Journalists Face Grave Threats in Sri Lanka

Colombo - A senior journalist, of The Sunday Times, Colombo English-language weekly, J.S. Tissanayagam, has been served with detention order by the Sri Lankan court and charged with aiding the terrorist activities in Sri Lanka. He was arrested two weeks ago linking him with terror activity, in Sri Lanka today that can be translated and interpreted as he was criticizing the present government of Sri Lanka, its miliraty operations and human rights situation in the country, a media activist in Colombo told TNS.

Tissanayagam had filed a Fundamental Rights (FR) against his arrest and ill treatment by the government of Sri Lanka has urged the country’s Supreme courts to order the police to release him immediately and rule that his Fundamental Rights (FR) were violated by police action.

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The Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), a Paris-based media watchdog, in a press release issued, accused Sri Lanka Police for arresting five Tamil journalists on false information and beating them during detention, and said that the Police action was intended to extract confessions from the detainees. RSF urged Sri Lankan authorities to explain why the journalists are still being held.

Sri Lanka is now one of the most dangerous places in the world for human rights defenders - broadly defined to include journalists, aid workers, activists, NGO workers and religious leaders, the media activist in Colombo told TNS.

The IFJ called on the Government to comply with international human rights and legal instruments to ensure the protection of the rights of journalists and other citizens within the legal system.

Hong Kong-based-Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), London-Based Amnesty International (AI), The United States-Based the Human Rights Watch (HRW), UNHRC, the Law and Society Trust,  and many other local and international rights groups in Sri Lanka cited, the rights abuses such as enforced mass abductions, mass disappearances, unlawful execution style summery killings, mass murders, tortures, rapes, destruction of personal, public and cultural properties, forceful displacements are the reasons for their call for UN monitoring mission.

Human rights situations in the country got worsen after the unilateral abrogation of the Norway inspired ceasefire agreement between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eela, the media activist in Colombo told TNS.

In August 2007, U.N. humanitarian relief chief John Holmes said Sri Lanka was one of the most dangerous places in the world for aid workers. He referred in particular to the gruesome execution-style slayings of 17 aid workers of international NGO Action Contre la Faim in August 2006.

At the time, the government responded by calling Holmes "a terrorist", but last week an internationally acclaimed human rights monitoring group, the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), said in a damning report there was evidence to implicate the military in this incident.

"Since I am in politics I can understand the pulse of the government, the general trends, and moreover two of my colleagues, both MPs, were killed in Colombo," says Mano Ganeshan, a Tamil parliamentarian and possibly the country's most high-profile minority activist who leads a human rights monitoring group.

"So it is crystal clear the guns are pointed at me."

His predecessor, N. Raviraj, was shot dead last year and fellow Member of Parliament (M.P), T Maheshwaran, was killed in January this year.

"When I get up in the morning, if I can make it through the day I count it as a blessing," said a human rights activist from the north who did not want to be identified.

In a press statement in August 2007, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the northern town of Jaffna was one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, where in just one year up to eight media workers were killed.

In Sri Lanka, prominent journalists who are critical of the current human rights situations are being threatened and punished and most of the time killed, and local journalists association are calling countries like EU countries, the United States, Canada and India come to their aid by attending their cases for fleeing the country much faster than present level as Sri Lanka is too dangerous place to live in such a situation, the media activist added.

The civil war in Sri Lanka killed at least 80,000 people while half a million people internally displaced and over million people externally displaced. At least 5,800 people have been killed in last two years alone, a right group said.