Unlike Lasantha I do not intend to write my last editorial and have it published after my death. I know this is a dramatic statement to make but the need of the hour calls for just that.
Apart from my professional work, I have a life. I am a good parent. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of my being a good mother. I laugh. I show up. I listen.
I am a good friend and them to me. I am loved and I love in return. Without my family and friends I would have nothing to say to you today.
Ever since I took over from Lasantha at The Sunday Leader I am frequently asked why I do it. My response is similar as was Lasantha’s. It’s not that I am stuck for options. My entire family are British passport holders – only I and my two sons remain on Sri Lankan passports. I am proud to do so and have never wanted or tried to change my citizenship. Even the hassle of securing visas does not deter me. I love this country – this is my motherland – and my eldest son who is 16 insists that while he may go overseas to university he will come back. “This is my home” he has told me – “And I love it.”
In similar vein, nobody at The Sunday Leader is stuck for options. Yet, we do it. Why? We all have a conscience. We all remain committed. To all of us at this newspaper journalism is not just a job. It is a vocation. We all approach our work with passion and commitment. For none of us is journalism merely a means to a pay packet.
We all are clear in our minds that one day we can go to meet our Maker – with a clear conscience.
In all the years that I have associated with The Sunday Leader – for all of its 15 years – I was one of the first to write for the paper when it began in 1994 – there is a single factor that has never failed to impress me. It has humbled me. Sometimes it has moved me to tears. And that is the team spirit which has bound the staff of this newspaper for a decade and a half.
The many occasions this newspaper has come under attack has failed to dent that spirit. In fact, it is just that which has bound staff at The Sunday Leader – strengthened ties and firmly secured bonds.
Since this newspaper began there has been a culture of impunity and indifference over killings and attacks on journalists. The Sunday Leader has lived through trying times as successive governments attempted to stifle its voice – crush its spirit and literally burn the very edifices upon which it functioned.
When Lasantha was finally shot dead in January this year it was not the first time he had been fired at. On a previous occasion his house was shot at – but he and everyone else in his home escaped unhurt.
But perhaps it is the first in the 20 years that I, as a journalist have seen a total paralysis of the media community after the Sirasa/MTV station at Depanama, Pannipitiya was burnt down on January 6th this year, followed two days later by the killing of Lasantha.
The culture of impunity – propagated by the fact that in all the cases of attacks against the media and assassinations of reporters (11 in the last two years) there have been few if no serious investigations by the authorities and none of the killers have been brought to trial.
This has led to an almost total blackout of independent and objective reporting in this country.
I for one, having covered the ethnic conflict for 20 years – having repeatedly reported from the north and east – from the battlefront, from the Tigers former lair and from almost every horrific suicide attack – am tremendously grateful to this government for having finally wiped out the scourge of terrorism from this country.
As a mother of two sons, the youngest of whom is only three years old – I constantly fretted that my children would be compelled to grow up in a country that was wracked with civil strife – and worse – terrorism. I used to have dreams and worry myself sick that my older son would get caught up in a bomb blast, to or from school.
That the Rajapakse brothers actually did it – they effectively managed a military onslaught against the Tamil Tigers, is not only heroic but a success I for one will be eternally grateful for.
I may not fully agree with the methods they resorted to – but I can be no judge or preach military strategy. Certainly not, when it is a fight against terror.
But what I fail to comprehend and find tragic is that despite a heroic and successful military victory against terrorism, the top political leadership of this country has propelled forward a hostile environment of intolerance which has created a culture of impunity and indifference making each day a hunting season for attacks on media staff.
This, I will continue to fight against. And I speak with one voice for all at The Sunday Leader. Our differing viewpoints do not make me or any of the journalists at this newspaper traitors. In fact, it is our patriotism – our love for this country — tested over a period of 15 years – that make us continue to do what we do.
I firmly believe that journalists who report the facts as they are known are not subversives. When reporters can work and report freely, society is not threatened. In fact it is made stronger and more confident.
On Thursday, June 25, all the local newspapers of Jaffna that defied publishing an anonymous and defiling notice against the LTTE came under attack by an armed group in the early hours. The notice was brought out in the name of ‘Tamil Front Protecting the Country’ allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating within Colombo. Thousands of copies of the local newspapers, Valampuri, Uthayan and Thinakkural (Jaffna edition), were burnt in huge flames by an armed group at Aanaippanthi and Kannathiddi junctions at 5 a.m. Thursday, while the newspapers were being taken for distribution. The distribution workers were also brutally attacked.
Again on Thursday a freelance contributor who wrote the astrological column in our sister paper the Irudina was taken in by the CID and questioned for over 24 hours. His crime, allegedly predicting a bad period for the government and a good period for Opposition Leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe. A prediction, one would think, that only Ranil Wickremesinghe would have believed.
It appears that anyone believed or suspected of conveying messages that are critical of the government are not only “traitors” but “terrorists” too. Government ministers have not ceased to use inflammatory language against journalists and media institutions. This has led to widespread self-censorship among journalists in order to protect their lives.
For example, Iqbal Athas, Defence Correspondent for The Sunday Times says he stopped writing his weekly column as a result of threats. Athas also reports from Colombo for CNN and is a correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly.
Even if this government is not directly responsible for the attacks on journalists, it has created the conditions for such persecution with impunity. Government spokesmen continue their attacks on journalists naming them as “traitors” and “security risks.”
It was in February this year that Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake in a local TV news bulletin referring to the prospect of capturing the LTTE leader alive said, that if Prabhakaran had been a “girl” the soldiers could have “touched” or “fiddled with” her body! What is absolutely frightening here is that not only is the Prime Minister of the country in a position to make comments of this nature in public but that no one seems to have seen anything wrong in the Prime Minister’s remarks.
This is the crux of the matter. Civil society in this country is dead. The main opposition United National Party is yet to awake from the long snooze it is in. There is a general sense of apathy – the majority stakeholders in this country will do nothing to ensure that freedom of expression, democratic rights, fundamental and human rights are protected.
In this backdrop, no journalist perceived to be contradicting the work of the Establishment will be tolerated. Even if such contradictions lead towards a better, more stable and peaceful society.
This maybe the practice in lands such as Israel, whose cruelty in anti-Palestine offensives is well known to the world. In the post 9-11 context, the fight against terrorism and the concern over national and international security have resulted in detention centres, torture chambers, sexual abuse of prisoners and many other brutal violations of basic human rights.
If we are to look for comparisons, military reporting all through the Iraq war was identical to war reporting in Sri Lanka. Any alternative voice or voice of dissent was never tolerated.
We could only surmise that this government best understood the rash strategies of the war against terrorism adopted by the former Bush administration.
We can only hope that they did not forget to look at what happened thereafter. There were repercussions, the benefits of which are being reaped today in the United States of America.
- http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090628/editorial-.htm
