Open letter to IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn about loan to Sri Lanka


(RSF, Tue, May 5, 2009 ) - Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the lamentable state of press freedom in Sri Lanka at a time when the International Monetary Fund is considering a major loan for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government. In return for granting this loan, we urge you to obtain specific undertakings from the government to respect press freedom and the rule of law. Sri Lankan officials insist that there are no delays in the loan application process and that the money will be used for development. At the same time, a government minister has said the armed forces will be used for these reconstruction programmes.

Open letter to IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn about loan to Sri Lanka

Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Managing Director

International Monetary Fund

Washington DC

United States

Paris, 5 May 2009

Dear Managing Director Strauss-Kahn,

Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the lamentable state of press freedom in Sri Lanka at a time when the International Monetary Fund is considering a major loan for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government. In return for granting this loan, we urge you to obtain specific undertakings from the government to respect press freedom and the rule of law.

Sri Lankan officials insist that there are no delays in the loan application process and that the money will be used for development. At the same time, a government minister has said the armed forces will be used for these reconstruction programmes. We think the IMF should ask itself whether it is appropriate to accord Sri Lanka such a large loan as long as this government does not give firm undertakings to respect freedom of information.

You must be aware that the Sri Lankan government’s crushing victory over the LTTE Tamil armed separatists, at a cost of thousands of civilian casualties, has been accompanied by a ruthless campaign against the press and critical voices. Of all the countries with a democratically elected government, Sri Lanka is the one that shows least respect for media freedom, as its ranking in the latest Reporters Without Borders press freedom index shows.

As you know, Sri Lanka is spending as much as 1.6 billion dollars on defence in its 2009 budget, a 6.5 percent increase on the 2007 allocation, while neglecting social needs. Some army units are implicated in war crimes. Others are suspected of responsibility for many cases of violence against journalists and human rights activists.

The war that has left thousands dead in the north of the country has been waged in the absence of any independent witnesses. Sri Lankan and foreign journalists have been kept away from the battlefield, for their safety according to the army, but above all so as not to “hamper” the military offensive. The authorities also restrict press access to the Jaffna peninsula and detention camps holding Tamils who have fled the north.

The IMF has a duty to ensure that money lent to Sri Lanka is not used by the government or military to continue the crackdown on dissent.

While Sri Lanka still has quality news media, their freedom to cover such important subjects as corruption within the military, civilian and military casualties in the north or reconstruction in the east is now greatly restricted. Many journalists, including defence specialists, have fled the country and some media that are government critics have decided to stop publishing.

The World Bank has on several occasions stressed the key importance of press freedom for lasting social and economic development. Former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn said: “Studies show that the higher the level of press freedom in a country the greater the control over corruption.”

How can the IMF trust the current government when certain Tamil ministers who will have an important role to play in reconstruction are known to have been involved in human rights violations? The EPDP, a political party and paramilitary group led by social services minister Douglas Devananda, has for example been involved in many murders, including of journalists.

How can you be sure that this aid will not be embezzled when Sri Lankan journalists with a track record of investigative reporting have been murdered, threatened or forced to flee the country? You could, for example, insist that the government obtain concrete results in the investigation into the January 2009 murder of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, who was known for investigating corruption.

How can you be sure that this loan will be used to help the war’s civilian victims if the media and even the humanitarian organisations have great difficulty in working freely in the refugee camps and Tamil areas? You could condition the loan on the ability of journalists to move about freely in Tamil areas.

How can you count on the Sri Lankan government to guarantee good governance and the rule of law when government critics, including journalists, are gagged? You should ask President Rajapaksa’s government to obtain concrete results in the investigations into the many murders of journalists and physical attacks on news media that have taken place in recent months. If the perpetrators and instigators are not arrested, the climate of fear and self-censorship will continue to reign in the country’s media.

The international community, including the IMF, is already pondering post-war scenarios but how are the north and east of the island to be rebuilt and how is hope to be restored to the Tamils if the government does not undertake to respect their most basic rights, including the right to free expression?

There will be no process of reconciliation and reconstruction without press freedom. If the Tamils are deprived of the media that represent them freely, even if these media are sometimes guilty of excesses, future generations will take up arms again. It is vital that, as a conciliatory gesture, the Tamil journalists currently held, including J. S. Tissainayagam, are released.

At the same time, as long as the Sinhalese and English-language media are forced to censor themselves and are prevented from proposing ways for achieving a lasting peace, the hatred between the communities will continue to deepen.

Sri Lanka faces an enormous task. The regions with a Tamil majority have been ravaged by war and the civilian population is suffering. But there is no realistic hope of rebuilding the country unless the democratic system is consolidated.

These questions continue to be unanswered. Granting a loan to Sri Lanka as things stand, without any guarantees, would probably just reinforce a government which, while democratically elected, is guilty of many human rights violations.

We are aware that it is the IMF’s job to help Sri Lanka to recover from long decades of war, but we hope that your beliefs and convictions will lead you to make this aid conditional on the reinforcement of freedoms. We formally urge you to attach more conditions to this loan.

Sincerely,

Jean-François Julliard Secretary-General

RSF

     
World leaders note Sri Lankan press abuses

(By Bob Dietz/Asia Program Coordinator, CPJ, 05 05 2009) - Sri Lanka got special mention in the statements of world leaders marking World Press Freedom Day, May 3. It’s not surprising. The government in Colombo has coupled an all-out effort to end its war with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam with an assault on critics in the Sri Lankan media. U.S. President Barack Obama’s statement mentioned the egregious case of J.S. Tissainayagam, on trial in Colombo and accused of terrorism because of his writing.

Obama cites this and other cases as examples of press freedom abuses worldwide.

Emblematic examples of this distressing reality are figures like J.S.Tissainayagam in Sri Lanka, or Shi Tao and Hu Jia in China. We are also especially concerned about the citizens from our own country currently under detention abroad: individuals such as Roxana Saberi in Iran, and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, Adam Schiff, one of the founders of the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press, also mentioned Tissa, among several others, in his remarks for World Press Freedom Day. “His trial is set to resume on May 6, but it is our hope the Sri Lankan government will drop these baseless charges and release J.S. before the trial resumes,” the California congressman said.

In a May 2 message, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also turned his attention to Sri Lanka, calling on the government to ensure that those responsible for journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga’s murder are found and prosecuted.

Ban cited CPJ’s statistics to press the government for a full investigation into Lasantha’s death: “According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 11 journalists have been killed in the line of duty so far this year. Among them was Lasantha Wickrematunge, a prominent Sri Lankan journalist assassinated in January on his way to work,” Ban’s statement said.

And on May 3, the United Nations posthumously awarded Lasantha its UNESCO 2009 World Press Freedom Prize for his work. The decision to name Lasantha was made in April, by a global panel of 14 judges.

Lasantha’s wife, Sonali Samarasinghe Wickremetunge, did not attend the UNESCO ceremony in Doha for what she said were “unavoidable circumstances.” But her statement was read by her niece, Natalie Samarasinghe. (We’ve posted her full statement here) Her eloquence is fitting for the nature of the award and as a way to commemorate her husband’s killing and her country’s suffering:

The free Sri Lanka in which I was born no longer exists. Our country has entered a Dark Age characterized by tyranny and state-sponsored terror, where the government publicly, cynically and unapologetically equates democratic dissent to treason. The sinister white van in which the state abducts its perceived enemies including journalists, many of them never to be seen again, has become a symbol of untold dread. Yet, we need to remember that violence against journalists is only the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of ordinary Sri Lankan civilians–men, women, children, and the aged–have been herded into concentration camps where they are held against their will. There they languish in the most horrible of conditions, trapped behind barbed-wire fences and beneath the radar of a world which, perhaps rightly, is more concerned with the arguably greater tragedies unfolding in places such as Darfur.

CPJ Blog

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One Response to “Open letter to IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn about loan to Sri Lanka”

  1. Dr C P Thiagarajah - May 5th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    Why is that Reporters without Boarders shy to use the word racist against this government when Sinhalese people themselves call MR war is a racist war and that could be willful murder or genocide. Sonali Wickrematunga MSc and Dr Brian Senivirutne MD MRCP are the two prominent ones that come to my mind among the many learned Sinhalese gentry. Call a spade a spade. By being polite you are too soft to those who violate human rights of fellow citizens.
    Even if the money is given it should be given for the development of the war ravaged Tamil Homeland of the North and East with oversseing power given to the elected members of parliament of the area. The present regime is hounding out Tamils youths and at the moment nobody knows where they are because there is a press gag and not all INGOs are allowed to work with the refugees.

    Dr C P Thiagarajah

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