A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, June 26, 2017
Reporter seeks justice for 'white van' torture in Sri Lanka
- By KRISHAN FRANCIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
-
The sight of a white van still haunts Poddala Jayantha, a Sri Lankan journalist exiled in the U.S.
Eight
years after he was abducted in his home country, he says he saw only a
pair of hands pulling him inside the vehicle where he was tortured for
hours. He had broken bones in both his legs, fingers smashed, body
burnt, beard and hair cut and stuffed inside his mouth. A group of
tricycle taxi drivers found him dumped by the side of a deserted road
and took him to a hospital.
The decades-long civil war has ended, but the suspects in Jayantha's ordeal are still at large. On a visit back to Sri Lanka, Jayantha is now pressing his case for justice but it's far from clear he'll be getting it anytime soon.
Jayantha, 52, was the president of the Working Journalists' Association
of Sri Lanka, the largest media organization in the country, and spoke
against suppression of the media and organized protests at a time when
doing so was considered dangerous. Government forces were closing in on
Tamil Tiger rebels who sought to carve out their own state for minority
Tamils; advocating accountability, transparency and human rights meant
taking a personal risk.
Jayantha doesn't know who snatched him. But he said he had angered
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, one of the most powerful officials in his brother's
administration with the title of secretary to the minister of defense,
by arguing against Rajapaksa's criticism of the media. Jayantha said he
was openly warned of dire consequences of challenging such a formidable
figure.
Rajapaksa has been implicated in most other cases where journalists had
been targeted, but has repeatedly denied any role in violence against
the media.
There are no clear statistics available on the number of journalists
targeted during the war, in which at least 100,000 people were killed
and another 20,000 are missing. Scores of media workers were killed both
in the war-torn north and the rest of the country allegedly by
military, pro-government groups or Tamil Tiger rebels.
According to a March report by the International Truth and Justice
Project — an evidence-gathering organization administered by a South
Africa-based nonprofit foundation — the abuse continued beyond the civil
war through 2016, well after the country elected a new president who
promised accountability for past injustices.
The report is based on testimony from 46 Sri Lankan Tamils who fled to Britain or Switzerland and
were once held at Sri Lanka's security forces' headquarters. Some
victims said they were abducted in a "white van" and held for months or
even years without due process; kept in cells so small they could not
lie down; beaten, raped or tortured by means of having barbed wire
inserted into their anal cavities. The military's chief aim, they said,
was to learn of any ongoing rebel activity as well as the location of
hidden weapons caches, according to the report.
Police investigations have not led to any convictions more than two
years after hard-line President Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated by a
moderate, Maithripala Sirisena. Only a few high profile cases are being
heard in courts at a slow pace while investigations haven't even begun
in dozens of others, mainly those relating to Tamil journalists who were
killed or persecuted in the country's north and east.
A court this past week released on bail six soldiers accused of
abducting and torturing journalist Keith Noyahr a few months before
Jayantha was seized. Both were victims of the "white van" cases. Noyahr
has fled to Australia.
Sirisena's government is being criticized for being reluctant to pursue
suspects, nearly all of them military or paramilitary personnel who are
held in high esteem by many Sri Lankans for their role in defeating the
Tamil Tigers.
After the change of government, Jayantha said he wrote to the police and
a reparations committee appointed by the president, but to no avail.
Sirisena himself has publicly spoken against arresting soldiers
suspected of crimes.
"It is a joke to say that the war heroes will not be punished. When you
make such statements, what message do you give to the investigating
bodies?" Jayantha said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"The army must be cleaned up by punishing the small section that was involved in these crimes," he said.
In Jayantha's hometown of Mirihana, a police officer asked him to
provide the plate number of the white van used in his abduction, which
Jayantha said he had no way of seeing.
Last Tuesday, Jayantha visited the Criminal Investigations Department
asking it to take over the investigation from the local police. Days
later, the police chief referred Jayantha's case to the CID, which
questioned the journalist at length over two days and recorded his
statement.
The case now being handled by the CID however doesn't guarantee a speedy
resolution. Courts have not been able to move other cases quickly
enough because the military has not been cooperating by providing data
and records, media activists say.
Jayantha said that any white van he sees gives him "a continuous mental
agony," and that he sometime feels death would have been better than
living with the trauma. He said that the steel plates used to mend his
broken bones are a reminder of his pain that shoots up more often in the
U.S., where the cold weather makes it worse.
Lasantha Ruhunuge, the current president of the Working Journalists'
Association of Sri Lanka, said the government's attempt so far has been
to compensate the victimized journalists and avoid prosecution of the
alleged offenders.
"We are frustrated. We have been calling for a presidential commission
of inquiry for two years," Ruhunuge said. "As long as the wrongdoers are
roaming free in the society, you can't give guarantees for democracy
and media freedom in the country."
Soon after the attack, the then U.S ambassador visited Jayantha in the
hospital and offered to arrange for him to live in America. Jayantha at
first declined, but changed his mind after a few months when he began
receiving threats because he was beginning to speak of his ordeal. He is
now a green-card holder.
In New York, his daughter, who left Sri Lanka as a 12-year-old, has
entered college to study engineering, he said, adding that he plans to
work again in Sri Lanka after she graduates.