RTI will not halt media war
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| Sri Lanka’s journalism too changed in the last three decades in that civil unrest, insurgency and the ethnic war means the journalists no longer can lift up the phone and arrange a meeting with this politician or that or write mundane news such as cleaning up Colombo or an occasional murder or suicide which would have made front page news. |
by Pearl Thevanayagam
(June24, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) As if Sri Lanka is not on the endangered species list for journalists, the government is tightening its own noose and committing kamikaze by vetoing the RTI (Right to Information Bill) this week in parliament. Close on the heels of the Killing Fields video by Channel 4 there was not a single sane or diplomatic cabinet minister who could have advised our neophyte of a President to cool it, at least for now that the world is comparing Sri Lanka to Sreberinca, Rwanda and other nations whose leaders were brought before the war tribunal.
The Tamils abroad have far too much clout in the West where they were forced to seek refuge since the July pogrom of 1983. The world is watching and it has no choice but to close in on the government to justify its actions the last throes of the war which it is bleating ended terrorism once and for all.
Shavindra de Silva’s pathetic performance at the UN Church centre decrying and nit-picking on a few technicalities did not deter the watchers at this event from surmising that horrendous crimes were committed on succouring civilians which the government was deemed to protect.
Mahinda Rajapakse and his family of cabinet ministers rushed in and brought an end to LTTE terrorism annihilating thousands of Tamil thereby reducing their already minority status to near negligble percentage (according to CIA country report Sri Lankan Tamils are a mere 4.9 percent of the total population) where saner Presidents before him trod carefully and intermittently agreed to cessation of hostilities or cease-fire where there was breathing space for both parties to take a step back and assess the futility of continuing the war.
Prof. G.L.Peiris is a man much to be pitied because he has the onerous task of pacifying his paymaster, the President, whom he is compelled to protect from the UN investigations and other western nations on whose mercy Sri Lanka depends on for its development economic recovery.
If once he nursed ambitions of becoming the President he has found to his dismay the Rajapakses are here to stay and that he would be playing second fiddle to the yobs from the outbacks of Hambantota all because they claim to be more the sons of sunny Sri Lanka with its 2,500 year old Buddhist (Sinhala) culture than an Oxbridge elite and an intellectual to boot. The name G.L.Peiris is not on par with Sinhala Buddhist identity although he may have Gamini and Lakshman as first names and a poonool round his wrist. He is yet to parade himself in the national attire and methinks G.L. is far too gone in his western upbringing to don a kurakkan shawl and national costume although SWRD carried off the latter with aplomb.
I am straying here.
If I thought Sinhalese are my worst enemies I have since been proved wrong. I cringe when I write this but Nilantha Ilangamuwa, the editor of Sri Lanka Guardian who publishes a corss-section of news and views of all communities even when they come under heavy criticism and at the expense of being charged with mollycoddling LTTE sympathisers, the vegetable seller at the Thursday market at Enderamulla who when she realised I am a Tamil from Jaffna said, `you poor thing’, my die-hard Sinhala Buddhist neighbour in Wattala, Mrs Lankage, who never failed to turn up at my doorstep when the dog started barking or when the CID was visiting and last but not least the slain editor of The Sunday Leader Lasantha Wickrematunga who gave me unbridled access to visit the LTTE controlled areas and provided me with blank cheque, vehicle, driver and photographer and published my stories without editing make me have faith there are decent Sinhalese with conscience.
Dr Jehan Perera, Shanie (could she be the same one who followed the Dip. In Journalism course at Colombo University with me in 1990), Kishali Pinto Jayawardene, veteran journalist and respected lawyer, Human Rights lawyers Harshi Perera and Basil Fernando and several more enlightened Sinhalese who are not afraid to tell it as it is make me feel that Tamils could one day attain closure and regain their rightful place as equal citizens in the once peaceful island we call our home.
But they are pitted against folks like another erudite human rights lawyer S.L. Gunasekera, the son of an eminent judge who was booted out of heading Hela Urumaya because of his Catholic background. Caste can be such a bloody curse and unless one is a diehard Goigama there is hope in hell for SLG to lead the Sinhalese (exception being late President Premadasa), his comment of how Tamils have no grievances because they are Tamils in his book , Tigers and Pandora’s Package, notwithstanding. SLG is not Sinhalese enough.
Amidst all these shenanigans I still have hope. Hope that Sri Lankans can live together and that journalists could be allowed to express themselves freely, justly, undaunted and allowed unbridled access anywhere there is news as stated in the Press Accreditation Card issued by the government.
It is understandable Tamil websites and other media have to tread cautiously and seen more balanced or else they would carry the stigma of being pro-government or extremely leaning towards Tamil militancy.
Exiled journalists, many of whom are Sinhalese, express themselves much more freely abroad that they did at home. And it is the courage of the Sinhalese journalists such as the missing Prageeth Ekneliyagoda who exposed wrongdoings through his powerful cartoons, the late Richard de Soysa broadcaster, anchor, actor and the first journalist to be murdered on the orders of the government in 1990 for sending videotapes of massacred JVP youth to a foreign news agency and scores more who sacrificed their lives for honest journalism and the 36 other murdered journalists which keeps the flame of desire for independent journalism burning.
Most of these journalists lived fairly simple and often frugal lives but they were all the more richer and abundant in their thoughts and they did not sell their souls for a mess of pottage like Rohan Gunaratne, the State media journalists despatched as dis-information counsellors overnight becoming diplomats in foreign missions and the defence chiefs posted as ambassadors and diplomats since they have no use in the defence establishments locally.
The late Gamini Seneviratne who edited Saturday Review during the most volatile period of the eighties from Jaffna was but a rare gem of journalist who practised it to its true form devoid of prejudice and partisan politics. Then there was Tarzie Vittachi and Mervyn de Silva who practised journalism and took it to the pinnacle of journalistic ethics without compromising its values. Compare him to our Colombo journalists many of whom are veterans who have become propagandists and thrown away the very ethics of honest and responsible journalism.
It was a bit of a disappointment for me to meet Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter held captive in Palestine for more than 100 days when he turned up outside 10 Downing Street to show his solidarity with the exiled journalists who were protesting Lasantha’s murder. While he was held captive there were larger than life cut-outs of Alan and his face was known all across UK. Yet, he is so unassuming and unpretentious. His extra-ordinary trait is that he is so ordinary.
The power of the media was put to the test in the last three decades in Sri Lanka and the emergence of internet changed the way media reported events and news. One cannot help wondering whether the destruction caused by the two World Wars of the 20th century could have been greatly reduced had war correspondents such as Graham Greene had access to the information express highway available to the media in the last 15 years.
Sri Lanka’s journalism too changed in the last three decades in that civil unrest, insurgency and the ethnic war means the journalists no longer can lift up the phone and arrange a meeting with this politician or that or write mundane news such as cleaning up Colombo or an occasional murder or suicide which would have made front page news.
But Sri Lankan journalism is regressing. With the complete blackout of news from the frontline two years ago and this week’s shooting down of the Right to Information Bill it is back in the dark ages where the mantra for the media is `See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil’.
Any road up, the heat is on and pressure is mounting from international media and human rights organisations not to let go of thread of allegations unravelling with each passing day and perhaps for the first time in Sri Lanka’s history journalists could unhook the present regime not from the comfort zone of Colombo but from across the seas.
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