Columns

Last week was World Press Freedom Day. Unlike in earlier years, there was little or nothing to celebrate. The combined forces of a spreading pandemic and rising authoritarianism saw to that. From Latin America through Africa to Asia, the heavy hand of repressive governments rode on the back of Covid, spreading its own virus.

Admittedly restrictions were placed on social contact and gatherings of like-minded people to commemorate an annual event recognised the world-over except by leaders and their cohorts who fear exposure and wish to cover up the callous and inhuman treatment of their own people.

It is scant wonder they try to discard each exposure, each act of corruption and abuse and violation of rights inscribed in the constitutions they initially vow to uphold, as fake and turn the repressive state machinery against those who focus the spotlight on violators of the law, the corrupt who put their dirty hands into the public purse and harass and intimidate the public.

It is hard to commemorate, let alone celebrate, when even the most globally destructive pandemic, in which millions of people have died or are on their death beds and even more are suffering today due to mishandling by governments, is used as a vehicle for clamping down on the media and journalists and suppressing voices of dissent.

Even in countries where press freedom is paraded as an article of faith and constitutionally declared as a fundamental right, police powers are being enhanced to curb public demonstrations and anti-government street protests as Britain’s so-called Police Bill clearly demonstrates.

While this strengthening of police powers will not stop the British public from stepping out onto the streets or the media from revving down their criticism of the Boris Johnson government that is now being peppered for its violation of rules and regulations regarding prime ministerial and ministerial dealings with business interests and billionaire entrepreneurs.

In a hard-hitting editorial, the Guardian newspaper slated Prime Minister Johnson and a former Conservative prime minister David Cameron for private communications on a tax deal with a billionaire businessman by the former and lobbying for a contract by the latter.

“The pandemic justified urgency in decision-making but the government uses it to evade scrutiny and shirk accountability,” wrote the Guardian. Boris Johnson has tried to justify his action as a matter of urgency in dealing with the pandemic. The Guardian replied saying that while expediency might be valid in some circumstances it cannot be “stretched to cover every decision where corners were cut and contracts awarded to those with personal connections” with senior Tory Party figures.

Those mired in dirty politics and shady deals might well argue that such things happen in democracies, too. But there are two vital differences between the occasional ethical deficit in the democracies and the unaccountable actions and unaccounted for deals that occur in many of the countries in the Global South.

One is that where rules, regulations and conventions underpinning the democratic traditions are broken or knowingly violated they are inquired into by independent persons, action taken where necessary and the guilty reprimanded and exposed.

Two, these indiscretions and breaking of long standing conventions etc are widely reported in the media. The Johnson affair was splashed widely in the media last month. Had it not been for the media exposure Johnson’s private texting offering possible tax concessions to Sir James Dyson’s Singapore-based staff might never have come to light or so soon.

The crucial question is whether there would ever be official, independent inquiries if political leaders or their handpicked officials from the “developing” world were found with their hands in the public till and punished if guilty.

I cannot remember that happening in Sri Lanka during my working years there or ever since. Of course, there have been and will be inquiries, but that is if you belong to a defeated political party or a trouble-making dissident.

Even sections of the media are likely to take a vow of silence or retreat into the bushes unlike here where the British media across the spectrum splashed the Boris Johnson story, more so because he is the leader of the country and is expected maintain decorum and observe his political responsibilities.

But there is one danger. When western nations whose leaders are quick to point to the political abuses of developing countries and corruption and moral turpitude of those who run them, they open themselves to criticism in turn as their conduct is subjected to scrutiny.

Moreover legislation like Britain’s Police Bill that could be used to curb public protest and clamp on the freedom of expression and association could serve as examples for similar or even worse legislation in the South and so give legitimacy to repressive laws.

But repressive laws are not the only threat to the functioning of independent media. The World Press Freedom Index provides enough instances of the targeting of journalists by governments, politicians, criminal gangs, business interests and others who find investigative reporting and the media spotlight intolerable and invasive.

My Peradeniya University contemporary and Lake House colleague Thalif M Deen who has sent deep roots and sprouted branches during his 40 years in New York and become a permanent fixture at the United Nations has in his entertaining recent book talks of the life and death and sufferings of journalists who worked for Inter Press Service in which he was and is a sturdy stalwart.

“IPS news agency, which has relentlessly covered the developing world, has suffered both under repressive authoritative regimes and also in war-ravaged countries where our journalists have either been detained, tortured or beaten to death in the line of duty in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

But for most surviving families, the tragedy has been doubly devastating because the killer or killers have never been apprehended, prosecuted or convicted in any court of law in their respective home countries — or in some cases their bodies never recovered.

The most glaring example was the fate of 30-year-old Richard de Zoysa, the IPS Bureau Chief in Sri Lanka, who was abducted, tortured, killed and dropped from a helicopter into the ocean — a crime reportedly perpetrated by “death squads”. His bloated body was washed ashore in the suburbs of Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. The horrendous politically-motivated crime, which took place in February 1990, is still one of the unresolved murders after 31 long years.”

Since then there have been numerous other Sri Lanka journalists of different ethnicities and representing different media who have been killed or tortured for doing their jobs as the public is well aware.

If the Asian voice has been relatively silent on Press Freedom Day, it is not because it lacks a collective conscience or does not realise the importance of a free and active media to be what Edmund Burke rightly called the Fourth Estate.

It is because the Fourth Estate like other estates have been ‘nationalised’ in many countries. As the virus of authoritarianism spreads across Asia and the temptation to take refuge in nationalism grows, we see the evisceration of judicial independence too, another of the four estates.

Combining extraordinary powers and minimum transparency suits governments that enjoy doing business with chums hiding behind a veneer of national good and out of the glare of public scrutiny.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)