Saving Sri Lanka

Brief Hiatus September 25, 2009

Saving Sri Lanka has taken a brief hiatus, but we haven’t been forcibly shut down! We’ll be back quite soon.

Banning Websites July 22, 2009

As anyone who’s ever done research on totalitarian regimes will tell you, banning media is a sure sign of wrong-doing by the ones doing the banning (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union leap to mind). For that reason, Sri Lanka’s government hasn’t done itself any favors by banning yet another website, LankaNewsWeb. The website is still accessible by going to http://www.proxybrowsing.com and entering the address of the banned site on the page.

Below is the full statement by LankaNewsWeb.

Sri Lanka government  has banned popular Sri Lankan website www.lankanew.com from Sri Lanka Telecom and two other service providers operating within Sri Lanka, who hosted the anews website, have stopped hosting the site with immediate effect following a request made by the government from them. The management of the website had not received an official communication stating the banning of the site.

The right to freedom of expression is enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Article 19 of the ICCPR, similarly provides for the right to freedom of opinion:
“1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.”

President Postpones Negotiations with Tamils July 22, 2009

As mentioned before, a true “victory” in Sri Lanka will come not from the military defeat of the Tigers, but from a decision by the government to pass legislation in such a way that Tamils no longer feel oppressed and marginalized. When all Sinhalese and Tamils can more or less coexist without seeing the existence of the other as a threat to their own existence, then the government can say  “We (all Sri Lankan people) have won.”

Sadly, President Rajapakse has essentially and blatantly turned this vision into a political ploy. In an interview with Indian newspaper The Hindu, Rajapakse stated that he was going to hold off conciliating with Tamils until after his (hopefully, for him) reelection in November 2011. What, is he going to hold this over our heads to make sure we do the “right thing” and reelect him? It’s as if we’re children and he’s saying “If you behave for the rest of the day, I’ll get you ice cream,” except the “rest of the day” is actually more than two years, and the “ice cream” is the chance for Sri Lanka to be a safe, peaceful country instead of a bitterly-divided war zone.

What needs to happen is that the majority voters need to hold their president accountable. It’d be an easy thing for Sinhalese voters to elect him out of office if they thought he was a totalitarian bully doing not what’s best for all Sri Lankans, but what’s best for his own cultural group and himself. Rajapakse counts on his “own” people to stand by him no matter what, and even if all Tamils are against him, he can still win.

The root of the problem is this: many Sri Lankans view the Us vs. Them dichotomy as existing between Tamils and Sinhalese, with the government and Sinhalese citizens on one side, and the militant rebels and Tamil citizens on the other. This is the wrong way to look at it, and the cause of the self-perpetuating cycle of violence. The proper dichotomy is this: The People vs. the Government/Tigers. The Sri Lankan people need to make a commitment to peace and hold the government accountable for doing the same, now that the Tigers are defunct as an official force. To Sri Lankan Tamils: you should be siding with your Sinhalese brothers against the government, not with the Tigers against the Sinhalese. Sinhalese folks: it’s not the Tamil citizens who are your enemies, it was the militant Tigers. Stop taking the government’s side no matter what. Side with your fellow citizens, no matter what ethnicity they are, and hold your government responsible for their failures to create peace.

Thug Minister Threatens Local Chairman July 22, 2009

This man is Mervyn Silva, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Labour Relations and Manpower. He’s a controversial figure because of his use of strong-arm tactics and the numerous violent crimes, including assaults and rapes, allegedly attributed to him. Not a nice person.

Last week, giving a speech at the opening of a car dealership, Silva both claimed responsibility for the murder of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge and threatened to do the same to a local chairmen who opposed Silva.

Here were his words: “Lasantha from the Leader paper went overboard. I took care of him. [Freedom campaigner and government critic Poddala Jayantha] agitated and his leg was broken. Now a fellow in my electorate is trying to stand against me. I now tell him in his own hometown, I will give him only seven more days. If he does not resign as chairman of the [district of] Kelaniya, don’t blame me later on. You’ll don’t find fault with me. If this fellow goes against what I say, I will send him to the place where I sent Lasantha.”

Several days later, an unidentified group of armed men stormed the local chairman’s house and smashed the place up.

Doctors Wavering? July 9, 2009

Several Sri Lankan doctors are now telling the international media that earlier reports of civilian casualties were untrue. The Tigers, they said, had demanded that they inflate the numbers. This is conceivable. What is a little harder to believe are the government reports that not a single civilian was killed by government weapons. Not even accidentally? How could anyone know that for sure? If they had merely reported a low number–20 or 30–it would have at least seemed conceivable. But zero? It implies certainty, which implies fabrication.

The doctors also say that the hospital allegedly shelled in February was not shelled. International humanitarian groups say it was. This is just bizarre. How could this possibly be a subject up for debate? Either the hospital was shelled, or it was not shelled. Go look at the hospital. If it has shell damage, it was shelled. Ask some patients “Is it true or false that while you were staying in the hospital, portions of it exploded?” The entire thing has shades of 1984 written all over it. Just because a historical fact is asserted as the truth doesn’t change how it actually happened.

I’m not insinuating anything other than the whole thing is weird, and one side or the other or both is lying thru their teeth. Either the doctors were obliged to lie before, or they’re being obliged to lie now. Seriously, should it matter at this point? Instead of squabbling about whether or not the hospital was shelled, how about we focus on the people inside. Are they safe? Are they being taken care of? This is the priority, not the juvenile back-and-forth and self-aggrandizement. The healing needs to begin now.

Here is the story.

Insensitivity in Newsweek June 4, 2009

After six months or more of complete silence on the Sri Lankan situation, Newsweek published a tiny article on Sri Lanka in their International roundup section after the Tiger’s defeat. I was glad they mentioned the country at all, except the author’s tone is shockingly insensitive at best (and scandalously offensive at worst), albeit unintentionally, to the minority Tamil civilians. My jaw dropped when I read, “…the population, just 11 percent of which is Tamil, agreed to tolerate the suspension of some civil rights, as when Tamil refugees were put in temporary holding camps to screen fighters from civilians.” This is like praising Americans during WWII for “agreeing” to send U.S. citizens of Japanese descent into internment camps.

The article also mentions the lack of public outcry evidence that the citizens happily gave the government free reign during the war. Well, of course! The Sinhalese outcry would have been quiet if existent, because they wanted the Tigers defeated. Any Tamil objections, as we have seen elsewhere on this blog, have been stifled violently. There are human rights activists, both Tamil and Sinhalese, who protested, but at this point I’m getting the feeling that writer Christian Caryl did not do heavy research on the situation.

I sent in a letter to the Newsweek editor to complain and I’d urge you to do the same; you see, Newsweek owes it to us all to run a true coverage and analysis of the Sri Lankan situation, not just a terse and blithe afterthought of a piece which completely misses the angle of human suffering going on.

Pandemonium in the Streets May 18, 2009

Although Sri Lankans are celebrating what may be the end of a 25-year war, the situation in the cities has gotten even more dangerous for civilians, especially Tamils and foreigners.

Although most people are finally free of the fear of the Tigers that they’ve lived with for years, Tamils are afraid to leave their homes in Colombo. Anti-foreign sentiment has reached a fever pitch. Encouraged by the government, soldiers have been trying to intimidate foreign nationals. Today, a soldier at a checkpoint in Colombo aimed an an assault rifle at an American woman in an attempt to bully her.

Yesterday, a violent protest was organized by the JVP (the Sri Lankan Communist party) outside of the British Embassy. Eggs and stones were thrown, a window broken, and an effigy burned. Part of their anger is because they don’t appreciate British Foreign Minister David Miliband (whom they accuse of supporting the Tigers) sticking his nose in and trying to help the country. Apparently, they feel like they’ve got things well under control and don’t need any outside assistance at all. Right, clearly.

It’s the government’s role to model how it would like its citizens to behave. A responsible government would tell its citizens to be gracious in victory and remind them that this type of mob violence was what created the problems in the first place. It certainly wouldn’t encourage them to hector foreigners in a country whose economy is largely tourism-driven. If this group of leaders can’t send a positive message to its people, perhaps its time for the people to demand a different group of leaders who can.

Suspicious Foreigners? Call our Hotline. May 18, 2009

The Sri Lankan government has set up a phone number for people to call to report foreigners who criticize the government, so they can be deported. It’s constantly advertised on the radio. The number was initially ten digits when first introduced about a week ago, but has now been reduced to three so it can be more easily remembered. To our knowledge, this initiative was meant unironically, with the government seeming to have no awareness of how totalitarian it is, or how bad it makes them look. Read about it here.

Peace on the Horizon? May 17, 2009

The Tigers are preparing to surrender, or at least open negotiations, as they find themselves only prolonging the suffering of the Tamils caught in the crossfire. It is to their credit that their official statement explains their surrender by saying “it is our people who are dying now,” hopefully referring to those Tamil civilians–for awhile there, it was looking like those civilian casualties were a cost the Tigers were willing to bear.

This could mean an official end to the war. That’s good news, of course. The bad news is there is still the matter of the refugee camps and displaced civilians, as well as the psychological scars, the independent Tiger-sympathizers who may still continue to attack, and, of course, the bumbling, bullying, juvenile government who will continue to marginalize and persecute Tamils as if they don’t grasp the connection between those policies and the emergence of the Tigers as a force to advocate for Tamil rights.

The good news, though, is that without the continued militiary operations as a distractor, and with the Tigers (hopefully) less able to silence moderate Tamil voices, perhaps Sri Lanka can try again to work towards equal rights for Tamil citizens; this time with diplomacy and dialogue taking the place of mobs of angry students with automatic rifles. That is, if the government is willing to listen and engage maturely.

Independent Journalists Deported May 17, 2009

The UK journalists who were able to get the first independent photographs from the refugee camps have been deported by the Sri Lankan government. The team, led by Nick-Paton Walsh, was ordered to leave the country after their not-so-flattering report of conditions in the camps, which the government, of course, flatly denied (despite the photographic evidence). Once again, does the government not understand how bad it looks for themselves when they kick out the only independent journalists who have squeezed past their defenses? Can they really be that scandalously stupid that they thing they’re helping themselves? It’s almost as if they are following, step-by-step, the instructions of a book called How to Make Your Government Look Like a Bullying Authoritarian Regime to the Rest of the World.