Another Country, Another Journalist, Another Jail Cell

A Sri Lankan court has sentenced Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam to 20 years in prison because he "criticized the government's conduct and accused authorities of withholding food and other essential items from Tamil-majority areas as a tool of war."

The government of Sri Lanka claims that although “the constitution guarantees media freedom, but no one has a right to deliberately publish false reports that would lead to communal violence.” All the while Mr Tissainayagam's defence lawyer upholds that the journalist has been a tireless fighter for Human Rights and has been jailed for simply doing his job.

Both Amnesty International and US President Obama seem to agree, as they have both singled out this reporter as an example of journalists being jailed for simply doing their jobs. Amnesty International also states that 14 journalists and media workers have been killed since 2006 and that 11 journalists were forced to flee the country since the end of the 25 year civil war in May of this year.

I don't really know what to add exactly to all this, I mean how many times can one speak of anger and outrage and shock at situations like these? God knows I've written about prisoners of conscience over and over again on this blog and I'm pretty sure that everyone who reads this agrees with me that it is wrong. The good part in all this is that being Canadian, I have never had to worry about being jailed for expressing my opinions and I've never had to watch over my shoulder for fear government assassins were following me around.

So my heart goes out, again, to all those who are jailed for expressing their thoughts, their opinions and all those who fight for the rights of others despite the possibility of losing the very rights they are fighting for.

Tamils, the Forgotten People of Sri Lanka

(T-Shirt that I got from the Tamil Student Association Today)


As a Canadian, whenever I hear talks about Tamils it's usually referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better know here as the Tamil Tigers. They are a group of rebels in Northern Sri Lanka that have been engaged in a conflict to give the Tamils their own homeland. Over the years they have been accused of committing atrocities against civilians and commissioning the assassination of government officials.

For all the bad that the Tigers are known for their airforce also played an intricate part in the tsunami relief effort a few years back; *according to Tsunami Evaluation Coalition the key NGOs that responded also claimed that the LTTE forces provided extremely efficient and focused leadership and support to the relief effort.

But today I'm not writing about the Tigers or the surrender of some of their commanders. Today I want to write about the thousands of Tamils that inhabit the area (that until today) was controlled by the Tigers. The 3,000,000 Sri Lankan Tamils that are caught in the fighting. The Red Cross today is saying the 26 year old civil war has a reached catastrophic state. In fact 62,000 people had fled at the time the story was published and thousands more have fled since. In all over 70,000 thousand people have died in this conflict and Tamils along with Humanitarian Agencies accuse the Sri Lankan army of slaughtering over 1000 Tamils in the last few days.

International calls for peace, or at least a truce to let the refugees leave the territory unharmed have been ignored by the Sri Lankan government that has been pushing forward with their offensive against the Tigers. The Tigers are indeed a force to be reckoned with and a hardline organization for sure, but lets not forget the women and children and innocent people that live within their controlled territory.

Tamil Montrealers I have spoken to this morning claim they have received news from Sri Lanka that the government of Sri Lanka is on a quest to exterminate their people. Seeing how the calls for a cease-fire to save potential refugees have been ignored by the government it's hard for me to think otherwise until someone in Sri Lanka proves me wrong.

Muchaho Enfermo