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To
kill the messenger As the joint statement issued yesterday by the Newspaper Publishers and Editors point out, an attack on a journalist is an attack on Freedom of Speech and Expression, and on Democracy itself. The role of a journalist is to bring the news - and his own views - to the people of this country. Poverty in information is one of the worst forms of poverty. In fact, in the words of the famous economist Amartya Sen, it has been proved that countryies that had a free press never experienced a famine simply because the press highlighted shortcomings, and Governments were forced to take remedial steps. Last Monday, the cowardly attack on an unarmed journalist in Batticaloa, the award-winning Aiyadurai Nadesan, and the smoking gun, this time, points to the Karuna-faction of the LTTE. Not to be outdone, the fascist LTTE elements have hijacked the funeral of this slain journalist and paraded it, doing a great disservice to the scribe who would surely have preferred not to have been labelled an LTTE sympathiser. Uptodate, the Government has pretended nothing has happened. This was the arch-typical attitude adopted when the Government's temporary allies go on the rampage like they did when Nimalarajan, a Jaffna based journalist, was killed a few years ago. The EPDP were accused as the culprits on that occasion. To expect an inquiry into these killings, is to expect too much from a Government that prefers to ignore these happenings. Consequently, to expect the perpetrators to be brought to justice, is to expect the impossible. A string of investigations against attacks on journalists , especially in the bad old days of not so long ago give us an indication of what will happen to any inquiry into the murder of Nadesan as we continue to be lumped together in the basket of third-rate un-democratic nations like the Congo, Cuba, Turkmenistan, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Haiti. Now,
not later In a sense, we deserve all this (expletive deleted). On the one hand, the Government in Colombo keeps changing its positions by the hour; on the other, the LTTE wallahs in the Wanni make the absurd demands. The ordinary folk caught in this peace trap, continue to wonder while wandering aimlessly. The co-chairs statement also sends another message. Not really a new one, for we heard Japan's special envoy Yasushi Akashi say so last year. ' Sri Lanka is not going to be the only girl on the beach all the time '. It’s not that these donor agencies are not well-meaning. Keeping Akashi kicking his heels for over an hour to meet the President is bad enough, but to kick a gift-horse in the mouth for a nation like ours is not entirely wise. And yet, these donor nations have seen the way, especially the LTTE reacts to all their threats, their cajoling - basically their carrot and stick approach. We have said this before, and we say it again. The better approach would be to pump in the funds slowly. To begin reconstruction and rehabilitation work initially in the Government-controlled areas, where still the majority of the victims of the 20-year insurgency live. Allow the people, the ultimate beneficiaries of these funds see for themselves the dividends of peace and the futility of war, and wean them away from the path of self-destruction. The LTTE will undoubtedly not like this. But they will, one day, have to be answerable as well, to the people whose sole representative they claim to be, as to why they object to the uplift of these very people. |
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