“The matter is now in the hands of my lawyers”

“I urge to the Asian Tribune to trot out all the so called material and evidence they have. However it is evident from the blatant errors in their own articles that for this curiously constituted website facts are not sacred. The website while trying to tarnish me personally cannot even get basic facts right - mind you facts which they claim they have had for a long time but did not publish”.

by Sonali Samarasinghe , Editor in Chief, Morning Leader

(November, 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The matter is now in the hands of my lawyers. I have been told by several people that another defamatory article has been published today (14) by this website and defamatory, false and unsubstantiated statements have been carried. I wish to state that I will not be deterred by the low, cheap and gutter writing of this website called the Asian Tribune.

The Editor and his writer and or writers obviously have no answers to the article published in The Sunday Leader regarding its' Editor's involvement in the Karuna issue and have resorted to the cheapest and basest of methods in order to deflect attention away from their lack of answers to the real issues confronting them. That alone is proof of the Asian Tribune editor's guilt on the Karuna issue as exposed in The Sunday Leader.

Their infantile barrage of falsehoods against me personally and professionally will I assure you, have no effect whatsoever on me. However despite the vapid gibberings of insecure persons in their second childhood I can say fearlessly that I was more than qualified for the Job of Information Counsellor in Canberra as I had a Masters degree in International Affairs from the Australian National University, an LLB from the University of London and had practiced law for several years before I joined journalism full time. All of these academic qualifications I had achieved before I was appointed Counsellor Information to the High Commission in Canberra and it was on the basis of these qualifications I was so appointed. I took up my posting on February 4, 2003.

I also hold diplomas in Journalism from both Australia and Sri Lanka and I have been awarded the Editors' Guild Journalist of the Year which is the top most Award on no less than four occasions in 1999, 2000, 2005 and 2006. I have also received several other top awards by The Editors Guild and the Sri Lanka Press Institute including 'Columnist of the Year', 'Best English Journalist' and 'Scoop of the Year', since 1998 to date. I was also awarded The Zonta Woman of Achievement Award in 2006.

What is ironic in the falsehoods the Asian Tribune perpetrates is that I had already left Sri Lanka in January 2001 and was domiciled in Australia from 2001 and appointed Information Counselor only in February 2003, two years after I had left Sri Lanka.

On my tenure as Information Counselor in Canberra I have nothing to hide.

I urge this website to trot out all the so called material and evidence they have. However it is evident from the blatant errors in their own articles that for this curiously constituted website facts are not sacred. The website while trying to tarnish me personally cannot even get basic facts right - mind you facts which they claim they have had for a long time but did not publish.

It is over three years since my tour of duty ended but the pundits at the Tribune still cannot get it right as they refer to my appointment to the post of 'Minister' - an appointment much higher than the post of Counselor Information.

But their subterfuge does not end there. In a Proposal for funding prepared by K.T.Rajasingham and sent to Senior Cabinet Minister and Chief Government Whip Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, perhaps to make himself look more attractive, Rajasingham asserts that Mr. Neville De Silva whom he claims is the Asian Tribune's Diplomatic Editor, is the Founder and President of The Editors' Guild in Sri Lanka. Mr. Au contraire. Neville De Silva is not even a member of The Editors' Guild in Sri Lanka.

With such deliberate falsehoods written under Rajasingham's own hand in an official document on the one hand in order to get funding and the website's inability to even get a basic fact correct on the other, the unbiased decent reader will be able to judge for him or herself the quality and standard of this website calling itself The Asian Tribune.

This website has now accused me of legal blackmail. It is the Tribune that has attempted to blackmail, intimidate and threaten me. I have merely exercised my fundamental right to sue or take legal steps against a criminal offence perpetrated against me on an article and defamatory reference to me that had already been published. This is laughable.