U.N. rights chief slams Myanmar monk for 'sexist' remarks

Wirathu, Buddhist monk and leader of the 969 movement, talks with other monks during a protest against visiting United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, in Yangon January 16, 2015.

BY LOUIS CHARBONNEAU

(Reuters) - (Editors note: The third and fourth paragraphs contain language that some readers may find offensive.)

United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein sharply criticized a prominent Myanmar monk on Wednesday for what he said were sexist and abusive public comments about a U.N. special rapporteur.

According to the website of Irrawaddy magazine, the Buddhist monk U Wirathu condemned human rights rapporteur Yanghee Lee at a public rally on Friday held to denounce a recent U.N. General Assembly vote calling for minority Rohingya Muslims to be granted citizenship in the country, also known as Burma.

"Just because you hold a position in the United Nations doesn't make you an honorable woman. In our country, you are just a whore," Wirathu told a cheering crowd of several hundred people in Yangon on Friday.

"Can this bitch really be from a respectable background?" Irrawaddy magazine quoted U Wirathu as saying in the speech, which was posted on YouTube by the Democratic Voice of Burma.

Zeid condemned the remarks.

"The sexist, insulting language used against the U.N.'s independent human rights expert on Myanmar ... by an influential monk during Ms. Lee's official visit to the country is utterly unacceptable," he said in a statement.

"It is intolerable for U.N. special rapporteurs to be treated in this way, and I call on religious and political leaders in Myanmar to unequivocally condemn all forms of incitement to hatred including this abhorrent public personal attack against a U.N.-appointed expert," Zeid said.

He added that instead of attacking Lee, religious and political leaders in Myanmar should tackle the substance of concerns she has raised.

Another prominent monk said on Tuesday that U Wirathu had violated his monastic code and could damage his religion but was unlikely to face censure.

Lee, a South Korean, visited Myanmar earlier this month to assess the current rights situation there.

In her latest annual report last year, Lee warned that "the Rohingya community continues to face systematic discrimination." She said abuses suffered by the Rohingya population include executions, torture, forced labor, displacements and rape.

Most of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are stateless and live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state in the predominantly Buddhist country. Almost 140,000 Rohingya remain displaced after deadly clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.

Myanmar's government says it should no longer be subjected to special scrutiny by U.N. rights bodies. Its U.N. mission did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Burmese soldiers suspected of brutal rape and murder of 2 Kachin teachers

Mara Lu Ra and Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin were found raped and murdered earlier this week. Image via Kachinland News Facebook page.

By Mark Inkey Jan 23, 2015

Villagers in Burma’s Shan State are blaming army soldiers for the brutal rape and murder of two young Kachin teachers in a case that has caused local and international outrage.

Burmese Soldiers Suspected of Brutal Rape and Murder of 2 Kachin Teachers by Thavam Ratna

Japan awaits news of IS hostages as deadline passes

FRIDAY 23 JANUARY 2015
Japan says it is still trying to secure the release of two Japanese hostages held by Islamic State group militants after a deadline to pay ransom for their release passed.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference the situation remained "severe" while the mother of one of the hostages, a journalist, appealed for his safe release.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said saving the men's lives is paramount but that Japan will not bow to terrorism.

Read more: Islamic State's 'Jihadi John' in new hostage video

Muslims today gathered to pray at a mosque in Tokyo and call for the release of the two men (see video above).

In an online video released on Tuesday, a black-clad figure holding a knife stood between journalist Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, threatening to kill them if Tokyo did not pay Islamic State $200m within 72 hours.

The Japanese government considers the deadline to be 2:50pm local time (0550 GMT) on Friday. The deadline passed with no word on the fate of the hostages.

"My son Kenji is not an enemy of the people of the Islamic faith. I can only pray as a mother for his release," Goto's mother, Junko Ishido, told a packed news conference, choking back tears. "If I could offer my life I would plead that my son be released, it would be a small sacrifice on my part.

"He only went to rescue his friend. He has always looked out for weaker people, he was always helping weaker children than him," she added.

Abe has ordered his government to make every effort to secure their safe release, setting off a flurry of activity among Japanese diplomats.

The captor in the video, which resembles those showing previous Islamic State captives, says the ransom demand matches the $200m in aid that Abe pledged to help countries fighting Islamist militants.

Abe made the pledge during a multi-nation visit to the Middle East earlier this week. Islamic Statemilitants have seized large areas of Iraq and Syria, and beheaded several western captives.

Japan has stressed that its donation is for humanitarian aid, such as helping refugees, and insisted that it will not bow to terrorist threats.

Japanese officials have declined to say if they would pay any ransom, a move that would put Tokyo at odds with close ally the United States.

U.S., Cuba find ‘profound differences’ in first round of talks

By Karen DeYoung January 22 at 10:39 PM

HAVANA — The Cuban and American delegations sat at parallel tables, eight wary diplomats on each side, facing each other across a distance of about six feet and a gulf filled with more than a half-century of grievances.

US and Cuba admitted after the second day of talks, that it could take weeks just to schedule the next round of talks. AP print reporter Bradley Klapper says its a sign of the long road ahead after more than a half-century of tension.

U.S., Cuba Find ‘Profound Differences’ in First Round of Talks by Thavam Ratna

Running China on $1,833 a Month

Xi Jinping and other officials just got a raise, but netizens don’t think the bumps are enough to curb widespread graft.

BY ALEXA OLESEN-JANUARY 21, 2015

It just got slightly less difficult to be a clean Chinese official. State mediareported on Jan. 20 that Chinese civil servants had received their first pay raise in ten years, a move that includes a 60 percent bump for President Xi Jinping and the six men who serve with him on the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. The state-run China Daily said that Xi, who had been making $1,130, will now make about $1,833 per month. Salaries for the lowest level civil servants went from $101 per month to $213 per month. The paperadded the move came “after government officials had been leaving their jobs because of low pay,” though it didn’t provide any figures for the alleged exodus. The average monthly wage in Beijing, where Xi serves, was $930 in 2013.

On social media, most seemed to think the raises were long overdue, although many questioned how meaningful the official salary numbers are since they are supplemented by perks, bonuses, and an enormous shadow economy based on graft. Popular Beijing-based blogger and commentator Wuyue Sanren asked his 1.2 million followers on micro-blogging platform Weibo if they could explain to him how so many low-paid civil servants managed to acquire cars and homes. “Maybe I didn’t see the civil servants who are out doing some part-time begging?” he asked. One Beijing entrepreneur wrote on Weibo that he was astounded more government workers weren’t leaving such poorly remunerated jobs. “My dad can raise a pig for a year and get $1,611 for it,” he wrote.

The move was widely seen as an attempt to reduce the appeal of bribery by giving government employees a more livable wage. (The same rationale liesbehind Singapore’s famously high paychecks for its ministers, including about $1.7 million a year for the prime minister, over 77 times the $22,008 Xi is set to make annually.) Hong Kong’s Phoenix Television posted a survey asking people whether or not they expected Beijing’s salary boost to curb corruption. Of the more than 220,000 respondents, 

29.9 percent thought it would help curb corruption while 70.1 percent said it wouldn’t make a difference. But experts say that anti-corruption efforts in China can’t be truly effective without asset declaration rules forcing officials to reveal homes, cars, and other assets that may have been improperly given to them or acquired through illegal means. The Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International argued in an Oct. 2014 report that pilot programs already requiring officials in part of south China’s Guangdong province to publicly register the houses they own should be expanded nationwide. This would make it much easier to “track officials’ accumulation of assets and check if the salaries they earn are commensurate with their declared wealth,” the report said.

Other netizens, like novelist Tian You, expressed frustration that the move was made with no apparent public consultation. Tian wrote on Weibo that raises for civil servants in some other countries would have been subject to open debate and Congressional approval. “China’s different,” he wrote. “The government releases a document and immediately the civil servants get a raise.” The power of the government to pay itself more seemed to irk many. A news piece about the details of the new scheme on the Sohu news website quickly garnered more than 8,000 comments. The most up-voted responseasked when the government was planning to make life more affordable for regular folks. “Even with a civil service staff that is so enormous, they are able to say they will boost salaries and it’s done like that; but what about us ordinary people?”

If Xi’s public pronouncements are any indication, salary has been much on his mind in recent months. In October 2014, Xi delivered a warning to state-owned enterprises about “unreasonably high” compensation for executives. On Jan. 18, the People’s Liberation ArmyDaily, China’s military mouthpiece, quoted Xi cautioning soldiers that their only acceptable income was their salary. 

He warned them against taking any earnings from activities in the “grey economy,” a euphemism in this case for graft. In the context of those comments, Xi’s self-granted pay raise risks looking unseemly.

Far from downplaying the news, state media has spilled a good bit of ink over Xi’s salary in recent days. Papers like the China Daily focused on his pay hike as the lead example in their coverage of civil servant raises. Another news item making the rounds: a piece looking at Xi’s salary from 1979 just after he graduated from prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing. Back then, he made what’s now the equivalent of about $8 per month, which would have bought him 64 pounds of pork in 1979 or 2,293 pounds of cabbage (if for some reason, he’d spent the entire amount on one item). State-run publications likely realize that citizens can only get so indignant about an official income still lower than many Chinese corporate middle managers. But they dodged other, touchier subjects, like how Xi could reportedly have sent his daughter to Harvard on his scant earnings?

The New York Times, which has exhaustively documented the family wealth of China’s leader wealth at its own peril, noted that while Xi’s salary may be modest, he has access, via his relatives, to some impressive real estate in Beijing. “When he’s not cooling his heels at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in central Beijing, he can spend the night at the Xi family home, a grand traditional walled compound in the fashionable Nanlouguxiang neighborhood,” it said. It added that Xi “might find a better deal” at the Guanyuan apartment complex, a posh development whose investors include Xi’s older sister and brother-in-law.

Shujie Leng contributed research.

Bill Gates Talks About The Heartbreaking Moment That Turned Him To Philanthropy

JAN. 21, 2015, 8:40 PM
About a year ago, Bill Gates ruffled some feathers when he dissed an effort to bring the internet to the developing world.

Now we know why he feels that way.

He said at the time, "Hmm, which is more important, connectivity or malaria vaccine? If you think connectivity is the key thing, that's great. I don't."

It turns out, Gates didn't always think like that. In fact, his aha moment came when he, too, was trying to bring computers to impoverished areas of Africa.

Gates realized how ridiculous that idea was when he saw living conditions there firsthand in 1997.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Gates told the story:

"Well, the idea that a computer was relevant to the problems they were dealing with, where getting enough food, having decent health, getting any electricity, a reasonable place to live, it was pretty clear to me that, hey, I love this computer, and I thought it was neat and kids should have access, but they had to rig up a special generator so I could do this one demo. And they borrowed this generator. It wasn't going to be there when I left. So the idea that there was a hierarchy of needs ... While still believing in digital empowerment, that was not at the top of the list. That was pretty eye opening for me."

But the true moment that caused Gates to try to solve poverty was even more heartbreaking.

Melinda Gates, Bill's wife, told that story to Rose. Gates had visited a hospital treating people for tuberculosis during his visit to Africa. He called Melinda, she recalls.

"We often call each other when we are the road. Almost every day. But it was a different call. Bill was really quite choked up on the phone ... Because he'd seen firsthand in a TB clinic hospital how awful it is to have that disease ... He literally said to me, 'It's a death sentence. To go into that hospital is a death sentence."

So he decided not just to donate money to that one hospital, but to do things that could help "thousands and millions" get out of poverty altogether, Melinda Gates said.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been going strong now for 15 years.

The entire interview will air on PBS on Wednesday, Jan. 21 and on Bloomberg TV on Thursday, Jan. 22.

Here's the clip:

SEE ALSO:  3 Things Bill Gates Learned From Warren Buffett

Ipca hit by FDA ban over Ratlam plant production violations

Fri Jan 23, 2015

(Reuters) - U.S. regulator the Food and Drug Administration has banned imports from a Madhya Pradesh manufacturing plant of generic drugmaker Ipca Laboratories Ltd(IPCA.NS), citing violations of standard production practices.

India is second only to Canada as a pharmaceuticals exporter to the United States, where it supplies about 40 percent of generic and over-the-counter drugs.

But its image as a safe, affordable supplier has suffered from a spate of regulatory sanctions over the past year aimed at large drugmakers, such as Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd (RANB.NS) and Wockhardt Ltd (WCKH.NS), stemming from production concerns.

Last July Ipca suspended shipments to the United States from the plant at Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh that makes drug ingredients, after the FDA outlined half a dozen violations, including data integrity issues.

The FDA announced the ban, called an import alert, on its website late on Thursday. It did not elaborate.

Ipca is working to resolve the issue at the earliest, the company said on Friday. Four chemicals made at the Ratlam plant have been exempted from the FDA import sanction, it said in a notice to the stock exchanges.

Earlier data integrity issues at Indian drug and ingredient makers have revolved around the deletion of electronic data, the concealment of data on failed tests, the fabrication of records and test repetition to ensure satisfactory results.

Canada, Europe and Australia are among Ipca's other global markets. Exports accounted for about 63 percent of sales in the financial year that ended on March 31, its website shows.

The company's shares were down 8.5 percent at 639.90 rupees at 3:19 p.m. on Friday, underperforming the benchmark Nifty, which was trading up 0.8 percent.

($1=61.4300 rupees)

(Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Experimental Ebola vaccine shipped to Liberia

GSK hopes to enrol 30,000 people in first large-scale trials of the vaccine, which uses a type of chimpanzee cold virus-----Drop in Ebola cases ‘signals turning point’

An Ebola unit in Monrovia, Liberia. Healthcare workers will be among the first to receive the experimental vaccine. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Sarah Boseley, health editor-Friday 23 January 2015

Healthcare workers and others at high risk from Ebola in Liberia could be given an experimental vaccine as early as next week following the shipment of the first doses to Monrovia, according to the manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline.

The potential vaccine has been developed with unprecedented speed, but the rapid decline in Ebola cases in Liberia may make it hard to find out whether it works. Last week, there were only eight cases in the country, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday, down from a high of more than 300 a week in September.

GSK’s vaccine is the first of several under development to enter trials in west Africa. Trials of healthy volunteers in Europe, the US and unaffected African nations have shown it is safe and produces a response from the immune system. The question is whether that response will protect vaccinated health workers and burial teams from infection or enable them to fight off the disease.

The trial is being carried out by the National Institutes of Health in the US, which will vaccinate 30,000 people. Only one-third will get the candidate vaccine; others will get a routine vaccine against another disease, such as measles. The investigators will be looking to see whether there are further cases of infection in the control group than among those who were given the potential Ebola vaccine.

Dr Moncef Slaoui, chairman of global vaccines at GSK, said getting to the point of shipping the vaccine, due to arrive in Liberia on Friday, was a major achievement.

He said: “The initial phase I data we have seen are encouraging and give us confidence to progress to the next phases of clinical testing, which will involve the vaccination of thousands of volunteers, including frontline healthcare workers. If the candidate vaccine is able to protect these people, as we hope it will, it could significantly contribute to efforts to bring this epidemic under control and prevent future outbreaks.

“It is important to remember that this vaccine is still in development and any potential future use in mass vaccination campaigns will depend on whether the WHO [World Health Organisation], regulators and other stakeholders are satisfied that the vaccine candidate provides protection against Ebola without causing significant side-effects and how quickly large quantities of vaccine can be made.”

The company acknowledged that the declining number of cases in Liberia will make it harder to find out whether the vaccine works.

“Clearly it is good news that new cases of Ebola appear to be falling and we hope this trend continues,” said a spokesperson. “Lower incidence of Ebola does increase the chance that the planned trials may take longer to complete, and if cases drop very low, that they may be not be able to answer the question about whether the investigational vaccines are able to offer protection from the disease. However, we are absolutely committed to going ahead as planned to see if we can gain the information we need to help with this outbreak or prevent future outbreaks.”

The chair of GSK, Sir Andrew Witty, said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the company had disrupted the production of other vaccines in order to speed through the vaccine against the Ebola virus. “We have delayed two other vaccine programmes to do this work,” he said.

Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, which is funding a trial of the vaccine in UK and Mali and parallel studies of other vaccines in Geneva, Gabon, Kenya and Guinea, said: “This week we’ve heard encouraging news from west Africa, indicating that we may at last have reached a turning point in what has been the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Mali has been declared free from the disease and schools in Guinea reopened, restoring some sense of normality for those communities.

“But the disease continues to take a terrible toll elsewhere in the region, particularly in Sierra Leone. This is certainly not the time for the national and international efforts to be reduced. If anything, efforts need to be redoubled to bring the epidemic to a complete end. Which is why it’s so important and heartening that the first doses of a potential vaccine are now making their way to west Africa in preparation for large-scale trials. There is no doubt that we need vaccines and therapeutics for this epidemic and to try to prevent and respond to the inevitable future epidemics.

“The unprecedented speed at which the vaccine preparation has progressed would not have been possible without sheer determination and global partnership between national governments, funders, researchers and pharma companies, and agencies on the ground who have worked tirelessly to get this crisis under control.”

Sri Lanka's New Gov't to Investigate High-Profile Killings

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s new government will re-investigate high-profile assassinations including those of a newspaper editor and politicians that were alleged to have had state backing during the previous administration, a minister said Wednesday.

The killings of Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, Tamil lawmakers Joseph Pararajasingham and Nadaraja Raviraj, and then-Highways Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle will be re-examined, Cabinet Minister Rajitha Senaratne told reporters.

"We have got all the information and arrests will be made. We know how it was done and who are responsible," Senaratne said.

The lawmakers were critics of then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s conduct in the military campaign against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

Pararajasingham was shot dead at a Christmas midnight service in 2005 while Raviraj was shot dead the following year in his car. The government then blamed the killings on the Tamil Tiger rebels, but human rights groups suspected the involvement of government paramilitaries.

A suicide bomber blew up Fernandopulle as he arrived to open a marathon race in 2008. Though suicide bombings were a hallmark of the Tamil rebels, there were suspicions of a government hand.

Wickrematunge was a harsh critic of Rajapaksa’s and was killed inside a high security area while driving to the office in January 2009. He wrote an editorial, which was published posthumously, saying the government would kill him one day.

The original investigative cases were heard for years without conclusion.

Sri Lankan soldiers crushed the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, ending the rebels’ 25-year campaign for an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils. The U.N. has estimated between 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed but the actual number is believed to be much higher.

Dr. Wickremebahu to National executive council : Anura (JVP) makes two untenable proposals

(Lanka-e-News- 19.Jan.2015, 11.00PM) It has been decided to include Dr. Wickremebahu Karunaratne in the historic national executive council that was launched on the 15 th of this month for charting the course of the future of the country , according to reports. Dr. Wickremebahu who has a PhD degree from the University of Cambridge on a rare subject in Sri Lanka , is a staunch socialist and an intellectual. It is learnt that he will be participating in the next meeting of the council scheduled for 20 th of this month.

Meanwhile , JVP leader Anura Dissanayake is getting ready to bring forward two proposals before the apex committee of the council that takes decisions , Dissanayake has disclosed. The two proposals are : To withdraw the right of an individual who has dual citizenship to contest elections , and the other is , if any M.P. is switching allegiance that is, changing his party, his parliamentary representation be rendered null and void.

These two proposals though they reflect only the mentality of the people of the Island, are not compatible with Democratic tenets. His first proposal is based on the premise that a dual citizen can rob public funds , and flee to the other country. To prevent this ,effective methodologies have to be put in place to avert them , rather than attempt to deprive his democratic right to contest elections by enacting laws that contradict the fundamental human rights of the citizens of a civilized country.

Although depriving the parliamentary representation of an MP who switches allegiance will be in order , it is under the modern elections system , the voter casts his vote for the party , and marks his preferential vote in favor of the individual representative.

Under the proposed conventional representation voting system, this possibility is unavailable. No matter what ,an individual ought to have the democratic right to change his political party, and proposing that only through a by -election such a change should be made is reasonable.

At all events , Dinesh Gunawardena who is in charge of the elections system has already discussed this at the select committee , and a final decision has been reached .

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by     (2015-01-19 22:17:02)

Sri Lanka - country of concern: latest update 31 December 2014

Updated 21 January 2015

Contents

1. Give your comments and questions about the report

Any incidents or events taking place after 31 December 2014 will be covered in future reports.

Latest Update: 31 December 2014

There was no overall improvement in the human rights situation in Sri Lanka during the last three months. The UN Human Rights Committee examined Sri Lanka’s fifth periodic report from 7-8 October 2014. The committee’s observations covered a wide range of issues, including investigations into abuses during the conflict, counter-terrorism measures, unlawful use of force, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and persecution of journalists and human rights defenders.

There have been reports of violence following the proclamation in November 2014 of presidential elections due to be held on 8 January 2015. Local election monitors recorded 293 incidents of election-related violence. 168 of these were major incidents, including 21 instances of firearms being used, two attempted murders, 40 assaults, five incidents of arson, and one attempted abduction. The vast majority of attacks were allegedly by pro-government entities targeting the opposition. On 29 December, in apress release, Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma said that the people of Sri Lanka must be able freely to exercise their franchise, “in an enabling environment marked by transparency, a level playing field, and adherence to the laws and norms that govern a credible and peaceful election”. Meanwhile press reportsquoted the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as having conveyed his “strong expectation” that the government of Sri Lanka would ensure “the peaceful and credible conduct” of elections.

Freedom of expression continued to be restricted with a number of attacks on civil society, artists and opposition politicians. Sri Lanka dropped two places from 160 (2013) to 162 (2014) in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index and is classified as a “very serious situation”. There were a number of attacks on street drama teams and artists during the last three months. Transparency International Sri Lanka have faced challenges while conducting training courses, with death threats being issued to participating journalists and individuals involved in organising the programmes. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Front Line Defenders, the International Press Institute, and Reporters Without Borders, along with Transparency International, expressed concern about the escalating intimidation, and called on Sri Lankan authorities to take firm action to protect the safety of civil society.

Groups exercising their right of assembly also continue to face challenges. Protesting fishermen were pelted with stones, resulting in three being hospitalised. Two union leaders were allegedly subject to assault by unidentified groups on 25 October. The Free Trade Zone and General Employees Services Union, in a letter to the Inspector General of Police, noted that “it is clear that our trade union leaders are being suppressed systematically”. Posters vilifying leading civil society figures organising an event to commemorate the disappeared were discovered on 25 October, and stones were thrown at the residence of Brito Fernando, the chief organiser of this event. On 22 December, students protesting over education rights were reportedly attacked by police. The students attempted to storm the University Grants Commission gates, and were initially dispersed with water cannons and tear gas, but were allegedly seriously assaulted, with 28 students being hospitalised. Student unions claim that it was “a disproportionate response”.

Evangelical churches continued to face challenges; attacks on churches, prayer meetings, restrictions on their right to assembly, and onerous/unfair administrative burdens. Positively, the number of reported attacks on Muslims and their places of worship have reduced significantly.

Mayuri Inoka, the wife of a disappeared man, was abducted on 1 November, but managed to escape. She told the media that she was threatened with the same fate as her husband if she did not stop her campaign to find him. Mayuri’s husband, Madushka, was allegedly abducted by members of the local police in 2013.

Concerns continued around the situation in northern Sri Lanka. Vauniya (Northern Province) Citizens’ Committee chairman, G. Thavaraja, was assaulted and attacked with iron rods in October. Thavaraja, who was in the forefront of a campaign calling for the release of Balendran Jeyakumari (a human rights defender who has been detained for over 200 days without charges), was allegedly threatened with death if he continued his campaign. Newspapers and journalists in the north continued to face issues. In October, a senior journalist and media activist was allegedly interrogated by law enforcement officials on his journalism training and interactions with international media watchdogs. A number of newspaper agents in Jaffna and Kilinochchi have alleged harassment. Throughout the third week of October, a Tamil monthly newspaper faced harassment, and a distributor of the paper was attacked at Uruththirapuram, Kilinochchi, with his newspapers dumped in a nearby reservoir by an armed gang. Meanwhile the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced on 10 October that all foreign passport holders travelling to the north would require prior permission to do so. Conditions were subsequently relaxed enabling foreign passport holders of Sri Lankan origin to travel without prior permission. Two Tamil women from the north and east who were previously detained (relatives of terrorism suspects) were prevented from leaving Sri Lanka by law enforcement officials.

In a statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, criticised continuing attacks by the Sri Lankan government on the integrity of the UN Human Rights Office’s ongoing investigation into alleged violations and abuses of human rights by both sides during Sri Lanka’s conflict, and condemned the intimidation of human rights defenders and individuals who may wish to cooperate with the investigation. On 27 October, a Tamil man was arrested by members of the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) in Kilinochchi on allegations of attempting to provide fabricated evidence to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights investigation on Sri Lanka. Several human rights defenders were labelled as Tamil Tiger supporters by a pro-government Sinhala language newspaper.