tagged w/ Colombo
-
La mostra celebra un particolare “matrimonio esotico” tra culture, quella italiana e quella cubana, solo apparentemente lontane, evidenziandone il loro rapporto, poco noto ma sorprendente, attraverso il racconto delle vicende di tanti protagonisti, da Colombo fino ai giorni nostri.La mostra celebra un particolare “matrimonio esotico” tra culture, quella... more
-
-
Doctors remove nails allegedly hammered into maid by employers
By Iqbal Athas, For CNN
August 27, 2010 9:43 a.m. EDT
Photo: An X-ray shows nails hammered into the body of a Sri Lankan maid.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* NEW: Doctors remove nails from the maid's body
* She was attacked after complaining of being overworked
* Sri Lankan officials are urging the Saudis to conduct an investigation
* The victim is among thousands of Sri Lankan migrant workers
Colombo, Sri Lanka (CNN) -- Doctors at a Sri Lankan hospital operated for three hours Friday to remove 18 nails and metal particles allegedly hammered into the arms, legs and forehead of a maid by her Saudi employer.
Dr. Kamal Weeratunga said the surgical team in the southern town of Kamburupitiya pulled nails ranging from about one to three inches from Lahadapurage Daneris Ariyawathie's body. He said doctors have not yet removed four small metal particles embedded in her muscles.
"She is under heavy antibiotics but in a stable condition," Weeratunga said.
Sri Lankan officials, meanwhile, met with Saudi diplomats in Colombo to urge an investigation into the incident.
"It was cruel treatment which should be roundly condemned," said L.K. Ruhunuge of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.
He said the Sri Lanka government has forwarded to Saudi authorities a detailed report on the incident including statements from Ariyawathie.
Ariyawathie left Sri Lanka on March 25 to work as a housemaid in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia after the bureau registered her as a person obtaining a job from an officially recognized job agency.
She was held down by her employer's wife while the employer hammered the heated nails, Ruhunuge told CNN. She apparently had complained to the couple that she was being overworked, Ruhunuge said.
The nails were hammered into her arms and legs while one was on her forehead, he said.
"Most of the wounds are superficial but five to 10 are somewhat deep," said Dr. Prabath Gajadeera of the Base Hospital. "Luckily, none of the organs is affected. Only nerves and blood vessels are affected."
Ariyawathie, 49, is a mother of two children who were opposed to their mother's journey to Saudi Arabia for work.
Several countries across the Middle East and Asia host significant numbers of migrant domestic workers, ranging from 196,000 in Singapore to about 1.5 million in Saudi Arabia, according to a report published earlier this year by Human Rights Watch.
Many of the domestic workers are poor Asian women from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Nepal. Widespread abuse has been documented by global human rights groups.
Common complaints include unpaid wages, long working hours with no time for rest, and heavy debt burdens from exorbitant recruitment fees, said the Human Rights Watch report.
Isolation and forced confinement contribute to psychological and physical abuse, sexual violence, forced labor, and trafficking, the report said. The abuse often goes unchecked because of a lack of government regulation and protective laws.
Ruhunuge said the registration of the local job agency that placed Ariyawathie has been cancelled.
"We have also asked [them] to pay compensation to the victim," he added. "We want to bring those responsible for justice. We are doing our best in this regard," he said.
He said his office was ready to accompany Ariyawathie to Saudi Arabia to testify if a case is brought against her former employers.
Ariyawathie's dream was to one day return to Sri Lanka and build a house with the money she saved.
"We are looking at the possibility of helping her to do this," Ruhunuge said.
Karu Jayasuriya, deputy leader of the main opposition United National Party, visited Ariyawathie in the hospital and said he was appalled.
"We want the government to raise this issue at the highest levels with the Saudi government. We cannot imagine that such crude and uncivilized things are happening to our workers," he said.
Saudi officials were not immediately available for comment.Doctors remove nails allegedly hammered into maid by employers
By Iqbal Athas, For... more
-
-
There’s a lot of soul searching going on in the field of journalism these days. It’s been a tough year. And I don’t just mean for the declining newspaper industry.
It’s a little early to be doing end-of-year accounting, but it relates to Vanguard’s story this week, so bear with me.
Looking back, 2009 was a year that saw perhaps more high profile cases of journalists in jeopardy than in a long while: freelance reporter Roxana Saberi, New York Times reporters David Rohde and Stephen Farrell, Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari and of course our colleagues Laura Ling and Euna Lee, just to name a few.
Reporting, especially in conflict zones and repressive environments, has always been and will always be a risky endeavor. Our president of programming likes to quote “The Godfather” when we talk here about the risks that reporters often assume: “This is the business that we have chosen.”
And while it’s true that many of us often choose to parachute in and out of risky places in order to tell stories that we believe need to be told, there is also the understanding that we have a safe place to retreat when things get too dodgy.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case for local reporters.
While reporting this week’s episode of Vanguard, "Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror", Mariana van Zeller and I encountered one of the toughest media crackdowns we’ve ever experienced. Like all independent reporters, we were shut out of the war zone, refused entry into hospitals where the sick and wounded were being taken, and banned from refugee camps. But worst of all, in Sri Lanka’s War on Terror the government had drawn an eerily familiar line: “You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” And few people felt comfortable speaking openly or challenging the government’s prosecution of the war out of fear that they would be labeled a traitor or worse, a supporter of terrorism.
Much of the risk reporters take on is when trying to navigate around the barriers that are put up to block them from getting information, information that is often vital to drawing a true picture of events. Needless to say, Sri Lanka’s media crackdown was frustrating for us. But the struggles we faced were put into perspective when we visited the office of The Sunday Leader newspaper. There we found the empty office of Lasantha Wickramatunge, a prominent Sri Lankan journalist and editor of the Sunday Leader. Lasantha was a dogged reporter who spent his career exposing corruption and misdeeds in government. He was also a vocal critic of Sri Lanka’s War on Terror. It was a stance that would cost him his life.
In January, just months before the war officially came to an end, Lasantha was shot in the head and killed by unknown gunmen while on his way to work. But knowing that he was a target, just days before he was killed, Lasantha wrote an editorial that on his instructions was only to be published upon his death.
“When finally I am killed,” he wrote. “It will be the government that kills me.“
Lasantha’s letter from the grave received worldwide attention. But he was not alone. According to Amnesty International, at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists and media workers have been killed since 2006. And many others have been assaulted, arrested or fled the country. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka is also not alone. All over the world, there are journalists who daily suffer repression and intimidation, risk imprisonment and sometimes their lives in pursuit of truth.
This is the business we have chosen.
***
Within the journalism community there is a healthy debate now taking place about how we can better look after ourselves and members of our community, and still cover important stories. A few weeks ago, Mariana van Zeller and I were invited to New York by PBS’s FRONTLINE/World to participate in a small gathering of journalists and media representatives to discuss the challenges of covering conflicts and working in repressive environments.
The participants ranged from New York Times reporters to freelancers, established media organizations to fairly new upstarts like ourselves.
The idea is to eventually create a resource for journalists of all stripes when it comes to covering difficult stories. For more info go here.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. - Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” - Mariana van Zeller
- A Shout-Out to Interns Everywhere - Tracey ChangThere’s a lot of soul searching going on in the field of journalism these days.... more
-
-
Every now and then, something that seemed impossible to achieve, comes to pass. But we don’t always notice and say, “Holy Shit!” That’s because we live in an age where an over-abundance of trivial information is coupled with a rapid pace of change. Often, when we learn about a new occurrence, it’s difficult to think back even a few years and remember why it’s significant.
That’s the case with the subject of this week’s Vanguard doc, Mariana van Zeller and Darren Foster’s Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror. Which is one of the reasons why it’s so cool.
Without spoiling the suspense in Wednesday’s episode, in it Mariana and Darren look at the recent demise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the LTTE, one of the nastiest and most formidable insurgent/terror organizations in the world. With the US facing escalating violence in Afghanistan, they’re telling an important and engrossing story with big implications.
But besides plugging their episode, what I want to do here is vouch as to how nasty—and seemingly impossible to defeat—the Tigers really were.
In April of 2000, when the Tigers had a huge offensive going, Laura Ling, Gotham Chopra and I went to Sri Lanka, after Laura succeeded in getting us journalist visas in two days of trying, after I tried for a year and a half and failed. We arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, and found out that in order to get past the military checkpoints to head to the conflict zone, we needed a Road Permit, which we didn’t have. It took Laura a few days of negotiating with the Minister of Defense to get us the permit, and meanwhile we looked around Colombo a bit—what struck us was how common large suicide bombings by Tigers were. Our hotel had been bombed, and many public places had huge doves painted on the pavement—a sign that there had been a bombing. Hundreds of people had been killed in the city in the previous couple of years.
Outside the capital, fighting between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government continued to intensify. The week prior to our visit the Tigers had staged an amphibious landing at Elephant Pass and over-run a large Sri Lankan military base. The guys at the US Embassy in Colombo told us: “There are only two groups in the world that could stage an amphibious landing of that size—the US Marine Corps, and the Tamil Tigers.” The city seemed to live on edge.
Laura finally got us our road permit, and we drove out to the east, where the government controlled the main highway via a series of fire bases built along it—until night fell, and then the Tigers controlled the highway, along everything else off the highway which they controlled during daylight also. En route to a safe hotel run by a Tiger sympathizer, the sun set on us, and we had a pretty intense few hours driving the highway in the dark, afraid the soldiers in the fire bases we were passing would mistake us for Tigers and shoot, while the Tigers would mistake our van for a military vehicle and shoot.
The second day, we reached the end of where the government controlled the highway. There was a military base, and a barrier, like a train crossing, leading to Tamil Tiger country. Laura got on the phone with her friend the Minister of Defense back in Colombo, the soldiers raised the gate and we headed into Tiger Territory driving a steady 40 km per hour and honking our horn every 100 meters as a sign to the Tigers not to fire on us. Finally, some Tigers flagged us down, took us to a nearby command post. For such dread folks, they seemed very soft spoken and placid. They served us ice cold Coke—it was hot—and then showed us the cyanide capsules around their necks—they all wore them so they could commit suicide if captured. Then they gave us a tour of the area. We met a couple 16 and 17-year old girl Tigers who’d already had several years of combat experience. They were also placid, but now it began to seem spooky. Not surprisingly the Tigers were big into a culture of martyrdom. They showed us a lot of monuments to dead leaders, and a cemetery with 1000 fresh Tiger graves. They offered to let us stay to the night and go with them to fire mortars at a Sri Lankan military base, but we decided to head back.
My conclusion back then: What a nightmare. So when Laura and I heard early this year that the Tigers might be close to being defeated, we found it astonishing. And then Mariana and Darren went over to check out this important but underappreciated development. And the result is not only fascinating, but important. Check it out Wednesday.
This Week on Vanguard: Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror
"Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror" airs this Wednesday at 10pm ET / 10pm PT on Current TV.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. - Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” - Mariana van Zeller
- A Shout-Out to Interns Everywhere - Tracey Chang
- The economy is growing again. Where does that leave you? - Mitch KossEvery now and then, something that seemed impossible to achieve, comes to pass. But... more
-
-
I almost missed this juicy little tidbit from the arrest of Raj Rajaratnam, accused of millions of dollars of deals in insider trading: he's also suspected of helping to finance the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka's only recently-defeated insurgent group.
More specifically, authorities have looked into millions of dollars in donations that apparently landed in the coffers of the Tamil Tigers, the violent separatist group that battled the Sri Lankan government for a quarter-century until earlier this year.
A 2007 investigation into the American branch of the Tigers, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or L.T.T.E., turned up an “Individual B” who authorities say donated $2 million to the rebel group. People briefed on the matter, confirming a report in The Wall Street Journal, said that individual was Mr. Rajaratnam.
One of the things that made the Tamil Tigers such a stubborn organization for Sri Lanka's military to defeat was the large amount of financial support they received from the Tamil diaspora around the world. Donors gave huge amounts of money to support the cause of a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka. Rajaratnam, worth billions, had publicly begun a charity to help rebuild homes after the devastating 2004 tsunami that struck many Tamil villages on Sri Lanka's coasts. He's now implicated in donating directly to the Tigers' cause.
Vanguard's Mariana van Zeller traveled to Sri Lanka as the civil war was coming to a close. "Sri Lanka: Notes From A War On Terror", airing on Wednesday, November 4, documents the controversial strategy the Sri Lankan military undertook to finally bring an end to a Tamil insurgency that lasted thirty years.
Here's a short excerpt from that show:
Sneak Peek: Vanguard Season 3 Suicide Bomb (Video)
Recently on the News blog:
- Is Pakistan's instability spilling into Iran?
- Personal stories about The Oxycontin Express
- Afghanistan might get a runoff election after allI almost missed this juicy little tidbit from the arrest of Raj Rajaratnam, accused of... more
-
-
Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Sri Lanka to see how the Tamil Tigers, one of the world's most lethal and influential terrorist organizations, were finally defeated.Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Sri Lanka to see how the Tamil... more
-
-
What is going on in Sri Lanka? A discussion with International Affairs columnist and foreign correspondent Jonathan Manthorpe and Editor Fazil MihlarWhat is going on in Sri Lanka? A discussion with International Affairs columnist and... more
-
-
Tamil rebel aircraft dropped a bomb on Sri Lanka's capital of Colombo, killing at least two and wounding 47. Human Rights Watch says both the rebels and the Sri Lankan government "appear to be engaged in a perverse competition to demonstrate the greatest disregard for the civilian population."Tamil rebel aircraft dropped a bomb on Sri Lanka's capital of Colombo, killing at... more
-
-
BBC have reported at least 24 people killed and about 50 wounded by a bombing on a bus in the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, according to officials. The government has laid blame on the Tamil Tigers.
The escalation of the conflict between the government and the Tamil independence movement has also seen the rebel body uniquely employ its own air force. Only today there are reports that the Tamil Tigers have launched air attacks on north-east Sri Lanka, bombing military targets with light planes. This would be the fifth rebel aerial strike since the Tigers created the air force a year ago.
Todays attack is said to have caused no damage but would indicate the rebels have the coordinates of military targets. The development of the air force is itself a unique development in the conflict, which is said to have killed 70,000 people since the civil war began in 1983.
BBC have reported at least 24 people killed and about 50 wounded by a bombing on a bus... more
-
-
A large military parade is under way amid tight security in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, to mark the 60th anniversary of national independence. The anniversary comes as fighting has intensified between the government and the Tamil Tigers.
Security forces are on high alert after a series of bombings over the weekend. At least 11 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at the main railway station on Sunday, while 18 died in a bus blast in Dambulla on Saturday.A large military parade is under way amid tight security in Sri Lanka's capital,... more
-
-
Sri Lanka's cease-fire deal ended Wednesday in a spasm of violence, as suspected Tamil Tiger rebels bombed a civilian bus, gunned down the fleeing passengers and attacked farmers as they retreated into the bush, killing 31 people. There are fears that the official end of the truce, which had been largely ignored in recent years, will lead to even worse violence.
"This is a brazen demonstration to the whole world of its unchanged commitment to terrorism and the absolute rejection of democracy and all norms of civilized behavior in the pursuit of its unacceptable goal of separation" said President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority in the north and east after decades of being marginalized by Sinhalese-dominated governments. The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people.
Sri Lanka's cease-fire deal ended Wednesday in a spasm of violence, as suspected... more
-
-
A Sri Lankan minister has been killed in a roadside explosion near the capital. The blast hit the four-wheel-drive of DM Dassanayake, the nation building minister, as it was travelling in a motorcade on Tuesday morning on the road to the international airport. The minister received emergency treatment and had surgery for head injuries. Up to 10 other people were also treated for their injuries.
A Sri Lankan minister has been killed in a roadside explosion near the capital. The... more
-
