Journalist Sprint

According to Internews, the mainstream Sinhala language newspapers had been reluctant to carry stories about rehabilitated former Tamil combatants because they do not have the resources (such as reporters who know the language and region), they lack the background, and they feel that these issues are not important because they don't impact the majority community. Internews' Journalist Sprint addressed these issues by forming teams comprised of both Sinhala and Tamil journalists and training the journalists to produce well-researched and written stories that did not take political sides. Small teams of young multi-ethnic journalists are asked to identify an issue they want to cover and a location they want to travel to, and then provided with a small budget to use public transport to go to the field, conduct research, interview and produce a story, while being mentored throughout the process. One Tamil speaking and one Sinhala speaking journalist trainer provide guidance to the journalists.

In the first Journalist Sprint held in 2015, which involved 8 teams producing 10 stories, one team of four journalists - Tharidu Jayawardana, Idunil Ussgoddarachchi, Udaya Karthikan and R Indumathi (two of whom were Tamil, two Sinhala, two female and two male) - traveled to Killinochchi, a city in Northern Sri Lanka where many Tamils live, to research how former Tamil Tiger fighters are faring after the conflict. They wrote the story "Then They Held Guns, Now They Battle Hunger Pangs". ("I could not have done this story without my Tamil colleagues. I don't understand the Tamil language. If I went by myself, no one would talk to me because I am from a Sinhala paper and they would have assumed I would not cover their issue properly. Because we were there with our Tamil colleagues, the local people were comfortable and opened up to us," said Tharindu.) The story was published in the popular Sinhala daily Lankadeepa, in one of the major Tamil newspapers, Virakesari and the Sunday Thinakkural, and in two English language papers, Sunday Leader and the Daily FT. For their efforts, the team members were each awarded a smartphone sponsored by local e-commerce site Takas. During the following 2 weeks, all 10 stories were published in 13 newspapers. The comments that the stories received spoke to the impact that the stories had on both communities. Although the reader reactions varied, the majority understood that these rehabilitated men and women need help and had been forgotten. Others also felt that the long-term impacts of the conflict should be addressed without making regional differentiations.

Since that initial experience, Tharindu has recruited his Tamil colleagues to join the media advocacy group Young Journalists Association of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's media institutions remain ethnically polarised, and Internews is continuing to encourage the commissioning of more stories, using the skills of journalists who are able to collaborate with peers from other ethnic communities and tell stories that cross the divides. Continuing the spirit of Journalist Sprint, Internews has launched the One Sri Lanka Journalism Fellowship, where 40 promising and mostly young journalists of Tamil, Sinhala, and Muslim backgrounds are working together to understand each other's cultures and the challenges and issues that each ethnic community experiences. The programme facilitates mixed teams of journalists to report on stories that they wouldn't normally report on. During an upcoming round of story production, Tharindu and his Tamil colleagues plan to follow up with another story on the ex-combatants. Some of the people he met reporting the first story have become friends of his on Facebook; they have agreed to be sources for him on the next story.

A second Sprint was planned for early 2016.

Conflict

The Sri Lankan civil war, which claimed the lives of almost 100,000 people plus an estimated additional 40,000 in the final phase of fighting, raged between the insurgent Tamil Tigers seeking a separate Tamil nation on the north and east of the island and the Sri Lankan military, largely representing the majority Sinhalese population, living mostly in the south and west. The war was long and bloody, marked by a series of repressive military governments that restricted civil liberties in the name of national security. The media operated under a restrictive environment during the war, and after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, President Mahinda Rajapakse and his authoritarian government restricted media freedoms further, creating a culture of fear and self-censorship among journalists. In January of 2015, the Rajapakse regime was voted out of office in a popular election, ushering in a hopeful period of democratic reform led by the new President, Maithripala Sirisena. However, continuing suspicions and discrimination present obstacles for Tamils seeking to make a future in their country.