Related: When Was the Last Time You Heard About.... Sri Lanka?
I DOUBT THAT MATTERS MUCH to the TAMILS in the CONCENTRATION CAMPS no matter what you think -- and THAT is MY CONCERN because PEOPLE and life are THE MOST VALUABLE VALUE we have!!
A Tamil mother cradled her child at a refugee camp on the outskirts of the town of Vavuniya in Sri Lanka yesterday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is slated to visit the country. (Reuters)
Witness to a Holocaust
Boston Harbors Tamil Terrorists
Yeah, that is the kind of thing I.... wait, what was that last one?
"Arrest a big blow to Tamil Tigers; Sri Lankan officials question new rebel leader" by Bharatha Mallawarachi, Associated Press | August 8, 2009
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - The arrest of the Tamil Tigers’s new leader has dealt a major blow to the rebels’ efforts to regroup and push on with their separatist struggle after being routed by Sri Lankan forces, the government said yesterday.
It was also a major public relations coup for President Mahinda Rajapaksa ahead of elections today in two northern towns that he billed as the first seeds of democracy along the former war zone.
How are war crimes a pr coup?
Sri Lankan authorities yesterday were questioning Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the former chief arms smuggler for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and its new chief, after he was arrested in Southeast Asia and flown to Sri Lanka.
You, of course, mean TORTURING, right, MSM?
Pathmanathan, known by the nom de guerre KP, had been working to turn the remnants of the violent insurgent group into a peaceful liberation movement after the government routed the rebels on the battlefield in May and killed their revered leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The rebels, who had been fighting to create a separate nation for minority Tamils for more than a quarter century, had controlled a shadow state in parts of northern Sri Lanka that Prabhakaran ran as a virtual dictatorship. Today, the government is to hold elections in the towns of Vavuniya and Jaffna, which lay just outside the rebels’ former stronghold....
But the government has come under fire for refusing to allow foreign media into the towns - which are sealed to outsiders - to cover the vote.
I guess that accounts for the blips in news coverage as the Sri Lanka tragedy slinks along, barely and rarely remarked upon.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said the decision to bar the media “dashes any hope of a transparent election.’’
All rigged anyway, so.... ?
Armed paramilitary groups reportedly have a strong presence in both towns, and the residents appear disengaged from the vote - or afraid - after more than a quarter century of warfare....
Nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians who fled the war zone during the final months of fighting also remain in camps near the two towns.
Yeah, you SAW ONE or TWO or THREE ABOVE, didn't you?
The government is also holding an election in Uva province and is likely to get a boost from Pathmanathan’s arrest. The circumstances of the capture of the smuggler wanted by Interpol remained in dispute yesterday.
WHAT? WHO? WHEN? WHERE? HOW?
YOU KNOW what I'M THING, don't you (clue: rhymes with you) am thinking, don't you?
Or SOME OTHER UNDERCOVER WESTERN GUN-RUNNING OUTFIT, 'eh, 'eh?
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All right, LET'S SEE if they BRING IT UP again!!
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - On World Press Freedom Day in May, President Obama held up J.S. Tissainayagam, the editor of a crusading magazine in Sri Lanka who has been jailed since March 2008, as a symbol of the oppression of the media.
These self-centered, agenda-pushing cretins of the AmeriKan MSM are incredible. U.S has KILLED hundreds in Iraq alone.
Yesterday, a judge in Sri Lanka sentenced Tissainayagam to 20 years of hard labor for violating the country’s antiterrorism laws by writing articles highly critical of a government military offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels who had controlled a chunk of Sri Lanka’s north.
Let us HOPE and PRAY AmeriKa NEVER GOES THERE, huh? Or are we.... cusp?
Tissainayagam, who is Tamil, was the editor of the now-defunct North Eastern Monthly magazine, and was accused of accepting money and other support from the Tigers. He was convicted under laws that give harsh sentences for offenses like using racially divisive language or promoting disharmony.
Flip through a newspapers ad pages sometimes and see who (Macy's, AmEx, Boston.com, drug companies today) advertises in there. Any questions?
These laws were enacted in response to the Tamil Tiger insurgency. The insurgents, members of the Hindu Tamil minority, sought a separate state from Sri Lanka’s Buddhist, Sinhalese majority. The government decisively defeated the Tigers in a bloody final battle on a strip of beach in northern Sri Lanka in May.
Christian, too (cui bono in the mix, 'eh), but....
As is often the case with local journalists in conflict zones, Tissainayagam’s reporting reflected the prevailing point of view of the minority to which he belonged, but the government argued his work went further.
As if, what, it SHOULD BE GIVEN LESS WAIGHT and LESS CONSIDERATION than the PROPAGANDISTS riding desks and getting government handouts at WESTERN MEDIA all around the world??
WTF?!!!!
“The constitution itself gives freedom of press, but that doesn’t allow anybody to spread false information to spur ethnic violence,’’ Sudarshana DeSilva, the prosecutor, told the court, Reuters reported.
So what to do with the newspapers!
But rights advocates say that Tissainayagam’s sentence reflects the plight of Sri Lanka’s embattled press corps. At least seven journalists have been killed since 2007.
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Okay, no smuggler (or concentration camps), next....
Oh, and EDITORIAL now!
Journalists rarely set out to become like the proverbial canary in a coal mine. But in certain places, at certain times, they can’t help themselves. If they insist on doing their jobs and a government doesn’t like what they publish, they may be thrown in prison or killed by an assassin who goes unpunished. And usually, where reporters and editors are treated this way, a greater humanitarian catastrophe is at hand.
Please editorialize about Gaza, please.
So it is with J. S. Tissainayagam, the Tamil editor of a defunct monthly magazine in Sri Lanka who was sentenced a week ago to 20 years in prison under a law that criminalizes writings intended to create communal disharmony. The terrible irony is that 280,000 Tamil civilians displaced by the government’s victorious war against the separatist Tamil Tigers are currently suffering and dying in flooded, ill-provided camps.
Okay, they did mention it, even though they kinda low-balled it (I read 300,000 above -- nearly), they did mention it. But they don't keep it up, and some places they ignore. Meanwhile I get such s*** in my printed matter we call a paper way out here.
This is a real source of communal disharmony. This is what makes Tissainayagam a canary in a coal mine.
Truth bloggers!
On World Press Freedom day, President Obama cited Tissainayagam’s case as an example of what can happen to journalists who displease governments intolerant of criticism.
YOU BETTER STAND BY THAT, sir!!!!!!!!
Obama should call for his release and for Sri Lanka’s uprooted civilians to be returned to their homes.
YES, at all times, if possible, YES!!!!!!! If not, COMPENSATE!
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