In Occupied West Bank it was 14 Nov 2012. George Sahhar, Director of media projects at Wattan TV, opened the door to a closet-sized control room, where wires, routers, papers and computer screens were messily scattered across a desk.

“This is where the transmitter was,” Sahhar said, pointing to a gaping hole amidst the disconnected wires, before continuing on to a bigger control room, where more equipment is missing. “We don’t know why it happened. It’s inexplicable and unacceptable.”

Sahhar is director of media projects at Wattan TV, the only independent television station in the occupied Palestinian territories. In February 2012, over two dozen Israeli soldiers stormed Wattan TV’s Ramallah offices in the early morning hours. They confiscated the station’s transmitters, laptops, financial documents, invoices, contracts, archives, and other equipment.

 

Human rights groups condemned the incident as a blatant violation of Palestinian media freedom. Wattan TV, which is owned by local Palestinian civil society groups and partly funded by international donors, estimated that the raid incurred a financial loss of 300,000 dollars.

Before losing its equipment, the station broadcast a variety of political, cultural and social programmes to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, it no longer broadcasts in Gaza, can’t host live broadcasts from its studios, and airs only limited coverage in the West Bank.

Sahhar told IPS, “It’s very hard. Now, the station is appealing to the Israeli Supreme Court to have its equipment, files and archives returned, and to get an explanation about why the raid took place. The Court granted the Israeli government an extension to provide some answers”.

Wattan TV officials told IPS that they were still waiting for an update from the court. “We are not optimistic at all,” said the station’s director general, Muamar Orabi.

 

At the time of the raid, the Israeli authorities argued that Wattan TV’s frequency was interfering with radio signals in Israel, including those at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. Station managers, however, have staunchly refuted this claim.

“It’s a baseless accusation,” Sahhar said, explaining that Wattan TV has been licensed with the Palestinian Authority (PA) since 1996, and is also a member of the International Telecommunications Union based in Switzerland. “From 1996 until today, frankly, I’m unaware of any airplanes crashing as a result of our frequency.”

The Oslo Accords agreement, signed between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the early 1990s, organised Palestinian and Israeli telecommunications frequencies. It stipulated that neither side’s frequencies would interfere with the other’s, and that Israel will not impede the proper functioning of the agreed-upon Palestinian stations.

A Joint Technical Committee (JTC) was also set up to deal with any issues arising between the Israeli and Palestinian telecommunications systems. “If there is a dispute about the frequency, the Israelis need to tell the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PA will deal with it,” Sahhar said.

 

According to Mada, the Palestinian Centre for Media Freedoms and Development, since 2008, Israeli soldiers have stormed 11 Palestinian media headquarters, and confiscated equipment belonging to at least 14 media institutions.

“It’s a war of airwaves,” said Mada Director Mousa Rimawi from his Ramallah office. “(The Israelis) want to dominate the frequencies. They want to occupy everything.”

Rimawi explained that confiscating equipment from Palestinian media outlets has a very negative psychological impact on Palestinian journalists, which in turn impacts the quality of their reports.

 

“Palestinians try to continue their work, but in the back of their mind, the threats are still there. (The Israeli army) can come any day at night and no one can stop them,” Rimawi told IPS. “The Israelis are behaving like they are above the law. Because they are not pressured or punished, they are continuing their violations against media outlets, against journalists and against Palestinians in general.”

The Israeli army raided Wattan TV’s offices for the first time in 2002, in the midst of the Second Intifadah (uprising). Upset by the station’s critical coverage of its policies, the Palestinian Authority also shut the station down five times between 1996 and 2002.

For George Sahhar, while it wasn’t the first such incident, the latest raid on Wattan TV’s offices was akin to an attack on Palestinian culture. “It’s really painful when someone takes media work away violently. There is still a tremendous sense of apprehension,” Sahhar said.

“But we will continue to insist on being the voice of reason, with our limited resources. We want to inform Palestinians and create bridges to come up with a common vision of where we want Palestine to be. We have our eye on the future.” 

 

Earlier on 28 February 2012, Israeli troops raided two Palestinian television stations in the West Bank city of Ramallah overnight, seizing computers and broadcasting equipment, employees told AFP.

The Israeli military confirmed the raids, saying the stations targeted had been broadcasting illegally, a charge rejected by the Palestinian telecommunications minister.

The two stations affected were Watan Television, a local private station, and Quds Educational Television, affiliated with the Palestinian Al-Quds University.

"They came at 2:00 am (0000 GMT) and took around 30 computers and all the transmitters. The station is totally shut down," Watan's editor in chief, Ali Daraghmeh, told AFP.

"One of our guards tried to stop the army, but they told him they had official orders to close the station."

Haroun Abu Arra, director of Quds Educational TV, said troops raided his station shortly afterwards.

"At 3:00 am (0100 GMT), the Israeli army entered the television station's office and took all the transmitters, and the station is now unable to broadcast," he said.

Moammer Orabi, Watan's director general, said there were no warnings before the raid took place.

"It was a surprise. We still don't know why they confiscated the equipment and shut down the station, even though we work in areas belonging to the Palestinian Authority and we have a licence from them," he said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the raids came after "multiple requests" from the Israeli communications ministry to the two stations to halt operations.

"IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldiers accompanied an operation of the ministry of communications to close two pirate television station in Ramallah," she said.

"This station significantly interrupts other legal broadcasting stations and interferes with aircraft communications."

No one at the communications ministry was immediately available for comment. But Palestinian telecommunications minister Mashour Abu Daqqa angrily rejected the claims, saying Israel had failed to make any official complaint through the proper channels to the Palestinian Authority.

 

"They are liars," Abu Daqqa told AFP. "If there is any problem, we have an Israel-Palestinian coordination committee and we discuss any problems regarding frequencies all the time.

"We didn't receive anything through this committee and we believe that the Israeli army wants to change realities on the ground, ignoring all the committees formed."

Daqqa said the stations were both registered with the International Broadcasting Union and broadcast on legal frequencies.

They are both based in Ramallah, which lies within a part of the West Bank designated as under full Palestinian civil and security control. Israel carries out frequent raids in the area nonetheless.

The raids were condemned by Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, who visited Watan's offices after the raid, describing it as "a new and very dangerous Israeli escalation against the Palestinian Authority."

Journalists said they would hold a demonstration in Ramallah's central square later on Wednesday to protest against the raid.

 

The government’s decision to celebrate May 19 as a day of victory and the country’s second Independence polarised the Sri Lankan people. Whether by accident or design, it is ironic that through its continuing actions the government that reunified the territory of the country should also be the one that fosters the divisions between the people. I was in Mannar on that day that marked a watershed in the modern history of the country, and saw that the Sri Lankan people were divided in their attitudes. There was no collective remembrance of loss, but a reinforcement of the separation that has overshadowed the post-Independence era.

While the government was celebrating with military march pasts and air and sea shows in Colombo, in Mannar there was real action that was reminiscent of what happened during the war. A group of people, who had gathered to commemorate those who died in the last battle, were prevented from doing so by armed military personnel and police with guns pointing. It is reported that 15 of them were arrested and only released on bail late at night.  Earlier the state media had reported that such commemorative meetings were illegal and warned anyone commemorating the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was liable to be arrested.

However, the Tamil political parties in the opposition said they staged the remembrance for those who died in the final battle. This was where the top LTTE leadership were killed. In this charged context, the decision of the Catholic Church in Mannar to commemorate all victims of the war was pragmatic. Whenever Tamils have tried to commemorate the death of their loved ones, the government has taken steps to prevent this. The military in particular is sensitive to commemorations of the LTTE being held in the guise of commemorating the civilians who lost their lives. However, the reality is that the two groups of LTTE and civilians were often mixed. Especially in the last days of the war, the LTTE forcibly recruited children, some as young as 12, and this included the children of Mannar.

 

Mannar is the only one of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts that has a Catholic majority. With its unique cultural attributes, it is a celebration of the country’s cultural and religious diversity which must not be made into a weakness when it is a strength. Unlike the Tamil political parties who had called on the people to commemorate the war dead amongst the Tamil population, the Bishop of Mannar requested the clergy in the area to commemorate all victims of the war, and not just those who were Tamil. By implication, this would have included those of all three ethnic groups, the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, and also the fighting personnel on the two sides, the government and LTTE. It is a testament to the strength of Sri Lanka’s diversity, that it was a minority group that decided to commemorate all who lost their lives as recommended by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission appointed by the President.

This year’s victory celebration by the government was focused on the valour of the armed forces and the comprehensive defeat of the LTTE. President Mahinda Rajapakse viewed the military parade and pledged that there will be no room for those who tried to divide the country. He said, “We will not allow a single inch of the land that you won by the sacrifice of your life to be taken away.” The past fortnight saw a build up in the mass media to remind the people of those days of blood and bombs and how it all has ended. The contrast with the peaceful situation of the present will continue to bring in the votes of a grateful nation.

But the unfortunate reality is that the support of the Sinhalese majority for the war victory and the government’s celebrations has not been matched by any kind of equivalent support from the Tamil minority. They too have been beneficiaries of the peaceful situation that has followed the end of the war. They are now safe from the ravages of child recruitment and terror tactics that the LTTE brought to bear upon them. But they also wish to mourn their loved ones who are no more with them, to find out what happened to them, and also to regain their dream of enjoying equal rights in which they also have the right to decide. These are all matters on which the government appointed LLRC has made recommendations on but are not being followed by the government.

 

Four years after the war’s end the political solution that the leaders of government promised during the time of the war has yet to materialize. The LTTE has been replaced by the Sri Lankan military who govern them in conjunction with the civilian administration. The Northern Province, where the first gunshots of the war were fired and where the last of the rebel fighters fell, has still to enjoy the right of elected provincial governance even to as limited an extent as the other eight provinces do.  A government ally has filed action in the Supreme Court calling on it to abolish the system of devolution of power for the entire country. In this context, there is increasing skepticism whether the promised Northern Provincial Council elections in September this year will actually take place.

The civil war ended in 2009 but four years later the country has yet to find its path of reconciliation and to heal the wounds of war. At the present time it also appears that Sri Lanka is moving backwards, and not forwards, in terms of securing the Rule of Law. The impeachment of the Chief Justice process eroded the rule of law and usurped the pre-eminence of the Supreme Court in its role of interpreting the constitution. This has impacted negatively on the rule of law and by extension the protection of human rights and political accountability. There is also the rise of inter-religious tensions fanned by government allies.  A new dimension of inter-communal unrest is the rise of Buddhist extremism that has targeted the Muslim community and taken on an open and frontal confrontational approach.

Sri Lanka could have been a very different country today. There is a need to recognize that although the civil war ended in 2009 the country has yet to find its path of reconciliation through an inclusive process of political negotiations and a sincere effort to heal the wounds of war. If the recommendations of the LLRC appointed by the President had been followed, the government could have changed course last year. Government leaders would have ceased to further engage in ethnic triumphalism and instead focused on commemorating all victims who lost their lives in the senseless conflict. They could have utilized the occasion of May 19 to resolve that never again would such bloodletting be permitted to take place. This would have been a commemoration that all Sri Lankans, respecting multi ethnicity, equal rights, and the safety and dignity of all, could have taken part in as a united Sri Lankan nation.