Intimidation campaign is damaging to the image of Sri Lanka

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) accused the government of Sri Lanka on Monday of deliberately intimidating foreign observers and journalists of suppressing all criticism of its conduct of the war in the Tamil conflict. "Sri Lanka’s threats of expulsion against foreign journalists, ambassadors and the staff of aid agencies damage the image of the island state”, said the GfbV Asia consultant, Ulrich Delius. Sri Lanka’s Minister of Defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has threatened to expel the German ambassador, Jürgen Weerth, and the Swiss ambassador, Ruth Flint, as well as the correspondents of Al Jazeera, the BBC and CNN.

It is not the criticism from abroad which presents the problem, but the disregard for humanitarian international law by the Sri Lankan security forces. "Someone who orders an attack on a fully occupied hospital three times within 24 hours must be prepared to receive critical questions by journalists and NGOs”, said Delius. At least nine civilians were killed on Sunday when the hospital of Puthukkudiyiruppu in Vanni in the north of Sri Lanka was shelled. There were at the time 500 patients in the hospital. "Even violations of human rights by the Tigers’ Liberation forces do not give the Sri Lankan army a carte blanche for infringements of humanitarian international law.”

These threatening gestures throw a bad light on the democratic development of Sri Lanka, which has now reached a new low. An opposition politician has recently proposed that Parliament be suspended since so much pressure is being placed on the media that they can no longer report in freedom. Since Sri Lanka was voted out of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in May 2008 the human rights situation in the south-Asian state has deteriorated further. In no other country of southern Asia do more people disappear for political reasons and are more journalists prevented from free reporting. Sri Lanka’s government is encouraging a culture of lawlessness, which is not in keeping with a democracy.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, threatened at the weekend foreign ambassadors, journalists and NGOs with expulsion if they display in their reports sympathy for the rebels of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and spread panic.