Wednesday, 18 February 2004  
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Remembering Richard de Zoysa

A welter of poignant memories would arise today in the minds of many who knew the late Richard de Zoysa, journalist, broadcaster, dramatist, human rights activist and, above all, a humanist par excellence.

For, it was 14 years ago that Richard, loved and revered widely, was abducted by a posse of policemen from his home in Rajagiriya, in the very presence of his distraught and sorrow-laden mother, in the wee hours of the day and later murdered. His body was washed ashore at Moratuwa.

Richard was one among hundreds who were caused to "disappear" in those grave times, but his fate epitomises best, perhaps, the culture of State - induced death and violence which gripped Sri Lanka.

Those were times when the State was party to a round of murderous violence which arose in reaction to a violent insurrection. This situation shook Sri Lanka for more than two years and earned for it a notoriety which cannot easily be summed-up in words. Young lives were summarily and swiftly snuffed out by death squads which enjoyed State patronage and Richard's was one.

What was Richard's offence? It was simply that he was moved to corrective action by the human rights abuses which were then rampant. His "Offence" consisted in the fact that he exercised his fundamental right of expressing and espousing the cause of those whose rights were being violated by the then State in the name of advancing national security. And his rights advocacy brought down on him the murderous fury of the powers that were.

It is this aspect of power abuse and the use of the law and order machinery for an inhuman death which makes Richard's death both heart-rending and symbolic of the culture of death which pervaded this land. By commemorating his death, we, among other things, recall to mind the inhumanity of the then State.

Despite the overwhelming evidence at hand of the involvement of some police personnel in Richard's abduction and subsequent murder, nothing was done by way of legal redress until the PA administration under Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga came to power in 1994. There was clearly an attempt to hush-up the ignominy and to relegate it to the Limbo of forgotten things. This too proved State complicity in the murder. The fact that Richard's mother could identify one of the police personnel was brushed aside as inconsequential.

Among other things, we see here the need for politically-neutral State law and order agencies which would be immune to political influence and manipulation. Let Richard's memory be the prime mover of this much-needed reform process.

Native peoples

The riots that erupted in Sydney on Monday after the tragic death of a 17-year-old aboriginal youth is indicative of the deep resentment felt by indigenous communities struggling for rights and recognition in their own lands. The youth, Thomas Hickey, died when he fell from his bicycle and was impaled on a spiked fence. His family claimed he was being chased by police.

The incident has brought to the fore the fate of indigenous populations everywhere: In Australia, the 400,000 Aborigines remain ill-educated and poverty-stricken. They were not even considered as Australians until 1967. Millions of dollars have been poured into schemes to help the Aborigines, but they still have an average life expectancy 20 years shorter than other Australians. Problems facing the Maoris in New Zealand, the Indians in Canada and the US, the Amazon tribes in Brazil, the hill tribes in Asia and the Bedouins in Africa are no less daunting.

We need not look any further than Sri Lanka's own indigenous people - Vanniyela Aththo - to understand these challenges. Successive governments have tried to assimilate them to the mainstream population, but the Vanniyela Aththo see this as an affront to their way of life. Their traditional lands have been encroached and their settlements have almost become tourist spots.

Native peoples all over the world are being assailed by the forces of modern market economics. This is an alien concept to these communities which had survived for thousands of years without depending on money. They still cling on to values forgotten by the rest of the world, such as family bonds.

Nevertheless, the lure of money has led to an exodus of youngsters from certain indigenous communities, threateaning their very survival as distinct groups.

Another glaring injustice is that indigenous communities have been excluded from nation-building.

They are usually not consulted in the development process, even if their own lands are involved. They have no say in the political arena. For example, Australia has only one aborigine in National Parliament; Sri Lanka has none, at any level of the political spectrum. Their exclusion from the process of nation building alienates them further from mainstream society.

Governments must ensure justice for indigenous communities, the foremost settlers of their countries, before simmering tensions rise to the surface and destroy the social fabric.

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