Sri Lanka without freedom

Il presidente rieletto Rajapaksa In Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa has won the elections on January 26. That he won honestly remains doubtful, seeing his history. This is a man often accused of persecuting the press in a country where journalists are arrested and killed, 14 died during his presidency in a country at the bottom of all rankings of the world in regard to respect for human rights. And after the elections, the situation is not improving.

The losing candidate, General Sarath Fonseka, accused the president of rigging the election and shortly after his election office was raided by police, who arrested 23 people. Another 14 people, mainly members of the army, were arrested for conspiracy. Then, Fonseka himself was arrested. Fonseka is the general who led the final offensive against the Tamil Tigers, last summer, and managed to defeat them after three decades of civil war. But then the General has distanced himself from the President, claiming that the abuses against the Tamil minority and the killings of unarmed prisoners that took place in the final stages of the war were decided without his consent. The general counted much on the votes of Tamils, the minority that lives in the north of the country and constitutes 12% of the population. But much of the Tamil population still lives in the refugee camps following the war, and the government has effectively prevented many of them to vote due to lack of means of transport between camps and polling stations. Fonseka was planning to flee abroad, given the heavy atmosphere in the country, and also called in vain to foreign countries to protest with the President for the lack of democracy in the country.
In fact, the Government of Sri Lanka has good relations with China, Russia, India, European countries and the United States, and so it was duly scuppered the UN investigation on the abuses of the war and generally, the international media talk very little of the country, of the murders of journalists and of the issue of the Tamil minority, even if is no different than the Palestinian question. Even the Tamil in fact, since the country gained independence, were often persecuted by the Sinhalese majority and the refugees who have fled the country are more than one million.
After the elections the president re-elected promised to bring peace and normalize the situation, and finally, a year after his murder, was even arrested an alleged responsible for the death of the journalist and editor Lasantha Wickremarunge. But the reality is very different: the persecution of independent journalists continues as usual, and Amnesty International has recorded just in a few days at least 85 incidents of intimidation, assaults and murders against journalists, political opponents and defenders of human rights. And the parliament, ahead of parliamentary elections in April, voted for the extension of emergency laws that allow the arrest and detention of suspected opponents without warrant and without trial. At least the EU has decided to suspend the status of important trade partner to the country of the Indian subcontinent, because of the countless violations of human rights. But the suspension will be in force only six months from now, and so more than anything it is just a mild warning to push the Sri Lanka government to improve the situation. But these days it seems very unlikely that Sri Lanka could soon become a democracy able to respect and protect all its citizens.