Sri Lanka is systematically repressing freedom of speech and
expression of those who criticise the government, this according to several human
rights activists after a Tamil priest was questioned for hours by the police to
find out what he told UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi
Pillay during her visit to the country. At the end of her visit, the UN official said that Sri Lanka was slipping towards authoritarianism.
The clergyman in question is Fr VeerasanYogeswaran, a 60-year-old Jesuit who runs a centre for the promotion and protection of human rights in the Eastern Province.
The organisation's main task is to assist victims of political violence and the families of disappear without leaving a trace.
The priest said that last weekend five or six plainclothes police knocked on his door around midnight, interrogated him until dawn, and forced him to tell them what he and the UN official talked about.
"The problem is that such things should not happen four years after the end of the war," the Jesuit said. "People feel persecuted. I can only imagine the difficulties of ordinary people when they receive similar visits."
"Silencing human rights activists who are critical of the government has become common practice," Fr Nandana Mantunga, director of the Office for Human Rights in Kandy, told AsiaNews.
"Freedom of expression and the right to communicate with a UN official, especially one invited by the government itself, should always be respected."
"Already the interrogation [without due cause] is itself a violation," said another priest involved in human rights, Fr Reid Shelton Fernando.
"Secondly, why did the authorities come at night, when they had a whole day to summon and interrogate? Does this mean that the government has something to hide from the UN High Commissioner?"