’Peace and Reconciliation in South Asia’: A Presentation - 15 April 2008

Ladies and gentlemen, I am most grateful to His Holiness, and to the organizers of this Conference, for having given me an opportunity to contribute to this Panel discussion on ‘The Role of the Media in Conflict Resolution’. Increasingly it has become clear that the media, at least as regards Sri Lanka, has often contributed to the heightening of conflict, and it is timely therefore to consider how this can be reduced.

I say this in terms both of the ideals of this Conference, and of what happened here yesterday. The Conference talks about reconciliation, and that is what we desire. However, we also saw yesterday what might be termed bitterness, emotional perhaps, in some sense understandable, but not conducive to the healing that His Holiness is trying to encourage.

Bitterness, I should note, is understandable in the context of the treatment of Tamils, in particular in the early eighties. But continuing bitterness, as religious leaders of all sorts have taught us, only creates further suffering. And when bitterness privileges terrorism, when it condones through silence the killing of moderate Tamils who had sought political compromises, when it degenerates into a game of atrocity snap, it needs to be dealt with firmly, albeit with kindness and even sympathy.

Unfortunately such bitterness is often excited by the media which, understandably, prefers the sensational soundbite to accurate analysis. Many years ago, when trying to introduce some sense into the media policy of the Jayewardene government, that which launched attacks on Tamils in 1977, 1981 and 1983, I noted that the old adage, facts were sacred, opinion was free, had been totally perverted. Facts were not what happened, but what someone said had happened, opinion was not based on reason, it was simply what someone felt, without any need to supply objectively assessable justification.

Sadly, those practices still appear in our media in Sri Lanka. More worryingly, they are reproduced in the international media, which sometimes blindly follows assertions that are never checked. Thus, if I might refer to one of the incidents highlighted yesterday, the deaths of several young girls at Sencholai, when it occurred, the LTTE claimed that this was an orphanage. With more efficiency than generally manages, the government of Sri Lanka revealed that the orphanage had been moved from there several years previously. The LTTE then claimed that it was a training centre where girls had been taken for a first aid course. It did not explain why girls had been taken so far away for such a course.

The Air Force claim was that it had bombed a training camp, and it produced film of girls in fatigues training in military techniques at the place. This was shown to journalists, but this proof did not receive publicity. Obviously not, for sensationalistic claims of an orphanage being bombed are much more exciting than the truth.

In fact, three of the girls survived, and were cared for in Kandy. Then it was claimed that their parents wanted them, and they were taken back to the North, under ICRC supervision, whereupon one of them, the healthiest, was reported dead in Vavuniya. Again the government acted more swiftly than it usually does, and rescued the other two, and has kept them safe since in a secret location. They have now testified before the Commission of Inquiry, and it is clear that the centre was one to which young girls were taken forcibly, to be trained in the militarism that has now become endemic under LTTE domination.

Sadly, just as good money drives out bad, so too it is sensational falsehoods that settle deep in the minds of the world at large, fuelled by the propensity to believe of many Tamils who were so badly treated in the eighties. Unfortunately the cry is taken up by politicians who naturally enough listen to their constituents. Sadly, given the relative unimportance of Sri Lanka, there is little study of the facts, and a government that has to use all available resources not only to combat terrorism but to provide unparalleled social services to all its citizens, including those in areas still controlled by the LTTE, cannot combat the relentless propaganda churned out by bitter opponents of reconciliation.

To cite another example, yesterday we were told that Sri Lanka unilaterally abrogated the Ceasefire Agreement. We were not told that, after the CFA was signed in 2002, the LTTE violated it nearly 4000 times, not according to the Government, but according to the Scandinavian Monitoring Mission. Government violations were less than 10% of that. The LTTE continued to bring in arms, and set fire to a ship in which a brave Norwegian monitor had found them, forcing him to jump off. The poor LTTE crew – for we should have compassion even for them, being ordered to do this when they rang Kilinochchi, perished in the explosion. Little of this has been reported internationally, and it was soon forgotten, to be replaced by endless generalizations.

Thus we have heard of indiscriminate attacks on civilians. My earnest idealistic friend Mr. Prabhu spoke yesterday of heaps of civilian deaths through bombing. Fortunately I have collated all reports of such deaths, and by reports I mean anything that has appeared in the media. Though the very few incidents have been heavily highlighted, there have in fact, over 20 months, been only five incidents of civilian deaths in 168 aerial attacks on identified targets. Two of them were of broadcasting facilities which, as you know from Western precedents, are deemed legitimate targets.

Again, yesterday we had the extraordinary claim that elections in the Eastern Province were somehow wrong, that they went against the spirit of the Indo-Lankan Accord of 1987. That Accord was signed between two governments, and if both governments believe the elections are a positive measure, then it is quite extraordinary that extraneous elements should pronounce on them so pompously.

Sadly, the LTTE has always been against democracy and the right of the people to choose. In 2003, when the then Minister of Constitutional Affairs wanted local elections, the Prime Minister stopped him, under LTTE pressure as it seemed. Now, some LTTE surrogates, from the TNA, elected in a poll that is universally recognized as neither free nor fair, in the Tamil areas of the North and East, want to freeze representation at that low point of 2004. They forget that the principal candidate representing Eastern aspirations was killed just before the election – but he has been vindicated now, in that his daughter topped the poll for the Batticaloa municipality, and is now mayor of that once again proudly democratic city. Another candidate was forced to resign, having been identified with what was then termed the Karuna faction, and was killed soon afterwards.

But the press and the diaspora are silent about such killings, the killing of Tamil moderates who want peace and reconciliation. I do not think many of those who promote a perverted view of facts are deliberately dishonest. Rather, they have fallen prey to subtle propaganda. This is nothing new. After all, thirty years ago, there was much concern about the plight of Tamil estate workers immediately after the British tea plantations were nationalized. The idealistic reporters who went to town on this had not had their attention directed thither during the hundred years and more during which foreign owners had imposed much worse conditions. I have recently edited the memoirs of one of the planters of those days who talks about his efforts to secure improvements, and also about the steady response of his Directors in London, to the effect that they were responsible to their shareholders, and could not sanction such expenses, to improve line accommodation, provide running water and better latrines.

The reporters who pounced on Sri Lanka immediately after the nationalization of the plantations had no idea that they were being used. I am sure many reporters now have no idea of the facts behind the allegations they publicize. But I can only hope that careful study of facts and judgments based on analysis of background and context will replace some of the gung-ho journalism that now exacerbates conflicts instead of helping to resolve them.

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha

Secretary-General

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process