Common opposition candidate General Sarath Fonseka says Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa instructed a key ground commander in the north that all LTTE leaders must be killed and not allowed to surrender.

In an explosive interview with The Sunday Leader General Fonseka the then Army Commander said he had no information communicated to him in the final days of the war that three key LTTE leaders had opted to surrender to Sri Lanka’s armed forces as the battle drew to a bloody finish.

Fonseka charged that communications were instead confined between the LTTE leaders, Norway, various foreign parties, Basil Rajapaksa, Member of Parliament and the powerful senior adviser to the President and such information was never conveyed to him as he supervised the final stages of the war. “Later, I learnt that Basil had conveyed this information to the Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa – who in turn spoke with Brigadier Shavendra Silva, Commander of the Army’s 58th Division, giving orders not to accommodate any LTTE leaders attempting surrender and that “they must all be killed.”

General Fonseka explained how on the night of May 17th this year desperate efforts of three senior LTTE leaders trapped in the war zone to save their lives failed as they were instead shot dead as they prepared to surrender to government forces.

The government later claimed that troops found bodies of three key LTTE leaders identified as Nadesan, Pulidevan and Ramesh during the mop- up operations in the last LTTE stronghold on the morning of May 18.

General Fonseka said the incident took place as the remaining LTTE cadres were boxed into a 100m x 100m area, North of Vellamullivaikkal.

Balasingham Nadeshan a former police constable of Sri Lanka police was the political head of the LTTE. Seevaratnam Pulidevan was the head of “LTTE peace secretariat” while Ramesh a senior special commander of the military wing.

Hours before they surrendered, in a flurry of emails, text messages and telephone calls between NGOs, a foreign government and Sri Lankan officials in Colombo, the two LTTE political leaders had frantically inquired as to how they could give themselves up.

They were told: “Get a piece of white cloth, put up your hands and walk towards the other side in a non-threatening manner.”

But the attempt to surrender by the three LTTE leader and their families failed. Sometime between midnight on 17 May and the early hours of the next morning, the three men and their family members were shot dead.

General Fonseka said it was Basil Rajapaksa together with the Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa who through foreign intermediaries conveyed a message back to the LTTE leaders who wished to surrender to walk out carrying a piece of white cloth. “It was their idea,” he said.

When we contacted Shavendra Silva, now promoted to Major General he sounded very shocked when told of the allegation but insisted he could not respond to this charge until he had clearance from the military spokesman.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told us he had to get clearance from the Army Commander Jagath Jayasuriya.

Later in the day the military spokesman said that he had contacted both the Army Commander and General Shavindra Silva and both had said that they would not comment on the matter.

The chief intermediary for the three LTTE men was the Norwegian government’s then Environment and Development Minister Erik Solheim. (Solheim is now the overseas development minister) On Sunday 17 May, Mr Solheim apparently received calls from LTTE figures who said they wanted to surrender.

The ICRC in Colombo later confirmed that it had received word from the Norwegians that the two leaders were looking to give themselves up. “The ICRC was approached on this matter by the representatives of the LTTE as well as the Norwegian authorities,” spokeswoman Sarasi Wijeratne was quoted saying at the time of the incident. “The information was referred to the Sri Lankan authorities. We have no idea what happened [then]. We lost contact with everyone in the last conflict.”

The government’s point man in the negotiations appears to have been former foreign secretary Palitha Kohona who is now Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United nations He was quoted by news agencies saying that in the days leading up to Sunday evening, he had received a number of messages indicating from Mr. Nadesan and Mr Pulidevan – whom he has met at various peace talks – wanting a way out.

In one interview with ‘SiberNews’ Mr. Kohona said that his response had been that “there was only one way to surrender that is recognised by military practice”. He said they should obtain a white flag and give themselves up. “I kept saying this for three days,” he added.

But General Fonseka maintains that Nadesan, Ramesh and Pulidevan had been shot dead by government troops as they advanced towards them carrying a white flag, as they had been instructed to do.

Fonseka said he later learnt about what exactly had taken place as a result of journalists who had been entrenched at the time with General Shavendra Silva’s brigade command. These reporter’s according to Fonseka were privy to the telephone call received by the Army’s 58th Brigade Commander from the Defence Secretary –“telling him to not accommodate any LTTE surrenders but to simply go ahead and kill them.” – “These journalists later told me what exactly took place,” Fonseka said.

The Sunday Leader

Her Story…

By Frederica Jansz - Editor : The Sunday Leader

The fraudulent interview

On December 13, 2009 The Sunday Leader’s headline “Gota Ordered Them To Be Shot” – General Sarath Fonseka would become the most explosive story of the year.
The article which, perfectly accurately, quoted the General as saying he had heard that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had given an illegal order asking Brigadier Shavendra Silva (later promoted General) to not accommodate surrendering LTTE cadres, became more than a news story.

It became a political phenomenon and the allegations, denials, retractions and recriminations that followed are history.

However it is a history that has come to be grossly distorted.

As all the various parties caught in the story’s fallout struggled to save face, what began as a piece of journalism accusing the government of a serious war crime would become, through lies and deception, a coup for the Rajapaksa administration. Ultimately the campaign to vilify and distort the article and discredit me has now reached a point where I feel, I must comment and present what I believe to be an accurate version of the events leading to and following its publication.

To start at the beginning

After the presidential election was formally declared The Sunday Leader’s management made a decision that the paper would at an editorial level broadly throw its weight behind Sarath Fonseka’s campaign.

The Rajapaksa administration, by filing multiple law suits against this paper and failing to take real action in the ongoing investigation into Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder, left The Sunday Leader’s management with no alternative.

Facing devastating court cases The Leader had no option but to back Fonseka and despite my personal reservations I sympathised with the management’s position and agreed to devote a large amount of page space to the General’s campaign.

As part of our effort to give publicity to Sarath Fonseka’s campaign I requested on Monday, December 7 an interview with the General. The interview was intended to both give the reading public a better idea of the General as a person and allow him to put forward his views regarding his campaign and major policy issues.

We requested the interview on December 7, and were told that it could be done on Wednesday December 9 but at extremely short notice we were informed that the General would only be able to see us on Tuesday December 8 at 5.30 p.m.
Even at such short notice The Sunday Leader considered the interview sufficiently important that Lal Wickrematunge, the Leader’s Chairman, Raknish Wijewardene, a journalist, Thusitha Kumara a photographer and myself gathered at the General’s office at Reid Avenue on December 8th a little before 5.30 p.m.

As the General was preoccupied with the important business of managing a campaign we waited over an hour for our appointment but were eventually granted an audience with the man himself.

The interview proceeded as a series of questions and answers on major topics and issues and a transcript of the interview by Raknish Wijewardene appeared in The Sunday Leader of December 13, 2009.

However towards the end of the interview we began to discuss the ethnic conflict and the role Fonseka had played in the war.

I then asked him one final question. In relation to claims made both internationally and locally that LTTE surrendees carrying white flags had, instead of being accommodated, been killed. I asked the General what really happened.

In that context Fonseka made the allegation that would later appear in the newspapers.
He claimed he had heard that Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered any surrendering LTTE cadres to be shot, and related the story of Pulidevan and Nadesan’s surrender.

When Sarath Fonseka made this allegation I reacted as any journalist would. A presidential candidate and decorated war hero was accusing the incumbent President’s brother of ordering the death of unarmed surrendering LTTE leaders and their families.

That was simply an extraordinary story and I knew immediately that this would be the paper’s headline for the week.

It was at this point that I took the decision to run Fonseka’s allegation as a headline separate from the main interview.

It seemed obvious that an allegation of this magnitude deserved special attention.
As the accusation; the massacre of surrendering cadres and their families was extremely serious, I contacted all of those implicated in the General’s denunciation.

When I spoke with General Shavendra Silva he said he could not comment without permission to do so. I then spoke with Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara who later got back to me saying he had discussed the matter with the current Army Commander Jagath Jayasuriya as well as General Shavendra Silva and collectively taken a decision that they would not issue any comment. When I spoke with Basil Rajapaksa he denied that Norway had got in touch with him regarding this issue. Rajapaksa however did not deny knowledge of the incident. I tried contacting Gotabaya Rajapaksa but was told he had not come into his office on that day, December 11, 2009. I left a message with his office but Gotabaya Rajapaksa holds a personal grudge against this newspaper and refuses to speak to the Leader.

However, having secured an adequate number of responses from the government and the army I was able to compile the story.

Realising the impact such striking allegations would have, at 9.45 a.m. before the paper went to print on Saturday I once gain contacted Sarath Fonseka.

During a twenty minute phone conversation the General reiterated that he stood by the allegation. At that point I asked him who the journalist was who had told him about the supposedly illegal order given by Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Shavendra Silva. Fonseka gave me the journalist’s name but asked that I not name him “for reasons for his own personal security.” A request I obliged.

Fonseka then said that he was willing to go on record with his claim and he assured me he would not back down. Only with that assurance did we go to print.

Fallout

On Saturday the paper went to print and at The Sunday Leader’s premises at Ratmalana extra precautions were taken to guard against possible government reprisals; new lighting was installed, and new private security personnel were hired. Publishing what we thought was a story that would damage the credibility of senior government officials the newspaper naturally feared that the government or those aligned to it would, as they have done in the past, react violently.

And that was our biggest mistake

We assumed the government would react as they have done in the past with threats and violence but the Rajapaksa regime is capable of learning and should never be underestimated.

By contacting Basil Rajapaksa we had already given the government advanced warning; they knew the story was coming and they reacted decisively; not with the violence as we had expected but with spin.

After the story broke, instead of flatly denying the allegation or threatening journalists the government began to portray Fonseka’s allegation as an act of treachery. The story of the massacre was irrelevant. What mattered was that by speaking out Fonseka was betraying Gotabaya, the army and the country.

We believe the outcry that followed the story was to a large extent the result of an orchestrated campaign.

A government backed campaign to publicise particularly in Sinhala, a distorted version of the story, and present the General as a traitor. The objective behind the campaign was to convince the General that his accusations were eroding his popularity and to force him to back down in the interest of winning more votes.

This campaign began immediately after the newspaper went on sale with radio shows denouncing the story as an act of treachery by early Sunday morning.

The Sunday Leader’s message board which usually receives one hundred responses for a lead story was flooded with messages by 2 a.m. on December 13 and received well over one thousand (1000) responses to the story; the vast majority of them being extremely similar comments denouncing Fonseka.

Our analysis indicates that this was an orchestrated campaign with a small number of users using multiple log-in names to post multiple messages on The Sunday Leader website denouncing Fonseka as a traitor.

However the internet was only a small part of the campaign and by Sunday afternoon the state media was in a frenzy already denouncing the General as a traitor and alleging a conspiracy between The Sunday Leader, the General and the usual unpatriotic forces – the Western NGOs, etc.

Despite this pressure it is notable that in the hours after its publication the General stood by the story. In a press conference he gave on Sunday afternoon at the Jaic Hilton, documented by the BBC, he made no effort to deny the story.

It was only as the government’s denunciation campaign intensified with TV, radio, and internet sites declaring the former war hero a traitor that Fonseka’s advisors Mangala Samaraweera, Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Vijitha Herath in particular advised him to retract part of the story.

At a meeting with the Chairman of The Sunday Leader, Lal Wickrematunge on Monday, December 14, senior UNP leaders together with Samaraweera and the JVP insisted that a retraction was necessary as the story had damaged Fonseka’s reputation as a patriot.

It was requested that The Leader retract those parts of the article mentioning Shavendra Silva. The argument being that by criticising the army Fonseka was betraying his own comrades and losing public support.

However as a journalist and as someone who is committed to the truth I refused to publish a fraudulent retraction.

Also as I had contacted Shavendra Silva to get his version of events it was impossible for me to deny that he had been mentioned.

Later that same day, December 14, I met the General at approximately 2.45 p.m. whereupon he reiterated that he could not deny what he had said.

Mangala Samaraweera and Vijitha Herath however remained adamant demanding that The Leader publish a partial retraction. However as a journalist I refused to back down knowing that what I had published was the truth.

Finally, we agreed on a compromise whereby a clarification written by Sarath Fonseka would appear in The Sunday Leader of December 20, 2009 issue. This clarification emphasizes a technical point and is in no way a retraction.

However, The Sunday Leader is of course a weekly paper and during the course of the week pressure continued to mount on Fonseka.

Accused of betraying the army and conspiring to involve the international community in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs, at a hastily convened press conference at his offices at Reid Avenue the General addressed the matter of The Sunday Leader story.

Under immense pressure at this briefing and unable to flatly deny what he knew to be the truth, the General waffled and issued what was neither a clarification nor a retraction.
However over the following days his advisors and supporters would insist that Fonseka had denied the story.

The move from clarification to retraction and denial proved to be a disaster.
By backing down the politically inexperienced Fonseka ultimately played completely into the hands of the government.

He immediately came across as indecisive and weak. No one believed his half-hearted denials and his credibility suffered considerable damage.

The original article was written in part to demonstrate that Fonseka as a true war hero was not scared to confront the government’s bogeymen head-on. By backing down he proved himself to be incapable of tackling the Rajapaksas with the most powerful weapon at his disposal; the truth.

Again the fundamental mistake was the assumption that the government would react clumsily and violently and attempt to intimidate the newspaper into burying the story. By reacting with spin and turning Fonseka’s allegation into a question of patriotism the government was able to deal in its favourite currency of traitors and patriots.

By implying that the General’s comments made him appear a traitor and were losing him support, they put enormous pressure on him to rescind the story and squash any potential investigation into the event.

And Fonseka on the advice of his political advisors walked into the government’s trap; with a partial retraction that turned out to be a triumph for the government.
Fonseka’s garbled and gradual retraction destroyed his credibility, and also squashed any hope of an impartial investigation into the alleged massacre. As an added bonus for the government it also served to discredit that other thorn in the Rajapaksas side — The Sunday Leader.

As usual the government’s opponents — just like the LTTE, UNP and the JVP in the past — were through division, cowardice and petty-mindedness destroying themselves.
The end result has been devastating for Sarath Fonseka who has come across not only as unpatriotic but also as vacillating and indecisive.

To his credit the General never showed any enthusiasm for the denial always admitting that he had said what he had said. It was pressure from his advisors that pushed him to make his various half retractions.

To make matters worse however instead of burying the story after the press conference and clarification in The Leader, the JVP in particular began to circulate absurd rumors; that The Sunday Leader had conspired with President Mahinda Rajapaksa to discredit Fonseka, and that I had begged the General’s forgiveness for misquoting him etc. These hopelessly false allegations only had the effect of keeping an embarrassing story in the public eye.

Finally, the JVP threatened to sue The Sunday Leader for defaming Fonseka.
However, the UNP-side of the opposition alliance assured us that no Letter Of Demand would be forthcoming. In fact Malik Samarawickrema of the UNP finally issued instruction to bury the story and bring an end to a clumsy and bungled chapter in the General’s campaign.

And we at The Leader can only hope that once the story is buried the lies and spin associated with it will disappear as well.

***************** Webmaster Of Star Lanka Online,********
Priyantha De Silva's opinion...

Dear Frederica Jansz,

We know you are unbiased and you stood by your story because you believe what is the truth. I know from my personal experiences , if we stand by the truth, many others are against us and going to prove we are idiots and biased or behave like insane. I read your paper from my childhood and my 2nd article for a paper published in your paper around May 4 and ,May 18 in 1997. (Still I have that).
I post them in Sinhala and you (The Sunday Leader) has converted them in to English and published. It was one of the greatest moment in my life.(Thank You very much for the work that you have done.)My morality was increased by that moment , because I thought I know something that people appreciate.
That was my 2nd and final article for a paper after that I didn't try. Then I'm very grateful about your paper and the one of most respected person was Mr. Lasantha , in my life. Because, When he speaks , If he speaks by English never used Sinhala words to explain anything and also, If he speaks in Sinhala, never used any English words . That means he was the most fluent speaker all time in Sri Lanka. As a Buddhist, I really know the truth will win and the speaker who speak the truth will remain as a only Sun in the dark Sky. It is the only light to the dark. Also, one day people will respect those who tell the truth. But temporally it is very difficult to bear up the state.

finally, I remember the greatest song ever, by Boyzone, No Matter What. Also there's something to think about. I'm not popular or famous. But I had to face many trouble and was in very miserable state in some times because of the truth. But I'm always happy because I feel I've done greatest thing because I believe the truth and stood by it.

***But, there is a problem. I read this newspaper. We read. But Most of the Sri Lankans don't. Many of them even never seen The Sunday Leader, only by news some time to time, I know really because I'm out of Colombo. But In a town. One of shop owner said to me,
"Do you know, Sunday Leader is a government paper. After Lasantha died those shares have been bought by Gotabhaya Rajapaksha."

Another said, "Frederica got 10 millions for the story and the all in editors board got millions from Namal."

Today, another said "There isn't a cassette or any conversation with Fonseka with Leader. Frederica has got death warrant from the government. She is afraid and doing what the government says.."

etc.

All of them never ever read Leader or most of them even don't know English. Then, I believe you. we believe you. But those people ? I think at this moment, the only thing to do is to let the the time to come. Time will do heal anything.I don't know what the truth is. But you do. Then Stand by the truth with that you believe. One day it is the only thing to win and to remain.

People ! They don't want to trust or believe you, or anything. They want to prove what they believe. Everyone. without except me too.we all. Then, they don't care about you or whether it's The Sunday Leader or not. They care only about their belief. They don't want the truth.
(I'm not so much popular in media, But one time I won the 1st place in media from SLBC. therefor I care about the truth and belief of whole media)

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TFGE

The Future Global Educational Center
Hittatiya East
MATARA - Sri Lanka
Tel : +94 415 670 370

“Gota Ordered Them To Be Shot” – General Sarath Fonseka

The Sunday Leader

Her Story…

Star Lanka Online Dot Com

TFGE

The Future Global Educational Center Hittatiya East MATARA - Sri Lanka Tel : +94 415 670 370

“Gota Ordered Them To Be Shot” – General Sarath Fonseka

The Sunday Leader

Her Story…

The Future Global Educational Center
Hittatiya East
MATARA - Sri Lanka
Tel : +94 415 670 370