Writing under threat

In Jaffna, the places called High Security Zones are not really safe for Tamil people. They can’t go to their homes freely. If they go out they can’t return home freely. Even at the sea there are many rules and fishermen can’t freely work. They can’t go and fish freely. Like this, people can’t live freely. They talk about how many restrictions there are for their lives.

As people come and tell journalists this, we can’t write all about it because then problems will come to us. If we wrote about that, they will come and kills us or threaten us. And then they would go and threaten the people further and increase massacres and torture people.

In August in Jaffna 140 people went missing. But we can’t write this freely. But in LTTE controlled areas, I can see journalists here write freely whatever they want. Coming from Jaffna it’s very different, journalists here can write the news and their opinions freely. No matter what journalists write here, no one will torture them. And they can talk about any topic they want with all people. This is the difference between government and LTTE controlled areas. In war times we can’t write freely there — the government censors what we write. This mostly happens to Tamil journalists. For example, two journalists I Know, Veerakeswari Singajen and Manekavaseri Ponder. After they wrote articles they were taken and arrested and put in jail by the Sri Lankan Army...

It’s coming out that EPDP paramilitaries and the Sri Lankan Intelligence are doing this, organizations like the Human Rights Commission are saying. It’s coming out that it’s people who have contact with the Army — who stayed with them or work with them, who are doing this. And if anyone tries to make this known outside, they are the ones who will come and murder people and threaten them. When they go to talk to people and ask questions about this the Army comes and murders them. Because they are killed, others don’t write about this...

In peacetime, hundreds of youth and all types of people were killed and massacred. This is the environment of the Jaffna peninsula...

-Velluppillai Thavachchalvam, 36 years