists to visit to the Northern region, distinctly to the Mullaitivu district yet continues.
If the situation would have been concerned appropriately by the international community on time, today, the regime would have not been able to threat against rule of law, good governance and democracy in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is in a bizarre era, which not only failed to bring the perpetrators to justice, but also describes journalists as “terrorist”. At the same time, they are closely working with former senior LTTE members, whom were earlier interpreted as “ruthless terrorist” by the same regime.
In addition, no one holds a clear picture as to what happened for the journalists, who couragesly remained in the war zone during the last stage of the war and sacrificed their lives to tell the truth to the world. Since April 2009, there are no extensive details reported about those journalists. So far, details of the missing or murdered journalist are being collected; however, these details are not the full list of missing or murdered journalists, which are follows,
V.Susiparan – Journalist / killed on 25-04-2009
K.Suvendiran – Photo journalist- missing since 25-04-2009
T.Thavapaalan – News Editor – missing since 19-05-2009
Christhper Payas – Cartoonist (date of death or missing could not found)
H.Vijayakumar – Journalist (date of death or missing could not found)
B.Sivakumaran – Journalist (date of death or missing could not found)
Abovementioned details are just a tiny piece of the entire list. Another set of the journalists left Mullivaikal just before last phase of the bloody war began. Rest of the war zone journalists’ fate is unknown until now.
In parallel, threats and intimidation against media continued outside of the war zone as well. Managing director of the ‘Namathu Eelanaadu’ Tamil language news paper was shot dead in a high security zone area and the office was forced to cease all of the activities. Prageeth Eknaligoda, a journalist, cartoonist and political analyst disappeared in Colombo two days before the presidential election. (24 January 2010.) Few journalists were assaulted brutally, including Keith Noyar, deputy editor of the Nation and Poddala Jayantha, the secretary of Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association and a campaigner for press freedom.
At-least three journalists were abducted and released after a warning, including former Sooriyan FM news editor N.Guruparan and writer and journalist T.Thirukumaran. V. Jasikaran, owner of the E-Kwality printing press, writer and correspondent for the news website Outreach Sri Lanka, was arrested with his wife by the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID). Jasikaran was subject to torture while in custody. Just one day followed by the arrest of Jasikaran , a senior ‘Tamil’ journalist, J.S.Tissanayakam was arrested and convicted for 20 years hard labour by the Colombo High Court, who was the first winner of The Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism. After twenty-two months, due to international pressure, he was released. In this line on the media suppression, the TID later on interrogated a Tamil media person B.Vasanthan. All of them have been now forced to leave the country and live in exile.
Staff members of both ‘The Sunday Leader’ and ‘Uthayan’, news papers were attacked several times. After the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Sunday Leader journalists continued with their writing. In at-least one occasion they received death threat as follow “We will slice you up if you do not stop your writing”. Three of the Uthayan staffs were killed on the occasion of the International Press Freedom Day 2005.
BBC World Service suspended its FM programming to the Sri Lankan national broadcaster SLBC in 2009 February due to “deliberate interference” of its broadcasts by the Sri Lankan network.[3] The office of a radio channel known as, Vetri FM was burnt down. MTV network’s ‘Sirasa’ TV and MTV were attacked in the name of “patriotism”. The Thinakural, a Tamil language news paper’s offices in Jaffna and Colombo were raided more than two times by the Sri Lanka Armed Forces. Media in Jaffna still under severe monitoring and continue to receive indirect threat by the government sponsored paramilitaries and military intelligence officers. A few numbers of websites, including Tamilnet and Lankanewsweb were blocked by the government.
According to ‘Reporters Without Borders’s Washington director, since January 1st 2009, at least eight foreign reporters or contributors to international media organizations have been forced to leave the country after receiving threats from government authorities or their supporters. The brother of the president, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, threatened reprisals against the BBC and al Jazeera, after both news outlets filed reports on the country.
Harassment and arson attacks are continuing on the staff members of the Lankaenews and the office premises. After the Sri Lanka’n court ordered to suspend Lankaenews in Sri Lanka, the ‘Committee to Protect Journalists’ has called on the United Nations and diplomatic to intervene and investigate the apparent targeting of the website. They further said, “this suspension is the Sri Lankan authorities’ latest effort to silence an independent news outlet.”[4] Due to mounted pressures, on 12 March, the court released the Lankaenews journalist and lifted the suspension as well.
Beside of these, murders held one decade ago like the case of Mylvaganam Nimalrajan, who worked for several media, including BBC’s Tamil and Sinhala language service are still pending for justice. Though only a limited memorial events and mourning’s continue, such events too are held under restricted freedom. It is unfortunate and tragic, that aforementioned most of the threats, intimidation, harassment, arson attacks, abductions and murders took in government controlled areas. Even, some of them were in the areas which were designated as ‘high security zone area’ by the government. Nearly fifty journalists are currently living in exile.
A senior ‘Sinahala’ journalist wrote to me as a suggestion for a conducive atmosphere to the freedom of expression in Sri Lanka; Most of the Sinhala and English media carry the hegemonic views of the Sinhala dominants. There is no check and balances on democratic values as ‘Temple tree’ control the media. Therefore, in certain situation, most Sinhala and English private media are also functioning like the state media running propaganda. “My fundamental position is there can be no freedom of expression unless there are organized trade unions within media corporations and the public ownership of state media”.
At-least now, the Rajapakse regime should realize that the democratic nations are deeply observing the situation in Sri Lanka. According to the 2010 press freedom index of the ‘Reporters Without Borders’, Sri Lanka was ranked 158 out of 178.[5] Also, the report of the UN Secretary General’s Panel on accountability in Sri Lanka mentioned that “restrictions on the media, which are contrary to democratic governance and limit basic citizen rights” is other obstacles to accountability on Sri Lanka. [6]
The Rajapakse regiment should bring an end to the high level impunity, which is being freely enjoyed by their “proxies” without any further delay. No one can give me back my colleagues’ lives and smiles, but in any case, responsible actors should ensure the safety of the remaining journalists and press freedom. This would lead at-least to satisfy the journalists, who sacrificed their lives for the better future of the people and view the process of Sri Lanka entering into the real democratization process and their souls may rest in peace.
If the president seriously considers transforming Sri Lanka as a miracle of Asia, he should start democratization process, before it is too late. Freedom of expression is a major pillar of democracy. Therefore, the president should take concrete measures to protect the press freedom in the island nation. If not, Sri Lanka will create an image itself as a tragedy of Asia. Now, the choice, decision and responsibility are in the hands of the President of Sri Lanka.. The question is what he is going to do?
Recorded (April 2004-March 2009) list of killings of journalists and media workers can be accessed online here.
________________________________________________________________________________
[1] http://www.jdslanka.org/2009/08/sri-lanka-thirty-four-journalists-media.html
[2] http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf (pg.II)
[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/02_february/09/sri_lanka.shtml
[4] http://www.cpj.org/2011/04/sri-lankan-authorities-ban-lanka-enews.php
[5] http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2010,1034.html
[6] http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf Pg.IV
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