Sri Lanka's human rights disaster

By Conor Foley
Courtesy: The Guardian –London

(January 08, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) On 8 January 2009 Lasantha Manilal Wickrematunge, a prominent Sri Lankan anti-government journalist and politician and human rights activist, was murdered while on his way to work. Four gunmen riding motorcycles blocked his vehicle before breaking open his window and shooting him. He was rushed to hospital but died from his wounds. One year on, his killers have still not been brought to justice.

In a statement marking the first anniversary of Wickrematunge's death the International Bar Association (IBA) warned the human rights situation in Sri Lanka is still a cause for significant concern. IBA conducted a mission to Sri Lanka last February which noted "a wider pattern of intimidation routinely expressed against members of civil society, including academics, aid workers and lawyers representing terrorist suspects who are perceived to be critical or challenging of the government or its policies."

Programme lawyer Alex Wilks said, "The alarming circumstances surrounding Wickrematunge's murder and the lack of a prompt and effective investigation has had a profound impact on the journalistic community and on freedom of expression in Sri Lanka. In combination with the use of repressive criminal legislation to prosecute journalists, for example in the recent case of Nadesapillai Tissainayagam, this has led in many cases to self-censorship and has had the effect of stifling free and open debate on issues relating to the conflict."

Wickrematunge was one of 16 Sri Lankan journalists who have been murdered in recent years after reporting or criticising the government's actions and policies during the decades-old conflict with the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), which ended last year. He had been on Amnesty International's endangered list since 1998, when anti-tank shells were fired on his house.

Wickrematunge wrote a chilling editorial predicting his imminent death and blaming the government for it, which was published posthumously in the Guardian. Murder, he wrote, "has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty". He described the LTTE as "among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations to have infested the planet", but warned that the means being used to defeat it were violating the rights of the country's Tamil people and damaging democracy itself. "Bombing and shooting mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be custodians of the dhamma is forever called into question by this savagery – much of it unknown to the public because of censorship," he concluded.

No one knows exactly how many people died when the Sri Lankan army stormed the LTTE's final redoubt in the north-east of the country last May. For several months around 300,000 civilians had been confined in an area the size of New York's Central Park, which was shelled on almost daily basis by government forces. Supplies of food and medicine were restricted and aid convoys turned back. The UN estimated that between 7,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed during the bombardment. A report by the Times claimed that the death toll – from artillery fire, summary executions, disease and starvation – could have been as high as 20,000.

The government has refused all calls for an inquiry into what happened and rejected all reports of war crimes as "LTTE propaganda". Aid workers, journalists and human rights lawyers who contradicted the official line were arrested, intimidated or murdered. In July last year the government paraded five doctors who had been working in the conflict zone – from where they had sent eyewitness reports – and who had been held in incommunicado detention since their arrest. These now claimed that only 750 civilians had been killed. Looking nervous and flanked by government officials, they said that they regretted their previous "lies" and that no pressure had been exerted on them to change their statements. Sri Lanka was a democratic country, one said, and so they were no longer lying. Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to London published a response to an article that I wrote about the situation here.

The tragedy is that Sri Lanka is indeed a democracy and it has faced a ruthless campaign of terrorism from the LTTE. Its government has belatedly responded to international pressure to release people from the detention camps where hundreds of thousands have been held since the end of the war. An election is due later this month and the two main, Sinhalese-dominated, political parties are both seeking votes from the Tamil minority, whose influence could determine the outcome of the race.

However, the government continues to attempt to silence all legitimate criticism of its human rights record. Demagogic politicians are meanwhile deliberately inflaming hatred and creating a climate in which crimes of violence are encouraged against those who challenge the official propaganda. As Wickrematunge noted, "No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism ... Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last."