Comments on: Sri Lanka: Journalist Gets 20 Years Hard Labor

By: thee

thee — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:34:41 +0000

Reader, I feel your pain. LTTE was the favorite whipping boy for many who troll this site. Now that it is wiped out, the plight of Tamils there doesnâ€™t show up in the concern radar. Not necessarily because the government blacks out the media and punishes anyone who dares to speak up, but mainly because for many, it is not a worthy enough issue to spend their time on. 282000 people held is concentration like camps, and many think it is okay. I have to give some credit to Amardeep for at least bothering to bring up the issue once in a while even though I all along thought he also belonged to the same club of people who show token concern just to be able to ref to it in the future. No one has taken this up as the modern day tragedy that it is because there is not much to gain from being a torch bearer for a people who have no chance in hell to record what happen to them. There was media coverage about the leaked out video of summary execution of Tamils by the Army and it never even made it to this site. When a new form of LTTE emerges from those camps (out of whoever survives it), there will be enough concern again. Because suicide bombings make news. concentration camps don’t.

By: reader

reader — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 06:22:04 +0000

Sri Lanka just expelled a UNICEF official for being too candid about the state of the camps:

http://sundaytimes.lk/090906/News/nws_01.html

A UN official said no formal reason had been given for the move by the Sri Lankan government. However, Foreign Office sources, who did not wish to be identified, said the Government was concerned over repeated remarks he had made to the media about Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in particular the conditions of children in camps.

I realize there isn’t much interest here or in much of the world about the situation in Sri Lanka, but it’s important that we keep highlighting the things that are going on there. It’s really becoming a repressive situation and I don’t want to get to the point where we have violence again and people wring their hands and wonder how things became that way. It’s all happening right now. Thank you for this post.

By: SahaSamvada

SahaSamvada — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:26:31 +0000

Amardeep

You have raised some pertinent questions in your post. Many neutral minded people from the Sri Lankan scene do not seem to reflect similarly which would look at the issue beyond its 'infringement of freedom of expression' aspect, perhaps in fear of being labeled as pro-GoSL. There is also some talk in the web sphere of Tissainayagam being given a public pardon by the GoSL which would turn the whole thing into more of a political tamasha than what it is already. Lets wait and see.

By: context

context — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:23:21 +0000

"Obviously, if youâ€™re critical of the Sri Lankan government youâ€™re likely to be extremely skeptical about that part of the story. By contrast, if youâ€™re critical primarily of the LTTE, you might wonder where the funding for Tissainayagamâ€™s magazine, North Eastern Monthly came from."

One can be critical of the government AND the LTTE... Just pointing that out.

Also, Nayagan, 100% is a rather generous, although the point is taken that there are people in worse situations.

By: cylon

cylon — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:59:07 +0000

He’s been given an award by Reporters WIthout Borders: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8230965.stm

JS Tissainayagam has been named the first recipient of the Peter Mackler Award by the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders. He was found guilty of “causing communal disharmony”.

By: dips

dips — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:15:17 +0000

Yeah, at least we know he’s alive. More than we can say about countless other government detainees.

By: Nayagan

Nayagan — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:57:25 +0000

TMVP is a reference to the gov't=supported breakaway from the LTTE: Col. Karuna and the political org in power in the East. The Col. and his followers have repeatedly been accused of recruiting child soldiers. In the referenced report, the GOSL was depicted as denying the phenomena if Karuna was involved and higlighting it where the 'other' LTTE members were involved.

AFAIK he's bemoaning the lack of attention paid to the gov'ts own child-solider recruitment specialists.

anyhow, this is an improvement. a conviction and charges but no trial or evidence would sound grim in any other situation but here it's a 100% improvement on the often indefinite "detained for questioning"

By: Release Tissa

Release Tissa — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:58:21 +0000

http://releasetissa.blogspot.com/

http://www.tamilnation.org/forum/tissainayagam/index.htm