How the Brahmins marked World Press Freedom Day

The World Press Freedom Day – May 3 2012 –will remain a black day in the history of media freedom in Sri Lanka, the resplendent and blessed isle.

Self-acclaimed champions of media freedom who obtained millions of dollars or Scandinavian Kroners to set up their own organisation to preserve media freedom, train poor journalists and make them independent, fearless writers free from state influence want to be a strong voice have decided to back the MahindaRajapaksaGovernment. They have sent feelers privately. Publicly, it became as clear as it could be this week.

These champions, once respected editors, publishers and a video cameraman (who spends more time at Temple Trees than his own house) leads all of them by the nose. Because they did not want to take the path walked by state media, with the millions of Kroners they received, they purchased property and equipment. These elite Brahmins belong to the print media. They have money. They bought expensive video and radio broadcast equipment to train radio and TV journalists. None in the mainstream television or radio organisation in the country is represented or involved in their activities. This is used to canvass for more foreign funds. Annually they spend millions for an awards ceremony where Black Label whisky flows faster than the Kelani River. To a few young scribes, their baptism in imbibing Johnny Walker comes at that show. Go to the Mount Lavinia Hotel in July and you can see it. Selectors know to give awards to buddies of the elite group. Prominent publicity is given only in one media group, or maximum two.

Thursday, they marked the World Press Freedom Day in the luxuriously furnished auditorium of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI). Among the speakers was Mohan Samaranayake, Chairman of Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. He got that post after defaming UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when he was serving as Information Officer at the UN Office in Colombo. He was told to leave. RajpalAbeynayake, a lawyer and Editor of the Lakbima News. He became a Rajapaksa faithful after a UNP lawyer slapped him at the lawyers’ annual voet lights dinner for allegedly casting abuse. Mr.Abeynaike is not only a journalist. He was also a member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the Geneva United Nations Human Rights Council where they adopted a resolution against Sri Lanka sponsored by United States. He wore around his neck his official photo identity with picture et all to confirm this.

MessersSamaranayake and Abeynaike did what was expected of them. They took to shreds the foreign media. It has remained on the cross hairs of government politicians. Who should praise them? BandulaJayasekera, Director General of the President’s Media. He tweeted that diplomats present at the SLPI “went red” at the remarks made by the two gentlemen. Jayasekera also told a Presidential Secretariat staffer that Canadian High Commissioner Bruce Levy did not know where to hide his face.

It looked like everything worked according to the script. The choreographer worked overtime at Temple Trees and executed his contract without any hassle.

Still, it did not end there. BBC correspondent in Colombo, the gutty Charles Havilland (Charlie) sought an interview with Samaranayake. He asked why his SLRC branded local journalists who covered the Human Rights Council meeting “traitors” and carry out a “vicious campaign.” Samaranayake dodged it saying he was not aware of such a thing. Not one champion for media freedom stood out at the auditorium when MessersSamaranayake and Abeynayake spoke. The two nayakes got away.

Other than a handful of the elite who run the SLPI and their various institutions, it is not surprising that even private media groups are suspicious. This is why the Leader Publications are not members. This is why another newly emerged private group flatly refused to join the Brahmins. Their owner said that one of the elitist members had canvassed and even bribed newspaper venders not to sell his publications when they came into the market. They now have a foothold and have been invited. The publisher has said that he would, in time to come, expose the hypocrisy of the elite group and their activities. Kroners not only help lead good lives, but also provides a platform for disinformation. That is press freedom on a World Press Freedom Day.

 

Spy games and Sri Lanka
(Lanka-e-News-03.May.2012.5.30PM) Talking about the problems of the Sri Lankan Foreign Service, Mr.Kalyananda Godage, present Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Malaysia, once stated in a newspaper article "But what is unfortunate is that the Foreign Service gets tarred as people associate 'diplomats' with the Foreign Service whereas many in our missions, once again (after the Kadirgamar era) are only 'pretenders' not professional diplomats." Anyone who is fully aware of the present sad state of affairs at the Ministry of External Affairs would not disagree with him. This is because under the present political set up, no one can even think of performing as a truly professional diplomat. Today, the Ministry is full of trained monkeys, who are ready to perform various tricks when needed by the regim. In fact, behavour of Ms.Kshenuka Senavirathna is a unique example of a most politicized and highly corrupted diplomat of our time.

There is a darker side of the Sri Lankan Diplomatic service too. A large number of political and carrier diplomats, military and government servants are working as spies of other nations. This was prevalent mostly during the time of the war. For money and other benefits many military and government servants provided information to the LTTE. They even provided information to foreign governments for money, scholarships, citizenship for family members and other benefits. Some of them were exposed and punished. Many years ago one Diplomatic officer was caught at the airport with passports of two LTTE members. More >>

Tamara won’t quit Geneva, stage set for new dispute

By Shamindra Ferdinando May 3, 2012,

Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Tamara Kunanayakam, has flatly rejected an offer to move her to either Cuba, where she was previously stationed, or Brazil, amidst a simmering dispute over the handling of the US-sponsored resolution at the 19th sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Feb-March, 2012.

The resolution was passed by 24 votes––15 against with 8 abstentions.

Sources pointed said that a dispute over SriLanka’s strategy couldn’t have erupted at a worse time, with Sri Lanka’s scheduled UPR (Universal Periodic Review) coming up in November 2012.

The US and its allies, including India, are pushing Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) as part of the accountability process envisaged by the UNHRC.

Responding to a query, sources said that Ambassador Kunanayakam, formerly with the UN system, had, in a letter written to the External Affairs Ministry, explained her decision not to accept the the offer made on April 28. The Ambassador has asserted that her transfer could be interpreted by various parties in different ways and none could be beneficial to Sri Lanka’s efforts to thwart the ongoing campaign to pursue an international war crimes inquiry against the government and the military.

Ambassador Kunanayakam moved to Geneva nine months ago, just ahead of the 18th sessions of the UNHRC.

During the 19th UNHRC sessions, Ambassador her performance earned the plaudits of many, though there was criticism, too.

Sources said that the government would have to act decisively to thwart a damaging dispute, which could weaken the country’s defence on the human rights front. External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris is now scheduled to visit Washington for a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on May 18.

The Island learns that the latest squabble has been brought to the notice of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Ambassador Kunanayakam is the third to take up the Geneva post within three years.

Sources said that Ambassador Kunanayakam had agreed that she couldn’t give up the Geneva mission in a hurry, though she remained committed to setting up of a fully fledged diplomatic mission in Caracas to cover the entire region.

In the Memories of the Massacred

By: Roy Ratnavel

It has been three years since May 18, 2009. That’s the day Tamil Diaspora’s world stopped spinning. Over time, it has resumed its rotation, sluggishly at first. We are in the early phase of grieving, we have the rawness at our fingertips. Almost primal in our every thought and movement as we attempt to rise each day and put one step in front of another.

Dunes of emotions dominate our psyche somewhere between howling anger and stunned silence. We give up understanding. We find ourselves picking through the wreckage. Not even the lapse of time has numbed how truly horrible it was. Massacre of May 2009 remains a key moment in the shared history of Sri Lankan Tamils.

We don’t think of it as an isolated individual event without connection with rest of the world. There is no such thing in this interconnected world that we live in. Ultimately we understand how people can be prepared by governments and organizations to use horrific violence outside of the realm of civilized behaviour. It’s ironic, in war everybody is killing but there are rules even for killing and should be. Tamils know Sri Lanka never played by the rules.
( full story )

Cold war between the Rajapaksa brothers

Thursday, 03 May 2012

Lanka News Web learns that Minister Basil Rajapaksa and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa are close to a show down.

The situation has been caused by Basil’s support towards Minister Mervyn Silva in Kelaniya and Gotabhaya’s move to help the Kelaniya Pradeshiya Sabha members against Mervyn.

It is learnt that basil has objected to the appointment of another person to replace Mervyn as the Kelaniya organizer.

Gotabhaya had recently proposed a programme to remove the unauthorized structures in the Negombo, Kelaniya and Gampaha areas, but has had to shelve the plans after Basil had objected to it.

The main behind Gotabhaya’s plan was to take control of two of Basil’s great supporters in the Gampaha District, Mervyn and Nimal Lansa.

It is learnt that Gotabhaya had made arrangements to arrest Mervyn’s and Nimal’s drug peddlers under the programme.

Parts of Batticaloa worse than Vanni in ‘normalcy’

The location of newly established checkpoints of the Sri Lanka Army at Allai-oadai and Maavaddavaan junction [Photo: TamilNet]

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 May 2012, 16:30 GMT]
While the West and India have stopped talking about the East, and try to project an image that ‘normalcy’ has returned to the East and the North also should follow suit in the same directions, large parts of Batticaloa are silently kept under conditions worse than that of Vanni for the last five years, news sources in the East said. Similar to the times of the war in Vanni, more than 250,000 people were systematically displaced by the occupying SL military in 2007, in Batticaloa’s Paduvaan-karai part alone, under the pretext of ‘liberating’ them from the LTTE. Even though it is said that they are ‘rehabilitated phase by phase’, they are deliberately kept without basic facilities for nearly five years now, while the only ‘development’ seen there is the escalation of militarisation and harassment by the occupying Sinhala military.
SL military’s invasion and artillery shells displaced the entire population of Paduvaan-karai part of Batticaloa district in 2007. The region includes administrative divisions such as Vellaave’li, Vavu’natheevu, Paddippazhai, Koa’ra’laip-pattu South, Ea’raavoorp-pattu and Chengkalladi. Full story >>

MP delegation advises govt on Lankan Tamils

May 4, 2012

New Delhi: India’s concerns over the problems being faced by Tamilians in Sri Lanka were conveyed by a multi-party delegation, which recently visited that country, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna said in New Delhi today.

“They had a very fruitful and constructive visit…this delegation served a very useful purpose of conveying the entire country’s concerns about the problems Tamil speaking Sri Lankan citizens in the country are facing and it has served a very useful purpose,” Krishna told reporters outside Parliament House.

Offering healing touch. Image courtesy PIB

He said the government has gone through the report about the visit of the delegation led by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj.

“We heard a report about their visit, their impressions, their perceptions about what needs to be done,” he said, adding the delegation leaders held discussions with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and other leaders from government as well as from other opposition parties and Tamil organisations.

The minister said Sri Lanka is one of the closest neighbours of India with whom it shares historical and civilisational contacts.

PTI

Refugees Dream of Return, Come Home to Nightmare
by Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, May 3 (IPS) - Krishnaveni Nakkeeran has fled the country of her birth twice and returned twice in the last two decades. The 36-year-old mother of four from the northern Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka first fled the bloody civil war to India when she was just 16 years old in 1990.

Her family mistakenly believed it was safe to return five years later and was forced to flee yet again in 1998. She returned again in 2010, barely a year after government forces had defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, accompanied by her family. The war may have ended, but a harsh reality awaits those like Nakkeeran, returning after years spent in India. "Life has been hard, very hard, we probably work double (here) what we did in India," she told IPS.

Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans, almost all of them from the minority Tamil community, fled to neighbouring India during the island’s three decades of civil conflict. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are over 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees in India, out of which roughly 68,000 live in 112 camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Since the war’s end in May 2009, some of these have begun to return. Last year UNHCR facilitated the return of over 1,700 refugees to the island.

This year has seen a drop of around 30 percent in the number of returning citizens; the latest figures released by the U.N. refugee agency said that 408 persons returned during the first quarter of 2012, compared to 597 during the corresponding period in 2011. Full Story>>>

euronews 

Sri Lanka: A9 to reconciliatio

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The Northern Sri Lankan city of Kilinochchi acted as the de-facto capital for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for more than a decade. In November 2008 the Sri Lankan army launched sustained attacks on the town from three directions. Battles raged along the A9, the main highway from Colombo to the Tamil areas in the north of the country, many people were killed and most of the town destroyed before the Sri Lankan army regained control in January 2009.

Since then the area has undergone massive reconstruction, schools are being built and water and power supplies re-established and the resurfaced A9 acts as a powerful symbol as the country moves towards reconciliation.

For the people, problems persist but the bloody civil war is finally over.

Click on the link above to watch our report

Sampanthan slams President for silence over arrests in East
May 2, 2012

by Shamindra Ferdinando

TNA leader R. Sampanthan yesterday urged the government to explain the circumstances leading to a series of arrests in the Eastern Province, particularly in the Trincomalee District.

An irate Trincomalee District MP accused the government of failing to respond to a letter he had recently written to President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The TNA veteran was speaking to The Island on his return from Jaffna, where he joined UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe on May Day to urge the government to create conditions necessary for them to join the proposed Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), on the national issue.

There couldn’t be any reason whatsoever to take men into custody three years after the conclusion of the conflict, MP Sampanthan said. He alleged that the police and security forces had been engaged in search operations in the East, targeting those suspected of having had links with the LTTE.

Military spokesman Ruwan Wanigasuriya told The Island that since the end of the war, the armed forces hadn’t been involved in large scale search operations in any part of the country, though they assisted the police. Commenting on the recent operations in the Eastern Province, Brig. Wanigasuriya said that the military hadn’t initiated action but provided the required support to the law enforcement authorities. He emphasised that the deployment of troops for internal security operations was the prerogative of the government, not only here, but in any part of the world, depending on the requirements.

Asked whether the military was targeting ex-LTTE cadres, who may have missed rehabilitation at the conclusion of the conflict, the Brigadier said that nothing could be as important as having them rehabilitated. That would enable them to earn a living and lead normal lives, the official said. It would be a mistake to deny them the opportunity to undergo vocational training, he said, adding that the rehabilitation process was now rapidly coming to its final phase.

The TNAleader stressed that post-war arrests remained a thorny issue. "The government should address our concerns", he said, alleging that routine cordon and search operations were worrying those living in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. MP Sampanthan said: "I was in Kuchchuveli, north of Trincomalee, when the arrest of some youth was brought to my notice. I rushed to the Kuchchuveli police station, where the police had 30 men lined up. An ASP of the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID), who had the men brought in, told me all would be released in 30 minutes as they were not involved in anything. True to his word, all were released before I reached my residence in Trincomalee. But, subsequently, five of them were taken in."

Sampanthan urged the government to stop what he called clandestine operations if it genuinely wanted to win the confidence of the people who had undergone untold suffering during the conflict. Asked whether he had any idea how many men had been arrested in the East, MP Sampanthan said 15 and 20 persone had been taken in. He claimed that some of them had been already moved to Boossa, where hardcore terrorists were held and also Welikanda rehabilitation centre.