(September 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan Government is at war with journalists who report the truth. They had to find a scapegoat to teach a lesson, to the media that expose their numerous human rights crimes, through the facade of a judicial process. They have to portray those independent journalists as terrorists, and who is a better terrorist in Sri Lanka than a Tamil. The simple fact is that Tissanayagam is a Tamil and therefore a terrorist. Tissanayagam would not suffer the same fate if his name happens to be Dissanayake.
Considering that from October 2000 to August 2007 more than twenty Tamils, either journalists or those connected to the media who died, did not do so of natural causes or some terminal illness, Tissanayagam, an investigative journalist of repute is being used as a convenient scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb in the vendetta against objective and investigative journalists, a tribe in Sri Lanka now fast becoming extinct. It is most convenient when the one being sacrificed is a Tamil and can be done with no accountability.
The outrageous manner in which Tissanayagam’s case is being handled exposes the politicised Sri Lankan justice system, where the judiciary can be manipulated by the government to serve the needs of the racist State where the judicial system is tuned to function concertedly and in unison when it comes to penalizing Tamils and or considering their grievances. Tissanayagam, taken into custody under the draconian Anti Terrorism Regulations was not only tortured and his urgent medical needs denied at first, is also left bereft of adequate legal assistance, to which any human being is entitled in a civilized society. If he is not already a recruit to the cause of a separate Tamil State, he will need also immediate psychiatric attention.
Tissanayagam being a Tamil, like any other Tamil in Sri Lanka, is in the unenviable position of being desperately unable to disprove an allegation that he is a terrorist for all Tamils in Sri Lanka are deemed terrorists or potential terrorists for the only reason that they are Tamils, unless they demonstrate otherwise by attacking the LTTE, for their servile survival. It is for this reason that such journalists have to ensure that they condemn the LTTE at the outset, even when not warranted, to drive home their point. The existence of the LTTE for such journalists is vital for them to sound credulous and be accepted in the Sinhala polity. We are not for a moment holding a brief for the LTTE for all their actions. How should an independent Tamil journalist or for that matter an ordinary Tamil in the south prove that they are not a terrorist? Should they act in a special way, say, write in a special style or look different?
Tissanayagam was arrested in Colombo on 07 March, just a few weeks after creating a news website called Outreachlk with funding from FLICT, an NGO supported by the German development agency GTZ. Tissanayagam was also a columnist for the Sri Lankan weekly, The Sunday Times. According to Sunanda Deshapriya, a Free Media Movement spokesperson, the North Eastern Magazine of which Tissanayagam was editor wound up over an year ago was known as a pro-Tamil English-language publication but was not considered pro-LTTE. A person with pro Tamil views especially in the present context is not necessarily a supporter of the LTTE. Take for example Dr Brian Senewiratne, a Sinhalese, who has been sticking his neck out, vehemently campaigning for Tamil self rule, but who is by no means a part of the LTTE. So was the late Adrian Wijemanne another respected Sinhalese intellectual.
What provoked Tissanayagam’s arrest was an article captioned: “Child soldiers: What the Government report did not report” published on 24 February 2008; (Appended; courtesy Tamil Nation .org). In this article readers would discern that it was in the main an objective analysis of the report on the report of the Committee to Inquire into Allegations of Abductions and Recruitment of Children for Use in Armed Conflict (CIAARC) appointed by the Sri Lankan Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and headed by Justice Ministry Secretary Suhada Gamalth, to have been tabled at the sessions of the UN Security Council in relation to the statement of the Civil Society Working Group on Child Soldiers (CSWGCS), comprising a number of civil society organizations. The analysis quoted chunks of views from both sides. The comments therein made by Tissanayagam would have been be made by any intelligent journalist.
The charges, in general terms, relate to printing, publishing, and distribution of the magazine ‘North Eastern Monthly’ during the period between 1st June 2006 and 1st June 2007; bringing the government into disrepute by the publication of articles and the aiding and abetting of terrorist organizations through the raising of money for his journal.
Specific charges, we believe, will be doctored in due course, to find him guilty. He is also accused of arousing racism. Apart from the terminology in the charges it is ironic that within a State saturated in racism of even the primordial kind dished out to the minorities, in stark contrast to the acceptance of Barok Obama by the US Democrats as their presidential candidate elsewhere, we wonder what impact Tissanayagam’s ”racism”, if any would have had on the general milieu in combating the overwhelming racism of the State. We do not know how he could have aided terrorist organisations by raising money for his website and what dent he could have made in the already shattered Sri Lankan repute in regard to its most deplorable human rights record.
In dealing with a Tamil journalist, the Sri Lankan State has more ways than one, in skinning a cat.
Tissanayagam’Article of 24 February 2008:-
Child soldiers: What the Government report did not report
Earlier this week, the media highlighted government’s plan to present the report of the Committee to Inquire into Allegations of Abductions and Recruitment of Children for Use in Armed Conflict (CIAARC), at the sessions of the UN Security Council on Thursday. What transpired at the sessions was not known at the time this article was written.
CIAARC was appointed by Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and headed by Justice Ministry Secretary Suhada Gamalth. Among the highlights of the report, written after a fact-finding mission to Batticaloa, was that “there had been no complaints of abductions or forced recruitment recorded by law enforcement authorities in 2008” (Daily Mirror 19/Feb/2008).
In a concise, but comprehensive statement, the Civil Society Working Group on Child Soldiers (CSWGCS), comprising a number of civil society organisations, has demolished the work of CIAARC exposing the lies, omissions and the deliberate attempt to mislead the UN Security Council’s Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict by creating a false picture, apparently to exculpate the government.
The CSWGCS statement contradicts bluntly CIAARC’s claim there were no abductions reported in 2008 by stating: “Already, 5 cases of underage recruitment by the TMVP (three cases of recruitment and two re-recruitments) have been reported by the UNICEF for January 2008.” It has to be noted that the reason for the formation of CIAARC was persistent allegations of abductions and recruitment of children by the TMVP, once headed by Karuna and now by Pillaiyan.
The CSWGCS statement questions the work of the CIAARC fact-finding mission. Calling it a “fly-in, fly-out mission,” CSWGCS accuses it of staying only four hours in Batticaloa during the field visit. What is more, it says “this high-profile committee did not talk to the parents of the children abducted, or groups working with parents and child abductees.”
The statement goes on to dismiss out of hand the government’s pretence of not being complicit in the acts of the TMVP through denial, including Samarasinghe’s request for “credible evidence” of this link, by citing the training camps of the TMVP in government-controlled areas.
“There are number of training camps...established in government-controlled areas and in visibly close proximity to military outposts, army checkpoints and camps...Theevuchenai, Muttukal in the Welikanda area and Kadiraveli...Despite persistent denial of any involvement with the TMVP, its cadres have been seen patrolling with soldiers and walking in and out of army camps.”
Finally, the statement places the political link between the government and TMVP in perspective declaring, “This armed faction, listed in the annex of the UN Secretary General’s Report on Children and Armed Conflict as a violator of child recruitment, is now openly contesting jointly with the government in the local elections in Batticaloa.”
The CSWGCS statement concludes CIAARC “was intended to be nothing but a face-saving mechanism with no genuine political will.” Having demolished CIAARC, the statement proceeds to debunk claims made by the government to have set up a number of institutions for the protection of children and the efforts made by them to address underage recruitment.
Before dealing with this plethora of institutions, the CSWGCS statement documents the state of mind of civilians. It says, “Civilians live in a climate of fear, suppression and without the capacity to voice out their grievances. Parents, risking threats, intimidation and harassment, have made complaints to the Police, the National Child Protection Authority as well as to the Supreme Court regarding the abduction of their children, but to no avail.”
Speaking of the Police, the statement reports no progress had been made in protecting children or addressing underage recruitment. It dismisses “Samarasinghe’s claim that the Police would immediately investigate reported cases of abductions” by saying no reports had been made available “bringing into question whether investigations even took place.”
On the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka’s role, the CSWGCS says that despite complaints to the Commission it had “failed to visit the camps named in the HRW (Human Rights Watch) report where children and youth are being held and/or given arms training.” It adds the Commission made no attempt at even identifying camps where children were being held.
Going on to the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) under Chairman Jagath Wellawatte, the CSWGCS challenges the organisation’s excuse for inaction by claming it was not mandated to launch investigations into child recruitment cases without an official complaint. “This statement is completely contradictory to its mandate, which maintains: ‘the authority may, where it has reason to believe that there is child abuse on any premises…. authorize an officer of the Authority to enter and search such premises,’” the CSWGCS points out.
The CSWGCS report reserves its harshest criticism for the one-man Mahanama Tilakaratne Commission on Abductions, Attacks on Civilians and Killings. It says “the investigation was a sham,” buttressing the conclusion by, “to date no results of the investigations have been made public – even though parents, witnesses have been questioned. A number of parents were not even informed that such an investigation was taking place.” The Commission’s visit to Batticaloa was not announced and the three-day visit “was too short to achieve any substantial findings.”
It is on the basis of the shoddy and disingenuous work of these institutions that the government hoped to present its defence on the protection of children in armed conflict in Sri Lanka. The fact that it did not have tangible evidence of such abuses was not because there was no evidence, but because they did not bother to collect it systematically.
It could be that the government believed its customary approach of blaming all child recruitment on the LTTE would enable it to wriggle out of a tight spot. But such an argument might not wash this time judging from the tone of the HRW report released on Thursday claiming the LTTE’s recruitment of children had “dropped significantly over the past nine months,” though it accuses the Tigers of not keeping to the deadline of releasing all underage recruits already in its ranks.
Or it could be the government believes its reliance on slogans (“zero tolerance of child recruitment”), brazen falsehood (“there is no credible evidence” of TMVP abductions in government-controlled areas), or the appointment of a raft of committees, would protect it from too much damage in the hands of the UNSC Working Group.
The exposure of the machinations of the government and the institutions it has established, should not blind us to the fact that, finally, the UN is a club of states. Whether this club of states is willing to impose strictures on a fellow-member, fighting a counterinsurgency war using child soldiers, is left to be seen.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
Considering that from October 2000 to August 2007 more than twenty Tamils, either journalists or those connected to the media who died, did not do so of natural causes or some terminal illness, Tissanayagam, an investigative journalist of repute is being used as a convenient scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb in the vendetta against objective and investigative journalists, a tribe in Sri Lanka now fast becoming extinct. It is most convenient when the one being sacrificed is a Tamil and can be done with no accountability.
The outrageous manner in which Tissanayagam’s case is being handled exposes the politicised Sri Lankan justice system, where the judiciary can be manipulated by the government to serve the needs of the racist State where the judicial system is tuned to function concertedly and in unison when it comes to penalizing Tamils and or considering their grievances. Tissanayagam, taken into custody under the draconian Anti Terrorism Regulations was not only tortured and his urgent medical needs denied at first, is also left bereft of adequate legal assistance, to which any human being is entitled in a civilized society. If he is not already a recruit to the cause of a separate Tamil State, he will need also immediate psychiatric attention.
Tissanayagam being a Tamil, like any other Tamil in Sri Lanka, is in the unenviable position of being desperately unable to disprove an allegation that he is a terrorist for all Tamils in Sri Lanka are deemed terrorists or potential terrorists for the only reason that they are Tamils, unless they demonstrate otherwise by attacking the LTTE, for their servile survival. It is for this reason that such journalists have to ensure that they condemn the LTTE at the outset, even when not warranted, to drive home their point. The existence of the LTTE for such journalists is vital for them to sound credulous and be accepted in the Sinhala polity. We are not for a moment holding a brief for the LTTE for all their actions. How should an independent Tamil journalist or for that matter an ordinary Tamil in the south prove that they are not a terrorist? Should they act in a special way, say, write in a special style or look different?
Tissanayagam was arrested in Colombo on 07 March, just a few weeks after creating a news website called Outreachlk with funding from FLICT, an NGO supported by the German development agency GTZ. Tissanayagam was also a columnist for the Sri Lankan weekly, The Sunday Times. According to Sunanda Deshapriya, a Free Media Movement spokesperson, the North Eastern Magazine of which Tissanayagam was editor wound up over an year ago was known as a pro-Tamil English-language publication but was not considered pro-LTTE. A person with pro Tamil views especially in the present context is not necessarily a supporter of the LTTE. Take for example Dr Brian Senewiratne, a Sinhalese, who has been sticking his neck out, vehemently campaigning for Tamil self rule, but who is by no means a part of the LTTE. So was the late Adrian Wijemanne another respected Sinhalese intellectual.
What provoked Tissanayagam’s arrest was an article captioned: “Child soldiers: What the Government report did not report” published on 24 February 2008; (Appended; courtesy Tamil Nation .org). In this article readers would discern that it was in the main an objective analysis of the report on the report of the Committee to Inquire into Allegations of Abductions and Recruitment of Children for Use in Armed Conflict (CIAARC) appointed by the Sri Lankan Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and headed by Justice Ministry Secretary Suhada Gamalth, to have been tabled at the sessions of the UN Security Council in relation to the statement of the Civil Society Working Group on Child Soldiers (CSWGCS), comprising a number of civil society organizations. The analysis quoted chunks of views from both sides. The comments therein made by Tissanayagam would have been be made by any intelligent journalist.
The charges, in general terms, relate to printing, publishing, and distribution of the magazine ‘North Eastern Monthly’ during the period between 1st June 2006 and 1st June 2007; bringing the government into disrepute by the publication of articles and the aiding and abetting of terrorist organizations through the raising of money for his journal.
Specific charges, we believe, will be doctored in due course, to find him guilty. He is also accused of arousing racism. Apart from the terminology in the charges it is ironic that within a State saturated in racism of even the primordial kind dished out to the minorities, in stark contrast to the acceptance of Barok Obama by the US Democrats as their presidential candidate elsewhere, we wonder what impact Tissanayagam’s ”racism”, if any would have had on the general milieu in combating the overwhelming racism of the State. We do not know how he could have aided terrorist organisations by raising money for his website and what dent he could have made in the already shattered Sri Lankan repute in regard to its most deplorable human rights record.
In dealing with a Tamil journalist, the Sri Lankan State has more ways than one, in skinning a cat.
Tissanayagam’Article of 24 February 2008:-
Child soldiers: What the Government report did not report
Earlier this week, the media highlighted government’s plan to present the report of the Committee to Inquire into Allegations of Abductions and Recruitment of Children for Use in Armed Conflict (CIAARC), at the sessions of the UN Security Council on Thursday. What transpired at the sessions was not known at the time this article was written.
CIAARC was appointed by Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and headed by Justice Ministry Secretary Suhada Gamalth. Among the highlights of the report, written after a fact-finding mission to Batticaloa, was that “there had been no complaints of abductions or forced recruitment recorded by law enforcement authorities in 2008” (Daily Mirror 19/Feb/2008).
In a concise, but comprehensive statement, the Civil Society Working Group on Child Soldiers (CSWGCS), comprising a number of civil society organisations, has demolished the work of CIAARC exposing the lies, omissions and the deliberate attempt to mislead the UN Security Council’s Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict by creating a false picture, apparently to exculpate the government.
The CSWGCS statement contradicts bluntly CIAARC’s claim there were no abductions reported in 2008 by stating: “Already, 5 cases of underage recruitment by the TMVP (three cases of recruitment and two re-recruitments) have been reported by the UNICEF for January 2008.” It has to be noted that the reason for the formation of CIAARC was persistent allegations of abductions and recruitment of children by the TMVP, once headed by Karuna and now by Pillaiyan.
The CSWGCS statement questions the work of the CIAARC fact-finding mission. Calling it a “fly-in, fly-out mission,” CSWGCS accuses it of staying only four hours in Batticaloa during the field visit. What is more, it says “this high-profile committee did not talk to the parents of the children abducted, or groups working with parents and child abductees.”
The statement goes on to dismiss out of hand the government’s pretence of not being complicit in the acts of the TMVP through denial, including Samarasinghe’s request for “credible evidence” of this link, by citing the training camps of the TMVP in government-controlled areas.
“There are number of training camps...established in government-controlled areas and in visibly close proximity to military outposts, army checkpoints and camps...Theevuchenai, Muttukal in the Welikanda area and Kadiraveli...Despite persistent denial of any involvement with the TMVP, its cadres have been seen patrolling with soldiers and walking in and out of army camps.”
Finally, the statement places the political link between the government and TMVP in perspective declaring, “This armed faction, listed in the annex of the UN Secretary General’s Report on Children and Armed Conflict as a violator of child recruitment, is now openly contesting jointly with the government in the local elections in Batticaloa.”
The CSWGCS statement concludes CIAARC “was intended to be nothing but a face-saving mechanism with no genuine political will.” Having demolished CIAARC, the statement proceeds to debunk claims made by the government to have set up a number of institutions for the protection of children and the efforts made by them to address underage recruitment.
Before dealing with this plethora of institutions, the CSWGCS statement documents the state of mind of civilians. It says, “Civilians live in a climate of fear, suppression and without the capacity to voice out their grievances. Parents, risking threats, intimidation and harassment, have made complaints to the Police, the National Child Protection Authority as well as to the Supreme Court regarding the abduction of their children, but to no avail.”
Speaking of the Police, the statement reports no progress had been made in protecting children or addressing underage recruitment. It dismisses “Samarasinghe’s claim that the Police would immediately investigate reported cases of abductions” by saying no reports had been made available “bringing into question whether investigations even took place.”
On the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka’s role, the CSWGCS says that despite complaints to the Commission it had “failed to visit the camps named in the HRW (Human Rights Watch) report where children and youth are being held and/or given arms training.” It adds the Commission made no attempt at even identifying camps where children were being held.
Going on to the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) under Chairman Jagath Wellawatte, the CSWGCS challenges the organisation’s excuse for inaction by claming it was not mandated to launch investigations into child recruitment cases without an official complaint. “This statement is completely contradictory to its mandate, which maintains: ‘the authority may, where it has reason to believe that there is child abuse on any premises…. authorize an officer of the Authority to enter and search such premises,’” the CSWGCS points out.
The CSWGCS report reserves its harshest criticism for the one-man Mahanama Tilakaratne Commission on Abductions, Attacks on Civilians and Killings. It says “the investigation was a sham,” buttressing the conclusion by, “to date no results of the investigations have been made public – even though parents, witnesses have been questioned. A number of parents were not even informed that such an investigation was taking place.” The Commission’s visit to Batticaloa was not announced and the three-day visit “was too short to achieve any substantial findings.”
It is on the basis of the shoddy and disingenuous work of these institutions that the government hoped to present its defence on the protection of children in armed conflict in Sri Lanka. The fact that it did not have tangible evidence of such abuses was not because there was no evidence, but because they did not bother to collect it systematically.
It could be that the government believed its customary approach of blaming all child recruitment on the LTTE would enable it to wriggle out of a tight spot. But such an argument might not wash this time judging from the tone of the HRW report released on Thursday claiming the LTTE’s recruitment of children had “dropped significantly over the past nine months,” though it accuses the Tigers of not keeping to the deadline of releasing all underage recruits already in its ranks.
Or it could be the government believes its reliance on slogans (“zero tolerance of child recruitment”), brazen falsehood (“there is no credible evidence” of TMVP abductions in government-controlled areas), or the appointment of a raft of committees, would protect it from too much damage in the hands of the UNSC Working Group.
The exposure of the machinations of the government and the institutions it has established, should not blind us to the fact that, finally, the UN is a club of states. Whether this club of states is willing to impose strictures on a fellow-member, fighting a counterinsurgency war using child soldiers, is left to be seen.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
 The Sri Lankan Government is at war with journalists who report the truth. They had to find a ...){kind=link}
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