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The Associated Press: Official: Sri Lankan war zone doctors detained
By RAVI NESSMAN – 4 hours ago
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Three Sri Lankan doctors who treated hundreds of badly wounded civilians in understaffed, makeshift hospitals in the country’s war zone were detained on accusations they gave false information about the casualties to the media, a health official said Monday.
With journalists and nearly all aid workers barred from the war zone, Thurairaja Varatharajah, Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi and V. Shanmugarajah became some of the few sources of information on the toll the war took on the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the area.
The doctors fled the conflict last week as the government’s fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels neared its conclusion. The government declared victory Monday in the 25-year-old insurgency.
A health ministry official said the doctors were detained by the military when they fled and were later turned over to police. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The ministry was conducting an inquiry into their conduct, including allegations they disseminated false information, the official said.
Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said he had no information about the doctors, whose fate has generated international concern.
As the fighting in the north escalated, the doctors told harrowing stories of the fighting and the conditions they were forced to work under. They repeatedly relocated their makeshift hospital to schools and other buildings amid heavy shelling as government forces swept over the area. They described how the vast number of wounded civilians overwhelmed their facility, as they ran low on medicine, supplies and staff. Eventually, they could only throw gauze and bandages at the wounded.
They said the war zone, packed with tens of thousands of civilians, was under almost constant artillery attack that caused heavy civilian casualties.
As the doctors told the world of the dire conditions for civilians, government officials denied the men existed. They later acknowledged that Varatharajah and Sathyamurthi were working for the government in the war zone, but said they were under rebel pressure to lie about the fighting. Health officials in Colombo said they had not heard from Shanmugarajah since October.
The government also denied it was shelling the war zone and dismissed reports of large civilian casualties. Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said Sunday, the government freed all the civilians without “shedding a drop of blood.”
Varatharajah was the chief government health official in the Mullaittivu district, while Sathyamurthi was a top official in the Kilinochchi district. Their presence in rebel-controlled territory highlighted a quirk of the long civil war here. While the rebels controlled a mini-state in the north, the government ran the social services there to prove its continued sovereignty over the area.
The U.N. said it believed the doctors had been detained as well.
“To the best of our knowledge, the doctors are in the custody of the government. We understood that Dr. Varatharajah was wounded and is in the hospital,” U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.
The United Nations says more than 7,000 civilians were killed in fighting since Jan. 20. The Red Cross said it had evacuated 13,769 sick and wounded and their relatives from the war zone over the last three months.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Ministry of Defence – Sri Lanka | Official Defence News Provider
Monday, May 18, 2009
Last modified on: 5/18/2009 11:29:49 AM
Foreign Correspondent(By: Gomin Dayasri)
It’s a stopover in paradise for a Foreign Correspondent to live majestically on his overseas allowance. Such comfortable digs are not in the market in the recession stung home country. There is exotic food and groovy watering holes at affordable prices. NGOs’ provide the freebies and rolls the red carpet.
Evenings may be dull but there is fun around-sun and surf, safaris and misty mountains within easy reach. Surroundings are ideal to prop a savings account for a rainy day. It’s an earn to save assignment; where on most days the drink and dinner is free with invitations galore. Many sophisticated hostesses desire to declare that they call the local BBC /CNN man by the first name. They pass unquoted quotes, to display their importance.
It’s a comfortable station to report a war with no hazard to life or limb-the possible menace being the cancellation of the visa and a deportation order. Foreign correspondents live in Iraq or Afghanistan, Sudan or Somalia with death beckoning.
English is understood by those who matter and the girls in the NGO circuit provide the information and entertainment. News is at the door step with LTTE agents in attendance. Cultivation of news sources is not a requirement as there is a free flow.
So laid back is life with much free time to read the book that requires the time to read. The constant irritant being the need to attend press conferences where Ministers narrate stories which the editor will not bother to read. Yet a convenient platform to meet the tribe to exchange a few yarns to embarrass the government.
To win the holiday package you need the war to obtain the assignment. If the guns are silenced the return ticket will arrive to pack the bags. War is a must and it must go on and on and on for the good life to continue. Otherwise Sri Lanka is not a resident base for a Foreign Correspondent. The event will be conveniently covered by the Delhi bureau with a periodic visit to Colombo.
To keep the war on track LTTE presence as a fighting formation is paramount. To beef the LTTE, arms and ammunition and ships and planes are alone not sufficient-pen and ink are equally vital. To win the hearts and minds it is necessary to usher the propaganda war-so enters the Foreign Correspondent.
Most Foreign Correspondents arrive with a neo liberal agenda peddled by their editorial staff. Sri Lanka is often an early posting and a stepping stone to the cosmopolitan world of journalism-many in Colombo are seen later in hotspots around the world dispatching reports. For upward mobility writing must calibrate with thinking of the news desk and editorial opinion which is to romanticize the war with a strong tilt to the underdog. That is breaking news and a visa to a more prestigious posting.
Their insights on arrival had been choreographed by the NGOs and provided with a hand picked list of contacts from the NGO seminar circuit. They take over with a dinner date in a local atmospheric caf� with sophisticated small talk in attractive company. A traveling urbane companion is provided to map the Colombo strategy. To the credit of the foreign correspondent many are not soft bunnies and in their whimsical western way enjoy the goodies laced with their typical suave cynicism. Still, there is much common ground to tread hand in hand with the Colombians.
LTTE churns out television footage from their sources; so does the government. Watch on BBC, CNN, Al Jazzera – always on display is the LTTE coverage hardly ever from government sources. If so slanted to sympathize, with the LTTE. Is this balance presentation or a tilt towards the favorite son? Certainly reporting from Colombo, the television Foreign Correspondent is more balanced in his presentation than the anchor person in the studio. This is media manipulation at its prime, supporting the philosophy of western stalwarts like Hillary Clinton, leaning towards the terrorist outfit. The local based foreign minions have to toe the official line, from editor to statesman, for their future enhancement.
The print media are the foot soldiers of the LTTE; the dispatches that please the editor are those that discredit Sri Lanka. Having supported the LTTE relentlessly for over 25 years, to be defeated in a cause they peddled, is to have egg on the face. Westerners can never take defeat gracefully when inflicted by Easterners. It was visible from Dien Bien Phu to Saigon, from Baghdad to Kabul. It is unbearable to watch terrorism being defeated with minimum facilities, while the west gropes with jealous green eyes, the east achieving success as they understand better the aspiration of the peoples’ local power.
It is a wonder why the west has been unable to fathom the reason the CIA is a permanent loser in the final chapter?
These media mercenaries treat with contempt those in conflict with their culture- it a handful that have the sophistication to understand cross cultures. What ever is alien to their value structure, is blasphemous. They carry chips on both shoulders; mocking both the NGOs that nourish them to the government they abhor. At least at this point there is no discrimination. It is a complex in reverse, stupid!
With the LTTE gone where will they go? After few more horror stories to demean the Security Forces and back to the bonnie of the west to face the shock treatment of recession. War is an investment relief to the Foreign Correspondent. The order will soon come to pack the flack jackets and return to a not so sweet home and to wait patiently for a call to another exotic destination?
To be fair, the Foreign Correspondent deserves sympathy-he is his master’s voice. The master placed his bet on the wrong horse and made the work horse sounds dim and daft.
The Foreign Correspondent will now jet to another destination to write a story to please his master, provided he is pleased. Left to himself he would be more objective, but he has to find a destination-so he remains obliged!
Click below to view SL Ministry of Defence response to reports of IDP camp abuses
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Tough search for Sri Lanka truths
BBC NEWSBy Chris Morris
BBC News, DelhiReporting from Sri Lanka at the moment is extremely difficult. There is no independent access to the northern war zone, or to the thousands of Tamil civilians who have crossed over to government-controlled territory.
The only regular sources of information are the government on one side, and websites sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) on the other.
There is a propaganda war alongside the conflict on the ground, and confirming details of what is going on is all but impossible.
Many journalists covering South Asia have been unable to get visas to travel to Sri Lanka.
Some have tried to enter the country as tourists and have been turned back at the airport.
Those who do try to travel to the north independently are stopped at a series of checkpoints far away from the war zone.
The government says this is a necessary precaution to ensure that journalists do not come to any harm.
Iron hand
Critics in the local media are under extreme pressure. Several independent journalists have been killed in the past few years.
One leading newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickrematunga, was shot dead on his way to work in Colombo this year.
The government denied any responsibility for his death. But in an editorial he was said to have written a few weeks before he was killed, and which was published after his death, Mr Wickrematunga’s accusation was clear.
“When finally I am killed,” he wrote, “it will be the government that kills me.”
The past few months have been one of the most challenging times to report from Sri Lanka, but this has never been a particularly easy war to cover.
The Tamil Tigers have now been pushed into a tiny corner of the country. But they have always ruled any areas under their control with an iron hand.
Dissent has never been accepted – and many Tamil critics of the LTTE have been murdered over the years.
The Sri Lankan authorities have also become intolerant of criticism. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse told me during a trip to Sri Lanka this year that in a time of war all dissent was treason.
A few days later, in a front-page newspaper report, he accused me of supporting the Tamil Tigers and threatened to “chase me out” of the country.
The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and several foreign embassies have also been the target of criticism.
After more than 25 years of civil war, Sri Lanka senses that the defeat of the LTTE is at hand.
But the lack of independent accounts of what is happening in the north has given rise to growing concern around the world.
“How the war ends will be critical to Sri Lanka’s future,” argues Robert Templer, the Asia director at the International Crisis Group.
“Will it be in a bloody massacre whose memory will be used to incite decades more war and terrorism?
“Or will we see renewed efforts to find a negotiated end to the fighting, and with it, the possibility of building a new, more peaceful Sri Lanka for all its people?”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8010565.stmPublished: 2009/04/21 15:27:42 GMT
© BBC MMIX
groundviews » Fear Psychosis, State of our Nation, Terrorism and Sri Lanka, our Motherland
From the Blog, Groundviews a Sri Lankan citizen journalism initiative
May 13, 2009 at 6:42 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Human Rights, Human Security, IDPs and Refugees, Media, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dhammika Dharmawardhane
Double standards as it may seem Lasantha’s murder was a rude awakening for many, including me. Why I call it a double standard is that many lives were previously lost and I chose to ignore it under the justification of national pride and war for the sake of our country’s sovereignty. Well at least I confess to be guilty as I did. However, as I have always said, I am loyal to my country, I am a nationalist, a patriot, but I refuse to be a blind one.
The latest development where the Government of Sri Lanka has requested for public information on any dissent to the war effort strengthen what I would call fear psychosis. Journalists, bloggers, key decision makers in the community, peer leaders have all attributed this to the days of Hitler when one was rewarded for one’s Nazi loyalty. I question this new public information telephone number, we do have emergency numbers to call, and so as citizens do we now need another to report those who dissent against the war? Dissent against terrorism we must, as everyone in the world does, but if our voices were and are to be heard in a working democracy, isn’t this call for patriotism for the want of a better expression, working against the very freedom we seek to establish by fighting this war against terrorism for the very sovereignty of our motherland?
I take Afghanistan, the Taliban and the fundamentalist way of life as an example. Originally Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein stood out as individuals to be targeted in the war against terror. 9/11 changed the world forever. The war against terror now has moved on from individuals to a collective of individuals. In a lawless country like Afghanistan where the warlords ruled the day. For those who had the power, in this instance the ability to kill, ruled. Indiscriminate bombing, ill planned military presence has now allowed what I call a collective of individuals against the western world. The warlords were disarmed, but individuals, families were wiped out in this war against terror. The west as always not understanding the simple facts of life in the developing world and its ways. It’s simply personal now; if you bomb my house I will seek you out for revenge. So as an answer, do we now wipe out whole villages, kill whole families and ensure that none are left to nullify future quests for revenge?
Sri Lanka’s war against terror now confined to four kilometres proves easily quenchable. The government propaganda and war machine understand the importance of identifying the Tamil Eelam program to its leader Prabakaran. His death is imperative, for with it, they hope the end will come. A weak opposition, macabre politics with former terrorists in parliament, a severely disappointed Tamil Diaspora all clearly show us that democracy has ended in Sri Lanka. So the end not only is Prabakaran’s.
A family government with enough trusted and most loyal generals waiting in the corridors of power. Filial connections, none fragile.
The aspirations of the Tamil people flow in ashes in the many rivers of Sri Lanka. So do the blood of its people.
We prayed another 1983 would never happen again, we watch in vain as 2009 is happening before our very eyes. Through battle we create another generation who will grow hating Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan’s and Sri Lankanarism’s. We ourselves lay the first stone to the building of another Prabakaran.
We create the need for revenge again. We created it amongst the Tamils in the south in 1983. Prabakaran took it to the north. Now we strengthen his claim of inequality by those we destroy now. We make him more credible.
The battle is already won in Sri Lanka. Prabakaran’s justice will be quick death.
Aspirations for freedom will never die, no one deserves to live in a land they call theirs subjugated.
Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan’s and Sri Lankanarism’s largely depend on the whim of a large family. Warlords… Kings… Call them what you may defend them as you may.
As we fight to eradicate terrorism from our country and fight for our countries very freedom we ourselves through the right we call democracy create demagogues within our country. Through election.
I wonder about the former Soviet Union, culture, creativity, pride, national war assets, and music all under the umbrella of communism. Now their gift to the world is human trafficking, blonde prostitutes and the Albanian mafia, all in the name of freedom.
Thailand best economic progress under Sinawata’s quasi dictatorship.
China, the best of communism and culture, all without the freedom to speak.
So is a dictatorship what we need? Sans the freedom?
Are you with or against us rises the clarion call of the Rajapakse’s.
We respond in our typical Sri Lankan manner. Best summarised through what I heard recently from a friend in Colombo. “Machan, the world may going through a recession, all kinds of problems and people in the US and UK may find life hard, in Colombo it’s business as usual. We’re eating, drinking and partying hard!”
Spoke to a friend in London. “Machan, I don’t blog about MR or I am really careful for I don’t want them to turn me back from the airport when I holiday in Sri Lanka.”
The Sri Lankan’s who are Tamils among us suffer in stoic silence. The Tamil Diaspora scream in protest. The Tamil Tigers die. The Tamil people in the north die in the crossfire. We breed a new batch of Tamils, hatred and a new cycle of violence.
The Tamils suffer death, indignity and violence.
The end is what never was. All of us watch in silence. Democracy disappears very like the ashes swept and washed from the opposition leaders home hearths.
Thanks to Prabakaran and LTTE terrorist tactics we lost any proper leadership that Sri Lanka may have had through suicide attacks. We are left with what we have now.
So are we with them? Is this the value of democracy, that it can be twisted to meet your needs? The needs of those in power?
Unite Sri Lanka is another clarion call, who’s calling please?
Stop the violence. Please hear us.
Stop.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Burma’s Suu Kyi ‘to face trial’
Burma’s Suu Kyi ‘to face trial’
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is to face trial for breaching the conditions of her detention under house arrest, her lawyer has said.
Ms Suu Kyi will stand trial on 18 May, the lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, said.
She was taken to a prison from her home in Rangoon, where she has spent most of the past 19 years, to hear the charges.
A US man whose uninvited visit to her home led to the charges, will also be tried on immigration and security offences, the lawyer added.
“ If somebody shows up at her door step in violation of Burmese law she can not be held responsible for it ”
Lawyer Jared GenserThe American man, John Yettaw, was arrested after swimming across a lake to her house and staying there secretly for two days.
The charges are yet to be confirmed by the government.
But it looks as though this is a device to keep her detained until elections due in 2010 which the generals think will give them some legitimacy, says BBC South-East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head.
Another of her lawyers said they would contest the charge.
“The charge is going to be violating the conditions of her house arrest and what her lawyer is going to argue is that of course that’s ridiculous because, yes under the terms of her arrest she cannot invite people to visit her but she of course did not invite this person to visit her,” Jared Genser told the BBC.
“If somebody shows up at her door step in violation of Burmese law she can not be held responsible for it.”
Security stepped up
A spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), Nyan Win said he had been informed of the plan to try Ms Suu Kyi and two women who live with her by her lawyer, who visited Ms Suu Kyi in her off-limits house on Wednesday.
She was driven in a police convoy from her house to the prison, eyewitnesses said.
Reports say security has been stepped up at the Insein prison.
The Nobel Peace laureate has been under house arrest for much of the past 19 years.
The latest detention began in May 2003, after clashes between opposition activists and supporters of Burma’s (Myanmar) military government.
The house arrest was extended last year – a move which analysts say is illegal even under the junta’s own legal limits.
It is now due to expire at the end of May.
Earlier this month, the military government rejected an appeal for the 63-year-old to be freed, despite NLD claims that she was suffering from low blood pressure and dehydration.
Ms Suu Kyi was detained after the NLD’s victory in a general election in 1990. Burma’s junta refused to allow the party to assume power.
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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8049187.stmPublished: 2009/05/14 05:54:41 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Sri Lanka EDITORIAL:: Of those propaganda hit men
Wednesday, 13 May 2009 – 1:04 PM SL Time
A few days ago the army monitored a conversation between the LTTE`s arms procurer turned spokesman KP and a senior Tiger leader trapped in the Vanni via a satellite phone. KP asked his beleaguered colleague to do whatever possible and hold out as he and his foreign allies were doing their best to save them. Less than two days later, a story was floated that a large number of civilians had been killed in an army artillery barrage. It was sourced to a person calling himself a government doctor in the LTTE-held `no fire zone`. The Health Ministry has denied the presence of any government doctor in that area! (The real source was the LTTE s web arm TamilNet.)
Obviously, LTTE spin doctors were trying to prepare the ground for Sri Lanka`s humanitarian situation to be taken up by the UN Security Council.
British and French Foreign Ministers David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner who look Thomson and Thomson in Tintin comics because of their well coordinated yet inane actions made, true to form, another abortive attempt to move the UN Security Council against Sri Lanka the other day. Their thundering pratfall signifies the solidarity of the civilised world with Sri Lanka. Their ignominious failure is also a pointer that the western powers are fast losing their grip on the rest of the world and their neo colonial strategies aimed at global domination have failed to yield the intended results. The US and its allies are losing ground not only to the donkey-riding primitive Taliban savages but also to a collective of sovereign states determined to defeat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. The angry reaction of the Obama administration to the Rajapaksa government s refusal to let go of terrorists has been to block an IMF loan to Sri Lanka.
At the forefront of the Save the Tigers campaign is a section of the western media, either directly or indirectly controlled and/or influenced by their respective governments in spite of their claims of impartiality and independence.
Their recent coverage of the humanitarian situation in the Vanni is a testimony to the fact that they are far from independent and impartial and that they are ready to let ethics fall by the wayside if that suits their agenda. How a BBC story based on a single source that an intelligence dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was `sexed up` by the Blair government to make a case for invading Iraq finally drove weapons expert and inspector Dr. David Kelly to suicide in 2003 is also a case in point. The attendant scandal shook the BBC to its foundation.
BBC, it may be recalled, blacked out Sinn Fein leaders until the IRA agreed to eschew violence, though its journalists are under strict instructions not to use the term `terrorists` to describe even the blood thirsty terrorists in other parts of the world. A former BBC correspondent, Pill Rees, boasts in his much publicised yet mediocre book, Dining with Terrorists, that during twenty years of his reporting conflicts, he never used the word `terrorists` to describe `armed militants`! What an achievement!
Intriguingly, nothing prevents BBC from producing programmes that lionise terrorists like the one on LTTE suicide cadres, which the LTTE made the best use of for fund raising and indoctrination purposes. It looks as if BBC needed a set of separate guidelines to prevent its personnel from currying favour with and sanitising terrorists to have access to conflict zones and get exclusive stories.
CNN is no better. A few years ago one of its glorified yet na ve correspondents had the temerity to tell the world from Colombo itself that both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army used child soldiers! That was how he sought to `balance` his story! There is a misconception among some people in this part of the world that the western media are run by super humans not capable of wrongdoing. And some Sri Lanka watchers have gone to the extent of arguing that the western media should be given unrestricted access to the Vanni so that they could see the situation there for themselves and tell the world the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
We don`t approve of the government`s decision to keep the welfare centres out of bounds for the media but it is only wishful thinking that the western media will report the true situation, even if they are granted access. Here is an example:
Eason Jordan, chief news executive of the cable network, confessed in an article on The New York Times op-ed page on April 11, 2003 that CNN had for years suppressed important news about the Iraqi dictatorship, as it thought reporting the truth would jeopardise the network`s Iraqi employees. He said he thought such reportage, might also have got CNN kicked out of the country, too, and that apparently was a price CNN was not willing to pay. The Herald Sun, which filed a report on the NYT article described what CNN had done thus: `They chose to shill for Saddam rather than be shown the border.` So much for CNN`s independence, impartiality and professionalism! One is reminded of how the Swedish media sided with Hitler during WW II to save their skin and in the process had themselves practising the oldest profession in the world!
David A. Schlesinger, Reuters` global managing editor taking exception to the insertion of the word `terrorist/s` into his agency`s dispatches by some newspapers had this to say in justification of soft-pedalling the issue of terrorism: `My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity.` It was a lapsus linguae: Reuters won`t call a spade a spade for fear of reprisal. What?
An editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, eloquently countered Schlesinger`s argument:
`Terrorism is a technical term. It describes a modus operandi, a tactic. We side with security professionals who define terrorism as the deliberate targeting of civilians in pursuit of a political goal. Those who bombed the nightclub in Bali were terrorists. Suicide bombers who strap explosives to their bodies and blow up people eating in a pizza parlour are terrorists. The men and women who took a school full of hostages in Beslan, Russia, and shot some of the children in the back as they tried to flee to safety were terrorists. We as journalists do not violate our impartiality by describing them as such. Ironically, it is supposedly neutral terms like `militant` that betray a bias, insofar as they have a sanitising effect. Activists for various political causes can be `militant,` but they don`t take children hostage.`
Scott Anderson, editor-in-chief of CanWest Publications said that Reuters` policy `undermined journalistic principles,` and asked: `If you`re couching language to protect people, are you telling the truth?` We find ourselves on all fours with him!
Thus, it should be clear that the western media are not infallible and they rarely hesitate to compromise principles for expedience. It was not for nothing that CNN was once dubbed the `Clinton News Network`. In fact, they are evidently doing so, where Sri Lanka`s war is concerned. Most of them have lent themselves to their governments and INGOs as propaganda hit men.
So, it is not surprising that some international media outfits are collaborating with Miliband and Kouchner, who are all out to save Prabhakaran and perpetuate Sri Lanka`s conflict so that the western powers could keep on feeling India`s soft belly from this side of the Palk Strait until time is ripe to sink the dagger.
It is not being argued that the Vanni welfare centres for the war displaced are nice and cosy. There are, of course, problems, most of which seem to be teething in nature. And the government is doing its utmost either altruistically or under pressure to improve those unfortunate people`s lot. But, there is no humanitarian catastrophe contrary to unsubstantiated claims by the western media to that effect. The living conditions of the war displaced are certainly far better than those of the marginalized Black Americans in ghettos, the homeless in big American cities who are reduced to frozen cadavers in their numbers every winter night, and the poor languishing in Mumbai slums notorious for Delhi belly or foraging in dustbins and feasting on garbage in Bihar or Tamil Nadu.
It is one thing to keep the government on its toes in handling the victims of war- that needs to be done but it is quite another to blow the humanitarian situation out of proportion and propagate diabolical lies about the war displaced in a bid to vilify this country and save the terrorists awaiting decapitation.
What the western media must do is not to exploit human suffering to gain mileage or support their governments and terrorists but to do factual reporting so as to help ameliorate the plight of those hapless victims of war with international assistance.
By Stewart Bell
National PostMay 7, 2009
Sri Lanka waging a war without witnesses
The road up Sri Lanka’s northern coast passes through fishing villages where men haul nets and dump their catch into wicker baskets, and past rows of look-alike houses built after the tsunami.
At a lagoon, it stops and a barge powered by a 15-horsepower outboard skims cars across. A few kilometres later, a second ferry traverses another waterway and lands at a military checkpoint on the outskirts of Pulmuddai.
The war is not far off. The strip of sand where the Tamil Tigers rebels are holed up with thousands of civilians is an hour up the coastline, but this is as close as reporters can get without government approval. We have no such permission, and are forced to turn back.
This has been called a war without witnesses.
Journalists have been unable to get close enough to the fighting to provide independent accounts. With the exception of the International Committee of the Red Cross, no humanitarian workers have been allowed into the combat zone.
The reasons are partly geographic (Sri Lanka is an island whose waters are patrolled by naval craft), partly logistical (the north is an active war zone filled with land mines) and partly government-imposed.
Not able to observe the events themselves, news agencies have been resorting to interpreting satellite photos and videos, along with photos provided by others, which may or may not represent the true state of affairs.
Otherwise, the only information about the war comes from the conflicting parties themselves. They provide starkly divergent accounts: One side says the government is waging genocide, the other says the Sri Lankan military is conducting a rescue mission to free trapped civilians.
Whether the army is adhering to its promise to refrain from firing heavy weapons, or is continuing to use artillery, and whether there are 15,000 civilians with the rebels, as the government says, or 100,000, as the Tamil Tigers claim, nobody can verify.
“The fog of war makes it difficult to be certain of the facts of the present situation. This is compounded by the lack of access for international agencies and the media,” David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, told the House of Commons in London after his visit to Sri Lanka.
Canada’s Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, last week voiced concern about the information vacuum. “Because of the exclusion of international media and aid agencies, Tamil Canadians here in Canada have limited information about loved ones trapped in the conflict zone,” he said. “This is a war without witnesses. And any such conflict is especially dangerous.”
Inside the briefing room where the military updates reporters on the war, a sign on the wall reads, “It’s the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It’s the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.”
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, the Sri Lankan military spokesman, said the army had taken reporters close to the frontline but they were not allowed any further for their own safety and that of the troops.
“There is nothing for us to hide,” he said. “All these groups that are making these allegations, they are based on various reports being fed to them by pro-LTTE organizations.” The Tamil Tigers are known here as the LTTE, the acronym of their full name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Tamil Tigers supporters are engaged in a propaganda war of their own; they use Internet sites to circulate uncertain allegations of army atrocities. When the RCMP interviewed Mariyathas Manuel, head of the Toronto-based World Tamil Movement, in 2004, he told officers he had been personally appointed by Tamil Tigers leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his group was trying to support the rebels with what he called “propaganda.”
The foreign press may face severe restrictions in Sri Lanka, particularly on their movements, but the local press has its own difficulties. Reporters Without Borders says Sri Lankan journalists practice self-censorship or have simply left the country. The Paris-based group condemned the “lamentable state of press freedom” in a letter this week to the head of the International Monetary Fund. Sent on World Press Freedom Day, it said Sri Lanka’s military offensive had been accompanied by a “ruthless campaign against the press and critical voices.”
Of all democratic governments, Sri Lanka had the worst record of press freedom, it added.
“The war that has left thousands dead in the north of the country has been waged in the absence of any independent witnesses,” wrote Jean-Francois Julliard, the group’s secretary-general. “Sri Lankan and foreign journalists have been kept away from the battlefield, for their safety according to the army, but above all so as not to ‘hamper’ the military offensive.”
Those who have strayed from the government line have been arrested, abducted and killed. In January, the editor of the Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was gunned down while on his way to work. Weeks later, the editor of the Tamil newspaper Sudar Oli was taken away in a van while attending a funeral.
“They just grabbed me,” Nadesapillai Vithiyatharan said in an interview in Colombo yesterday. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, his pants were removed and he was assaulted.
After two hours, he said the demeanor of the police officers changed. They removed his handcuffs and transferred him to another vehicle, which brought him to a police station.
Mr. Vithiyatharan said he was accused of links to the Tamil Tigers and held on a three-month detention order. Investigators went through his telephone records and bank accounts but found nothing. He was released two weeks ago.
While he said he was treated well during his two months in custody, he fears for his life. He now works from his home, which has been fitted with security cameras. The editor accused the government of suppressing one side of the story by refusing to allow journalists to get close to the events. “If they allow that, truth will come out,” he said. “That is the only reason.”
Despite his arrest, and attacks against his sister newspaper in the northern Jaffna region that have killed several of his staff, Mr. Vithiyatharan said he has no intention of putting down his pen. He said he would continue to report on the perspective of the Tamil minority. “I will not run away, I will not hide,” he said. “I will try my best until my last breath.”
© Copyright (c) National Post
Sri Lankan shelling kills 378 – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Posted May 10, 2009 18:19:00
Updated May 10, 2009 20:40:00Officials say the places attacked were within what the Government calls its ‘new safety zone’.
Health officials working near the front line in Sri Lanka say heavy shelling in the newly-designated civilian safety zone has killed hundreds of civilians in the past 24 hours.
One official has told the BBC at least 378 are dead and more than 1,100 others have been injured in continuing artillery attacks which are reportedly being launched from areas the Sri Lankan army control.
The United Nations spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss, says there has been no let up for civilians caught up in the conflict.
“Our assessment is that people stuck up there at the moment are in very very poor condition. They’ve had very little food delivered to them for months now,” he said.
“We can see from the position of the people who are coming out of that area and winding up in camps that they’re in a terrible condition. So we can only imagine that the people still stuck up there life has become… is even worse.”
Meanwhile, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), claims up to 2,000 civilians may have been killed in the last 24 hours.
Mr Weiss says there have always been competing claims about casualty figures.
“The UN has said for some time now that thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded over the past few months,” he said.
“We have no reason to believe that the toll on civilians has let up in any significant way since this last phase of the conflict.”
The reported attack is the latest in a series of accusations and counter-accusations about who is harming civilians, tens of thousands of whom are trapped inside less than five square kilometres of battlefield.
The disparate accounts illustrate the difficulty of getting a clear picture from inside a war zone that is rarely opened to outsiders by either side, and where those present are not fully independent from pressure often delivered at gunpoint.
Both sides have repeatedly exaggerated battlefield accounts for propaganda purposes, and both deny accusations they are harming civilians.
Health officials said the places attacked were within what the Sri Lankan Government calls its ‘new safety zone’, a small area into which the army has asked civilians to move.
They said two hospitals were struggling to cope with the casualties and that people were hiding in bunkers and many makeshift tents had been burnt.
The officials say shells fell near medical facilities in very congested areas.
But the Sri Lankan Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told the BBC the accounts were propaganda of the Tamil Tiger rebels.
The reports have also been confirmed by the pro-rebel group Tamilnet, which said on its website that the dead were “found in bunkers and inside the tarpaulin tents”.
Sri Lanka’s leaders believe their military offensive is close to defeating the Tamil rebels, who are holed up on the north-east coast, after 37 years of ethnic conflict.
At the height of their power in 2006, the Tigers – who want an independent Tamil homeland in the Sinhalese-majority island – controlled roughly a third of the island.
The Sri Lankan Government has refused all international calls for a ceasefire despite United Nations’ reports last month saying up to 6,500 civilians may have been killed and 14,000 wounded in fighting since January.
It has also turned down requests to send humanitarian aid into the rebel territory, where the UN estimates about 50,000 civilians are trapped.
The Government says the number of civilians being held by the Tigers as a ‘human shield’ is less than 20,000.
Independent reporting from the conflict zone is impossible, as journalists are banned from travelling freely.
- BBC/AFP
Now media freedom condition for IMF loan
Financial Times
Reporters Without Borders (RWB) is raising the ‘lamentable state of press freedom ‘ in Sri Lanka at a time when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is considering a major loan for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government.
In a letter to IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan dated May 5, the global media watch dog’s Secretary General Jean-Francois Julliard is urging the IMF to obtain specific undertakings from the government to respect press freedom and the rule of law in return for granting this loan.
Mr. Julliard wrote that the Sri Lankan government’s crushing victory over the LTTE at a cost of thousands of civilian casualties, has been accompanied by a ruthless campaign against the press and critical voices. Of all the countries with a democratically elected government, Sri Lanka is one that shows least respect for media freedom, he wrote.
Mr. Julliard added that Sri Lanka is spending as much as US$1.6 billion on defence in its 2009 budget, a 6.5% increase on the 2007 allocation, while neglecting social needs. Some army units are implicated in alleged ‘war crimes ‘ . Others are suspected of responsibility for many cases of violence against journalists and human rights activists. Sri Lankan and foreign journalists have been kept away from the battlefield.
The authorities also restrict press access to the Jaffna peninsula and detention camps.
Mr. Julliard said there will be no process of reconciliation and reconstruction without press freedom. If Tamils are deprived of the media that represent them freely, even if these media are sometimes guilty of excesses, future generations will take up arms again. He also said it is vital that, as a conciliatory gesture, the Tamil journalists currently held, including J.S. Tissainayagam, are released.
AlertNet
Sri Lanka’s plight highlighted at World Press Freedom Day
05 May 2009 09:55:00 GMT
Written by: Andrew Stroehlein
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.
I just returned from the World Press Freedom Day conference in Doha, Qatar. It was a fairly typical affair as these sorts of conferences go — until the final award ceremony, when murdered Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge was posthumously given the World Press Freedom Prize 2009.
His niece, Natalie Samarasinghe, read out a statement from his widow, Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge, which was so forceful and so impressive, I feel it deserves a much wider audience than the few hundred people who gave it a standing ovation in the room on Sunday. With permission, I am publishing it in full below.
For more, also have a look at the forthcoming website www.unbowedandunafraid.com, to be launched on 8 May, the four-month anniversary of Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder. “Unbowed and unafraid” was his credo.
=================
STATEMENT BY SONALI SAMARASINGHE WICKREMATUNGE
WIDOW OF LASANTHA WICKREMATUNGE, 2009 UNESCO WORLD PRESS FREEDOM LAUREATE
“Your Highness, Mr Director-General, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
On behalf of my late husband and fellow journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge, I wish to thank you most sincerely for this great honour you have done him. Lasantha would have been so proud, so humbled, to have known that an august, independent, international jury of his peers had seen in him, a fit candidate to receive this prize. On his behalf, and on behalf of fellow journalists worldwide who continue to risk life and liberty, to provide for us, all the freedoms we so cherish, from the bottom of my heart I thank you. His parents and his children will be so proud, to know of the recognition you have given their son, their father… as indeed am I, now his widow.
The fact that Lasantha is the second journalist to be honoured posthumously since this prize was created 12 years ago is testimony to the risk many journalists run in the pursuit of their calling. Two years ago you honoured Anna Politkovskaya, an unapologetic critic of military and political excess, who was brutally murdered in Moscow in October 2006.
The life trajectories of Anna and Lasantha bear bizarre similarities. They were both born in 1958. They were both courageous critics of state-sponsored violence and spoke fearlessly for human rights. They were both threatened with death over a period of years. They both suffered repeated attempts on their lives. And they both chose not to flee, but to stay on and fight to the end. They both knew full well that they would pay with their lives. And they both knew who their murderers would be.
But the fate that befell Anna and Lasantha is not an isolated one. In Sri Lanka, it has become the norm for journalists to be killed in the pursuit of their profession. No less than 16 dissident media professionals have been assassinated-all of them in commando-style attacks-since President Mahinda Rajapakse took office in November 2005. That is about one in every two months. Presses and television stations have been destroyed in these raids, as indeed have the newspapers Lasantha and I edited.
Apart from those who have lost their lives, we need to remember also those journalists who languish in Sri Lankan prisons with no charge or with only the flimsiest and most childish of contrived charges pressed against them. In other cases, false charges are levelled so as to harass dissenting journalists.
Dozens of journalists-including myself-have been forced to flee Sri Lanka. I have no doubt that should I return to Sri Lanka, my remaining days would be few indeed.
Other journalists have been threatened personally by the president or his brothers, three of whom he has elevated to high public office. Indeed, on 11 January 2006 Lasantha too, was personally threatened by President Rajapaksa.
The free Sri Lanka in which I was born no longer exists. Our country has entered a Dark Age characterized by Read the rest of this entry »
The other war in Sri Lanka — in the silence of a newsroom
Muzamil Jaleel Posted online: Monday , May 04, 2009 at 0139 hrs
Colombo : The silence of the newsroom is broken only by the tapping of the computer keyboards. Large posters of a man with a gloomy face decorate the walls. Sunday Leader has more than journalists. It has a martyr. Its editor Lasantha Wickramatunge was assassinated on January 8, the ultimate punishment for independent journalism, which he had predicted in an editorial published posthumously.
The story of this weekly newspaper and its editor demonstrates the dangers faced by journalists in Sri Lanka who want to remain faithful to unadulterated truth, exhibiting the larger political climate in the country following a victory on the battlefield. The Tamil Tigers never tolerated any criticism but now the government too has silenced the voice of the free press.
On World Press Freedom Day today, a leading newspaper of Sri Lanka The Sunday Times ran an editorial saying Sri Lanka has become one of the most dangerous places for a journalist. “Recent attacks on media practitioners have been done in the name of national security and morale of the security forces,” the editorial states. “The President invites political discourse. The reality is that either the press has been browbeaten by means of a ‘chilling effect’ syndrome or won over.”
“Sunday Leader is here. It is independent as it always was,” insists Lal Wickramatunge who looks after the newspaper after his brother-editor’s murder. “We have had tough times earlier as well. Our press was burnt down. We were attacked twice. But murder — it has been devastating.” He says the newspaper will never shut down. “We will never stop, no matter what happens. Everyday, I have to pass the place where he (Lasantha) was assassinated. He was eight years younger to me and we started this newspaper together. I have not come to terms with it (his murder) as yet. I have kept Lasantha’s last editorial on my desk in the office so that it gives me inspiration, so that I don’t lose heart.”
In fact, the newspaper republished its assassinated editor’s last editorial today. “We wanted to remind people again,” says Lal Wickramatunge. “We have not sealed our lips.” He says that despite the fear created by the assassination of the editor, no one from the staff has left. “That was encouraging in these difficult times.”
How have you covered the war? “We have done whatever we could. We haven’t budged.” The newly appointed editor Fredrica Jansz, however, says that the journey has been very difficult. “This is the biggest story and we don’t have access,” she says. “If you dare to dissent, if you are critical of not the war but even the conduct of this war, you are immediately labelled a traitor.” The assassinated editor’s journalist wife Sonali Samarasinghe, who was editing the paper’s sister concern The Morning Leader has already left the country because of a threat to her life.
Jansz says that this reaction from the government is not exclusive to their paper alone. “The defence writer of The Sunday Times Iqbal Athas had to stop his weekly column and leave the country after he was called a terrorist on the Defence website,” she says. “Keith Noyar of Nation newspaper was abducted from his home and severely assaulted. He was released only because of the intervention of the CEO of the media group, Krishan Coorey. Now the CEO too has left the country.”
The reporters at Sunday Leader say that they are angry but scared as well. “He (Lasantha) was like a father. Most of us have worked here for years. Whenever I am distracted while writing, I look up and see his poster. It’s a constant reminder of our tragedy,” a senior reporter says. “We don’t know how to deal with his assassination. We are angry, very angry. But we know nothing will happen. His murderers will go scot-free.”
Lal Wickramatunge says that the situation for journalists in Sri Lanka is very grim these days. “At the moment, journalists are under constant fire. Targeting journalists is done with absolute impunity,” he says. “Then the state has started to buy journalists and newspapers too.” He says that he does not see the curbs on press ending anytime soon. “The war is popular and the government is taking full advantage of it. Even if the war is over, I don’t see a change happening. Even if they catch or kill Prabhakaran and curb the LTTE, they will continue to use intimidation to curb dissent.”
He says that browbeating is not the only weapon that the state is using to silence the free press. “They are literally buying newspapers. They first assaulted a journalist of Nation and then bought it. Island (newspaper) is anyway following their line. Lake House group is owned by the government. The Sunday Times is middle of the road. That leaves us and one television channel,” he says. “But I have decided. No matter what happens, I will never let the sacrifice of Lasantha go waste. Sunday Leader will continue.”
The official reaction is as always the same — free press is an important pillar of a democracy. But a quotation displayed prominently in the military spokesman’s office explains it all: “It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the politician, that ensures our rights to life and liberty…”
Violence Silences Voices of Sri Lankan Journalists – NYTimes.com
April 5, 2009
By SETH MYDANS
RATMALANA, Sri Lanka — A blue plastic bag sits crumpled on the floor, easy to overlook, in the office of Lal Wickramatunga, the managing editor of The Sunday Leader.
Inside the bag are the clothes and shoes of a dead man — the things his brother Lasantha, 52, was wearing on Jan. 8 when eight masked thugs on motorcycles smashed the window of his car and shot him to death.
“I keep them as an inspiration,” Mr. Wickramatunga said, “because if we don’t take what happened and make Sri Lanka a better place, then Lasantha will have died in vain.”
His brother was editor in chief of the newspaper and was one of at least eight journalists who have been killed in recent years in what appears to be a broad Sri Lankan government campaign to silence dissenting voices.
Many others have been kidnapped or assaulted, according to the reports of press monitoring agencies. Many have stopped writing or have capitulated in self-censorship. Dozens are under arrest, and dozens more have fled the country.
No one has been brought to trial for an attack on a journalist, the press monitoring agencies say.
The press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders ranked Sri Lanka 165th last year out of 173 countries in terms of press freedom — by far the lowest democracy on the list. It called Sri Lanka the fourth most dangerous country for journalists, after Iraq, Somalia and Pakistan.
Mr. Wickramatunga’s killing came two days after attackers blew up the control room of the country’s main independent television station, and two weeks before another newspaper editor was beaten in his car and fled the country.
His final article was about his own killing before it happened, an essay titled “And Then They Came for Me.” It ran the following Sunday in the newspaper, which is printed in this town on the southern outskirts of Colombo, the capital.
“Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced,” he wrote. “Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. Read the rest of this entry »
Sri Lankan army ranks media freedom low priority | The Australian
Amos Roberts | March 23, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE sign on the army spokesman’s wall rang the first alarm bells.
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara had pinned his statement of faith to a map used to brief journalists visiting Sri Lanka: “It’s the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press,” it began. It went on to say the soldier, not politicians, “ensures our right to Life, Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
I was recently in Sri Lanka to report on the final stages of a civil war that has been raging for a quarter of a century.
As I write, 200,000 civilians are caught between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers.
Unfortunately, it became a story about the difficulty of reporting at all and, in the case of local journalists, about its perils.
For the foreign correspondent, everything in Sri Lanka begins and ends with the armed forces: where one can travel; what one can film; even to whom one can speak. And dealing with the military is like travelling through the looking glass, although a blunter analogy would be with George Orwell’s 1984.
They lie brazenly and the lies aren’t even credible.
The UN may tell you that at least 2000 civilians have been killed in fighting since January, but Sri Lanka’s Secretary of Defence, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, says there are none.
Absolutely none. “If you want to believe me, believe me, no civilian casualties.
“We have taken all the precautions to avoid civilian casualties … The world has to appreciate this, if somebody doesn’t appreciate this — bad luck,” he told me.
When I arrived in Colombo I knew it would be impossible to access the battleground, but I hadn’t appreciated how much of the country had become a no-go zone for journalists.
Without special permission from the Ministry of Defence, you can’t even visit Vavuniya, a town in the north where civilians fleeing the conflict are being brought and which has never been in rebel hands.
The army also told me I couldn’t visit wounded civilians in the eastern town of Trincomalee, “because that’s the way we want it. Simple answer.” A visiting crew from Al Jazeera complained about travelling around Sri Lanka only to film soldiers putting their hands over the camera lens.
Eventually, the army invited about 50 frustrated reporters on a day trip to one of the “welfare villages” where displaced Tamil civilians are being settled outside Vavuniya.
Although it’s surrounded by razor wire and soldiers prevent anyone from entering or leaving, the army would have you believe that no one is actually being detained. We were told we could wander freely and speak to whomever we liked.
But soldiers wandered with us and some people said they’d been instructed not to speak to the foreigners.
I did get permission to travel to Jaffna after I told the Defence Secretary I wanted to interview a government minister there. In addition to a permit from the Ministry of Defence, I required authorisation for every piece of equipment I carried, right down to my AA batteries.
It takes a full day to get there — an hour’s flying time and a seven-hour security nightmare. Air force personnel search every passenger and tear apart every piece of luggage. They were particularly suspicious of my swimming goggles. I was interviewed and photographed by what appeared to be military intelligence. I arrived in Jaffna on a bus with curtains drawn across the windows — and was reprimanded for peeking.
But if it’s difficult to report in Sri Lanka as a foreigner, it can be deadly for the locals — especially if you’re brave enough Read the rest of this entry »
found at the blog, Sacred Media Cow
Man- hunt @ midnight in Rangoon – Notes from across the border at
Published by Angad October 5th, 2007 in Burma.This is an extract from an update sent by Ben Hur. I have edited certain bits out, for various reasons.
Hi Everyone,
Thank you all for moving so fast. Here I am sending the latest situation in Burma (Up to October 04, 6:00 pm)
The junta has announced curfew since a week ago, the troops has raided many monasteries, they visited house to house around mid-night and picked up whom they suspected as the protest leaders in Rangoon, the former capital city of Burma.
Till today evening (around 3:00 pm Burma time) the Light Infantry Batallion No. 66 has seized two of the biggest monastery in Rangoon.
The ShweMaw monastery which situated in South Okkalapa township was seized around midnight. All 30 monks (Including the senior reverend monk) were arrested. A source, who is staying beside the monastery, said “It seems like the troops raiding a terrorists camp. Thereafter the blood stained monastery was locked and pasted the poster which mentioned it is strickly prohibited to enter”.
Around at 3 pm Burma time, the same thing happened at Maggin monstry in Tingankyin township, where all the monks have been arrested (not confirmed in numbers) but 9 Koyins (junior monks or monks below teenagers) were sent to another monastery.
Though thousands of activist has been arrested, the junta has released less than 50 activists and claimed that they has released them almost all of them. While many of the parents doesn’t know whether their children are dead or alive, or even they doen’t know that whether they were arrested or not. When those who were released today claimed their goods like hand phone, Ipods, golden chain, wallets, camera and other valuable things, they were warned by the concerned authorities that they would be sent to hard labor camp if they try to accuse the authority by making claims. So, most of them doesn’t dare to claim but just keep quiet. (NB: Though cell phones are cheap here, the cost of a single mobile hand phone cost minimum 30 lacs or 3 million Kyats. and to get this handphone activate, they must give atleast the same price to the authority as a bribe)
It is also learnt that though there is no demonstration in Rangoon, more than 190 NLD members were arrested.
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Indian Justice Party activists, Buddhist monks protest against Myanmar crisis
Malaysia Sun
Friday 5th October, 2007
(ANI)New Delhi, Oct 5 : Activists of the Indian Justice Party today joined Buddhist monks to stage protest against Myanmar military junta.
“The Government of India should come forward, and send the necessary army to Myanmar as they had given army to the Pakistani East Bengal previously,” said Damaviyo Mahathero, a Myanmarese protestor.
The protestors also said they did not appreciate the ‘non-interference’ stance of the Indian government.
In Yangon, the pro-democracy movement led by monks is being violently repressed by the military government and at least nine people have died in the crackdown.
Meanwhile, continuing its crackdown following last week’s protests, the military has reportedly arrested scores of Myanmarese.
The international community has expressed concern over the violent crackdown.
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IRIN Asia | Sri Lanka:
Monks show solidarity with Myanmar protesters
humanitarian news and analysis
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
SRI LANKA: Monks show solidarity with Myanmar protesters Photo: Amantha Perera (IRIN)
COLOMBO, 4 October 2007 (IRIN) – A group of monks chanting from sacred Buddhist scripts is not a typical scene near the UN compound in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, but 100 monks from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand and Bangladesh were there to support the pro-democracy protests in Myanmar.
The demonstration was led by two of Sri Lanka’s most prominent monks, Madoluwave Sobitha Thero and Belanwila Wimalarathne Thero. The group presented a petition to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Neil Buhne, seeking greater UN intervention in Myanmar and calling for an end to the junta’s assault on the protests.
The demonstrators then moved on to the embassies of the USA, UK, Russia, China, India and France to deliver copies of their petition.
“Myanmar is a Buddhist country, we share the same heritage,” Sobitha Thero said. “What we are asking for is that the Myanmar government stops the harassment of Buddhist monks, who hold a special place in both our societies, and restore the will of the people.”
Buddhists a force within Sri Lanka
Monks play a leading role in Sri Lankan politics. No government can be elected or survive without the support of the Buddhist clergy and politicians have routinely sought the approval of the monks when pressing for new policies and on occasion shelved them when faced with their opposition. Recently their influence has grown. Eight Buddhist monks from the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) political party are members of parliament and a lay member of the JHU is a government minister.
The JHU has not openly come out against the crackdown in Myanmar. However, its parliamentary group leader, Ellawala Medananda Thero, said it also did not condone the brutal assault on monks.
“Monks should not be beaten, assaulted and shot dead on the streets when they are staging peaceful protests,” Medananda Thero told a press conference in Colombo on 2 October.
The Sri Lankan government’s only reaction to the crisis in Myanmar has come from Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama: “Sri Lanka is eager that Myanmar resolves all issues through a peaceful process of national reconciliation and political accommodation,” he told the UN General Assembly in New York.
International protests
Similar Buddhist protests have been held in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan and Israel.
“This sends out a signal to the junta that Buddhists all over the world, especially in countries like Sri Lanka, support us,” Ykk Asma Thero, a Buddhist monk from Myanmar, who was part of the Colombo protests, told IRIN. “We hope and pray that the junta changes, but we will keep up with our campaigns if it does not.”
Sri Lankan monks also say the local protests are a sign that at least part of the clergy is actively engaged in upholding basic rights. “Human rights are universal, it is the same here and in Myanmar,” Badegama Samitha Thero, a Sri Lankan monk who has served as an elected member of parliament, told IRIN. “As monks we carry an extra responsibility when they are challenged.”
ap/bj/mw
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Myanmar restores Internet links, say online users
INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
Agence France-Presse
Last updated 01:19am (Mla time) 10/06/2007
YANGON–Internet connections in Myanmar were restored late Friday, users said, a week after the military regime cut the links to stop the flow of news and images on its bloody crackdown on mass demonstrations.
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Al Jazeera
Myanmar Admits Thousands Arrested
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 04, 2007
0:39 MECCA TIME, 21:39 GMT
Myanmar’s military government has admitted arresting more than 2,000 people in its crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.The announcement by state media came as the UN envoy to Myanmar gave the secretary-general a grim report after returning from a four-day mission on Thursday.
Ban Ki-moon said his special envoy Ibrahim Gambari had delivered “the strongest possible message” to Myanmar’s military rulers but the envoy reported that it did not seem to have had much of an effect.
China praised Gambari’s talks with Myanmar’s military rulers but, together with Russia, made clear the crisis was an internal matter and did not threaten international peace.
China said it was opposed to any security council action.
Its ambassador to the UN, Wang Guangya, said: “There are problems there in Myanmar but these problems still, we believe, are basically internal.
“No international-imposed solution can help the situation.”
Open session
But China and Russia relented on their initial demand that the security council session where Gambari would give his report be held behind closed doors.
They had said Gambari would feel greater freedom to be forthright in a closed session but in the end agreed with the rest of the council to have Gambari brief members on Friday morning at an open meeting.
Myanmar’s representative has been invited to speak as has Singapore’s, the country being the current head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The council will then hold consultations behind closed doors.
Al Jazeera’s UN correspondent, Mark Seddon, said the open session was unprecedented on the issue of Myanmar and indicated the council’s intent to show Myanmar’s rulers that the eyes of the international community were on them.
He added that this could be the beginning of sanctions against Myanmar and there was talk that Gambari would return to the South-East Asian nation in November to see what progress was being made.
Suu Kyi offer
Possibly hoping to head off any sanctions, state media reported on Thursday that Myanmar’s ruler, Senior General Than Shwe, had agreed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained opposition leader.
But she must end her support for sanctions against the government and give up “promoting confrontation and utter devastation”, state media said.
The military also announced that it had arrested more than 2,000 people during the crackdown on the greatest challenge to military rule in 20 years.
Gambari was dispatched to Myanmar after troops opened fire on anti-government protesters last week.
State media said 10 people were killed, but foreign governments and dissident groups put the toll in the hundreds and say 6,000 people were detained, including thousands of monks.
The government is continuing to round up suspected activists.
Separately, the US state department said the Myanmar government had invited the US envoy in Yangon for talks on Friday and the envoy is likely to reiterate the US view that the military rulers must “stop the iron crackdown” and start a “meaningful” dialogue with all democratic opposition groups.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
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Irrawaddy
Overnight Arrests of Monks Continue in Rangoon
by Wai Moe
October 4, 2007
Five monasteries were raided in Rangoon and about 36 monks were arrested overnight on Wednesday, after receiving beatings from soldiers.
“They (soldiers) came and searched for monks on their lists,” a monk told The Irrawaddy. The soldiers had photographs of monks, and if they found a monk who was in a photograph, they arrested all the monks in the monastery, said the monk.
Raided monasteries included Shwetaungpaw, Dhammazaya and Sandilayama monasteries in South Okkalapa Township and Zayawaddy and Pannitayama in North Okkalapa Township. Two mobile telephones that belonged to monks were also seized by troops, said the source.
The raids in the North Okkalapa monasteries started around 10 p.m. and ended in early morning, said Nilar Thein, a leader of the 88 Generation Students group.
“Monks requested soldiers not to use violent acts on them. But soldiers neglected their requests.” she said.
The raids on monasteries in South Okkalapa Township began at midnight and ended at dawn. Everyone in the monasteries, including laymen, women and children, were taken away.
Security forces also entered a monastery at Chauk Htat Gyee Pagoda in Rangoon searching for specific monks.
At Maggin Monastery in Rangoon, authorities took photographs of HIV positive laypeople that are housed at the monastery and questioned them regarding interviews with a foreign radio station.
Sometimes arrests are like “kidnappings,” said one source, because soldiers might ask for up to 200,000 kyat (about US $130) for the release of unimportant detainees.
Overnight raids on monasteries began on September 26, the day the junta started its crackdown on peaceful protesters.
“I also heard some monks under detention at GTI (the Government Technology Institute) died,” said a Rangoon resident.
Soldiers are also looking for people who provided water or food to monks during the mass protests, said one source.
Also on Wednesday night, soldiers, searching for information, entered the home of a prominent former student leader, Min Ko Naing, who is under arrest.
In Taungdwingyi in central Burma, three men, Aung Ko, Kyaw Naing and Bo Ni, were arrested around midnight on Wednesday. All are members of the National League for Democracy.
According to Rangoon residents, security checkpoints are still scattered around the city. Soldiers stop and search civilians, particularly young people who carry bags.
Dissidents in Rangoon estimate there are 1,200 monks detained among an estimated 3,000 people arrested during the mass protests in Burma.
Monks are currently detained in Insein Prison, the Government Technology Institute and Kyaikkasan Stadium in Rangoon. Many monasteries in Rangoon remain locked up, and monks are unable to go out for alms, say Rangoon residents.
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