On My Watch: Lucien Rajakarunanayake

Politics of diversion and the macabre

“By refusing to allow the land he loves to be destroyed by an enemy within, by proving that terror can be opposed and defeated, President Rajapaksa has reawakened the hopes of his countrymen and shown a model of leadership to a watching world. Sri Lanka remains a nation with challenges. But the future will always be bright in a country that produces such men as President Mahinda Rajapaksa.”

This is quoted with apologies to outgoing US President George W Bush in his comments on the recent award the US Medal of Freedom, its highest civilian honour, to President Alvaro Uribe of Columbia on January 13, 09. Read Alvaro Uribe in place of Mahinda Rajapaksa, and Columbia in place of Sri Lanka.

The military makes its advances each day

As the military makes its advances each day into territory that is ‘controlled’ but not served by the LTTE, Sri Lanka is proving to the world that terrorism can be opposed and defeated. As Dr. Harsh V. Pant of King’s College London, the well known researcher on International Relations and Security Studies, recently stated about Sri Lanka: “the military option is integral to dealing with the problem of violent extremism and terrorism, something that the LTTE exemplified long before Islamist extremism came to the fore. It is nonsensical to suggest that terrorism cannot be defeated by military force.

Terrorism and extremism

It can be defeated by effective use of military power but if the absence of terrorism and extremism is to be guaranteed on a sustained basis, a comprehensive approach, that includes effective economic, political and social changes, is needed. But such changes can only be brought about once a limited measure of security has been achieved.

And for this it is important to defeat terrorists and insurgents militarily.”

It is in this context that it is necessary to look at the two major incidents of the past week, which, whether by design or not, sought to draw the attention of the country away from the successes of the security forces against terrorism, with attacks on a media institution - MTV/Sirasa - and the killing of Lasantha Wickremetunga.

In addressing media heads both from the State and private sectors President Rajapaksa urged them to ensure that their institutions acted with a sense of responsibility in reporting on matters where there is heightened public interest, giving examples of the kind of knee-jerk and baseless reports, deliberately pointing accusing fingers at the Government and even the President, for these two crimes.

Eye-witness crimes

It is now becoming evident that most of the ‘on-the-spot reports’ and so-called eye-witness accounts and detailed graphics of these crimes based on such reports are not borne out by facts, and have largely been the result of the possibly suspicions and crooked thinking, or fertile imagination of politicians who preferred to use these incidents to attack the government.

We now see the familiar international actors jumping in concert with the Sri Lankan manipulators who seek to draw attention away from Sri Lanka’s success in routing terrorism to what is claimed are deliberate state-manipulated attacks on the media and the situation of the Tamils trapped in the North, about which there is greater understanding of the truth of LTTE inhumanity emerging daily.

Media watchdogs

So-called media watchdogs such as Reporters sans Frontiers (RsF) that hardly bothered about Israel preventing international journalists crossing into the Gaza Strip, and Human Rights trumpeters such as Amnesty International, who are largely silent about the carnage of civilians in Gaza by the deliberately disproportionate air and land attacks on crowded civilian centres and refugee camps in Gaza by Israel, are rushing in to support the forces of political manipulation in Sri Lanka.

We also see discredited politicians who had the most harsh words and even unrepeatable insults for Lasantha Wickremetunga when alive, copious in their tears at his brutal killing, and calling on today’s President to take responsibility for both these recent crimes, just as a former head of state claims to have done.

Such claims bear a little truth when one recalls the killing of Rohana Kumara and early attacks on Lasantha Wickremetunga.

We have often seen that dead bodies are the favourite tools of politicians in their lust for power, and the funeral turned circus of Lasantha Wickremetunga saw proclivity to revel in the politics of the macabre being displayed in all its vulgarity, complete with drunken dancing and the frenzied smashing of coconuts, appealing deities and demons for curses or favours, which is treated with contempt by the Assembly of God where the last rites for Lasantha were performed. Political manipulators of the R & R or Ranil & Ravi school of political intrigue will hardly bother about such niceties of religion.

While it is necessary to have the most efficient, thorough and speediest inquiries into both these incidents cannot be gainsaid, there is also the need or those who believe in genuine democracy and freedom of expression to expose the hypocrisy of these false champions of media freedom, through the record of their past; look more closely at the respect that The Sunday Leader has so far paid to the ethics of journalism, especially the right to privacy of the individual, and the suspicions of journalistic blackmail that we have seen in some of the media organs that are much touted as the best source of information to the public.

Pressing demands

The distractions from the successes in the battlefield against terror that are being orchestrated today, also seem directed in some measure to divert he attention of the public from the need to have a closer scrutiny of the funding of non-government organisations, especially after the exposure of what has allegedly been taking place in the Free Media Movement, and either directly by association in the Centre for Policy Alternatives, too. These are pressing demands, and urgent as the investigation the two recent high profile crimes. They should not be delayed because of any vigils for media freedom or demonstrations against Sri Lanka at Downing Street.