Another gobbledygook of Minister Yapa

"Will the Media Minister respond to hundreds of unanswered questions about the war and post war situations in a frank and responsible manner without arming with hostile answers and statements to ridicule the modicum of intelligence of the people and the international community?"
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By Rajasingham Jayadevan

(August 29, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) When it comes to denials of accusations against Sri Lanka, the Cabinet Spokesperson and Minister of Mass Media & Information, Anura Piriyadharshana Yapa is one of those in the forefront of the government to go straight on the offensive. Gibberish verbal dictums of anything at his disposal will be fired instantaneously in response.

A lawyer by profession, on many occasions failed to understand the legal merits or idiocy of his comments. His writ only stands in the country where the judicial service has become the puppet of the political dictates of the ruling.

In the latest hilarious comment, the Minister has publicly announced that Sri Lanka will ‘protest to Britain over the Channel 4 TV station telecast of defamatory and distorted images of a Sri Lankan soldier shooting a man and a woman.’ A Minister with the able guidance of the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London Justice Nihal Jayasinghe should have known that there is nothing that British government can do on the independent Channel 4 TV for reporting the news. He should have known as an aggrieved party, GoSL should go through the media regulatory process to redress the grievances or deal through the British legal system.

(Infamous Minister Mervyn Silva after his violent brawl at the state run Rupavahini TV station is Colombo)

The British government does not employ persons like Sri Lanka’s Labour Minister Dr Mervin Silva to barge into the Channel 4 TV station to pressurize them to stop publishing news about the poor little Sri Lanka in the future. In a mature democracy like Britain, there are systems and procedures to follow if a party is aggrieved by any media revelations.

Minister Yapa, a man of legal acumen, should have been advised by his able and esteemed High Commissioner in London who had held unique positions as Supreme Court Judge and had served in the UN’s War Crimes Tribunal that the best course of action would be to make a complaint to the broadcasting regulatory authority or even challenging the Channel 4 in the Court of Law in the UK.

The latter would be an ideal option, as the able lawyer Minister and the highly esteemed retired Justice High Commissioner could create an opening in the British judicial mechanism to argue a case of war crimes in Sri Lanka. There are Tamils waiting to come forward to provide strong evidences of war crimes by the Sri Lankan forces when they are unable to find redress for them in a Sri Lankan Court because of the white van culture and the impunity prevailing for the criminals including some paramilitary and criminal ministers in the government.

Minister Yapa further states: “We won’t ignore this. We want the Channel 4 and the British government to take action to prevent a repetition of this kind of fabricated propaganda against our armed forces. The Sri Lanka high Commission in London has already lodged a protest with Channel 4,” What a patriotic statement for the poor masses in Sri Lanka to digest. Instead of initiating an open, transparent and scientific inquiry within Sri Lanka to find the truth about the C4 news, Minister Yapa is expecting to seek justice in the UK in the method followed in Sri Lanka.

Will the Minister confirm publicly that C4 or any other media could visit the war torn north and film evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the warring parties. Sources in Sri Lanka tell us that the military is making concerted efforts to eliminate all traces of evidences of war crimes in the battle areas before the Internally Displaced Persons, INGO’s and the media are allowed into the area.

It was reported, LTTE’s political spokesperson Nadesan saying, before he was summarily executed by the army when he went with the white flag to surrender, that the area around him ‘is a Pinak Kaadu’ (forest of corpses) and that ‘dying bodies are crying’. Will the Minister tell the world why the government did not give access to the Pinak Kaadu and what they are doing to eliminate all traces of the Pinak Kaadu’s.

The Minister at the peak of the war emphasized that only 75,000 civilians were trapped in the battle front. The civilian influx following the brutal execution of the war by the government saw over 200,000 escaping the force of the war. Doesn’t this issue expose the government and its Minister of duplicity and deception to hoodwink not only the people of Sri Lanka and also the international community?

Will the Media Minister respond to hundreds of unanswered questions about the war and post war situations in a frank and responsible manner without arming with hostile answers and statements to ridicule the modicum of intelligence of the people and the international community?

‘Gobbledygook’ is an English term used to describe nonsensical language. ‘Not only the language, the behaviour of the Minister has become nonsensical’ said a patriotic Sri Lankan to whom I read this piece before publication. -Sri Lanka Guardian