No one did it, but somehow it was done

Looking for recent news on Sri Lanka, one is presented with contradictory messages: according to Time magazine, “Sri Lanka Promises Not to Endanger Civilians;” however, according to the BBC, the government has found it necessary for “civilian attacks [to be] denied.” However, it is not the biases of the two authors that clash, but rather the material they have to work with. In the chaos and mayhem of the last stages of a 25-year-long civil war, both the government and LTTE are blaming each other for wildly varying numbers of civilian casualties, while prohibiting independent media from entering to verify the numbers or attribute blame either way.

In the Time article, written at the beginning of this month (February 6), Ravi Nessman reports that the Sri Lankan government assured the United Nations that the military would protect civilians in the northeastern conflict areas. After capturing some key bases of the LTTE, the government was evidently confident that, in the words of President Rajapaksa during a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, offenses against the LTTE could be “would be carried out without harassment to the civilian population." In fact, the military had reported that citizens had begun fleeing from the conflict area to government-controlled territory. A military spokesman predicted that it was going to become “a mass movement now.” At the same time, the government has refused calls for a brief ceasefire to let civilians flee the area, preferring to let them figure it out on their own. Clearly, the few weeks since this article was written have shown that no “mass movement” followed the government’s capture of bases at Chalai, Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, Trincomalee, and other areas. Somewhere around 250,000 civilians remain trapped in rebel-held territory, unable to leave and victimized regularly. For example, the UN reported that between the escalation of the war and the writing of this article (a space of about a month), around 300 civilians had been killed.

Furthermore, the government since September 2008 has barred all aid agencies and nonprofits from the country, as well as making it very difficult for foreign journalists to gain entry. In essence, they are closing themselves off so that no one knows what is really going on. Meanwhile, their own people are left to suffer and fend for themselves.

The weakness of the government’s claims was revealed only a few days after the Time article was published, when according to the BBC article, government bombs hit a makeshift hospital set up by the Red Cross in Putumattalan, killing 16 people. Although the government denied responsibility for these 16 deaths, the Tamil Tigers have also denied shooting down 19 people fleeing rebel territory- and yet these 30 people are somehow still dead. No one did it, but somehow it was done.

The Red Cross, the Sri Lankan government, and the LTTE have all commented on these incidents:

Paul Castella, head of the Red Cross: “We are shocked that patients are not
afforded the protection they are entitled to."

Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, military spokesman: "We did not fire at this location on Monday and it is quite possible that the Tamil Tigers attacked them."

C. Ilamparithy, a rebel spokesman: “Sri Lankan military machinery, which has relentlessly killed and maimed thousands of civilians during the past four weeks, is now engaged in a propaganda drive to divert the mounting pressure on the Colombo government by the international community."

Castella’s comments reflect the general reaction of the international community, as far as I know. But Nanayakkara’s and Ilamparithy’s remarks are much more indicative of the political climate within Sri Lanka- again, as far as I understand the situation. Both are almost laughably caricatured examples of finger-pointing and unwillingness to take responsibility for action. Both the government and the LTTE are like drowning people who already hate each other, pushing each other under for the sake of victory in war as well as for the sake of public image. The situation in Sri Lanka is terrible, with abuses on both sides, and the only way that either side will survive relatively unscathed is to take advantage of the chaos in the region and blame the other.

Finally, Human Rights Watch (HRW) takes the obvious position, saying that both the government and the LTTE are “responsible for the dramatic increase in civilian casualties during the past month - approximately 2,000 killed and another 5,000 wounded, according to independent monitors on the ground.”

This article is a summary of the much longer report released recently by HRW, entitled “War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni.” In the report, various human rights abuses by both sides are enumerated. On the government side, these include not only shelling of civilians (even those in government-declared “safe zones”), refusal of humanitarian aid agencies to the areas that need them (and resulting inadequacy of medical care, food, water, and shelter), internment of civilians who escape from rebel territory in military-guarded refugee camps, and arbitrary detainment of suspected Tamil Tigers (including the disappearance of many). Lately, the government has declared that everyone in the rebel-held territory is a potential Tiger, so indiscriminate bombing is justified. This declaration “effectively sanction[s] unlawful attacks,” according to HRW.

On the other side, the LTTE is not only shooting civilians who try to escape to government-held territory, they are even forcibly recruiting them to help with military efforts for which these civilians have no training. As a result, most are killed quickly.

The report from HRW provides many personal stories from the front lines in Sri Lanka, but this one affected me the most:

"Some 150 people started out together, but when we tried to leave, at
Suthanthirapuruam, the LTTE tried to stop us. There was only a narrow path to
leave by. The LTTE caught us. There was fighting, arguments. They were shooting
at us. Many people were injured and killed. It was shocking to see. Only 65 were
in my group when we came out. One father was carrying his child on his back. As
they were running from the LTTE, he was holding him by the arms so hard - in
order not to lose him - that he broke both of the child's arms." – Anonymous
35-year-old Sri Lankan father of three

Essentially, although the Sri Lankan government promised to protect its citizens, it and its military have harmed the people at least as much as the LTTE has. Both sides show blatant disregard for the welfare of the people of Sri Lanka, but deny their roles in the violence vehemently. They don’t want anyone to know what’s going on within their borders. Spread the word.

Free Press Issues in Sri Lanka

I noted in my last entry that both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have grievances to repay as well as sins committed. Most of the world decries the LTTE as a terrorist organization- the “bad guy” in this situation, and while I cannot disagree, I must also point out that the government is no saving grace either. While skimming the news recently I have come across several articles on the Sri Lankan government’s oppression of free press in Sri Lanka.

In one New York Times article about wounded civilians near Trincomalee (in the northeastern part of the country), the reporter mentioned not only the numbers of civilians killed and wounded, but also the rarity of a reporter making it to the conflict zone. He said that:

“The Sri Lankan government has barred reporters and most foreigners from the
conflict zone, so the accounts of the injured here in government-controlled
territory provided a rare glimpse into the predicament of at least 100,000
civilians trapped behind the front lines.”

From the way that the rest of the article described the scene in the conflict zone, it is no wonder that the government doesn’t want the world to see it. According to the author, there were 368 patients (including children, nuns, and the elderly) being treated at the hospital he visited (for wounds inflicted by both the LTTE and the government, by the way), and another 160 set to arrive in a few days. A doctor reported that most of the wounds were infected and that humanitarian aid was having a difficult time finding the patients who needed it.

That is, for those who can still use humanitarian aid- many civilians are killed as they try to escape the conflict zone. One elderly nun was reported as saying that “at least 10 to 15 people die a day, and no one is there to bury them.”

Because of the situation and the intensity of the war, the army has tried to block access to refugees in camps and the wounded in hospitals. The New York Times reporter was in fact only reluctantly allowed into the hospital.

For me, the issue here is separate from the arbitrary killing that is going on (as terribly tragic as that is). The issue here is that the government doesn’t want anyone to know what is going on. This tells me that they are doing something wrong- and they know it. It tells me that the LTTE’s accusations have at least some basis in truth, and that the government IS responsible for some of the killings, accidental or otherwise. They thought that they could keep it a secret, and maybe they could have 20 years ago. But in this day and age, everyone knows everything about everyone. Secrets are hard to keep, especially one of this magnitude. In trying to keep theirs, however, the Sri Lankan government is denying basic human rights to their people and probably making the world more suspicious in the long run than it would otherwise be.

In fact, the oppression has gotten so bad that extrajudicial killings have been resorted to. In a very personal article in TIME magazine, journalist Jyoti Thottam writes about the late Lasantha Wickrematunge, a Sri Lankan contrarian journalist. Wickrematunge disagreed openly with the government through his paper, the Sunday Leader, for the past 14 years. He criticized government officials and politicians of every party with “cheeky” editorials and exposés alleging corruption and other shady dealings. What’s more, he was openly critical of a government which demanded absolute loyalty and conformity of thought form its people. According to Thottam, Wickrematunge was completely against the ideology expressed in 2006 by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa:

"You decide whether you should be with a handful of terrorists or with the
common man ... You must clearly choose between these two sides."

This viewpoint has prompted the government to make the war zone “all but off-limits to the media,” a fact which Wickrematunge vehemently opposed. For his views, Wickrematunge was killed while driving to work on January 8. Of course, there is no clear evidence pointing to who is responsible.

In his last editorial, Wickrematunge noted prophetically:

"Much of the media has been bought, or cajoled and bullied into silence. Dozens
of journalists are dead and others have been incarcerated without trial for
months…. Who then survives to provide the public with a contrarian view?"

Unfortunately, it seems to me that Wickrematunge was right in saying that those reporters providing a “contrarian view” are fewer and fewer. It also seems to me that the government, as well as the rebels, is growing more desperate as the war reaches its end (or perhaps just its climax). They have reached a new level of desperation indeed when they are resorting to simply murdering their opponents (while it cannot be proven that the government is responsible for Wickrematunge’s or other journalists’ murders, all signs do seem to point that way). I just hope that the war ends before they feel much more pressure to keep the media silent.

Even though the Sri Lankan government is trying to keep the rest of the world from finding out about their restrictions on the press, the rest of the world can’t be fooled for long. Earlier this month, the BBC reported that it would suspend its broadcasts on FM radio through the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) after receiving news that many of its reports in English, Tamil, and Sinhala had been disrupted or only partially broadcast. Oftentimes, the current events portion of the report was not broadcast, and although the BBC spoke directly to the SLBC Chairman, Hudson Samarasinghe, their broadcasts allegedly continued to be disrupted.

In a statement, Samarasinghe told the BBC that because of “terrorist attacks” on Sri Lanka, his organization had a duty to “restore peace and harmony” in the country. He also said that “some foreign news centers created fabricated news items about Sri Lanka,” including the BBC. He further accused the BBC of trying to broadcast the voice of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on rebel “heroes day” this past November, and said that the SLBC is not allowed to broadcast Prabhakaran’s voice.

The BBC plans to keep up its AM transmissions in Sri Lanka in English, Tamil, and Sinhala, as well as its web component.

In this dispute, I side with the BBC. For one thing, the BBC has a record of good journalism, and all official forces in Sri Lanka (the government, the rebels, the media, etc.) have records of (accusations of) bad journalism. Combined with other reports of the government’s oppression of the free press, it is not surprising that officials wouldn’t want even their own people to know what’s going on in the country.

In all, this whole situation is an unfortunate mess. I for one never think in a war like this about the cost of individual freedoms, such as speech and the press, which we in America take for granted. It seems unimaginable for a journalist to be killed for simply telling the truth, or for current events just not to be broadcast. It is ridiculous that the Sri Lankan government is so ashamed of what they’re doing and so worried about it getting out that they have resorted to these measures. Even if they defeat the LTTE and Sri Lanka is at peace, there may be another war in store to get rid of this government, or at least elect a more liberal leader.



P.S. After having finished this blog entry, I found another blog which perhaps sums up the free press issues in Sri Lanka better than I did. The author- who as a part of the Pulitzer Center is in Sri Lanka now- knows more about the situation, so he puts it in context better and emphasizes its direness. So... click here. The September 5, 2008 entry really speaks to what I wrote about.

60,000 and Counting

Welcome to my blog! Over the next semester, I will be reporting on and analyzing the civil war in Sri Lanka.


Many people do not know about the conflict in Sri Lanka, or even where the country is. So, before going any further, I would like to discuss the background of Sri Lanka and the civil war it is now enmeshed in.

History to WWII

The BBC in its “country profile” of Sri Lanka reports that Sri Lanka is a beautiful and potentially prosperous island country located off the southeastern coast of India. For centuries, it has been known to travelers for its beauty and to traders for its tea industry. It was originally inhabited by groups of Sinhalese people, with a Tamil minority in the north and east. Later, it was colonized by the Dutch and British and known as Ceylon.

The Outbreak of War: 1983

After the British left in 1948, Sinhalese resentment toward the Tamil population, who they saw as the recipients of British favoritism, expressed itself in tensions between the two groups. In 1976, the group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was formed. Other pro-Tamil groups were formed during the same time period, but this group is the most important because it is one of the primary belligerents in the war today. In the 1983, civil war finally erupted following the murders of 13 government soldiers in an LTTE ambush. After the attack, Sinhalese all over the country attacked Tamils in the streets in an event that came to be known as “Black July” and killed between 400 and 3,000 civilians. This brought about the open aggression that has now persisted for over 25 years.

Modern History of the Conflict



Most of the fighting has happened in the northern part of the country, although the LTTE also used suicide bombings in the southern capital city of Colombo in the 1990s. There was a ceasefire agreement reached in 2002, but was violated continuously by both sides and then in January 2008, the government pulled out just before the agreement expired. In all, more than 60,000 people have been killed in this conflict, out of a population of 19.3 million.




LTTE Goals


Besides seeking reparations for the wrongs done to them, the LTTE is also fighting in pursuit of securing a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka. However, most Tamils in the country live peacefully with the Sinhalese and do not support the actions of the LTTE.

A Terrorist Organization

In fact, according to Wikipedia, 32 separate nations have declared the LTTE to be a terrorist organization. Although both sides have been shown to exaggerate or lie at times in this conflict, the group no doubt does participate in some questionable activities. For example, many charity organizations around the world that claim to be fighting for the rights of the Tamil minority actually are fronts for the LTTE. Sadly, they make millions per year using these schemes.

The Basics of Recent Developments

Recently, the Sri Lankan government (led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa) has taken much LTTE territory in the north and reports that the war will be over soon. On February 3, 2009 the United States, European Union, Japan, and Norway issued a joint statement urging the LTTE to lay down their weapons and surrender, since the war will be over soon anyway. Nevertheless, the rebels (led by Velupillai Prabhakaran) have vowed to fight on, utilizing the guerrilla tactics which are their main advantage.

So… Who is Right?

It is difficult to say who has the side of “right” in this conflict, because both sides have provoked conflict, and both sides have their reasons for fighting. Maybe in the long run it doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong, but it is interesting to look back at what has happened so far in the conflict. An article by Al Jazeera English sums up the events from 1948 to 2009:
- 1948: The “Citizenship Act” denied citizenship to the Tamils whose ancestors were brought to Sri Lanka by the British to work on tea plantations.

- 1956: Sinhala is made the official language of Sri Lanka. Peaceful protests by the Tamil population are broken up by a mob.

- 1970: Buddhism is the official religion of Sri Lanka, which further alienates the Tamils who are predominantly Christian or Hindu.

- 1976: LTTE formed.

- 1983: “Black July.” The murder of 13 soldiers sparks riots that in turn spark the civil war.

- 1987: India deploys a peacekeeping force (the IPKF) to Sri Lanka.

- 1990: The IPKF withdraws. Over 100,000 Muslims are expelled from LTTE-dominated areas.

- 1993: Ranasinghe Premasdasa, President of Sri Lanka is killed by an LTTE suicide bomber.

- 1999: Chandrika Kumaratunge, the first female President of Sri Lanka, is wounded in an assassination attempt at an election rally.

- 2002: Ceasefire (brokered by Norway) comes into effect.

- 2004: The LTTE splits between two influential commanders: Colonel Karuna, who goes on to form a pro-government movement, and Prabhakaran.

- 2007: The army takes back the LTTE-held town of Vakarai, and the LTTE attacks Colombo airport among other targets

- 2008: The government formally withdraws from the ceasefire.

- 2009: The government has reportedly captured Kilinochchi, the political hub of the LTTE. War could end in the next few days.

As you can see, both sides have traded blows. The way I see it, both the LTTE and the government do have some legitimate reasons to be angry. For the sake of peace, I just hope that they can lay aside their differences, as clichéd as that sounds. After 25 years, I think that they should be able to let bygones be bygones and all that.

Civil War is not Enough!?

Sri Lanka also faces the devastation left on the southern shores in the wake of the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, which killed 30,000 Sri Lankans.

More Information…

If you want to read more detail, here are the links to the articles I used.
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1168427.stm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War
- http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/blanktemplate/2008/11/2008111061193133.html