Original in Sinhala, Vimarshi Article 38
When discussing the issues on human rights violations of Sri Lanka the main topic has turned out to be the people displaced due to the war situation. Within a very short period around three hundred thousand people, so displaced, were led in to a refugee camp in Vavuniya. It is hardly affirmed in any media about the difficulties these thousands undergo inside the camps, other than an occasional isolated disclosure to the readers made by social service organizations or by representatives of International donor agencies who visit these camp compounds. There aren’t any sincere attempts made by the media to find out and publish the real ground situation where these displaced people accommodated. The only Sri Lanka media that publishes about it are those controlled by the government which put in to print news items such as the facilities given to the displaced, the development work carried out on their behalf and the opening of any new refugee camp. So only a few newspapers report with accuracy. Something noted during an entire year was, that no Sinhala newspaper ever published such news item as their headlines. The English news papers were no different to the Sinhala papers during those last stages of the battle, but some English papers after the end of the war attempted to show some concern through their on and off efforts to publish those happenings, in their headlines. What was specially noted was the approach they made in reporting the incidents without showing any favoritism. Whenever articles were put in to print the Tamil news papers of Sri Lanka made every effort to highlight the situations where the displaced had to live in inhuman conditions inside these refugee camps. All three language medias under government control and other affiliated media organizations bias to them made no efforts at all to publish about the inconveniences faced by those in the refugee camps, instead made strong criticisms of persons and organizations which made any attempt to expose the real living conditions inside the IDP camps. The articles published by them were seemingly against those persons and organizations who voiced displeasure about the conditions inside those camps. It is observed, some articles which failed to bring the facts into focus initially, at latter stages made some attempt to make up for their past lapse. Some media does not make even that much of concern. Those only convey to the reader a false degrading picture of his sincere attempts to help the displaced. Read more…
Original in Sinhala, Vimarshi Article 36
There is a belief in this world that during any war any other disaster it is women and children who suffer most. There are enough examples to prove that this is also a fact. We could see through the media once in a way that there is also a child populace in the displaced camps in Wanni who faced the same suffering of people in Wanni that were forced to face a terribly dangerous war. Read more…
Original in Sinhala, Vimarshi Article 35
Focusing on the media during the past few days it was observed the Governments displeasure about the pressure used by the international and local community to expedite the resettlement of the IDP back in their villages and home towns. By continuously showing thousands of landmines which had been removed soon after the war and advertising the modern equipment imported for this purpose the government is trying to put the blame on the delay as because of the presence of the landmines. The government officials say that the resettlement work cannot be hurried just because the international community or anybody else urges, but a suitable living environment has to be created first. Therefore those who keep on reminding about the resettlement come under attack. Observed through the media is the Government’s justification over this delay, which stress that they not only had to clear the area of landmines in the war zone but even from around the houses of those who were escaping, but this pretext was criticized by a cross section of the society. The recent arrival of a representative of the UN which coincided with the 12th Convention on the Human Rights Commission held at Geneva, again brought to surface the matter on the resettlement of the IDPs. Therefore our media watch focused it’s attention on that. Read more…
Original in Sinhala, Vimarshi Article 34
Exactly one day after the 31st of August, where the entire world was stunned over a sentence passed on a media personal accused of having violated the Prevention of Terrorism Act, it was reported that three others journalists were also taken in to custody on similar charges. As observed this report made the Sri Lanka media community uneasy and restless. The passing of the 20 year old sentence on journalist Tissanayagam was for writing articles about the harassment the Tamil people were subjected to in a war situation. These articles published in the North Eastern Monthly and which were treated as controversial issues in the backdrop of the Prevention of Terrorism Ac, pushed the entire life of a journalist in to complete darkness. Though the rest of the world was agitated by this sentence, there was little displeasure shown by those in the local media. Only a few media reports indicated the dangerous impact it could have directly or indirectly in the future. But the newspapers which did not consider the 20 year sentence imposed on Tissanayagam as serious but treated it as news item, gave much prominence when three of the media personal of the newspaper Lanka were arrested. This seems like an issue under the category of publishing about the misuse of public funds, corruptions and misappropriations. In this instance even though they were not Tamil, they were reporters of the unofficial JVP newspaper Lanka and the reason for their arrest must be studied from different angles. The number of newspapers that really brought to focus the impending threat to the media freedom with the enforcing of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the arrest of Tissanayagam were few. After these reporters were released on bail there weren’t many publications of that nature indicating the motive for their arrest, for whatever reason may be, had been somewhat successful. However when observing the reaction of the media at the arrest of the 3 Lanka media personnel and the arrest of Tissanayagam there appears to be a clear distinction between the two. Read more…
Original in Sinhala, Vimarshi Article 31
We, who were making an attempt to identify the media tendencies in humanitarian news reporting, were forced to monitor the manner in which a chain of tragic incidents that violates human rights very seriously while also subjecting the human rights of people severely, taking place in our society. It was so severe we could not avoid it. This gross violation of basic human rights through delivering death sentence to suspects by the police challenging the supremacy of the law in the country, did not spring up suddenly. However some discussion in this regard through mass media in this regard came up due to two incidents that took place recently. However the reason for it to emerge was because a public force or some other force became active against them. One of the incidents was about the discovery of tortured dead bodies of two youth arrested by the police.(night of August 12th) The other incident was the sparing of the life of a student subjected to a bloody assault by the wife of an ASP and his son, without getting branded as the dead body of a common criminal. The residents of Angulana dared to challenge the police over the death of two youth while in custody of the Angulana police in anger and this heat also crept in the media. In the 2nd incident (though this happened before the other incident) the parents of the abducted student was able to spring in to action immediately contacting politically influential people, while the students of the SLIIT students in Malabe also got active, forcing the media also to play an active role. It is through these awakenings the police came under severe condemnation where its official powers are being abused to hunt down and punish opponents of their own sons and go on human hunting at their own discretion under the label of war heroes. Read more…
Article originally written in Sinhala. See Tamil translation here.
The judgment of 20 years with heavy labor passed on media reporter J. S. Tissanayagam recently sent shock waves internationally, among the societies that value democracy and especially amongst the community of the international media, who thinks the charges brought against him and the ruling of the courts as highly unreasonable. This verdict imposed on the 31st of August has become the main point of discussion among the civil society and those actively engaged in the media related work. Over this sentence there is some displeasure voiced to some extent within a section of the media in our country to and to a larger extent among the civil society, about the danger on the freedom of expression as a result of the prevention of terrorism act and the state of emergency. The failure on the part of the defendant’s lawyer to convince the Judge to get the sentence which is based on 3 separate charges lessened to 10 years from the original verdict of 20 are noted as weak points and are currently in discussion. Certain reports made by some media after a careful observation on the judgment passed are of the opinion that under the ruthless law named the Prevention of Terrorism Act, even though he is not going to be the last person to be jailed, certain evidence brought against him, being the first person, had not been in his favor. Read more…
Translation of article originally written in Sinhala. See Tamil translation here.
For the second time the British Channel 4 television service, has become the main topic of discussion in the Sri Lanka’s media circles. The first time it came to attention was, when on the 9th of May, 3 of its media personnel, taken into custody were deported out of the country. The reason was for preparing and forwarding a report on human rights violations taking place inside some IDP camps in Vavuniya. On the orders of the authorities who studied the contents of the report , they were arrested and deported. Our attention was drawn to the attitude shown and the approach made by Sri Lanka media on reporting this incident. But on this occasion the incident is considered more serious. Channel 4 has broadcast a video clip that could bring discredit to the government of Sri Lanka on war crimes. As such it can be observed through their counter media reports, with how much ferocity and contempt the Sri Lanka government has treated this matter. Our objective was to make a report on how the Sri Lanka media reacted to a state of affairs where 300,000 of their population were displaced due to a war situation. Read more…
Article originally written in Sinhala. Read Tamil translation here.
By closely observing the media coverage on the reports of confusion and distress connected with the college education, it is apparent the importance attached to it. On one hand the students from the IDP camps who sat for the year 5 scholarship exam on the 23rd set off from their homes, which were covered with water contaminated by the overflowing toilet pits due to heavy rains. Some are even now writing for the A/L exam.
Read more…
Translation of article that originally appeared in Sinhala. See Tamil translation here.
The Humanitarian day of the United Nations falls on the 19th of August. The UN commemorated this day for the first time on last Wednesday 18th August. But when this commemoration as going on the residents of Sri Lanka were apparently unaware of the massive amount of displaced people suffering severely from the dire need for human needs and deprivation of human rights, in the biggest man made disaster in the history of Sri Lanka. It is also quite possible that they are pretending to be unaware of it. They may feel it but ignore it because it is not their pain and are insensitive today because of the lack of eyes to see or ears to hear. It is the information provided by the media that gives eyes for the people to see and ears for them to hear. But if the media is not fulfilling this responsibility or they are not permitted to do so, the biggest responsibility of media, to be faithful to people, will not take place. The country has no use of a media that is not faithful to people and do not act for the betterment of the people. Read more…
Translation of article originally written in Sinhala. See Tamil translation here.
There is something that had to be cleared up when we talk of the difference between pre-war era and post war era humanitarian news reporting. Though we use the word pre-war here the topics we discuss are relevant to reporting when the war was going on. The reason is the war that was declared over by the army commanders to the President on the 17th May and the official announcement made by the President the next day, kept going for two years and 10 months. So it would be clearer for us to consider this two years and ten months period as the era where the war was going on and the era that began after the 20th of May as the post war period. We made this preface to clarify some differences that can be noticed from October last year up to May 19 2009 when we started the monitoring of humanitarian reporting and the period that came after that. Though some media showed a slight change in their attitudes while reporting humanitarian issues, the govt media kept on protesting against them even last week. This protest was done in two ways. One protest was based on statements made by some govt authorities on reports published by the international media with regard to humanitarian crises in Sri Lanka. The other protest was expressed by refusing to extend the visa of Ravi Nessman of the Associated Press and making him to leave Sri Lanka. The organizations appearing for media freedom protesting against this incident opines that the reason for this is reporting on humanitarian news. Read more…
