Fifth column in our Fourth estate

“Most of these members of LTTE fifth column in the south go unpunished due to lack of technology and expertise of our defense establishment to monitor their activities and catch them red handed. We do not have advance surveillance devices, nor we were trained to use them. When the defense forces catch the terrorists in media suits with great difficulty and compromising their own personal safety, the courts let the culprits go free due to poor evidence and technicalities.”
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by Kumara Kaluarachchi

(July 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardain) Fifth column is defined as “a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group to which it is expected to be loyal, such as a nation”. In 1936, Emilio Mola, a nationalist General during Spanish civil war, spoke in the radio as his army approached Madrid. He told that four columns of his army outside the city, is being supported by a “fifth column”, his people inside the city, to undermine the Republican government from within. Ever since the term refers to a subpopulation assumed to have loyalties to countries or nations other than the one in which they reside or belongs to. It also refers to those who support some other nation in war efforts against the country they live in.

Today we see the LTTE fifth column firmly rooted within our Fourth Estate, namely Sri Lankan media (both Working Journalists and Non-Working Journalists included). The said fifth column spends lavishly on their unsuspecting and / or gullible colleagues to buy their loyalties. The LTTE fifth column spread their wings in to trade unions and NGOs (Tamilnet editor Sivaram was last seen along with the journalist Kusal Perera and allied health trade union leader Ravi Kumudesh) and work in the offices of members of the parliament (remember Mano Ganesan and Nadaraja saga??). We have infamous “Free Media Movement” to “safeguard” the media freedom in Sri Lanka and Working Journalists association members to actually do some media work! They are very agile protesting if something goes wrong with the Fifth Column of the LTTE. Free Media chaps think that they are above the law and most office bearers and the members of the movement rarely write or contribute to media. They are “protecting” the unfortunate guys who actually make media!!! Fifth Column of the LTTE is under protection of Free Media for a FEE and how much protection money change hands, we do not know.

Name is Free Media, but they seem to act for a handsome fee! Numerous journalists were treated shabbily by the politicians and media companies in the past. The free media did not see those small fish and never came to help them in heir hour of need. When the TV journalist Richard De Zoysa was killed during the UNP regime, current leader of the opposition Ranil Wickramasinghe was a very influential senior member of that government. Ranil himself was connected to various death squads and torture chambers. Yet, now he is the darling of Fee Media Mafia today!

Most of these members of LTTE fifth column in the south go unpunished due to lack of technology and expertise of our defense establishment to monitor their activities and catch them red handed. We do not have advance surveillance devices, nor we were trained to use them. When the defense forces catch the terrorists in media suits with great difficulty and compromising their own personal safety, the courts let the culprits go free due to poor evidence and technicalities.

Only few weeks ago the CID arrested a former director of Film Cooperation in connection with LTTE suicide squads. Luckily he is singing like a cannery bird. His confessions lead to arrest more and more members of the same gang who came to Colombo to blow up the city and kill its citizens. This time no “Free Media” types march in Lipton circus to protest the arrest of the film director, because of the fool proof evidence the CID has against him. Otherwise the free media will make a mockery of the defense establishment in front of the world and let the culprit go FREE. Perhaps foreign currency may be the “Open Sesame” for the free media that work hand in hand with the Fifth column of the LTTE!

Finally, it is important for ordinary people like us to see through the “agenda” of the LTTE fifth column which is rooted firmly in our Fourth Estate. We must understand the difference between a media person and a criminal who is working as a media person!

(The Writer is a Editor of the Lanka journal web site)
- Sri Lanka Guardian