Archive for January 29th, 2008
Full Text of Press Statement by iTRO:
Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) offices today took time to pay their respects and remember the 7 TRO humanitarian workers who were abducted on 29 and 30 January 2006 while traveling through the Welikanda area in the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) controlled Polonaruwa District.
Paramilitary forces allied to and working in conjunction with the GoSL abducted the 7 TRO workers (6 men and one woman) tortured them, raping the woman, and then executed and disposed of their bodies. The bodies have never been found. This incident was the culmination of a series of attacks on TRO in GoSL controlled areas which began in 2004, it was also the beginning of a campaign of intimidation and harassment of local and international NGOs by the GoSL, paramilitaries and government controlled media outlets.
Since January 2006, 60 humanitarian workers have been killed in Sri Lanka leading John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, to observe that Sri Lanka is among the most dangerous places on earth for humanitarian workers.
These killings of humanitarian workers appear to be aimed at limiting or ending the humanitarian work that local and international NGOs are engaged in, thus creating a climate of fear within the humanitarian community.
The execution of 17 of Action Contre La Faim (ACF) humanitarian workers in August 2006, a massacre the Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission blamed on the GoSL security forces, received worldwide attention and condemnation. Unfortunately this has not led to any improvements in conditions for humanitarian organizations or the communities that they serve.
The lack of any meaningful investigation of the attacks on TRO, ACF or the other organizations has contributed to the current climate of impunity in Sri Lanka and has reduced the space available for humanitarian organizations to operate effectively.
Though the President of Sri Lanka created a Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate the ACF executions, amongst other cases, the TRO 7 were not among the cases taken up and the whole exercise is seen by most to be an attempt by the GoSL to placate the international community. Even the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), set up to monitor and give technical advice to the COI, has severely criticized the investigations and the lack of independence of the COI.
TRO appeals to the international community, the UN and human rights groups to move beyond the tired, ineffectual statements issued to date. These statements have failed to have any impact on the GoSL. The first step should be to establish a United Nation Human Rights Monitoring Mission and to bring the massive violations of human rights by the GoSL to the attention of the Security Council. This is even more important now due to the unilateral abrogation of the Cease Fire Agreement by the GoSL and the resulting departure of the SLMM.
The 7 TRO humanitarian workers abducted:
29 January 2006 Abductions:
Mr. Kasinathar Ganeshalingam: Age 53 (Member TRO Board of Directors; Secretary of the Pre School EDC)
Mr. Kathirkamar Thangarasa: Age 43
30 January 2006 Abductions:
Ms. Premini Thanushkodi: Age 25 (Chief Accountant Batticaloa Office; Student at the Eastern University)
Mr. Shanmuganathan Sujendran: Age 24 (Children’s Home Accountant)
Mr. Arulnesarasa Satheeskaran: Age 23 (Children’s Home Accountant)
Mr. Kailayapillai Ravindran: Age 26 (Children’s Home Accountant)
Mr. Thamiraja Vasantharajan: Age 24 (Children’s Home Accountant)
TRO Headquarters
A9 Road
Kilinochchi
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iTRO London
500 Sunleigh Road, Wembley, HA0 4NF, UK
Tel No: + 44 (0) 208 733 8283
January 29th, 2008
Full Text of press statement by The Committee to Protect Journalists, NY
[New York, January 28, 2008]-The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s brazen public call yesterday to censor the media and reintroduce criminal defamation laws. The comments were published in a Sinhala-language interview by Sri Lanka’s largest weekly, Sunday Lankadeepa, according to Free Media Movement spokesman Sunanda Deshapriya and veteran Sri Lankan journalist Iqbal Athas.
Rajapaksa, who is the brother of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, told the Sunday Lankadeepa that he advocated press censorship, harsh punishments for critical reporting on the military and military expenditures, and a criminal defamation law, according to extracts from the article translated by the Free Media Movement.
“If I have the power I will not allow any of these things to be written,” the secretary said in reference to reporting on the military, according to the Free Media Movement translation.
“This is an open intimidation of the media,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “The Sri Lankan press sorely needs space to report independently on the escalating instability in the country, free of government intimidation.”
CPJ documented the case of a reporter who said she was personally threatened by Rajapaksa last year, but this is the first time his aggressive attitude toward the media has been publicly demonstrated.
The newspaper group Wijeya, which publishes the Sunday Lankadeepa and several other widely circulated publications-including the English-language Sunday Times-and the broadcasting conglomerate Maharaja were singled out by the secretary as examples of privately owned media groups that abuse their existing freedoms by reporting critically, according to the Free Media Movement translation.
January 29th, 2008
Full text of the press release issued by Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF), Paris-based media rights advocacy group on Jan 29th:
Reporters Without Borders appealed today to President Mahinda Rajapakse to rein in various government ministers whose inflammatory comments and incitements to violence have serious threatened the safety of dozens of Sri Lankan journalists.
“Mr. President, it is not yet too late to restrain those of your close associates and political allies who sow trouble and fear among journalists,” the press freedom organisation said. “The violent behaviour of the men employed by some of your ministers is bringing the government into disrepute, a situation that will be hard to redress if nothing is done.”
The defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the president’s brother, said in an interview in the Sunday Lankadeepa on 27 January: “Journalists should not be allowed to write about military matters. Strong action ought to be taken against those who do. We should return to the laws that criminalize defamation in order to punish those who try to murder us.” He also criticised the Wijeya and Maharajah private press groups.
Thugs working for labour minister Mervyn Silva, who is well known for his racist comments about Tamils and his diatribes against journalists, were probably responsible for the stabbing of Lal Hemantha Mawalage, a journalist employed by state broadcaster Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), on 25 January.
Two men on a motorcycle, who were armed with knives, ambushed and attacked Mawalage as he was returning home on the outskirts of Colombo. He and his son managed to hide in a forest until the police came. He was hospitalised with stab wounds to the hands and body.
Mawalage told several journalists he had received death threats in the weeks that followed the violence at SLRC headquarters on 27 December, when Silva ordered his men to beat up the channel’s news director T. M. G. Chandrasekara. Terrified at the possibility of further reprisals, Chandrasekara recently asked to be relieved of his post.
After that incident, Reporters Without Borders contacted presidential aides to express concern about the threats to SLRC journalists.
On 7 January, social welfare minister Douglas Devananda, who is also the head of the pro-governmental EPDP militia, accused journalists working for Minnal, a Tamil programme on Shakthi TV, of orchestrating an interview with a Tamil opposition parliamentarian at the behest of the Tamil Tigers rebels. In the interview, conducted a few days before he was murdered in Colombo, the parliamentarian told the station he was being threatened by the EPDP.
Devananda called on the police to investigate the programme’s journalists, especially Sri Ranga Jeyaratnam. Following his comments, demonstrations were held in various parts of the country to defend Minnal, which is one of the few remaining Tamil programmes to cover politics in an independent manner.
Devananda’s thugs are also suspected of being responsible for the threatening phone call made on 6 January to the Jaffna-based daily Uthayan. The call came from Kayts, an island controlled by the EPDP. Uthayan editors told Reporters Without Borders they feared for the safety of their employees.
Another journalist, Suhaib Kasim, a former senior member of the staff of the Tamil-language daily Thinakaran, was stabbed by unidentified assailants at his Colombo home yesterday. The motive of the attack is not known.
January 29th, 2008