Modi, Xi renew their ‘Chindia Reset’ for a ‘Pacific’ New Asian Century

 Friday, 4 May 2018

US President Donald Trump once characterised North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as the “Rocket Man”. More recently, as the historic inter-Korean summit took place at the Peace House of the Panmunjom village in the UN-sponsored Demilitarised Zone, Trump called him a “very honourable” leader. The most pervasive and inescapable news this week has been the historic summit between North and South Korea.

Yet, a separate and less covered “informal summit” across the Yellow Sea, and one likely to be as consequential, is that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The summit, taking place at Chairman Mao Zedong’s summer villa in Wuhan of Hubei province in central China, is arguably more historic than the Korean peninsula to “reset” Sino-Indian relationship that goes back for millennia.

The two ancient civilisations—Hindu and Confucian—intersected long before the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and Buddhist Emperor Ashoka the Great (304-232 BC) in India. Through the trading networks of China’s maritime and Silk Routes, a wide range of merchants, pilgrims, and knowledge systems enriched each culture. Among them was the dissemination of Buddhism from Sri Lanka and India to China, which had a transformative effect on the Confucian and Daoist culture.

For example, the earliest and later translations of Buddhist Sutras (scriptures) were revised and completed by famous scholar-monk Kumarajiva. Most significantly, he was the son of a Brahmin father from Indian Kashmir and a Chinese Kuchan princess—a “Chindian” (China and India) offspring.

If the two seemingly clashing cultures want to “reset” their evolving relationship, the starting point could well be Kumarajiva whose biological, intellectual, and spiritual connection bridge “Chindia” together. The importance of Kumarajiva is that he revolutionised the evolving Chinese Buddhism—the Mahayana tradition or the Chan Buddhism—without relying on the earlier translations through the concepts of Confucian and Daoist literature during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420).

Invoking Buddhist diplomacy

In recent years, Xi has used his foreign policy innovation in Buddhist diplomacy, especially with Sri Lanka. Modi has also invoked the Buddhist connection in his dealings with Sri Lanka and while visiting China’s Buddhist sites of shared Sino-Indian heritage, including the Daxingshan Buddhist Temple and the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda.

At the recent request of Modi, Beijing and New Delhi agreed to have the world’s two most populous nations meet for a “Chindia Reset”. The mindset of the Beijing leadership related to the timing and the location is critically important not only to overshadow the American-led denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but to highlight the significance of Wuhan on the historic bank of the Han and Yangtze rivers that is considered the intellectual mecca for communist retreat of Chairman Mao and politburo members. Mao had written a poem, “Great plans are afoot: A bridge will fly to span the north and south; Turning a deep chasm into a thoroughfare,” from which theme both Xi and Modi could bring about greater prosperity and peace for the northern (China) and southern (Indian) civilisations connected by Buddhism.

Like US President Richard Nixon’s historic China visit to “reset” Sino-American relations after the Vietnam War and prior to his presidential re-election, Modi similarly had two reasons for the summit. First, India’s regional power has been somewhat weakened by China’s increasing economic engagement with its neighbours Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. More importantly, when Chinese troops entered the disputed Doklam (or Donglang in Chinese) tri-region of Bhutan-China-and-India last year, the Chinese military threatened the Indian forces as Beijing tried to extend the highway towards Bhutan, which has a “special relationship” with New Delhi.

Second, Modi is focusing on winning the national election in 2019 as domestic issues and political protests have seemingly weakened his Bharatiya Janata Party. But, Modi is a strategic leader, especially in a larger context of China’s transformative leadership with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Asia and beyond.

Closer neighbours and

distance friends

China and India—the second and seventh largest economies in the world—represent almost 40% of the world population and see each other as leaders of the “Asian century” in the “new era” of Xi that drive the engines of global economic growth, while the US and Europe belonged to the 20th century’s outdated game of geopolitics with Russia and the Middle East.

In the meantime, China advances it assertive foreign policy—with the BRI, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the South and East China Sea disputes—while managing its relationships with the US and other European powers. Thus, China’s global vision is carefully guided and executed by the two pillars of Confucian bureaucracy and the Communist Party of China. The perception of China’s ruling mechanism is now being favourably viewed by many developing countries as more effective and efficient than the chaotic nature of India’s democratic governance—ultimately to serve its people better. 

The rapid development and modernisation of China has, for example, proven that Beijing can govern its affairs locally and globally in confidence than what India has accomplished over the years. Behind only in military power, China has also surpassed—and growing—every economic and social development index compared with the US, according to Harvard Professor Graham Allison.

With the unprecedented global influence of China’s comprehensive power, Washington has tried to revitalise its old Indo-Pacific region’s “quad” strategy of Asian democracies of Australia, Japan, and India coming together as a unified force to counter China’s rise. Yet, America’s concerted military strategy only works if the US has the economic maturity to address the increased defence expenditures and the much-needed infrastructure development to “Make America Great Again.”

For India, a real alliance with the distant US is currently problematic, especially with the unreliable and chaotic Trump administration. The two populous markets need each other not only for economic reasons, but also Beijing and New Delhi have traditionally adhered to the Nonalignment Principle of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and Chairman Mao.

Chindian frenemies

As former nonaligned countries, both Beijing and New Delhi shared an idealistic vision of independent national sovereignty—free of the colonial and Cold-War mentalities. As practical men of vision, the Wuhan summit between Xi and Modi is driven by national interest, the fear of external powers, and the pride in civilisational cultures. The two nations would cooperate in trade, commerce, and investment as China has increasing number of Indian workers, tourists, and students across Chinese universities.

The border disputes are of concerns for both countries. But, the challenges are being managed as India currently views China as a growing military power, surrounded by smaller nations of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka that are economically (and perhaps militarily in the future) aligned with Beijing’s realm of dominance. In such a case, India may likely consider the US as a potential democratic ally to counter to China’s assertive behaviour.

At this point in time, however, the calculus of being anti-China would not serve well for India whose cooperation has greater value in the global stage with China, especially in climate change and sharing global commons from which the US has departed. As a highly-decentralised governing system in India—with diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups in a noisy democracy—only the test of time will tell whether it, or China’s form of governance with centralised control will prove to be more effective.

Indeed, like India, China has a similar diversity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious varieties but with a different governing model of centralised power. Like the starting point of Kumarajiva’s acculturation of the Sanskrit translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese through the then-prevailing hierarchical governance of Confucian society (with the Chinese characteristics), the “Chindia reset” may gradually have a transformative effect on China. It would certainly be more like Nixon, who triggered a domino effect that changed Sino-American relations, the “Chindian reset” could well be a new beginning to transform the most dynamic region into a “pacific” Century of Asia as the power shifts from the West to the East.

(The writer, a Harvard Kennedy School’s former Rajawali Senior Fellow, is an Associate-in-Research of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a Commissioner to the United States National Commission for UNESCO at the State Department. Professor Mendis is the author of “Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and American Destiny Create a Pacific New World Order’. He is a Senior Fellow of the Pangoal Institution in Beijing and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Asian-Pacific Affairs at the Shandong University in Jinan, China. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent the institutions of his affiliations.)

#MeToo sex scandals spur interest in standards for the aid sector

Ben Parker Senior Editor-

Geneva, 2 May 2018
for proper oversight and vetting of aid agencies and workers, and for the introduction of mandatory professional standards.

Donors have demanded new measures and reporting from grantees, and investigations have been launched by the British regulator. Critics say aid agencies operate without sufficient checks and balances and wonder why attempts to set up an independent authority, such as an ombudsman, have flopped. This, they argue, partly explains how the Oxfam scandal could happen.

Others insist that viable systems are in place, they just need to be implemented: a leading benchmark for aid agencies, the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS), drawn up in 2014, already includes the management of risk and prevention of sexual abuse and exploitation.

“Never has it been more important to apply the Core Humanitarian Standard,” CHS Alliance Executive Director Judith Greenwood wrote in a web posting.

Over the last 20 years, international aid organisations and donors have set up a range of self-regulation initiatives for quality assurance, accountability, and common technical standards with which many major aid agencies say they comply.

A handful of donors tie compliance with standards to funding. For example, Denmark makes independent CHS verification or certification a requirement for its strategic partners, and provides funding to defray the costs of compliance. A spokesperson for the humanitarian department of the Danish foreign ministry told IRIN that agencies that have “gone through a CHS verification or certification process [are] shown to have better Protection against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) safe-guarding systems.”

As humanitarian aid professor Dorothea Hilhorst put it in a column published by IRIN, the problem now facing the sector is not a lack of standards, rather it’s the lack of third-party enforcement and meaningful sanctions. “The initiatives all rely on the voluntary buy-in of NGOs, who ultimately retain power to independently deal with abuse,” she wrote.

The regulatory challenge

Designing a unified body of regulations and standards is difficult when so many different types of organisations inhabit the humanitarian space. International emergency aid services are offered by NGOs and charities, faith organisations, volunteer networks, social enterprises, or philanthropic projects connected to for-profit companies. More than 600 agencies received officially reported funding (mainly from governments) in 2017, according to the UN’s Financial Tracking Service (and that doesn’t include myriad smaller and informal groups).

But there is no international humanitarian watchdog, nor is there a directory of vetted aid groups. Each group is governed by an array of oversight and tax mechanisms in its home country and unevenly governed by the host country at the point of delivery. The organisations are not under a single jurisdiction, and neither are the staff; there isn’t an aid worker union.

And “aid worker” isn’t a single profession: a trauma surgeon or a water engineer may hold internationally recognised qualifications, but a range of generalist roles lack a single categorisation.
In the Oxfam scandal, for instance, it was possible for an aid worker whose conduct was questionable to be re-hired repeatedly over a 20-year period because there was no system to flag up such people and prevent their re-recruitment. But proposals for a single register of “whitelisted” aid workers, even if such a registry were legally viable, would not have stopped the re-recruitment of Oxfam Haiti manager Roland van Hauwermeiren: none of the organisations he worked with fired him, nor was he criminally prosecuted.

Organisations and banana skins

At the other end of the spectrum, the challenges facing smaller organisations trying to gain credibility can also feel immense.

Reza Chowdhury, executive director of Coast Trust, a Bangladeshi NGO supporting Rohingya refugees and combatting local poverty, has spent over two years ensuring that his organisation adheres to professional standards.

Local aid agencies like his that are trying to break into the big leagues have “banana skins” in their internal systems that prevent them gaining credibility, he said. Chowdhury said a two-year process of getting an independent certification as a humanitarian agency, culminating in an on-site audit in late 2017, has been worth it to provide a recognised seal of approval from an independent group, and get a robust review of its procedures.

Chowdhury spoke as he was picking up a certificate from the Geneva office of the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative (HQAI).The document designated Coast Trust as the 14th aid agency certified by the group – the first from the so-called Global South, or developing nations.
Using a network of independent auditors, HQAI assesses aid organisations, usually against the CHS standards. The process involves a management audit: interviewing staff, focus groups, project beneficiaries, reviewing documents and records in the field and at the agency’s offices.


Ben Parker/IRIN-Coast Trust is the first southern NGO to be certified by the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative (HQAI), an independent auditing and advisory service for relief aid agencies, based in Geneva. COAST gained its certificate in January 2018.

Lately, HQAI is particularly busy, a fact the group’s executive director, Pierre Hauselmann, partially ascribes to reactions to the UK aid agency scandals. “Suddenly, HQAI services have become much more visible, from donors and NGOs alike,” he said.

Over the last two years, the organisation has done about 35 audits, which Hauselmann says are designed to drive incremental improvements in adherence to the CHS standards. Because the process involves repeat annual reviews, “we can see the improvements from one audit to the other”, he noted.
A trusted third-party seal of approval can make a difference to donors who are considering whether to shift more cash to non-Western aid groups, often as part of “localisation” efforts, Chowdhury said. HQAI worked with his group to align its operations with the principles and commitments set out in the CHS. In this post-scandal era, that includes showing how an organisation can act on complaints and misconduct if and when they arise.

It’s a process that takes time, Chowdhury said, not a rapid “commando raid” by auditors. Coast Trust’s audit report included 12 “minor” recommendations, with deadlines for the group to make improvements. These included, for example, better procedures for following up complaints and data protection.

This is not unusual, said Hauselmann: an audit without findings for improvement would itself be suspect. Coast Trust’s relationship with HQAI, Chowdhury said, is similar to a partnership, but with a watchdog element. To retain their ratings, organisations must commit to annual checkups and, if standards are not kept up, the HQAI seal of approval can be withdrawn. “The teeth exist”,
Hauselmann said, but “behind a smile.” In the current climate, he added, agencies are “very wary” of losing certification.

Credentials

At least part of the answer to regulating aid workers may lie in the international standards and professional credential systems used by sports coaches and those who care for the elderly, according to a Geneva-based non-profit training provider and association, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP).

The group is beta testing multiple-choice examinations on skills, similar to exams offered in other professions. PHAP will soon offer a total of six exams, designed to confirm a candidate’s competence and suitability for specific aid jobs, (for example in cash distribution or needs assessment) and test their general knowledge of the sector as well as ethical foundations.

Angharad Laing, PHAP’s executive director, said there is no shortage of volunteers to help design and test the exams. As well as taking a “nerdy” pleasure in checking questions on their specialist areas, volunteers feel a sense of community and pride, she said, approaching the project with an attitude of: “Oh wow, lots of people have been thinking really hard about how I do my work”.

To address misconduct and underperformance, holders of credentials earned through the exams can be stripped of their professional designation after a review by a credentialed peer panel. This process is based on a system devised by the International Standards Organisation.

Laing says some job postings now specify that candidates hold PHAP credentials. Since the UK scandals broke, she said, the HR departments of major NGOs have contacted her to discuss how they could use PHAP’s services. She believes there has been an over-reliance on agencies and organisations “holding themselves to account”.

PHAP has 4,000 aid workers as current members and offers face-to-face training, webinars, and a professional membership structure. PHAP’s membership makes it one of the largest aid worker associations, although its members are only a fraction of the amorphous aid community:
consultancy Humanitarian Outcomes estimates that there are 450,000 humanitarian aid workers worldwide.

Technical standards

In addition to organisational accountability and coherence, and individual competence and ethics, efforts toward stronger regulation in the aid sector must address technical issues.

Sphere, a donor-funded standards organisation formed in 1997, brings together practitioners and experts to set minimum standards for quality humanitarian response, including targets for planning shelters, building latrines, or setting up vaccine campaigns.

The group considers issues such as what is the acceptable number of people per toilet in emergency environments (answer: 20), or reminders not to distribute powdered milk.

“The teeth exist”, Hauselmann said, but “behind a smile.”

The Sphere Handbook wraps these technical materials with the CHS (of which it was a co-author)
and an overarching “humanitarian charter”. The fourth edition of the omnibus publication, available in about 30 languages, will be issued later this year, said executive director Christine Knudsen.

Enablers or barriers?

Standards in general are not a barrier to new or small NGOs and newcomers to the sector, Knudsen insisted. In fact, she added, they provide a framework for good practice and comparability.

Knudsen pointed out that standards and certifications only demonstrate whether an organisation has the structure to do quality work. They are “an enabler, rather than a predictor” of quality, she said.
Hauselmann of HQAI said that previous attempts at third-party audits and independent assessments had suffered because of a perception that they are “a tool to sanction”. Instead, he stressed, they should be seen as one of the “most important drivers for improvement”.

However, Nicholas Stockton, former head of the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership and a veteran of earlier initiatives to improve standards, doesn’t believe NGOs can achieve effective collective self-regulation.

After revelations of sex-for-aid abuses in West Africa in 2002, there was a “moral panic”, and new initiatives were established, he wrote in an online comment on IRIN. Gradually, however, “business as usual resumed and a growing sense of impunity and hubris grew, and with it the ever-increasing danger of unmanaged moral hazard that has now been blown open.”

bp/js/ag

Regular fast food eating linked to fertility issues in women

Image copyright

4 May 2018

Women who regularly eat fast food and not enough fruit are more likely to struggle to conceive, a study suggests.

A survey of 5,598 women found those who ate fast food four or more times a week took nearly a month longer to get pregnant than those who never or rarely ate it.

Regular junk food eaters were also less likely to conceive within a year, the report in Human Reproduction found.

Experts said it suggested a good diet boosted the chances of conceiving.

However, there were some limitations to the study, including that it relied on women having to remember what they had eaten before pregnancy.

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Women in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland were quizzed about what they had eaten in the month before they became pregnant with their first child.

Midwives visited the women when they were about 14-16 weeks pregnant and asked them how often they ate fruit, green leafy vegetables and fish, as well as foods, such as burgers, pizza, fried chicken and chips, from fast food outlets.

Researchers found the women who had eaten fruit less than one to three times a month took on average half a month longer to become pregnant than those who had eaten it three or more times a day.

They also calculate that the women with the lowest intake of fruit had a 12% risk of having been unable to conceive within a year, while this was 16% for those who had eaten fast food four or more times a week.

This compared with a risk of 8% in the group as a whole.

Image copyright

Couples were excluded from the analysis if the male partner was receiving fertility treatment.

Prof Claire Roberts, from the University of Adelaide, Australia, who led the study, said: "These findings show that eating a good quality diet that includes fruit and minimising fast food consumption improves fertility and reduces the time it takes to get pregnant."

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However, while researchers found an association between the consumption of fruit and fast foods and the time it took to get pregnant, perhaps surprisingly their study found no link with eating green leafy vegetables and fish.

Although the study was large, it incorporated only a limited range of foods.

Information on the fathers' diets was not collected, and it is possible that other unknown factors might have affected the results, researchers said.

But experts said it still added to evidence that women's diet before pregnancy had an impact on their chances of conceiving.

Dr Gino Pecoraro, a senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, who was not involved in the research, said: "Generally, the study does support what most health professionals would intuitively believe - having a healthy diet is good for couples trying to conceive."

SELECTIVE MEMORY: ERASURE & MEMORIALISATION IN SRI LANKA’S NORTH

Image: Exhibition by the Geneva lake side, April, 2018. (c) s.deshapriya.

03/05/2018

(CPA, Colombo, Sri Lanka) The insurrections of the 1970s, the riots of 1983 and the 30-year conflict – all which have immeasurably shaped the country’s history and have far more reaching consequence for its future – are glaringly absent from the history syllabus of the Sri Lankan education system. Textbooks are one way of teaching history and memorialisation. So too are the physical expressions of history and of memory, in the monuments we have built to tell the stories of our past. As with the lessons that we teach the younger generations, the Sri Lankan State’s practice is selective here too.

From schoolbooks to statute and statues, this erasure of the country’s violent recent history is reflective of deliberate State amnesia on the part of successive governments and a convenient approach to dealing with the past – without confronting its horrors – by way of denial. The atrocities witnessed, especially by those living in the combat zones of the Northern Province, and the drastic losses faced by the communities have been reduced to monuments that tell only one, partial story – that of the glorious victories of the armed forces.

The monuments do not account for the multiple narratives and truths around experiences of the conflict. The State-sponsored memorials were not built with any consultation from the communities that live in the immediate vicinity. Communities whose histories are linked to these places and what they were before the conflict, and whose everyday realities are linked to these places and what they are after the conflict.

For people from the South in general, it may be difficult to understand why these memorials are so out of place and violent. For the people living around them, the monuments are a living reminder of the painful recent past which prevent them from ‘moving on’ in any sense.

The impact of these memorials is inextricably linked to the patterns of militarization and land occupation that remain in the Northern Province, eight years after the conflict came to an end. Taking into consideration the ground realities that persist for residents of these areas, issues that have gone unaddressed by several governments, sustained marginalization of this nature, if left unaddressed, has the potential to fuel renewed cycles of conflict.

Access this story made on Microsoft Sway here or view the embed below.

Journalists in Sri Lanka still cannot report on wartime atrocities

Journalists from north and east Sri Lanka stage a demonstration calling for justice for murdered Tamil journalist Dharmeratnam Sivaram. Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. April 27, 2018. Source: Twitter - @sabeshwaran

By JS Tissainayagam | 3rd May 2018

INDEXES on press freedom indicate that Sri Lanka’s media has become freer since the National Unity Government took office in January 2015.

However, the reality on the ground with journalists threatened with counterterrorism laws, editors forced to practice self-censorship and near-continuous surveillance, paints another picture.

Journalists in Sri Lanka still cannot report on wartime atrocities.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Freedom of Expression on the decline in Sri Lanka

Featured image by Amalini De Sayrah – Sandya Eknaligoda at her home  

RUKI FERNANDO-05/03/2018

The last twelve months, since World Press Freedom day 2017, has not been a good year for freedom of expression in Sri Lanka. The war ravaged North bore the brunt of repression, while there were also several incidents in other parts of the country. Victims included journalists, lawyers, activists, artists and in particular those speaking out and advocating on issues such as of women’s rights, gender and sexuality. A website that had published content critical of the President was blocked, following an intervention from the Presidential Secretariat. With very few exceptions, impunity reigned for past violations of free expression, including most serious ones such as killings and disappearances of journalists and media workers and arson attacks on media institutions. At an event organized by the Free Media Movement (FMM) on the eve of World Press Freedom day, all the speakers and several participants acknowledged the lack of movement in structural reforms to the media in Sri Lanka in the last year.

Free Expression in 2017 – 2018 in the North

In March this year, the Army was reported to have detained and questioned Shanmugam Thavaseelan, a Tamil journalist reporting about Army’s alleged attempts to seize the land of a destroyed LTTE cemetery. When the journalist had refused to hand over his camera to be searched, he was interrogated by the Army who implied that his days were numbered and also subjected him to verbal abuse. The Army appeared to have acknowledged this during an inquiry by the Human Rights Commission, but there were no reports of even disciplinary action against the responsible officers. In December last year, a group of Tamil journalists doing research on Sinhalisation in the Tamil majority Mullaitivu area were reported to have been detained and questioned by Army and Police, their cameras and equipment seized and photos and videos deleted. The identity details and vehicle registration numbers were also recorded and were photographed by the soldiers.

Also in December, in two separate incidents, two Tamil journalists, Subramaniam Baskaran and Shanmuganathan Manoharan were reported to have been beaten. In July, another Tamil journalist, Uthayarasa Shalin was reported to have been stopped by two soldiers when he was travelling to Maruthankerny, to report on a protest by Tamil families of disappeared, and accused of writing lies. Also in July, Northern Tamil print and broadcast journalist T. Pratheepanwas reported to have received multiple summons by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to appear in Colombo to testify about broadcasting a press conference, and after informing his inability to travel to Colombo, he was interrogated for three hours about the press conference and was asked to produce footage. His statements, given in Tamil, were transcribed in Sinhala – a language he does not understand and he was pressured to sign this Sinhala document despite being unable to verify its contents. Tamil journalists in the North reported continued surveillance and intimidations.

In a bizarre incident, V. S. Sivakaran, the head of the Federation of Community Organisations in Mannar was reported to have been summoned to appear before the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) in Colombo, in relation to a letter he had written to President Sirisena, ahead of the latter’s plans to visit the opening of an allegedly illegally constructed Buddhist temple in the vicinity of the historic Thiruketheeswaram Hindu Temple in an area with no Buddhist residents. In his letter, Sivakaran is reported to have criticised the President for his planned participation in the event and that the President’s attendance at the opening ceremony would be marked with protests from aggrieved locals. Sivakaran had not issued any threat to the President’s person.

 Mariyasuresh Easwary, a Tamil woman whose husband had disappeared and has been vocal leader of a prolonged protest demanding truth and justice was assaulted in Mullaitivu. A rights activist was interrogated and beaten on his way home after speaking at an event. A memorial event to remember and grieve for Tamils killed in the war was stopped and organisers harassed and subjected to investigations. In November, two Tamil youths from the Vavuniya district in the Northern Province posted a photo on Facebook showing the Vavuniya District Secretariat office, the purpose of which appeared to be to draw attention to a poster of a tree planting campaign and a large tree behind the poster that looked as if it had been cut. They were questioned by the Vavuniya police, and made to sign an affidavit written in Sinhala, a language they don’t understand, and were told that they could lose their jobs and that they could not photograph Government offices nor critique their actions.
These incidents indicate a trend where the Army and Police seems determined to restrict reporting on matters considered to be sensitive such as disappearances, remembering war-dead, Sinhalisation, land, militarisation and anything critical of the government.

Freedom of Expression outside the North

While freedom of expression was under the greatest strain in the North, there were also several alarming incidents across the rest of the country from 2017 to 2018. Lakshan Dias, a human rights lawyer speaking about the rights violations of religious minorities on TV was threatened by the then Minister of Justice and was compelled to flee the country temporarily, and was subjected to lengthy interrogation on return. Sudesh Nandimal De Silva, an eyewitness and vocal campaigner seeking justice for prison massacre had his house shot at, and received death threats by phone. Human rights lawyer Senaka Perera who had filed a petition on behalf of Nandimal, also received death threats by phone. There were vicious threats online against them and others campaigning for justice. On October 6, Police Assistant Superintendent Roshan Daluwatte was recorded assaulting journalist Susantha Bandara Karunaratne while the latter was being taken into custody. The video of Karunaratne being held by two police officers while Daluwatte slapped him went viral online and was widely broadcast on television. The Human Rights Commission launched an investigation into the incident shortly after.

In general, foreign journalists found access and the working environment  in Sri Lanka favourable, but in March 2018, a week after the attacks on Muslims by mobs identifying as Buddhists, heavily armed Army and Navy personnel tried to stop an Al Jazeera crew with government accreditation, from filming by the roadside. One soldier warned that they don’t like the situation ongoing in the area being known overseas and another stated that they had been ordered not to allow filming in the area, though this was later denied by the Director General of the Government Information Department.

Free Expression online

In March this year, the government restricted access to several social media platforms for several days in the aftermath of attacks against Muslims by mobs identifying themselves as Buddhists in the Kandy district. Right To Information (RTI) requests by the editor of the citizen journalism website Groundviews revealed that the website Lanka E News was blocked, after a letter from the Presidential Secretariat to the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission noting that the website has been publishing false articles about the President and family members and asking the TRC’s Director General to “take suitable action”. Earlier on, Groundviews had managed to obtain a list of 13 websites that had been blocked from 2015onwards by the TRC, with at least in four instances, the order coming directly from the Presidential Secretariat, who via the Media Ministry had made applications to block specific websites, often on the grounds of providing incorrect or false information about the President.

 Reprisals for expressing opinions and advocating on women’s rights, gender and sexuality

In April this year, a performance in Colombo titled “Cardinal Sin”, by Grassrooted Trust, looking at proposed reforms to abortion law was barred by the government’s censorship arm, the Public Performance Board. The performance was part of an annual event called “V day”, the 2018 version of which was called “PatriANarchy” focusing on how patriarchal values continue to inflict violence in Sri Lanka.

The Muslim Personal Law Reforms Action Group (MPLRAG) , which have expressed strong positions against discriminatory and oppressive elements of the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) have often come under attack in social media, with accusations ranging from them being a group operating in secret, being Israeli agents, not looking like Muslim women etc. Those expressing opinions and advocating in favor of equal rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender persons also faced vicious attacks on social media. Women’s dresses, ranging from abaya to bikini also drew criticism on social media. In April this year, the English language “Daily Mirror” newspaper used words such as “nag”, “nitpick”, bemoan”, “lamenting” to describe women who went to courts against discriminatory laws.

Impunity

In August 2017, Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, who was abducted in 2009, tortured and subsequently dumped on the roadside while he was editing the Colombo based “Sudar Oli” paper during the war had asked a senior Sri Lankan journalist Sunanda Deshapriya, ‘Why is this Government not investigating my abduction? Is it because I am not a Wickrematunge or Ekneligoda?’ The then Secretary to Defense had told an Australian TV, “Vithyatharan is a terrorist, so we arrested him”, and Vithyatharan identified two policemen who came to abduct him by name as Ranganathan and Wijerathana. But still, there is no arrests and none of these three have been even questioned to the best of our knowledge.

Tamil journalist Subramaniam Ramachandran disappeared in February 2007 after being seen at an Army checkpoint.

Another Tamil journalist Subramaniyam Sugirtharajan was killed in January 2006 after he had published photos indicating 5 youth killed in Trincomalee in 2006 were by shooting and not due to grenade injuries as narrated by the Special Task Force (STF) of the Police. The Uthayan newspaper office have been subjected to arson attacks and it’s journalists and media workers killed, disappeared, assaulted and threatened numerous times during and after the war, but no one has been arrested, prosecuted or convicted.

In contrast, there has been some progress on three few high profile journalists cases in Colombo. In relation to the killing of Sunday Leader newspaper’s editor Lasantha Wickramatunga and the abduction and torture of Deputy Editor of the Nation newspaper Keith Noyahr, a senior Police Officer an Army Officers were arrested this year.

But after some arrests and revealing of significant information to courts, the case of Prageeth Ekneligoda disappearance seems to be stagnating since about 2016 when all the suspects were released on bail, the last of which was just after a public statement of the President criticising the detention of Army intelligence personnel. Both the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and State Counsel leading the case on behalf of the Attorney General’s (AG) department, had repeatedly told courts of the Army providing false information, denying possession of evidence, delaying production of evidence and misleading investigations and courts. They had also reported a lack of cooperation and obstructions towards investigations from the Army, and intimidation towards witnesses. A key witness, who had seen and questioned Ekneligoda in the Giritale camp on 25th January 2015, has complained to the Police about a conspiracy to harm his life from the Giritale camp.

Significantly, more than three years after the new government came into power, there have been no prosecutions even in these cases, in May 2008, January 2009 and January 2010 respectively.
Conclusion

In the annual World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reports without Borders (RSF), Sri Lanka still languishes in the “bad” or “red” category (Above very bad, but below Good, Fairly Good, Problematic), placed 131 out of 180. The RSF index indicates that Sri Lanka’s situation on press freedom has improved in relation to other countries by ten notches in the last year, but it should not be misunderstood or misinterpreted as indicating an improvement of the situation of press freedom in Sri Lanka since 2017.

Although there has been no killings or disappearances of journalists, media workers or arson attacks on media institutions during this period, the many threats to Freedom of Expression in last 12 months such as those mentioned above, and impunity for past violations, makes it clear that Freedom of Expression was on the decline in Sri Lanka in 2017-2018.

Editor’s Note: Also read “Continued Impunity: Journalist killings unresolved in 2016” and “Towards True Freedom of Expression“

Press Freedom & Enforced Disappearances: Two Sides of the Same Coin in Sri Lanka

The late Richard de Zoysa, former IPS UN Bureau Chief in Sri Lanka.

By Kanya D'Almeida-Thursday, May 3, 2018

Kanya D’Almeida* is a Sri Lankan writer, journalist and editor. 

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

NEW YORK, Apr 30 2018 (IPS) - When Sri Lankan journalist Richard de Zoysa was abducted from his home in Colombo on the night of February 18th, 1990, his family knew there would be dark days ahead. The population was still reeling from one of the bloodiest episodes in the island nation’s history – a government counterinsurgency campaign to crush a Marxist rebellion in southern Sri Lanka, which left between 30,000 and 60,000 people dead at the hands of government death squads.



Even more disturbing than the extrajudicial killings was the wave of enforced disappearances that took place between 1988 and 1990: tens of thousands of Sinhalese men and boys suspected of being members or sympathizers of the People’s Liberation Front, or JVP, went missing, never to return.

At the time of his kidnapping, de Zoysa was a stringer for this publication, filing regular reports on the political violence plaguing the country. He was on the verge of accepting the post of Bureau Chief of the agency’s Lisbon-based European desk when the goons came knocking.

For hours that bled into days, his mother, Manorani Saravanamuttu had no idea what had become of him. High-ranking officials assured her that he was alive, in police custody, but refused to give her exact coordinates when she asked to be allowed to bring him some clothing – he had been wearing only a sarong when he was kidnapped – or a meal.

It later transpired that while she was making frantic phone calls and searching for answers, de Zoysa was already dead, shot in the head at point blank range, and his body dumped in the Indian Ocean, a tactic that had become a common feature of the government’s systematic abductions.

A fisherman happened to recognize his face – de Zoysa was also a well-known television personality at the time – when his body washed up on shore in a coastal town just south of the capital. He alerted the authorities who in turn contacted de Zoysa’s mother.

According to a 1991 Washington Post interview with Saravanamuttu, the discovery of her son’s body was a turning point, for her personally, and for the nation as a whole. When she walked out of the inquest a few days after de Zoysa’s abduction, she found herself surrounded by reporters, to whom she made a statement that resonated with countless families across the island: “I am the luckiest mother in Sri Lanka. I got my son’s body back. There are thousands of mothers who never get their children’s bodies back.”

Mothers of the Disappeared

Saravanamuttu’s statement quickly catalyzed a movement known as the Mother’s Front, which had been a long time coming. Perhaps due to her privileged status as a member of the country’s English-speaking elite, she became a kind of totem pole around which women from the poorer, politically marginalized and largely Sinhala-speaking rural belt could gather, and from which they could draw strength. By 1991, according to the Post, the Mother’s Front counted 25,000 registered members.

The movement did not succeed in bringing justice to many of its victims. To this day, not a single person has been convicted for de Zoysa’s murder. Ministers who opposed Saravanamuttu and others’ attempts to seek answers in the murders or disappearances of their loved ones continue to hold positions of power within the government – Ranil Wickremesinghe, who the Post quoted as brushing de Zoysa’s murder off as “suicide or something else”, now serves as the Prime Minister, the second-highest political office in the country.

Amnesty International estimates that since the 1980s, there have been as many as 100,000 enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka.

The Mother’s Front movement did, however, make a crucial contribution to the country’s political landscape, one which continues to have ramifications today: it tied together forever the plight of Sri Lanka’s disappeared with the fate of its journalists and press freedom – or the lack thereof.

Exactly 20 years after de Zoysa was assassinated, another journalist’s disappearance prompted a woman to step into the global spotlight, much as Saravanamuttu did back in the 90s. This journalist’s name is Prageeth Eknaligoda, and he was last seen on January 24th, 2010. He telephoned his wife, Sandhya around 10 p.m. to inform her that he was on his way home from the offices of Lanka eNews (LEN), where he was a renowned columnist and cartoonist. He never arrived.

From local police stations all the way to the United Nations in Geneva, Sandhya has searched for answers as to his whereabouts. It is only in the last two years that some information regarding his abduction and detention by army intelligence personnel has been revealed.

Both Saravanamuttu and Sandhya Eknaligoda have received international recognition for their tireless campaigning. In 1990 de Zoysa’s mother accepted IPS’ press freedom award at the United Nations on her son’s behalf, and last year Sandhya was honored with a 2017 International Woman of Courage Award. But back in Sri Lanka, she faces a government and a public that is at best indifferent, and at worst openly hostile to her continued efforts to find her husband.

A New Front: Tamil Women in the North

Sandhya has also been one of the few women, and one of the lone voices, connecting the issue of press freedom with the movement of families of the disappeared led by Tamil women in Sri Lanka’s northern province, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) waged a 28-year-long guerilla war against the Government of Sri Lanka for an independent homeland for the country’s Tamil minority.
Since January 2017, hundreds of Tamil civilians have observed continuous, 24-hour roadside protests in five key locations throughout the former warzone – Kilinochchi, Mullaithivu, Trincomalee, Vavuniya and Maruthankerny (Jaffna district) – demanding answers about their disappeared loved ones.

Like the Mother’s Front in the 1990s, this movement too has been several years in the making. When the civil war ended in 2009, some 300,000 Tamil civilians were rounded up and detained in open-air camps, while hundreds of others – particularly men who surrendered to the armed forces – were taken into government custody under suspicion of being members or supporters of the LTTE.

But while the camps have closed and a large number of people reunited with their families, an estimated 20,000 people are still unaccounted for, including those who disappeared in the early years of the conflict, as well as others who have been abducted as recently as 2016 and 2017.

In 2016, Parliament passed a bill to establish an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) tasked with investigating what Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera called “one of the largest caseloads of missing persons in the world.”

However, rights groups like Amnesty International raised concerns about the bill, including the government’s failure to consult affected families throughout the process. This past March, the government passed a bill that would, for the first time in the country’s history, criminalize enforced disappearances.

But these cosmetic measures have failed to yield concrete results.

In an interview with IPS, Ruki Fernando, a Colombo-based activist who has been visiting the protests in the northern province, noted that Tamil families’ decision to spend day after day in the burning sun by the side of polluted, dusty highways and roads is indicative of their lack of faith in government mechanisms like the OMP and the judiciary to bring them relief. He also called attention to the dismal levels of support or solidarity they have received from Sri Lanka’s broader civil society, including from English and Sinhala-language media or women’s groups in the capital.

“It’s not fair that these families – particularly elderly Tamil women who are leading the protests – should have to carry this burden alone. They have already suffered heavily during the war – they starved in bunkers, they didn’t have medication for their injuries, they have lost family members. All these factors have made them physically weak and emotionally vulnerable, yet now they are also shouldering the burden of keeping these protests going.”

He recalls meeting women as old as 70, adding that protestors sometimes don’t have food, and must endure the vagaries of the weather in the arid northern province. Some of the younger women are forced to bring their children with them. And most, if not all of these families, face the additional financial hardship of having lost their primary breadwinner, or losing out on livelihoods in order to participate in the protests for long periods.

“In my memory, such a strong movement led by women, occurring simultaneously in five locations across the North and East, or any region, is unprecedented,” Fernando said. “And yet it has not become a priority for the rest of the country.”

He called Sandhya Eknaligoda’s participation in the protests as a Sinhala Buddhist ally an “exception” to the rule of general indifference, which he chalked up to a combination of political and ideological issues.

“Some people believe these protests are too radical, too politicized, that there should be more cooperation with, and less criticism of, the government,” he explained. But as Fernando himself noted in an article for Groundviews, one of Sri Lanka’s leading citizen journalism websites, Tamil families have met repeatedly with elected officials, including President Maithripala Sirisena, to no avail.

No Closure

Fernando is not the only one to draw attention to Tamil families’ disadvantaged position with regard to both deaths and disappearances.

Another person to make this connection was Lal Wickrematunge, the brother of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, former editor-in-chief of the Sunday Leader who was murdered in broad daylight in 2010, and whose killers still haven’t been brought to justice.

Lal pointed to the ongoing investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department into military intelligence officers’ involvement in the kidnapping and torture of former deputy editor of The Nation newspaper, Keith Noyahr – and the arrest earlier this month of Major General Amal Karunasekera in connection with multiple attacks on journalists, including Noyahr, and Lasantha Wickrematunge – as a possible avenue of closure for the families.

According to a recent report in the Sunday Observer, “The assault on former Rivira Editor Upali Tennakoon and the abduction of journalist and activist Poddala Jayantha are also linked to the same shadowy military intelligence networks, run at the time by the country’s powerful former Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.”

But Lal Wickrematunge told IPS in a phone interview that while his family, along with international rights groups, are “keenly watching the progress of the investigation, which will determine if the government is serious about law and order”, he is concerned about those who may never receive answers – such as the families of two Tamil journalists who were assassinated in 2006.

Suresh Kumar and Ranjith Kumar were both employees of the Jaffna-based Tamil-language daily Uthayan, whose employees and offices have been attacked multiple times, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Other disappeared Tamil journalists whose cases receive scant attention include Subramanium Ramachandran, who was last seen at an army checkpoint in Jaffna in 2007.

For Fernando, the task of keeping the torch lit for Sri Lanka’s dead and disappeared cannot be laid at the feet of their family members alone – it is a responsibility that the entire country must share.

“What we need first and foremost are independent institutions capable of meting out truth and justice and winning the confidence of the families. And secondly, there is a need for stronger support for victims’ families from civil society – activists and professionals like lawyers, journalists and women’s groups.”

“Pushing for answers about what happened, and demanding prosecutions and convictions requires an exceptional degree of commitment,” he added. “Not everyone has the strength to wage such a battle, on a daily basis, against extremely heavy odds.”

*Kanya D’Almeida was formerly the Race and Justice Reporter for Rewire.News, and has also reported for IPS from the UN, Washington DC, and her native Sri Lanka. She is currently completing an MFA in fiction writing at Columbia University, New York.