Channel 4
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Sri Lanka's Killing Fields featured devastating new video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity - some of the most horrific footage Channel 4 has ever broadcast
Screened at the UN in Geneva and New York and also shown to politicians at the House of Commons, the European Parliament and key figures in the US Senate Sri Lanka's Killing Fields prompted comment from leading political figures around the world including Prime Minister David Cameron. Yet the Sri Lankan government has so far failed to fully investigate the horrific crimes featured in the film - including videos of extra-judicial executions, the aftermath of targeted shelling of civilian camps and evidence of sexual violence including the naked and abused bodies of female Tamil fighters - captured on mobile phones, both by Tamils under attack and government soldiers as ‘war trophies.'
For this new film, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields : War Crimes Unpunished (w/t), also presented by Jon Snow, director Callum Macrae has accumulated powerful new evidence including contemporaneous documents, eye-witness accounts, photographic stills and videos relating to how exactly events unfolded during the final days of the civil war. Jon Snow says: 'I'm very proud that the new year will see a follow up to our widely-acclaimed documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields. We believe it shows more evidence of official complicity in war crimes and we will continue to show what we find to the world. I hope this film captures, shocks and educates in the same way as the first did."
Despite pressure from human rights groups and the report by a UN-appointed panel of experts which called for a thorough international investigation into alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, the Sri Lankan government's internal inquiry, ‘The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission' has so far failed to conduct any kind of rigorous investigation into the allegations of war crimes.
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields : War Crimes Unpunished (w/t) explores the reasons behind the apparent international inaction in calling the government of Sri Lanka to account. Byrne said: "The horrific revelations in Sri Lanka's Killing Fields caused concern across the globe and calls for further investigations so we decided to do just that; to continue the journalistic endeavour to find out the full truth about these terrible events."
Like Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, Channel 4 and ITN Productions will be making this second film available internationally - it will be ungeoblocked on 4oD. Chris Shaw is the executive producer and Callum Macrae is the director. Macrae said: "Just occasionally you get involved in a film which you feel might really make a difference. Our last film had an extraordinary international impact throughout the world. In this new film we investigate those responsible for those crimes; we show who knew about them and we explain just why the world failed to prevent them."
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, has been watched by over a million viewers in the UK and been watched in over 30 countries on 4oD - totalling more than 455,000 across all platforms and more than 360,000 on channel4 4oD. It has also been televised in Australia, India, Denmark, Norway and Belgium.
© Channel 4
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Channel 4 commissions second Sri Lanka war crimes investigation
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Sri Lanka: Media watchdog appalled by web censorship
Reporters sans frontières (RSF)
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“We deplore this measure, which reinforces government control over online media,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Several news sites had already been blocked by the government, and now this requirement to register with the information ministry poses an additional serious threat to the already limited online freedom of expression.
“We also condemn any attempt to control coverage of the ongoing ‘White Flag’ trial of former army commander Sarath Fonseka or to limit criticism of the government, no matter how virulent, for which journalists have been threatened. The information ministry must lift these blocking orders and rescind this new requirement. And we call on commercial telecom companies to stop blocking sites at the government’s behest.”
The announcement that news websites need to register with the media and information ministry and obtain accreditation came on 5 November, shortly after the secretary to the ministry, W.B. Ganegala, had accused certain websites earlier the same day of constantly defaming senior government officials.
It is not yet known how news websites are supposed to register or what sanctions they face if they refuse to comply. Some website journalists reportedly went to the ministry and requested registration forms only to discover that no procedures have so far been put in place.
The number of blocked sites has risen steadily in recent weeks. They include the Lanka-e-News site, which was blocked at the end of October by state-owned Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and privately-owned Internet service provider Dialog Axiata PLC without Lanka-e-News being given any explanation. Reporters Without Borders interviewed Lanka-e-News editor Sandaruwan Senadheera at the time (read the interview). The decision to block the site was upheld by a court today.
Sri Lanka is classified as a “country under surveillance” in the Reporters Without Borders report on “Enemies of the Internet” and is ranked 158th out of 178 countries in the Reporters Without Borders annual press freedom index.
© RSF
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Sri Lanka abandons round-up of military deserters
By Charles Haviland | BBC News
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It says there are nearly 60,000 such deserters - an apparent increase of 10,000 in just under a year.
However, some of the deserters fled the forces many years ago.
A military spokesman said that the forces were now pursuing just a few dozen deserters who are thought to have committed serious crimes.
'Ex-soldiers'
Since it defeated the Tamil Tigers two-and-a-half years ago, Sri Lanka has not demobilised its soldiers.
Saying the country still faces a security threat, it has instead increased the size of the army to more than 200,000.
Clearly, however, not all within the forces are happy with their situation and desertions have continued on a large scale.
Just 12 days ago an army spokesman said that about 60,000 deserters would be rounded up and apprehended.
Now, however, he has told the BBC that nearly all of them will instead be de-listed and will be able to term themselves "ex-soldiers" rather than deserters.
There have continued to be many reports of deserters suspected of involvement in violent crime - most recently in the killing of a well-known doctor and in a separate triple-murder case.
While the army says it will pursue the few suspected of serious offences, it appears the military wants to de-link itself from any association with such criminality and also let non-criminal deserters get on with their lives.
© BBC News
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Sri Lanka’s (nearly) forgotten massacre
By Jonathan Kay | National Post
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Imagine that, sometime in the next few months, Hamas attacks against Israel escalate to the point of all-out war. Hundreds of Israeli tanks roll into Hamas-controlled territory, supported by artillery barrages and round-the-clock bombing runs. Position after position is overrun, until the retreating Arabs — Hamas fighters alongside innocent civilians — are packed into a tiny coastal sliver of beach. Fathers dig makeshift foxholes to protect their wives and children from Israeli bombs. Finally, Israeli forces penetrate the last defensive barrier, and kill Hamas’ leaders. Amid the battlefield carnage, tens of thousands of innocent civilians lie dead.
Imagine, for a moment, the international outcry that would accompany this bloodshed. It would be the Goldstone Report times a hundred. The daily massacres would be front-page news all over the world, every day. One can even imagine Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Syria and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon joining the war and invading Israel.
Yet if you re-read the second paragraph of this column, and replace just three words — “Arab” with “Tamil,” “Hamas” with “Tiger,” and “Israel” with “Sri Lanka” — everything I described actually did happen in 2009, when Sri Lanka’s military overran Tamil Tiger forces in the northern part of that island nation. Yet, around the world, few paid these events any attention.
There was no “flotilla” for Sri Lankan Tamils: Most of the Canadian activists who rend their garments over the fate of Palestinians probably couldn’t find Sri Lanka on a map — even though the death toll in that country’s 26-year civil war was an order of magnitude greater than the combined death toll from Israel’s generations-long campaign against Palestinian terrorism.
This isn’t to say that the story in Sri Lanka was black-and-white. The Sri Lankan government had every right to fight the Tamil Tigers, which had mutated from a legitimate political movement into a nihilistic terrorist cult that assassinated leaders, kidnapped children for use as soldiers, staged suicide bombings, and even (through local proxies) extorted money from Tamil-Canadian shopkeepers. But the scope of the war got out of hand: In the last months, Sri Lankan forces effectively carpet-bombed swathes of territory that they had declared safe havens for civilians.
The word “massacre” is thrown around a lot in wartime. But in this case, there is solid evidence behind the charge. This is no Jenin-style pseudo-massacre we’re talking about.
Earlier this year, I sat down here in Toronto with a Tamil family that had witnessed all this firsthand, survived, and escaped to Canada.
The father — I’ll refer to him as B. — had worked in northern Sri Lanka as a photographer and Tamil activist. One day, he would be working a wedding. The next, he’d be taking photos of unexploded Sri Lankan bombs. His was an ordinary middle-class family, until everything turned to hell.
It was three years ago when the army moved into his area, declaring it a “high security zone.” He moved his wife and two young children to a village called Suthanthirapuram, where they lived in a makeshift hut.
But the war followed them there, too. In January 2009, bombs hit the local American Ceylon Mission, killing 17; and some of B.’s immediate neighbours were blown up by cluster bombs. He moved on to a nearby village, where his brother, a doctor, was living with his own family.
Then one day, Jan. 22, B. watched as his brother was blown apart as he stood at the mouth of a bunker they’d dug out together. Without time for a proper funeral, B. and his family took the body pieces in a rolled up sari and fled to the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu, as Sri Lankan soldiers flooded the area; and then on to the coastal area of Mathalan — a government-declared “no-fire zone” that became a killing field. By this time, B. and his family were down to one meal a day. The desperate struggle to stay one village ahead of the bombs turned the family into wandering vagabonds.
Finally, they ran out of real estate: B. and his family were trapped on a crowded beach — a stretch of sand a kilometre long and 300 metres wide, where the Tamil Tigers were making their last stand. Amid constant barrages, men dug desperately for cover in the sand, trying to create protective foxholes for their wives and children. When a bomb fell, B. saw figures go up in the air as people, and come down to the ground as corpses.
It’s been more than two years since all this happened. And Sri Lanka’s government would be more than happy to have all of it forgotten. But some world leaders have refused to succumb to amnesia — including our own PM and Foreign Affairs Minister. In September, John Baird declared that there were “credible” allegations of war crimes committed by Sri Lanka — and he continues to press the issue bilaterally with Colombo. More recently, Canada has threatened to boycott the 2013 Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka unless its government takes responsibility for its behaviour toward the Tamil minority.
This is a positive step for Canada, which is home to the world’s largest Tamil diaspora. Under the Liberals, we swung too far in the opposite direction — refusing to list the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist group, and turning a blind eye to Tamil fundraising. Stephen Harper corrected that. And many observers credit Canada’s policies with a weakening of the Tiger military apparatus in the final years of the war. But standing firm against a terrorist group shouldn’t mean turning a blind eye to very real massacres against civilians.
Mr. Harper should keep holding the Sri Lankan government and military to account for what it did in 2009. Given the lack of international interest in this part of the world, our role here is important. If not for us, Sri Lanka may succeed in sweeping its actions under the carpet.
Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post, and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
© National Post
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Sri Lanka sees "war tourism" as survivors struggle
By Nita Bhalla | Alertnet
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Along the way, the buses stop and passengers descend into the hot afternoon sun, taking out their phones to photograph displays of blown-up water tanks, captured boats, armoured vehicles and monuments dedicated to the army. In some places, they buy a cool refreshment and a souvenir t-shirt.
More than two years after the Indian Ocean island's 25-year-old civil war ended, an entire generation of Sri Lankans is finally getting the opportunity to see a part of their country which was off limits. A place they had heard about, but never imagined visiting. A place now healing from the ravages of war.
"It’s really interesting to see all this," says accountant Gayan, 33, from the capital Colombo, as he holds up his BlackBerry to snap a picture of his brother and father posing in front of a captured truck. It’s on display at an army-run roadside "tourist spot" at Elephant Pass, a strategic military base fought over repeatedly during the 25-year civil war.
"Growing up, we would hear about the Tigers and were scared of attacks in Colombo, so it’s good to have peace and see the north," he said, sipping some ice-cold Coke at the cafe and examining the other war relics on display – a tractor and wooden boat once owned by the Tigers.
Sri Lanka’s army retook Elephant Pass, under Tiger control since 2000, as part of its 34-month offensive to end one of Asia’s longest modern conflicts once and for all – retaking nearly a third of the island’s land mass which the Tigers controlled, until a cataclysmic final battle defeated the separatists in May 2009.
In the nation’s south, including Colombo, the victory brought an end to the constant fear of suicide bombings and other attacks that killed thousands of civilians – a hallmark of the Tigers, who were on the terrorism lists of more than 30 nations.
Now, as communities return to find their homes destroyed, possessions lost and little means of making an income, some aid workers and residents question this “war tourism” in an environment where survivors worry about their next meal and are still haunted by their violent past.
"It’s wonderful that the war has ended," said a foreign aid worker based in the northern Kilinochchi district, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting the government.
"But given it was a horrible finish and that war-affected people are still struggling financially and emotionally to pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives, it’s too soon and insensitive to be making even a small business out of it or erecting memorials to those partly responsible for civilian deaths."
The government rejects allegations that it intentionally killed civilians during the final offensive, when some 300,000 were held hostage by the retreating Tigers.
It has ratcheted down the presence of foreign aid workers, especially in the north, where by necessity they worked with the separatists and often had their organisations infiltrated by Tiger operatives.
T-SHIRTS AND ARMY NOTEBOOKS
Most of the Tamil civilians were forced to flee with the Tigers, until army operations allowed hundreds of thousands of them to pour out. They were sent to crowded displacement camps lacking proper sanitation.
There is no conclusive figure on how many civilians were killed in the fighting in the final months.
A U.N.-sponsored report, criticised by the government as being filled with unfounded accusations that initially emerged from Tiger propaganda outlets, says there was "credible evidence" thousands and perhaps tens of thousands killed in shelling and fighting.
Yet no one who gets off the buses mentions the bloody end of the war or the struggle survivors are going through, despite the pick-up trucks laden with World Food Programme sacks of grain and large white lorries with the familiar blue "U.N." lettering – a telling sign that aid is still needed here.
Along the A9 Highway, which runs through the centre of Kilinochchi town, a massive concrete water tank lies fallen on its side, blown up by Tigers retreating from a place they unilaterally declared the capital of Tamil Eelam, the country they wanted to carve out as a Tamil-only preserve.
The destroyed tank is enclosed within a wall, together with a plaque and a "Souvenir Galore" shop run by the army. Visitors take a few snaps, have a cold drink and buy a black t-shirt or baseball cap with "Kilinochochi Re-awakening" emblazoned across it, or opt for the smart Sri Lanka military field notebooks on offer for a just few hundred Sri Lankan rupees.
"During the week, there are many buses and people stopping. At weekends, we get the most amount of visitors – around 600 or so," says Nalaka Vijaypala, 24, a Sri Lankan army soldier in civilian clothes, the left side of his head scarred from sniper fire during the war. "The army runs this place ... It’s popular."
Other monuments are also on display along the route – a giant cuboid with a bullet lodged inside it and a lotus flower and the gold, red and green Sri Lanka flag emerging from the top of it – in memory of the Sri Lankan army “in the gallant operation to annihilate savage and brutal terrorism which has terrified this land," reads the plaque.
The government has quickly repurposed its military assets and personnel for civilian purposes, in part to help President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s post-war development drive and also to keep the roughly 100,000 troops in the north gainfully engaged after the war.
But for some war survivors, it is just too early.
A few hundred metres down from the imposing cuboid, 35-year-old war widow Subendine, who sells vegetables by the roadside, says the visitors bring discomfort.
"They come and go ... they take their pictures. They don’t ask us or even want to know what happened," she said.
© Alertnet
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
EU concerned over Sri Lanka net censorship
Lanka Business Online
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"The EU considers that freedom of press forms an integral part of any democratic system," European Union heads of mission said in a statement.
"The EU therefore believes that the media should be allowed to operate independently.
"The EU also believes that citizens have the right to access all information provided by the media and to make their own judgements and to formulate opinions independently.
"The EU Heads of Mission call on the Sri Lankan authorities to ensure that the rights of the free media are respected."
Sri Lanka's information ministry said several news websites were damaging the image of the country, head of state, minister and senior state officials. The ministry also wanted all websites carrying information about Sri Lanka to register with it.
The United States earlier expressed concern over the blocking of Lankaenews.com
© LBO
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Sri Lanka 'still torturing' Tamils
By Jonathan Miller | Channel 4
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Now ahead of a United Nations meeting tomorrow, human rights groups are calling for an urgent investigation into the allegations that human rights abuses are still rife in Sri Lanka.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government dismisses all that as "preposterous". He has embarked on a charm offensive to help repair his island nation's tarnished reputation.
But Channel 4 News has spoken to two men who say that behind the smiles, there still lies a vengeful, sadistic regime.
The Tamil Tigers stand accused of war crimes too. Suspected fighters were rounded up at the end of the war, but it is claimed suspects are still being detained - and tortured - today.
'It felt like I was breathing fire'
"Nimal", whose identity we have concealed, claims he was tortured by Sri Lankan security forces in June this year because of his association with the Tamil Tigers.
"They used to beat me with a steel cable. It would peel away my skin. The pain would be simply unbearable. They would hang me upside down and dunk my head into water. They covered my head with a polythene bag soaked in petrol and tied it tightly round my neck. When I tried to breathe in it felt like I was breathing in fire," Nimal tells me.
"I had no medical treatment. I couldn't sleep because I had to lie face down so I wasn't laying on my wounds. You can't sleep in that much pain. They would tie me upside down and dip me into a barrel of water.
"My wounds would feel like they were burning as soon as they touched the water. When I screamed in pain they would come back with the confession and try again to make me sign it," he continues.
"Maaran" says his treatment at the hands of the government made him want to die.
"They hung me upside down and shoved my head in a barrel of water. They laid me face down on a table and hammered me with wires, poles and rods. They burned me with cigarette butts and when I asked for water to drink they gave me urine. I thought it would have been better if I died at the end of the war rather than to have survived to face this."
The men I met have now been granted asylum in the UK. Both had past associations with the outlawed Tamil Tigers. Both were tortured in Sri Lanka this summer.
It can take years to be granted asylum. The two men I met were approved within weeks because the government accepted their stories. Both had past associations with the outlawed Tamil Tigers.
Calls for 'urgent investigation'
"Nimal" and "Maaran" are not alone. Tomorrow a United Nations committee meets to consider mounting evidence that Sri Lanka is in breach of the UN convention against torture, to which it is legally bound.
Among reports submitted to this committee from 12 international organisations, the most detailed and damning is from the UK-based group Freedom from Torture.
Its Sri Lankan caseload is based on forensic medical documents compiled from 35 men and women, tortured, it says, since the end of Sri Lanka's civil war. It says torture perpetrated by the military and the police is still occuring in 2011.
The evidence, the group concludes, is sufficiently serious to merit urgent investigation.
Juliet Cohen of Freedom from Torture, says the effects of torture can last for years.
"People have been through overwhelmingly terrifying experiences, and these in Sri Lanka seem to have employed the full range, pretty much, of torture methods.
"People seem to be having a very high concentration of torture within quite a short time frame, and they're very damaged by it and theyve got physical and psychological scars."
Turned back
This year, the British government has forcibly removed an unknown number of failed Tamil asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka.
The UK has signed the UN convention against torture, which states that no-one should be deported if there are "substantial grounds" to believe they would be tortured.
The government bases its assessment of that risk on the UK Border Agency's country of origin information reports.
The latest COI report on Sri Lanka is dated July this year. Under the section on torture, it quotes international human rights groups, other governments and the UN as stating that torture is still rife in Sri Lanka.
Having said all that, the report then cites a letter, in paragraph 8.35, from a British diplomat - our man in Colombo - who writes: "I asked the Senior Government Intelligence officials if there was any truth in allegations that the Sri Lankan authorities were torturing suspects. They denied this was the case."
The Border Agency told us that it only returns those whom they are satisfied are not at risk, in line, it says, with a European court ruling that not all Tamil asylum-seekers do require protection.
Human rights groups contend that failed Tamil asylum-seekers are all at risk.
From the evidence we have heard from those who have made it out of Sri Lanka's torture camps, the long war is not over yet.
© Channel 4
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Families search for thousands of missing victims from brutal war
By Andrew Buncombe | The Independent
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That scene played out in May 2009, on a patch of blood-soaked sand in northern Sri Lanka where Tamil rebels made a last stand against the advancing forces of the Sri Lankan army. With them were up to 300,000 civilians. Since then, Abi's family has searched for him without reward, turning to the army, charities even Hindu priests. "I don't know what happened to him. All I know is that he put his arms around my neck," said the boy's mother, Getharagowri Mahendiran.
The family is not alone. Two-and-a-half years after the end of the military operation that destroyed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), many hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people remain missing and unaccounted for. Campaigners say the uncertainty and trauma for their families is creating a stumbling block to the government's efforts to work towards reconciliation in a country scarred by decades of violence.
Figures made available by a project set up by the Sri Lankan authorities in conjunction with UNICEF to trace missing children, suggest 2,592 people, including around 700 youngsters, have been officially registered as unaccounted for. The Family Tracing Unit (FTU), based in Vavuniya, is only mandated with looking for children, and passes details of missing adults to other government officials.
Around 30 children have been traced and reunited since the unit started its work at the end of 2009. Another 20 are in process. In 64 further cases, the names of missing children have been matched to those on the unit's database. Around 65 per cent of the children's cases, relate to forced recruitment by the LTTE.
"It is not an easy process. It is very difficult," said Brig JB Galgamuwa, a retired army officer who heads a team of three female probation officers that scours police and army records, hospitals and children's homes, for information about the missing. There are suspicions some children's homes may have engaged in child trafficking. "We are doing our best to help [the families]," he added.
"We are all parents, or else good sons or daughters, and that is why we realise the importance of this issue."
The uncertainty for people such as the family of Abi, the missing six-year-old whose family is now being assisted by the FTU, adds to the misery of a community still reeling from the war and who may only recently have been released from refugee camps. Yet the work of the unit is highly sensitive, given the intense dispute over the number of civilians killed in the final stages of the military and that both government forces and the LTTE have been accused of war crimes.
Officials say that given the unit's limited resources and that for someone to be officially counted as missing requires there to be a living relative in a position to register the case, it is likely the FTU's figures only represent a portion of the total of those people unaccounted for.
"Many people are coming to us, saying can you confirm whether the child is dead or alive, even if you cannot reunite us," said one official linked to the project who asked not to be named. "With that uncertainty they don't want to be resettled to their original districts because they feel they should stay here. They also feel unable to go back to work or to return to their fields until they recover their child."
The majority of cases relate to the period between January-May 2009 when the once powerful LTTE retreated north and eastwards as the Sri Lankan army advanced. As they did so, around 300,000 civilians were caught up with them, the LTTE's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, intending to use them as both a buffer and a bargaining chip.
Witnesses have reported that LTTE cadres subsequently shot dead a number of civilians who tried to escape to government-controlled territory.
After the LTTE's headquarters of Killinochi fell in early January 2009, crowds of civilians flooded east along the A35, heading towards Mullaitivu, close to where the last fighting took place and which remains off-limits to journalists. Today, both in Killinochi and along this rutted road, where the monsoon rains have left it sticky with crimson mud, it seems as if almost everyone either lost a friend or relative, or else is searching for someone unaccounted for.
In a barber's shop in Killinochi, Ponnathurai Suriyakumar wept uncontrollably as he recalled being forced eastwards with his family until they reached the so-called "no fire zone" established by the government. Numerous eyewitnesses have told how both the government and the LTTE continued to fire on and out of this patch of land, with devastating impact on civilians. On May 8, a single shell claimed the lives of 13 people taking shelter with him, said Mr Suriyakumar, including his eight-year-old son, Sakinder. Mr Suriyakumar, himself badly injured, said his 23-year-old cousin had been missing since that day. "We have no information about her," he said. "You cannot imagine [the situation there]. Everything was destroyed. It was chaotic."
A farmer called Bala Singham, who lives close to the A35, said his family fled until they reached the village of Pokkanai, which was seized by government troops. It was there that his brother went missing. "All the people ran towards the army. He was not there. We ran over bodies," said Mr Singham, who was released from a government camp in May of this year. "We have searched everywhere. We have gone to the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), the police, NGOs. I am still searching."
In the absence of hard information, many families are turning to priests and astrologers, hoping they can offer insight. Officials say relatives are torn between accepting a family member is dead, grieving and moving on with their lives, and continuing to believe that person is alive. Young women whose husbands are missing are particularly vulnerable. Officials suspect not all astrologers - paid a fee for their services - act responsibly.
In Jaffna, heartland of the Tamil community and a place that has seen intense violence and conflict, a Hindu priest called Sivashanmuga Nandakurkal, said people had long come to him for information about loved ones who had "disappeared". Yet the numbers had increased since 2006, after a peace-deal with the LTTE broke down and President Mahinda Rajapaksa took the decision to renewed military operations to end to a separatist insurgency that had left up to 100,000 people dead.
"They come with the missing person's horoscope. Through the horoscope we can tell whether the person is alive or not," said the priest. "If you are talking recent history, most people are not alive. Only in a few cases is that person alive."
The priest, who claimed an accuracy rate of 95 per cent, said he would not mislead a relative as to the fate of their loved one. Yet he said in an attempt to cushion their pain, he never directly told someone their relative had died. "In those cases, we say 'It will be very difficult to find them'," he explained.
A farmer called K Sathyanantharaja, who grows rice in flooded fields next to the A35, said his father-in-law and sister-in-law had been killed in the fighting, while his 21-year-old nephew was still missing. Having contacted the ICRC but with no results, the family had instead contacted a priest. "We don't know whether he was taken by the LTTE or the army," he said. "We approached the astrologers. They said he was still alive. They said he could not come at the moment but that he will return in three or four months."
The government of Mr Rajapaksa has spent millions of pounds on post-war projects in the north, improving roads and infrastructure, providing emergency shelter, food and financial support, as well establishing large numbers of military bases in territory formerly held by the LTTE. Yet campaigners and Tamil politicians say the issue of the missing remains a source of ongoing trauma. Nuwan Bopege, president of Students for Human Rights, called on the government to release the names and details of captured and suspected former LLTE members still being held.
The circumstances in which the last weeks of the war were fought remains deeply controversial. Earlier this year, a panel established by UN Secretary General Ban Ki -moon found there were "credible allegations" both the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE committed war crimes in the final stages. It said tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed and called for an independent international probe. Among the most serious allegation was that the army shelled hospitals in the no fire zone.
The Sri Lankan authorities have rejected the panel's findings. Its own commission of inquiry on the conflict is due to report to the government later this month. Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, an MP with the ruling coalition and an adviser to the president on reconciliation, said almost all the 11,000 former LTTE fighters held by the government had now been released and that about 200 were to be charged. "The names [of those being held] are with the National Human Rights Commission… The names are available to the next of kin," he said.
On the issue on civilian casualties, Mr Wijesinha said he believed a total of around 5,000 people may have died, including those killed by the LTTE, as well as those who died as a result of "collateral damage". He said the government had taken a number of steps towards reconciliation, including economic and social development, but said there was more to be done. He added: "We have to persuade people to work towards a pluralistic society."
Meanwhile, for people such as the family of Abi, who would now be nine years old, there is little they can do but wait, and hope. His mother said: "I strongly believe he is somewhere."
Aftermath: Truth and recrimination
After the 2009 operation to defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), there were widespread calls for an independent investigation into claims that war crimes may have been committed, but Sri Lanka rejected the demands.
In the spring of 2010, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would appoint a panel of experts to advise him. At the same time, President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced his own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) to examine the events between 2002 to 2009. It is believed the LLRC will report later this month, but many have already accused the commission of pro-government bias and of failing to protect witnesses. "Sri Lanka's LLRC is not a credible accountability mechanism. Its mandate is seriously flawed and in practice it falls far short of international standards on national commissions of inquiry," said Amnesty International.
The UN report, meanwhile, found "credible allegations" that both government troops and the Tamils committed war crimes. Among the most serious claims aimed at Sri Lanka's army was that it fought in a "no-fire zone" and "systematically" shelled clinics. It accused the LTTE of forced recruitment, of using civilians as human shields, and of preventing people from making their way to government-held areas. It said tens of thousands of civilians may have died, most killed by government forces. The government dismissed the allegations.
© The Independent
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Sri Lanka urges news websites to register after ban
By Ranga Sirilal & Shihar Aneez | Reuters
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"It's a request from the Media Ministry to register (news) websites with the ministry," said Director General of the government's Information Department Ariyarathna Athugala.
He declined to comment on the reason for the measure.
Sri Lanka's Telecommunication Regulation Commission, last month blocked access within Sri Lanka to the anti-government Lanka-e-News (www.lankaenews.com) website, which carried news critical of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers.
The United States Embassy said it was deeply concerned over the banning of the site.
"The United States believes that a free and independent media is vital to ensuring the health and continuation of any democracy. Freedom of expression, including unfettered access to internet news websites, is a basic right which must be respected," it said in a statement.
"We therefore call on the Sri Lankan authorities and the management of Sri Lankan telecommunications firms to stop activities aimed at blocking free access in Sri Lanka to all legitimate media websites, including Lanka-e-News."
In May, the Sri Lankan government imposed a ban on Lanka-e-News for publishing false news. A court lifted the ban after accepting the website's apology.
The island nation's government initially blocked news websites during the final phase of a 25-year war against separatists Tamil Tiger rebels, banning the rebels' main propaganda website in 2008.
The government defeated the rebels in May 2009, but continued the ban on anti-government websites from time to time.
"I don't see any necessity for registering. There is enough room under the normal law to prevent obscene and unethical publications," Kusal Perera, a government critic and director of the Center for Social Democracy, told Reuters.
"This is just to hunt down the dissent."
© Reuters
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Sri Lanka targets dissident websites
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
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The Ministry of Mass Media and Information said many reports posted on dissident websites amounted to character assassination of President Mahinda Rajapakse, his ministers and top officials.
"This ministry believes that those who are operating and maintaining these clandestine websites have been doing so to discredit the government, the head of state," the ministry said in a statement.
"Such slanderous publications should not only be discouraged but also acts of this nature would have to be effectively prevented in the interest of the general public."
It said the websites should register with the ministry at the earliest, but did not say which laws were being used against dissident websites. It did not specify penalties for those who fail to comply.
However, the statement came four days after the US embassy in Colombo said that freedom of expression, including unfettered access to Internet news websites, was a basic right which must be respected by Sri Lankan authorities.
"We... call on the Sri Lankan authorities and the managements of Sri Lankan telecommunications firms to stop activities aimed at blocking free access in Sri Lanka to all legitimate media websites," the embassy said.
Sri Lanka began web censorship in June 2007 with the blocking of the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website at a time when security forces stepped up their attacks against the rebels who were eventually defeated by May 2009.
However, since then many website which are openly anti-government have been blocked by Sri Lankan authorities.
Rights groups have repeatedly accused the government of stifling media freedoms, a charge denied by the authorities.
© AFP
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