Word: sri
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...Sri Lankan Army is fighting - and apparently about to win - a 25-year-old war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a brutal ethnic separatist movement. Alongside the conventional war, which is now in its final stages, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been fighting a carefully orchestrated public-relations battle...
...main issue is access. Since the Sri Lankan Army announced on April 20 the "imminent defeat" of the LTTE, both local and international media organizations have been clamoring to get into the combat zone and witness the end of one of the world's longest running conflicts. They have all been denied. The Defense Ministry set up the Media Center for National Security in 2006 specifically to monitor and control coverage of the war, and it has refused to allow journalists into the war zone in northern Sri Lanka since early 2008. That policy has not changed even with...
...result, there are no recent pictures taken by independent photojournalists of Sri Lankan soldiers on the battlefield; of civilian or military casualties (other than the grisly, usually unsourced pictures occasionally released by the LTTE); or of of what war has done to the north of Sri Lanka since the effective collapse of a ceasefire in 2006. The primary source of news about the war within Sri Lanka comes from a handful of reporters and photographers who are embedded with the military, filing stories mainly for government-run television networks. The conflict in Sri Lanka may be unique among modern wars...
...Rajapaksa enjoys overwhelming support for the war among the Sri Lankan public, but the plight of civilians in and near the war zone - 100,000 have fled in the last few weeks - has sparked strong statements from the U.S., the U.K. and France, which have called on the Sri Lankan government to halt the fighting until the 50,000 or so remaining civilians can leave. The LTTE are believed to be using them as human shields, but Rajapaksa has been unmoved by entreaties from Western countries to allow aid agencies to enter the war zone to help them. On April...
...Sri Lankan government has been more welcoming of delegations from sympathetic countries, such as India, South Asia's regional superpower, and Japan, Sri Lanka's largest donor country. Neither has tried to exert similar public pressure. The Indian foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, met with Rajapaksa on April 24; three days later the Army announced that "combat operations have reached their conclusion," a declaration that was quickly clarified - it meant the Army would cease only heavy bombardment. On April 30, the Times of London reported that the U.S. and Britain were trying to use Sri Lanka's application...