Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Okay, thank you.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Goodbye.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  What does the government use to censor the media?

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The censorship of the media in Sri Lanka is done by a combination of methods. The primary method is that literally journalists die, disappear, or are forced into exile. There is a very good organization, which you might want to consider taking testimony from if there is time, called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, which is an organization of exiled journalists, Sinhala, Tamil, and I think Muslim journalists who have been exiled from Sri Lanka.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The government has regularly prevented access to certain websites. It has limited certain websites. It has tried very statutory things. It has tried to introduce systems, with varying degrees of success, where websites had to register with the government. Also it has specifically blocked websites as well.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Don't worry. I'm glad to be able to help.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That is my recollection. I'd be more than happy to have that confirmed, but I believe that to be the case.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Even in Colombo you can see that, and I think that the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission did say that the MOD, should withdraw from inappropriate civilian administrative activities. Their response to that, I think if you look up the website of the Ministry of Defence of Sri Lanka, you will see that it is called the ministry of defence and urban renewal.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, I am actually supposed to be at an event, which started three minutes ago, but I could perhaps spend another few minutes, not too many, unfortunately. I'm very sorry.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for inviting me to speak.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm so sorry, I think I missed the beginning of that question. Would you mind saying it again?

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes. This is an extraordinary publication, which I am hoping to try to find time next week to do a detailed rebuttal of. Our journalism has been under absolute constant attack by the Sri Lankan government since we started this. We have an independent television regulator in the U.K. called Ofcom, the Office of Communications, to which any member of the public can submit a complaint if any television program is, in their view, unfair, misleading, misrepresenting, or whatever.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  If I could, I would say one other thing on Bandula Jayasekara. On one level, his tweets are clearly libellous and demonstrably libellous. The idea that I'm funded by an organization I condemn as guilty of war crimes is absurd. That manner of speaking was extremely dangerous. I was not able to walk on the street in safety in Sri Lanka because of that kind of material, these kinds of lies, which are, in the context of Sri Lanka today, quite clear incitements to violence and incitements to hatred.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes. I think the problem is that it was completely ignored at the time. In its first meeting after the end of the war, I remember that the United Nations Human Rights Council extraordinarily and shamefully passed the resolution congratulating Sri Lanka on ending the war. In a sense, the truth is beginning to come out, in that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which was so surprisingly and appallingly held in Sri Lanka, did actually focus attention to some extent on what's happening.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The problem among ordinary Sinhala people in Sri Lanka is that they are fed lies. I know I keep saying that I don't use these expressions lightly, but I don't. They're quite clearly just fed categorical lies. There was an article in the government-sponsored Daily News. There was a full-page investigation into me that quoted e-mails I had been sent by my Tamil Tiger commander instructing me to make these three programs.