Of journalistic hacks and the slinging of mud

"With every rejoinder, Rajpal shows that he has forgotten his original article. Whether this is some form of amnesia I do not know. But with each article you see the traits of such amnesia. By the last article, he had even forgotten my name."
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A reply to Rajpal Abeynayake’s malicious meanderings

By Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena

(August 21, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Since I am not ordinarily in the habit of reading Mr Rajpal Abeynayake’s column in the Lakbima English newspaper and since I was also out of Colombo until mid this week, I did not see the most extraordinary article entitled ‘Rice-fed rascality’ in the LakbimaNews of 16th August 2009. Since I do not intend wasting space in my regular Sunday Times column by responding to such manifest rubbish, I am now sending a right of reply which Abeynayake may or may not carry in his newspaper. Frankly, his reactions and responses do not matter much to me anyway. I do not intend to waste further time on his malicious meanderings.

This right of reply is however written solely for the purpose of correcting some of the deliberately false assertions made by him.

Abeynayake’s devious and shifting stand on the matters that he writes about is clearly exposed in his later article which he has written as a response to Mr Basil Fernando’s ‘rotten eggs never get better’ (Lanka Guardian of August 18th 2009) - see Abeynayake’s verbal excesses in ‘Rotten eggheads never get better’ Lanka Guardian of August 19th 2009. His initial position was that I lacked ‘perspective’ in my Sunday Times column of August 9th 2009 titled ‘the appalling silence of the good among us’ because I had ignored the extensive human rights violations committed during the eighties while demonizing the present regime, thereby painting Kumaratunge and the UNP as ‘lily white’.

Let us see however as to what I actually said. My commentary in this column referred to the atrocious precedent of lawyers appearing for critics of the government being labeled as traitors in the Defence Ministry website and questioned the culture of silence that prevails in regard to such patterns of intimidation. Further, using the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case decided in 1998, I made the point that public outrage with the killing and torture of a teenage schoolgirl in Chemmani had resulted in a prosecution that was conducted to the finish with the determination of the State to secure convictions of the perpetrators. Therefore there were no calls to seek justice in any other forum and no calls for war crimes tribunals. This was similarly so in regard to the Embilipitiya convictions in 1999.

My point all along was for the public to be heard more strongly on the atrocities of civilian killings and other patterns of intimidation. My point again – since there may be others as dense as Abeynayake – was not that the Mahinda Rajapakse regime was worse than the regimes of Kumaratunge and JR Jayawardena/Premadasa but that the public voice needs to be articulated in relation to current cases such as the killings of five Tamil youth in Trincomalee (2006) and the seventeen aid workers killed in Mutur (2006) as much as it was articulated in regard to the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case. The quote by Martin Luther King was used in this context.

This was a commonsensical argument which can be twisted to seem otherwise only by persons who either cannot understand the English language or who are motivated by despicable ulterior purposes. I do not venture to guess as to what category Abeynayake belongs to but suffice to say that in his characteristic style, he twists this argument completely out of context when he tries to put a political colouring on my column. Not only content to say that I have considered the regimes of Kumaratunge and that of the UNP to be lily white as compared to the current regime, he then incoherently attempts to correct me by saying that in fact, there were calls made for war crimes during the period of the eighties by none other than the current President who was himself an activist at that time.

This is to completely not miss the wood for the trees but to miss the entire forest, as it were. My argument was NOT about the thousands of killings and enforced disappearances during the eighties in general regarding which not only Mahinda Rajapakse but others had called for international inquiries at that time but about the two specific instances of the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case and the Embiliptiya case which were an exception to the general pattern in that they were successfully prosecuted. Most importantly, these two cases were not cited to absolve the government of that day from blame but rather to stress that the public voice had compelled some measure of accountability in this regard, which ought to be witnessed in these current times as well.

If Abeynayake wishes to enlighten himself on my denunciations of state excesses during the eighties and nineties he may refer to past editions of not only the Sunday Times but also the now defunct Sun newspaper where throughout the mid eighties (when I was studying law at the University of Colombo) and thereafter, I consistently wrote virtually hundreds of articles as well as columns about the human rights violations of the UNP as well as the Kumaratunge regime subsequent to 1994.

He then makes his time worn - and frankly quite tiring- claim that the Colombo elite do not wish to focus on Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ‘transgressions.’ Abeynayake should again correct himself. I do not consider myself to be one of the elite – Colombo based or otherwise - and have, in fact, been one of the strongest current critics of the dismal failures of the UNP and its present leadership on all matters, ranging from its lack of strong opposition in general as well as its weak position on the implementation of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. However, unlike Abeynayake who seems unfortunately to have deteriorated to a cheap political hack, I have maintained this constant critique in regard to all governments. Again, unlike him, I have not used invective in my critiques but rather looked at the relevant questions in principle and in the interests of reasoned debates.

From this position that he had maintained in his initial meanderings, he now (in his second missive) takes up the position that I had not written about the excesses of the LTTE. Again, this is typical of Abeyanake’s absurd perversity. He is well aware of the fact that I had all along been a most vocal and public critic of the totalitarian nature of the LTTE not only now when it has become fashionable to do so but also during the UNF period of the ceasefire when in writing for the same newspaper as a columnist as Abeynayake, I pointed out that the right to self determination of the Tamil people in the North cannot be obtained by the LTTE’s forced coercion, extortion and terrorizing of the ordinary citizens when it had the free run of the North and East. If Abeynayake does not still possess the effort to locate and read through the relevant columns, I may (as a concession) arrange for them to be sent to him. His lapse of memory is rather remarkable however for the reason that I distinctly recall him complimenting me on the particular column referred to above at a chance meeting of the media community at some point during that time. His amnesia appears to be peculiarly selective.

Meanwhile, he uses the citation for Sri Lanka’s Woman of Courage award conferred on me by the United States Department of State in 2007 to accuse me of working to a US agenda and claims that if I had genuine commitment to the cause of human rights protections, I should have refused that citation given that the US administration has been put in the dock for its rights violations in several parts of the globe. His personalized attack in this regard is well seen by the fact that he uses the third person terminology in the initial parts of his misconceived column and then switches to the term ‘you’ when talking of this citation.

In substance, one obvious refutation to this flawed argument is that if this logic is to be accepted, then (taking this country as one example) the various eminent personalities in the fields of law, science and the arts who accepted honorary titles from Presidents Jayawardene, Premadasa and Kumaratunge, including ‘Deshamanya’ titles’ would all be tainted with the same brush as all these state leaders were accused of human rights violations. The other examples from across the world which may be cited to defeat Abeynayake’s ludicrous claim in this sense are many and I do not intend to waste my time by citing all of them.

What is more serious and clearly defamatory is that he suggests that I am working to a covert US agenda. First I should enlighten him again that before and after the US citation, I have been forthright in my condemnation of the actions of the US particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have been critical in this regard not only in my Sunday Times column, (which I find it hard to believe that Abeyanayke has not seen given that he appears to be an ardent reader of the same), but also in other fora, most recently in the 30th Anniversary Issue of the Khaleej Times (30th April 2008) where I wrote a guest column titled ‘US and Rights Violations.’ The focal point in this column was that the Bush administration’s subversion of the national security argument to completely do away with the observance of minimum rights for ‘terror detainees’ poses one of the greatest challenges for this century since it has opened the floodgates for other regimes to do exactly the same in their parts of the world. Since Abeynayake appears to be notoriously unable to place dates in their proper context, may I point out to him that this guest column was written post-US Woman of Courage citation? There were many other of similar nature.

So where indeed is this pro-US agenda of mine? Abeynayake may not have the luxury of being able to work wholly independently and without being dictated to by others in his current employment but I have been fortunate to have had the opposite experience, whether as a media columnist, human rights lawyer or independent researcher. While I sympathise with his pique and frustration in this context, I cannot see as to why I have to bear the brunt of his anger. In whatever research that I engage in, I do not allow donors, embassies or others to influence the tone and tenor of my work. I have been a strong critic of excesses engaged in by some non governmental organizations as well as for example, by persons in other sectors such as the legal and judicial sphere. This is not to say (obviously) that all non-governmental organizations, activists, lawyers and judges, or for that matter, journalists, are bad. Abeynayake for example, should not be seen (by heaven!) as a typical example of a good Sri Lankan journalist.

Abeynayake also appears to have some outstanding grouse with the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) which is between him and the CPA. He drags me into this furore by saying first that I ‘work’ for CPA citing CPA’s funders in this respect. Later, (probably when he was informed as to the factually incorrect nature of his first assumption which he could have easily himself checked if he had been diligent enough to do so), he changes this wording to say that I am in ‘cahoots with the CPA.’ Let me categorically correct him on this issue by informing him that I do not work for CPA or am in ‘cahoots’ with them in any way though I did appear as legal counsel for some fundamental rights cases which CPA filed in the late nineties and early part of this decade resulting in several judgments of the Supreme Court expanding the ambit of rights protections, as well as wrote, during that time, to their legal review magazine ‘Moot Point.’

While being amused in large part about the fact that Abeynayake had thought it fit to devote an entire column to me last week, I remain slightly puzzled as to why his thinly disguised attack on me was so transparently full of holes that it enabled only a minimum effort to decimate his lazy linguistic verbosity. I would have appreciated a far better reasoned effort at meeting my arguments. Or was he so presumptuous to think that I would not bother to respond perchance? It is journalistic hacks such as these who by not following basic ethical norms in their writings ironically strengthen public opinion that self regulation of the Sri Lankan media does not suffice to discipline the media. The ignoring of ethics to serve a pro-government agenda is the lowest rung of this unsavoury ladder.

I must also note the fact that he has professed to be a friend of mine in his initial salvo. While I cannot quite return that compliment, I am irresistibly compelled to observe that with self-professed friends such as these, what need indeed of enemies?

Related articles:

The rotten egg and the phantom limb - By Basil Fernando

More rotten egg in his face - By Rajpal Abeynayake

Rotten egg is now in his pocket -By Basil Fernando

Rotten eggheads never get better - By Rajpal Abeynayake

Rotten eggs never get better - By Basil Fernando

Rice-fed rascality? - By Rajapal Abeynayake

-Sri Lanka Guardian