November 7, 2001

I spent an emotional and intense day today with Manoranjan, a Tamil newspaper editor who dares to criticize the Tamil Tigers.

I spent the first part of the day driving to work with him, where I got a firsthand feel for how seriously Manoranjan takes threats to his life posed by the Tigers. It was fascinating and frightening, as he explained how he never tells his driver, or his wife for that matter, his destination. Every hundred yards or so, he tells his driver whether to keep going straight or to turn.

You could feel the cumulative stress as Manoranjan talked about not having gone out with his wife in public for nine years, and about how his daughter's friends think the driver who drops her at school is "daddy." At one point, Manoranjan broke down in tears when he started to talk about the loyalty and courage of his Sinhalese driver.

I did an interview with Manoranjan at his newspaper office. He raised some pointed questions about the double standard in international responses to Al Qaeda and to the LTTE, an organization that targets its own people, uses child soldiers and has committed countless acts of terrorism. "The international approach on Sri Lanka is that we need a negotiated settlement here. But no one wants to ask the question, what kind of government would there be under a fascist force like the LTTE," he said.

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