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| A chronicle of abuse |
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Pearl THEVANAYAGAM
- Skills:
–
- Country of origin: Sri Lanka
- Languages:
– English
– Sinhala
– Tamil
Email: pereraandrea82@hotmail.com
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Details
 Training
· 1993, Environment & Development Fellowship, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
· 1990-1991, Diploma in Journalism (English Medium), University of Colombo
· 1990, Diploma in Journalism (English Medium), Aquinas College of Higher Studies, Colombo
Experience
· 1990-1997, Sub-editor, feature-writer and news-reporter on several English language national newspapers in Sri Lanka
· 1994-96, staff reporter, The Sunday Leader, Sri Lanka
· 1995, Colombo Correspondent, Times of India, 1996-97 News Editor, Weekend Express, Sri Lanka
Specialisms
Politics, human rights
Based
London
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In my last position as a news editor in Sri Lanka, I managed a staff of 30 correspondents and reporters amidst increasing censorship.
As a staff reporter I had covered cabinet briefings, interviewed ministers, and visited refugee camps in the North and East, highlighted their lack of housing, medicine, food and essential items.
I wrote a regular satirical column on human rights, politics and social issues. I visited rebel-held areas, interviewed government forces and rebel leaders.
I started The Missing Persons Bureau column in the wake of large-scale disappearances during the conflict.
In mid-1996, a teenage student, her mother, brother and a neighbour disappeared at a checkpoint in the North of Sri Lanka. It later transpired they were murdered by security forces. The women had been raped by eleven soldiers.
As news editor I gave publicity to the story, and when the exhumed bodies were brought to Colombo I managed to view the bodies with the help of a human rights lawyer. The government forbade photographs, so I asked a cartoonist to draw pictures from my description and published them alongside my news feature.
While writing news stories I bore in mind the sensitivities of the public and the government since we were in the middle of a civil war, and observed the rules of journalism on libel and defamation, parliamentary privilege and contempt of court. I tried to bring out the essence of a story in the first few lines using plain and appropriate words.
I was never affiliated to a political party since I wanted to maintain my journalistic integrity. But I advocated human rights in my writings, and focused on reporting about the plight of refugees and the internally displaced due to the civil war.
It was my articles about the ethnic conflict which antagonized the Sri Lankan government. And led me to seek political asylum in the UK in 2000, and I was granted indefinite leave to remain.
Since then I have been a caseworker at an immigration solicitors dealing with asylum-seekers from Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and African countries including Somalia. I also worked as a voluntary researcher in the information team of The Refugee Council, and prepared the country report for Zimbabwe.
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Offers of work: contact the journalist direct