SRI LANKA: The role of journalists on preventing torture

Contributors: Nilantha Ilangamuwa June 27, 2012

Full text of the speech delivered by Nilantha Ilangamuwa at the event jointly organised by the Asian Human Rights Commission and the University of Hong Kong on Freedom of Expression and torture prevention at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC), Hong Kong. June 25, 2012

Understanding the role of journalists on preventing torture and protection of human rights in a suppressed society

Question: - Where is Prageeth Eknaligoda?
Answer: - Our current information is that Mr. Eknaligoda has taken refuge in a foreign country.
Place: The UN Committee against Torture (UNCAT), Geneva, November 2011

Question: - Where is Prageeth Eknaligoda?
Answer: - I don’t know if he is alive or dead, only god would know if the information that I received about him is true. I don’t think even the government knows where he lives.
Place: The Homagama (Colombo suburb) magistrates’ court, June 2012

(Answers given on two different occasions, by Mr. Mohan Peiris, Former Attorney General of Sri Lanka, currently a legal adviser to President Rajapaksa, for an identical question).

Grief and sorrow is spreading far and wide. Our hearts and minds are continually screaming, and they cannot find a sustainable way to find stability – to achieve peace and harmony. The unavoidable reality is forcing us to witness the destruction of a society. And it is forcing us to question the so called electoral and democratic system that we had preserved through a long and acrimonious struggle. Our major collective achievements in terms of freedom have been hijacked and betraying by select families of the political elite, whose single-minded goal is little more than amassing personal benefits, while tactically dividing the country into pieces. Questions by radical political ideologists in the early 70’s gave way to a brutal civil war that finally ended in mid-2009, and have resulted in depression and bitterness for the bottom social strata. What Sri Lanka went through was not just a war against the regime, but a collective expression of our depression at the ultimate breakdown and loss of hope in our lives, all due to blithering politics that neglected ordinary people. Nearly four decades of armed struggle has cost us more than 400,000 lives and consolidated government power in the hands of a few egocentric politicians, who attained enormous social control with the 18 amendments that now decorate our once honorable constitution.

A Brief Political Background

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