Free media - a thorn on the side of the genocidal programme

"It is not necessary for a Sherlock Holmes from Scotland Yard to determine who are responsible for the killings and the assaults on the media personnel."
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(January 30, Jaffna, Sri Lanka Guardian) The bombings on Gaza by the Israeli state with the blessings of the Bush administration were unilaterally ended not because of the UN Secretary General talking in platitudes but because of the extensive coverage by the international media evoking international outrage partly because of the geopolitical importance of the Muslim states in the Middle East, the strong presence of humanitarian agencies also constantly reporting and the nearing of the assumption of office by Barack Obama as President of the United States.

If king Dutu Gemunu the valiant Sinhalese king who vanquished the Tamils 2300 years ago did not have the media bothering him why should President Rajapakse who portrays himself as his modern version in crippling Tamil freedom by military means be restrained by the independent media? If the media, considered a nuisance in the fascist Sri Lankan State, are to survive they should do so on the terms of the genocidal state with the annihilation of the Tamils as its primary sacred undertaking with every other consideration relegated as secondary.

The systematic bombings of hospitals, makeshift hospitals, civilian concentrations of the helpless IDPs amounting to nearly 350,000 starving Tamil people in the Vanni killing them by the hundreds and injuring maiming and traumatizing thousands of persons per day denying any kind of help or aid with people dying on the roadside with the Sri Lankan military deliberately aiming at the helpless congregations of civilians and medical personnel definitely fall within the ambit of the definition of genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” applicable in the instant case of the atrocities.

Constrained also by the lack of doctors at the scene, in a frantic appeal for medical supplies from blood bags to Panadeine the Mullaitivu Regional director of health services, Dr Varatharajah had said he was making “an urgent appeal to the Government of Sri Lanka, ICRC, the UN, and the international community for medical supplies and medical teams to be sent to the District to assist our staff. We currently only have 9 MMBS”. It is very unlikely that there will be any response from the Sri Lankan government which have denied that such a report was ever sent. We now hold fears for Dr Varatharajah’s life for he could suffer the same fate as Lasantha Wickrematunga the journalist who was killed.

We are informed that the tamil people caught up in the Vanni prefer to die honourably rather than go towards the government forces and face the consequences of death, rape and torture in the hands of the racist and the most indiscipliend army in the world, as has already happened to some who were forced to abandon the rest of the IDPs. According to the latest reports, some women of those who “defected” have been gang raped by the military and some have been killed by the army and buried in shallow graves.

Only in the reckoning of another politically bankrupt and servile Tamil scoundrel like Anandasangaree, Rajapakse’s foghorn and his petition writer looking for a position as a puppet, with no mandate whatsoever from the Tamil people but claiming to be their leader and waiting to be appointed to a leading political position in the north on the ashes of the freedom of the Tamil people, that the rate of the Tamils being killed, maimed and traumatised does not constitute a genocide. More people in his considered opinion have to be killed to qualify for genocide.

The impediments to the acts of terror by the state, with impunity on the Tamil people have been the presence of the international humanitarian organisations (INGOS) at the risk of the lives of their own personnel and the independent media if there are any left. The INGOs have been ordered out or have been intimidated into quiescence. They could only ambivalently say with utmost caution that the IDPs are trapped between the Government forces and the LTTE.

The terrorist state to protect itself from adverse international publicity being given to its geoncide not because they care two hoots for world opinion but because they have to maintain the flow of financial and military aid, provide the semblance of respectability and democracy for what they are worth to donors like Japan for them to save face, while maintaining themselves in power in a chauvinistic constituency. The only impediment left in a disgraceful democratic state is the residue of independent media, which is fast disappearing with the latest assault on Tennakoon the editor or Sirasa and the hounding out of other journalists from Sri Lanka.

We will be failing in our journalistic duty if we pass on without reference to the Japanese Sashaki Asasaki, an international disgrace and an insult to His Imperial Majesty and His people who in his numerous visits to Sri Lanka has proved to be a excellent guest of the Sri Lankan State apparently enjoying all the possible comforts provided and blinded by its hospitality or has an innate myopic inability to see beyond what he is shown and told.

It is not necessary for a Sherlock Holmes from Scotland Yard to determine who are responsible for the killings and the assaults on the media personnel. The answers lie in the questions themselves as who have been constantly warning and intimidating the media; who have been attributing far fetched motives to the assassination and attacks and who have been quick to accuse parties with no valid evidence. We can give the assurance that nothing will come out of the promises of investigations said to being carried out.

For information on the racially motivated genocide of the Tamil people going on with increasing severity the international media and the world community will have no other avenue but to depend on the distortions, deceptions, pre-emption and the denials of the Sri Lankan government and those dished out by sections of the Sri Lankan media servile to them.

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These are the strictly personal views of the writer

The writer i s a editor of the Eelamnation - Sri Lanka Guardian