I suppose the process and my experiences with freedom of expression first started when I was interviewed by a Sri Lankan newspaper and mentioned that I intended to come to CHOGM, as I had done with the Australian CHOGM, to cover events there. The immediate response of this was a series of tweets by a middle-ranking diplomat called Bandula Jayasekara in Australia, who is significant also because he used to be the president's media adviser. He did a series of tweets in which he said, "I will make sure you don't get a visa." He tweeted 30 to 40 times and accused me of being funded by the Tamil Tigers and of being a propagandist on behalf of terror, despite the fact that quite clearly in the film we condemn the Tamil Tigers for having used acts of terror and suicide bombers, and for having shot at their own civilians. This clearly condemned them as people who have committed war crimes.
That set the tone for an incredibly hostile attitude towards me, which captures the paranoid nature of the regime. I don't use this term lightly as an insult. I think it's actually a technical description, because anyone who criticizes the regime or raises concerns over human rights, war crimes, and crimes against humanity is regarded as either an enemy of the state or a terrorist supporter, or perhaps worst of all, if they are Sinhala, a traitor.
The other thing that was consequent on my saying that I was planning to come was a series of online comments in response to the interview that said things such as, “You're welcome to come to Sri Lanka, but you will leave in a coffin.” “Come to Sri Lanka, we will have a white van waiting for you.” I'm sure you've heard testimony about the white vans. They're an instrument of terror and are used partly as a kind of act of political intimidation, but also very specifically are used to abduct people who usually disappear subsequently.
Another one said, “Come to Sri Lanka, and we will take you to meet Lasantha.” Lasantha Wickrematunge was the editor of the The Sunday Leader, the founder of The Sunday Leader who, after he wrote an editorial in January criticizing the triumphalism of the imminent defeat of the Tigers, was shot down in the streets by four assailants who have never been found. He subsequently, as you may have heard, published an editorial posthumously in which he identified his assassins as the government.
That was the kind of context in which we arrived. I went and travelled out. I'm actually the director of these movies, but the first two were made through Channel 4, and the last one is co-produced by Channel 4, so I went out with the Channel 4 news team. During the war, the Channel 4 news team was itself expelled for having raised some of these concerns. We were only able to go, and I was only able to be given the visa, because we understand that the British Prime Minister said that unless the media were given free access, he would not go.
We then arrived. We were met at the airport by a large demonstration, clearly orchestrated by the government. Indeed, we hadn't announced what plane we were coming on, so there was clearly intelligence behind it. It was a large demonstration of people with large numbers of banners, condemning us as supporting the LTTE, shouting "Macrae go home", and so on. We then went to our hotel where there was another demonstration with similar posters.
For the next few days, everything we did was monitored. There were intelligence officers outside our hotel, and everywhere we went we were followed by them. I just heard today, in fact, that at one point I went to visit someone from Amnesty International who was staying at a different hotel, and the next day, a whole series of intelligence officers turned up at that hotel and demanded the guest list to see who was there. There was a very intimidatory atmosphere.
At one point, we tried to go to the north to see if we could get to the former war zone, because we had been invited and told we would have free access to do our job.
We left the hotel at six in the morning, discreetly without announcing we were going, and we were immediately followed onto the train by intelligence—military intelligence, we understand—who sat on the train. After about four or five hours, the train was suddenly stopped by a large demonstration of several hundred people all carrying very similar posters, which obviously either had been organized at very short notice when it was discovered we were getting on the train or had been organized earlier, if perhaps intelligence had been listening to our telephone calls or monitoring our conversations in our rooms, which we suspect now was also happening.
That demonstration—again, there were the same slogans—prevented us from travelling north. The train was stopped. We sat there for about two hours and were eventually bundled off the train by the police. There was a slightly curious incident, in fact, where we were bundled by the police into a van, with police motorbikes in front and the police van behind, and we were sent indirectly back to Colombo. Then the next day all the papers ran a story saying we had refused to pay the taxi driver and he had lodged a complaint with the police. This was a farcical situation, and it went on for about two or three days, in which the press was obsessed with the fact that we tried to avoid paying a taxi fare. The fact that it's generally regarded as inappropriate, if you're bundled into a van by the police, to offer them money didn't seem to wash.
Rather more seriously, however, clearly there was an orchestrated attempt to prevent us from doing our job. Rather more seriously, while we were trying to get up north, there were three busloads of relatives of the disappeared trying to get down south to attend a human rights vigil and event, and they were stopped by the police. They were prevented from travelling down to the south. Some who did get there were then surrounded by police who would not let them leave and threatened to arrest them saying that there were suspected terrorists there.
There was also an orchestrated demonstration, this time led by the BBS, we understand, which is an ultra-Sinhala nationalist organization that has been responsible for a series of violent demonstrations and violent attacks on Muslim business and also on Christian churches now, increasingly in the south, led by saffron-robed Buddhist priests. The leader of the opposition party, the UNP, tried to attend this vigil also and his car was stoned.
Subsequently, my colleague Jonathan Miller was also stoned in a demonstration, apparently spontaneously organized, when he was interviewing somebody. He went to interview some businessmen, actually some Sinhala businessmen, to talk about progress in the country. When he came out, there had been a demonstration organized and stones were thrown at them.
There is an incredible culture of repression, and I have to say, absolutely no evidence of any kind of freedom of expression in the country, something that was really brought home to us. Also we spoke to the media. I did speak to quite a few journalists, and they have an enormously difficult job. It's necessary, because of the threats and because so many media workers have disappeared, to use self-censorship or to use mechanisms for telling the truth, for example, slipping in bits of information dressed up in clearly uncritical pro-government rhetoric, but actually with news slipped in there. The work of journalists is very, very difficult. There are many journalists who are trying to do their best in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
Equally, there are state-sponsored, state-owned newspapers, The Daily News, for example, which is a Sri Lankan newspaper, that are utterly slavish in their commentary, and also television as well. For example, I was interviewed and repeatedly made the point that I regarded the Tamil Tigers, those people who used acts of terror and who committed war crimes, as a reprehensible organization. I noticed on one news report that the people of Sri Lanka were being told that Callum Macrae, the Tamil Tiger supporter, was there causing trouble. It actually showed footage of me making that speech with the audio turned down and with a commentary that simply described me as a Tamil Tiger supporter who was there to tell lies about the government.
It is a very, very difficult situation.
I'm not quite sure how much more time I have before I should answer questions. Please do let me know if I've spoken for too long.
