| by Pearl Thevanayagam
(April 23, 2013, London Sri Lank Guardian) Both our President and the famous fiction writer Michael Ondaatje share their initial letter of their first names except the latter declares his works as fiction while the President declares truth as fiction.
Speaking to media heads at a breakfast meeting yesterday, the President insisted that the government respects and maintains human rights in Sri Lanka. He said that fingers are pointed at the government even over normal criminal issues and that is then turned into claims of human rights abuses.
The President said that as a government they reject allegations of mass scale human rights abuses taking place in Sri Lanka. However he said that if there is evidence to back any allegation then the government will investigate those allegations and act on it under local laws.
The annual human rights report released by the US State Department last week had slammed the police in Sri Lanka for alleged torture and abuse of people while in detention.
The Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 2012 states that in Sri Lanka the law makes torture a punishable offence and mandates a sentence of not less than seven years’ and not more than 10 years’ imprisonment.
However, the report says there were credible reports that police and security forces tortured and abused citizens. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) allows for confessions from torture to be admitted as evidence.
The report also claimed that in the east and the north, military intelligence and other security personnel, sometimes allegedly working with paramilitaries, were responsible for the documented and undocumented detention of civilians suspected of LTTE connections. Detention reportedly was followed by interrogation that sometimes included mistreatment or torture. There were reports that detainees were released with a warning not to reveal information about their arrest or detention, under the threat of re-arrest or death.
There are mounts of evidence that government soldiers raped, killed and plundered civilians and the LTTE in Wanni towards the last months of the war which concluded four years ago on May 19.
Civilians with White Flags symbolising surrender were shot point-blank violating international humanitarian laws set out by the UN. Videos taken from mobile phones, eye-witness accounts of war victims, satellite pictures showing soldiers shooting fleeing civilians and evidence given by rape victims authenticated by psychologists are not fiction.
Killing Fields video by Channel 4 was authenticated by Ofcom, UK’s media regulating independent body. UN has verified that government soldiers breached international humanitarian laws in killing surrendering civilians numbering 40,000 or more.
Truth is stranger than fiction. In the absence of media on the frontline for all intents and purposes, journalists under cover have amassed enough evidence of blatant human rights violations by the government. Fools tread in where angels fear is lost on this government.
So let our President be credited with the best fiction writer of this century.
(The writer has been a journalist for 24 years and worked at Weekend, The Daily News, Sunday Leader and Weekend Express in Sri Lanka as sub-editor, news reporter and news editor. She was Colombo Correspondent for Times of India and has contributed to Wall Street Journal; Washington Bureau, where she was on work experience from The Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley, California. Currently residing in UK she is also co-founder of EJN (Exiled Journalists Network) UK in 2005 the membership of which is 200 from 40 countries. She can be reached at pearltheva@hotmail.com)
 Both our President and the famous fiction writer Michael Ondaatje...){kind=link}