New film tells story of Sri Lankan journalists forced into exile

FEBRUARY 10, 2012
BY FRANCES HARRISON

“I believe a journalist can change the world,” says exiled Sri Lankan journalist Sonali Samarasinghe, “if not why are we here then”. Sonali is one of three exiled journalists, from the minority Tamil and majority Sinhalese communities, whose stories are told in a new Norwegian film, Silenced Voices, by Beate Arnestadpreviewed last night at the Fritt Ord Foundation in Oslo.

All three paid an enormous price for that faith in the power of a journalist. Sonali is the widow of murdered Sinhalese journalist Lasantha Wickrametunga, who is famous for having penned his own obituary just before he was killed in January 2009 at the height of his country’s civil war. She’s shown in the film, alone in a tiny bedsit in New York, starting a news website, persevering in her profession, trying to interview a top army general over allegations of war crimes who’s now posted to the Sri Lankan mission to the UN. The scenes of the man dodging and fobbing her off will be familiar to any reporter, but this is very personal to Sonali since she still wants answers about who killed her husband in broad daylight in the capital. They’d only just got married and she could easily have been sitting next to him when he was killed.

Bashana is a Sinhalese journalist living in Germany, responsible for exposing war crimes committed by Sri Lankan soldiers from his own majority community. His organisation, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, obtained the horrific video broadcast by Channel 4 of naked, bound prisoners being executed by men wearing Sri Lankan army uniforms. While waiting for his asylum application to be processed, Bashana and his wife lose their home and are shown rolling out sleeping bags on the floor of a human rights office where they’re allowed to sleep at night. Some of the saddest scenes in the one hour film are of Bashana’s wife, Sharmila, who pours all her feelings of loneliness and sadness into beautiful but desolate photographs of frozen ice and empty winter landscapes. She says how much she just wants to go home.

Bashana’s extraordinary friendship with a Tamil journalist who worked for the pro-rebel news site, Tamilnet, is central to the film. They didn’t meet in Sri Lanka, but from exile Bashana helped Lokeesan apply for scholarships abroad, translating all the necessary documents. There are tense scenes when the film maker, Beate Arnestad, visits Lokeesan in southern India only to find out that Indian intelligence are watching her and she may have put Lokeesan at risk. He quickly goes into hiding elsewhere and she takes the next flight out. Months later Lokeesan escapes and finally meets the Sinhalese man who had helped him. Lokeesan told me he had never spoken to a Sinhalese civilian all his life, because he’d grown up in rebel territory in northern Sri Lanka and the only Sinhalese around were staring down the barrel of a gun at him.

Lokeesan and Bashana sit together in exile watching appalling footage that Lokeesan shot from inside the war zone in 2009, as hundreds of thousands of civilians were shelled and bombed by the advancing army. A young woman’s dead body is sprawled on the ground and by her side a little girl howls, asking why she’s left them all alone to wander the world as orphans.

As Silenced Voices plays out in public for the first time to a packed house in Oslo, Lokeesan cannot control himself as he watches the footage he took of dead bodies and government shell attacks. He’s inconsolable, sobbing with his face hidden in a checked handkerchief, unable to relive the tragedy he saw repeated again and again as a reporter in those dreadful months of war. Quietly Bashana, who’s also teary eyed, puts a hand on his leg in a quiet restrained gesture of human comfort that doesn’t intrude or interrupt the grief spilling out, three years later. Across the ethnic divide, they’ve stretched out the hand of friendship. It’s an example to the Sri Lankans in the audience some of whom come and thank the journalists for their sacrifices.

Silenced Voices is a very powerful film that tells the story of the invisible misery of scores of journalists forced into exile for just thinking they could change the world.

Frances Harrison’s book about the civil war in Sri Lanka Still Counting the Dead will be published by Portobello Books in the summer

Lanka to set up top panel to implement rights action plan

Feb 10,2012

Colombo, Feb 10 (PTI) Sri Lanka will set up a top panel to implement the national human rights action plan (NHRAP) in a bid to strengthen civil liberties in the country, a move seen as an effort to blunt criticism at a key UN session later this month. The cabinet here today announced the appointment of a cabinet sub-committee, including Foreign Minister GL Peiris and five other senior ministers, to implement NHRAP, officials said. The action plan was approved by the Cabinet last September. It was voluntarily formulated by the government in response to a pledge made at the Universal Periodic Review meeting before the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2008. The five-year action plan will be implemented under eight sections, including civil and political rights, social economic and cultural rights, rights of abstinence from torture, women and children rights. It is expected to strengthen civil liberties and ensure better human rights compliance. The Cabinet has also approved a proposal made by Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Minister and special envoy of President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Human Rights, to convene an Inter-ministerial committee under his chairmanship to monitor the implementation of the action plan and undertake initial work for Sri Lanka’s participation in the second cycle of the Universal Periodic Review in October 2012. Lanka’s rights record had come under close international scrutiny following the the release of a report by the UN Secretary General-appointed panel which recommended an independent probe into alleged war crimes committed by the government troops and the LTTE during the last phase of the military conflict which ended in May 2009. The government dismisses allegations of rights abuse as biased propaganda by the pro-LTTE diaspora backed by Western governments to tarnish the country’s image. UNHRC is set to meet in Geneva from February 27-March 23 where reports have suggested that western nations may move a resolution pressing Sri Lanka to probe alleged war crimes. Sri Lanka has said it is confident of facing the session as it has a clean slate. The government has cited the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) as its response to calls for independent investigations into alleged war crimes. The LLRC report has recommended that allegations of civilian casualties be investigated though it exonerated the troops of direct responsibility of targeting the civilians.

Why this kolaveri: Brian Senewiratne traces the roots of Sinhalese racist mindset

By Brian Senewiratne   10 Feb 2012

Posted 08-Feb-2012 Vol 3 Issue 5 February 4th, the day Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) got so-called “Independence” from Britain in 1948, is a day for action, not regret or mourning. British irresponsibility Of all the irresponsible acts of the colonial British in Sri Lanka, by far the worst was leaving the country in the hands of the Sinhalese majority. The entire ethnic problem has stemmed from this. Mahinda Rajapaksa is just a symptom of a deep-seated Sinhalese racism (Image Concept & Illustration: KravMaga Sreeram) If Britain was the cause of the problem, then it has to be part of the solution. To support the blatantly anti-Tamil Sri Lankan government, is to compound the problem, not to resolve it. It is absurd to claim that the British were unaware of the anti-Tamil stance of the Sinhalese ‘leaders’ such as D.S. Senanayake, leader of the United National Party (UNP), who took over from the British. Senanayake’s anti-Tamil stance (and actions) was clearly evident. This included altering the demography of the Tamil East by relocating Sinhalese from the South to make places like Amparai, a Tamil area, into a Sinhalese area. His blatantly racist stance against the Plantation Tamils of Indian origin was not even thinly  A poster designed by Tamils Cultural Centre in Chennai pleads India not to support Sri Lanka at the UNHRC disguised. This outrageous racism was based on the absurd claim that since some of them went back to India and came back, and some sent money to their families in India, they were not permanent residents of Sri Lanka. As Chairman of the Land Commission, his Interim Report of 1927 defined a “Ceylonese’ so as to exclude the Indian (Plantation) Tamils. The report stated: “by Ceylonese we mean the Sinhalese, Ceylon Tamils, Burghers, Ceylon Moors, Ceylon Malays and Europeans domiciled in Ceylon.e  ”Read Mor  Part 1 ‘Britain is also responsible for the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka’ 10 Feb 2012 Posted 10-Feb-2012 Vol 3 Issue 5 In the second and concluding part of his article on Sinhalese racism in Sri Lanka and the ethnic conflict it started, Brian Senewiratne blames the British for sowing the seeds of trouble in the island nation. Thefirst part of the article was published on 8 Februar 2012. Britain’s only concern vis-a-vis Sri Lanka has always been its own geopolitical, strategic and economic interests. On the eve of transfer of power, the British and Sri Lanka (Ceylonese) governments signed a “Defence and External Affairs” agreement of serious importance. In exchange for ‘Independence’, Britain would give military assistance to Sri Lanka, and would be permitted to station and have bases for its Army, Navy and Air Force in Trincomalee, Colombo and Katunayake.    Mahinda Rajapaksa is just a symptom of a deep-seated Sinhalese racism (Image Concept & Illustration: KravMaga Sreeram) The situation is no different now except that the international players and their ruthlessness have increased markedly. I refer in particular, to China, which is making Sri Lanka into a Chinese colony by stealth. In the dozen dvds I have recorded and distributed worldwide, I have said that there are two ’wars’ going in Sri Lanka. One between the Sri Lankan (Sinhala) government against the Tamil people to force them to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. Read More   part 2

Sri Lanka’s Mahinda Rajapaksha cracks under US/India pressure

· War veteran General Sarath Fonseka to be granted presidential pardon before the end of the month

· An action plan with time frames to be established of implementing the LLRC recommendations on a priority basis

· Consent agreement to be signed between the TNA and the Government

The Obama administration threatened Rajapaksha regime with possible actions in international forums such as in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that could result in international war crimes investigation into alleged breaches of international human rights and humanitarian laws by government forces.

Following on Secretary Clinton’s letter to external affairs minister G L Peiris, senior members of the administration who are currently visiting Sri Lanka have indicated to the regime that the administration is now very serious in pursuing action.

We can exclusively report that the war crimes division of the State Department has revealed the existence of a voice recording of a conversation between Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksha and field commanders in which instructions had been given to kill all senior members of the LTTE even if they carried a white flag at the end of the war in May 2009. Although the existence of such a recording was speculated earlier by various Tamil Diaspora groups, this is the first time this has been shared officially by the US.

The mounting evidence against the regime and particularly against the Rajapaksha brothers has made the President to agree to demands of the US.

It is now a known fact of the existence of mobile text messages between Basil Rajapaksha, Dr Palitha Kohona and various foreign ministry officials in Europe and UNSG’s Chief of Staff about a possible surrender of senior LTTE members. It is also a known fact that the former TNA Member of Parliament for Ampara, Mr Rohan Chandranehru gave evidence to the Expert Panel of the UN Secretary General where he has implicated Basil Rajapaksha as one of those senior government officials who gave clear instructions to be passed to the surrendering LTTE members.

This US/India plan of action was brewing before Mr Krishna, India’s external affairs minister arrived in Colombo during middle of January. India has asked the US for one last chance to be given to President Rajapaksha to see whether he has the political will to act on his own in resolving some of these international obligations. However in the de-briefing post Mr Krishna’s visit a decision was made to pressure the President to show the seriousness of the situation his government and him personally face, internationally. With India on board and working behind the scenes with the US this bold initiative of Secretary Clinton started to roll in the last few days and weeks.

Stephen Rapp’s calendar appointments were changed to include a rushed visit to Sri Lanka. Although Marie Otero, Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights and Assistant Secretary Blake were due in South East Asia in the first quarter as a routine trip, they were asked to include Sri Lanka in this trip. They both had to cancel a few pre-arranged engagements in Nepal and Bangladesh to include this short trip to Colombo.

These trips were arranged in haste to convince the Rajapaksha brothers that matters have now gone beyond tolerance limits in Washington and Delhi.

Once the next steps were agreed between Delhi and Washington, straight after Mr Krishna left Colombo, the Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka demanded a secret meeting between the TNA and the Government delegation including external affairs minister Peiris, Nimal Siripala de Silva and another senior minister to come to an agreement on the political devolution process and its implementation. Without Gotabaya Rajapaksha in the country, President refused to accept or sign any agreement that were reached at these talks.

A source disclosed the mood at this meeting was as serious and the Indian High Commissioner was in no mood for G L Peiris’s lengthy technical arguments. He was blunt and more assertive wanting a consent paper drafted on the day. However, Mr Sampanthan has gone for the rescue of G L Peiris and has offered to draft the paper in a day or two.

At this point the State Department machinery kicked in formally through the US political attaché informing the external affairs ministry of the likelihood of a letter from Secretary Clinton and the visits that may be forthcoming by senior members of the administration. In almost an instruction kind of written note, the US Embassy requested the external affairs ministry to instruct named key ministers from the government to restrict travel and be available to meet the visiting delegates. Even President Rajapaksha had to slightly adjust his travel plans to accommodate the visiting US delegates.

The main objective of the US/India initiative it seems to free General Fonseka in the hope of building a formidable opposition to the current regime. In their judgement, with all the internal problems faced by both the UNP and the JVP, there will never be a strong opposition in Sri Lanka in the foreseeable future.

The US has advised Fonseka and his wife late last year not to seek for presidential pardon and that before Easter they will be able to mount pressure for his release. This enabled Anoma Fonseka to even publicly state very confidently that her husband will never seek a presidential pardon.

Over many late nights with his brothers in the last two weeks, the president has now agreed to a time table on implementing some of the recommendations.

As Dr Kohona argued in the Geneva meeting recently with Professor Steve Ratner and others, “regarding protection of victims, Sri Lanka is a small island. We cannot do much to protect them. It is not realistic to theorise protection like what happens in the US. Regarding the number of civilians killed, the LLRC does not accept the number suggested by the Government of Sri Lanka. They still say that it is unverifiable. Nobody is able to say how numbers are obtained and verified. Government of Sri Lanka is disappointed that the Panel of Experts went for higher numbers. It is similar to the case in Libya where numbers post-Gaddafi were never confirmed.”

President’s plan on implementation of LLRC recommendations will have similar to the above qualifications and conditions attached. Some of the recommendations will be delayed due to lack of funds.

Mahinda Rajapaksha is to make a televised address to the people of Sri Lanka before the end of this month, before the UN Human Rights Council meeting which starts on 27 February to explain why he has finally decided to give the war veteran General Sarath Fonseka a presidential pardon. He will make it sound like he was only practicing grassroots democracy, justice and being a leader with Buddhist values he wants to strengthen what our motherland has been built upon since independence.

Next few days and weeks will be interesting to watch how the super power and the regional super power force the hands of the president to dig his own grave.

Last Updated on Friday, 10 February 2012 10:01

Devolution of police powers

February 9, 2012,
By M. A. Sumanthiran
TNA Member of Parliament

The government has responded in multiple and contradictory ways to the position of the Tamil National Alliance that powers over law and order, including powers over police, should be devolved to the provinces. The President himself has stated openly that police powers cannot be devolved, only to contradict that position when he assured Indian Minister of External Affairs S.M. Krishna that he intends to move towards "a political settlement based on the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, and building on it, so as to achieve meaningful devolution of powers." However, despite Minister Krishna’s statement going uncontested by the government at the time it was made, the President has now attempted to distance himself from that commitment. The government is aware that the 13th Amendment includes provisions for the devolution of police power. What then is the government’s position? The TNA has, in contrast, consistently asserted the need for powers over police to be devolved.

Constitutional Requirement   Full Story>>>

SRI LANKA: The agony of political lies

February 10, 2012

Article : What Sri Lanka needs today is the strengthening of the public institutions such as the police, courts and legislation. Nothing will happen in terms of development when institutions like the Parliament becomes like a pre-school; or when the police stations have become torture chambers or when the courts become fish markets. Talking about the history and what has gone before is not enough to retrieve freedom of justice and of the public. Unfortunately the President might have think vulgarism is best way to stay in power indefinitely but are we still foolish to trust his words? Read More...

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SRI LANKA: The state propaganda machinery's role in creating a brain dead nation

February 10, 2012

Basil Fernando

Article : Not only the content but also the style of the propaganda issued by the state media is aimed at dulling the minds and discouraging independent thought within the nation. The result is that when immensely dangerous things happen to the community the people have learned to avoid any public discussion on these matters. Take for example, the instance the murder of the British tourist and the grievous bodily injury and sexual assault to this Russian partner. Read More...

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Basil A Traitor ? And Rajapaksa’s Delegation To The US Basil A Traitor ? And Rajapaksa’s Delegation To The US

Friday, February 10, 2012

By Uvindu Kurukulasuriya

Basil Rajapaksa, Funeral home of slain student Manoharan Rajeehar, Funeral at the house of Yogarajah Hemachandran, Funeral home of Thangathurai Sivanantha, an engineering student from Moratuwa University, Funeral at the house of Shanmugarajah Sajeenthiran and Funeral home of slain student Logithasan Rohanth

It is important for us to brief them about measures we have taken, and plans for the future,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa told the Cabinet at a  meeting on Wednesday.
As a daily English newspaper reported, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has stressed the need to send a delegation to the United States of America ahead of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, to brief the leaders of that country on the measures taken by him to improve the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. The US government has already announced that they will support a motion against Sri Lanka at the next session of the UN Human Rights Commission scheduled for next month. Also,  Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently invited her Sri Lankan counterpart to visit the US and counter the allegations made against Sri Lanka. Read More »

War crimes in Sri Lanka

February 10, 2012
THERE are signs that the international community is gearing up for action to hold Sri Lanka accountable for alleged war crimes committed by its forces at the end of the brutal civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

A resolution is being prepared for next month’s session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and Pakistan, where the Sri Lankan president begins a three-day visit today, should not stand in the way of justice for tens of thousands of minority Tamils who perished.

A preliminary investigation by the United Nations said Sri Lanka’s “conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law” concluding that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in just five months.
There are indications that the death toll could be even higher.

Colombo has promoted its victory over the Tigers as a new way to defeat terrorism, dubbed “the Sri Lankan option”.

This is in fact a terrible euphemism for a scorched-earth policy, failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians and removing independent witnesses.

Between the months of January and May 2009, the Sri Lankan military indiscriminately shelled and bombed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a small rebel enclave in the north of the island, ordering all journalists and international aid workers out first so there would be no one to say what really happened.

The traumatised survivors describe a living hell. Starving women and children cowered in earthen trenches as the army pummelled them with volleys of shells fired from multi-barrelled rocket launchers and dropped bombs from supersonic jets.

In a lull in the fighting, people would emerge to find human body parts strewn around, a leg or baby’s head lodged in a nearby tree. They quickly buried their neighbours’ remains with shovels to prevent the dogs eating them.

Everyone has a tale of a near escape, chatting with someone one minute, the next watching the life literally go out of them.
Families survived on watered-down rice soup they cooked over tiny outdoor fires. A nine-year-old lost half her body weight in months. A mother who’d just given birth in a bunker sold her last gold bangle for a tenth of its value — 16g of gold bought just two kilos of rice.

Farmers and shopkeepers, teachers and civil servants were displaced up to 40 times, finally camping on a tiny stretch of white-sand, palm-fringed beach. Unable to dig bunkers because the dry sand just collapsed, women chopped up their best silk wedding saris to stitch sandbags.

Desperate parents contemplated running into the sea with their children to commit suicide because they couldn’t bear the idea of dying one by one. They hugged their hungry children and covered their eyes with their hands to shield them from the horror of seeing their friends blown to pieces.

Makeshift hospitals staffed by a handful of brave doctors were systemically attacked as life-saving drugs for surgery and bandages ran out. A baby was delivered with a bullet lodged in his leg, having been shot while still in the womb. Surgeons resorted to using butcher’s knives and donating their own blood to keep patients alive. A priest had his leg amputated without anaesthesia after being shelled in his church compound.

To escape tens of thousands of terrified civilians dodged bullets, waded through water full of corpses, and ran barefoot through puddles of human blood, some forced to make agonising choices about abandoning injured relatives in order to live themselves.

It’s not surprising many survivors are now suicidal. A doctor who served there can no longer stand the sight of blood, a photographer can’t look through a camera lens without seeing dead children and a Catholic nun had to struggle to keep her faith in a loving God after what she witnessed.

The war crimes and crimes against humanity were not perpetrated by only one side. The Tamil Tiger rebels compounded the catastrophe by refusing to allow civilians out of the war zone, using them as human shields, callously exposing their own people to the fury of the advancing Sri Lankan military.

The Tigers forcibly recruited more and more teenagers to die a pointless death in a jungle trench even in the last months when defeat was certain.

It was a terrible abuse of their own people many of whom hated them for it. The Tigers even sent suicide bombers to blow up refugees trying to flee the war zone, determined that everyone must stay together, in the mistaken hope the international community would intervene.

All along both sides claimed to be saving Tamil civilians, while showing little mercy.

When the Tigers were finally obliterated on May 18, 2009, the killing didn’t stop. In the final hours eyewitness saw the mopping-up operation as soldiers threw grenades in bunkers where injured rebels lay, unable to flee.

Some of the last civilians who walked out say thousands of dead bodies lay sprawled on the ground, rotting in the tropical heat.

All 280,000 exhausted crushed survivors were then detained against their will in a giant refugee camp, guarded by armed soldiers and surrounded by barbed wire.

Thousands escaped, bribing their way out. Eleven thousand suspected rebels were locked up in the world’s largest mass detention without trial. Tamils describe summary executions, gang rape and torture even a year after the end of the war.

The Sri Lankans recently completed their own flawed inquiry into the war but Alice in Wonderland-like they seemed to blame everything on the Tigers and completely exonerate their own security forces.

Human rights groups now want an independent investigation, arguing that accountability is a requirement under international law, not an optional extra.

Tamil survivors also want the truth acknowledged before they can move on with their shattered lives. Without the truth, reconciliation and forgiveness are simply not possible and the grievances that led to conflict in the first place remain dangerously unresolved.

The writer is a former BBC foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka and Iran. Her book of accounts of survivors from Sri Lanka’s civil war Still Counting the Dead will be published by Portobello Books in London this summer.

My brothers’ keepers-In Sri Lanka the grip of the Rajapaksas only tightens

Feb 11th 2012

THE president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, may well feel pleased with himself. On the face of it, more than six years after his first election, his prospects are still remarkably rosy. The economy clips along at about 7% a year. Mr Rajapaksa’s coalition controls over two-thirds of parliament, and opposition parties are so weak that a senior minister chuckles about not being held to account. The chief political threat, Sarath Fonseka, a former general turned popular presidential candidate, is in a Colombo jail. There, says an MP who has visited him, he wears short trousers and passes his days in a cell known as the “Scouting Room”, complete with a portrait of Baden-Powell.

Confidence lay behind the heavy hint dropped on February 8th by Basil Rajapaksa, the economy minister, that Mr Fonseka, a classmate chum, might soon leave prison and even return to politics. Basil is one of several Rajapaksa brothers, the one reckoned to be the brains of the ruling family. Possibly he thinks that Mr Fonseka may make a fool of himself at large, while enjoying martyr status behind bars.

On independence day, February 4th, the president chided his countrymen, urging them to be more grateful. It is true that since a bitter end in 2009 to a long, wretched ethnic civil war, the lot of many Sri Lankans has steadily improved. The state of emergency is gone, even if other draconian laws remain. Many of the tens of thousands of Tamils detained in the north at the war’s end have been released. New roads, ports, railways and power stations are spreading. In Colombo, the capital, various swanky structures are rising and the ground has been cleared for a lotus-shaped tower intended to be South Asia’s tallest.

How, then, to explain a persistent grouchiness among Sri Lankans? The past months have brought strikes, riots and protests by students, railwaymen, prisoners and public workers. The opposition Tamil National Alliance swept local elections in the north, leaving the president’s party in the dust. Ranil Wickremasinghe, the main Sinhalese opposition leader, no ball of energy himself, claims to see wide “protests and agitation against unfulfilled promises”.

Hushed café talk about a “Colombo spring” overstates things, but Mr Rajapaksa may remember how such grumbles and protests helped his own rise to power. Most outsiders focus on his headaches abroad. In March the United Nations will consider a resolution on Sri Lanka over suspected killings of thousands of Tamil civilians and rebel prisoners in the last days of the war. Last month Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, said America would vote against Sri Lanka. A retired senior official frets about an “adversarial lock” closing on his country.

Yet matters at home may be more troubling. Furious recriminations followed the murder in October of a senior politician, an old friend of the president, in a shoot-out with a fellow MP. Rumours of graft in infrastructure deals persist. A big investor calls the government “extremely corrupt and arrogant”. In the past this businessman went along with kickbacks of a “few million dollars: this is a developing country, after all”; but he balked once demands rose to tens of millions of dollars to win tenders for projects funded with Chinese loans. The bribes, he suggests, are split between Chinese state-owned partners and members of the ruling clique. Morals aside, he says this makes it impossible to turn a profit. He has been threatened, including with violence, for speaking out.

In the capital, commentators, activists and business types—who all demand anonymity on the topic of the Rajapaksas—warn of a family rule that has become more centralised, heavy-handed and authoritarian. Here, the defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is most often mentioned. Whereas the president has an earthy charm that appeals to rural Sinhalese, Gotabaya Rajapaksa wields power more bluntly. He presides over both army and police, 300,000 armed men in all—just what a good democracy needs, he says. This year the defence budget will top $2 billion, a fifth of all public spending—an alarming share for a country now at peace. The army’s role in business is also growing. An economist and opposition figure, Harsha de Silva, says the army is getting into hotels, farming, construction, golf courses, sports stadiums and even running roadside tea stalls.

The vegetarian strongman

The defence secretary, curiously, also oversees urban development, giving Gotabaya wide powers of patronage. His brother, Basil, calls him “fully vegetarian…the nicest, kindest person in the family”, yet he is widely feared. A Tamil leader says the army oversees “oppressive, insulting, humiliating” rule in the north, with tales of land grabs, murders and rape. In Colombo political observers worry about the militarisation of politics. And though Gotabaya rejects the natural comparison with Pakistan, he enthuses about his recent expansion of what he calls his “huge” intelligence agencies. A suggestion that spooks can undermine democracy is dismissed as merely “hypothetical”. Yet some local journalists are warned by editors never to write about him. Asked if he frightens people, he says: “If they don’t criticise me, it is because there is nothing to criticise.”

Some think that growing army clout could be the defence secretary’s personal route to power. It presumes potential discord among the brothers, of which there is no sign yet. Gotabaya disavows any interest in politics: he is an army man, he says. A human-rights lawyer, whose home was once attacked by assailants with grenades, raises a greater fear. If the ruling family feels it can rely on the army, it may worry less about appealing to voters; one day, it may even refuse to “go home”. Unsurprisingly, the Rajapaksas see it otherwise. “We brothers are a very successful family, maybe because we grew up close,” says Gotabaya. The brothers’ rule looks assured for a while yet.

^{Economist.com/blogs/banyan}