What happened:
A week ago, a violent a mob of about 2,000 Sinhalese, including a group of Buddhist monks led by the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, stormed and vandalised a mosque in Dambulla. The mosque was declared an illegal structure, but it is unclear how this far this is accurate.
Several videos, broadcast on national TV in Sri Lanka and now circulating globally on YouTube capturing the violence beggars belief. There are members of the sangha engaged in physical violence and verbal abuse. There is a member of the sangha who disrobes and exposes himself, in public, in front of the mosque. In one video, Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala thero suggests that the maniacal mob is actually a shramadaanaya, and that destroying the mosque is something that they should in fact be helped by the government.
Aside from the physical violence, which includes scuffles with Army and Police personnel, the derogatory and racist language employed by Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala thero and other Buddhist monks during the attack against the mosque, and a nearby Hindu kovil, is appalling. Though the violence of the Sinhala idiom employed loses much in translation, Groundviews put into English the most disquieting comments for a wider appreciation. More startling are anti-Muslim, Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist Facebook groups that have thousands of active members and with content too inflammatory to even translate.
A week after this violence,it has not received the condemnation it deserves from the President, government or mainstream media. Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, perhaps reacting to the indelible record of violence captured in film, attempted to suggest to the BBC that the footage of the mob broadcast on TV was doctored. Ironically, his own media websites showcase the same violence, in greater detail. A Press Release issued on 25th April from the Government Information Department, only in Sinhala, strangely referred to the violence as a ‘minor misunderstanding’, yet reiterated that Sri Lanka is “a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society” and that “in addition to respecting their constitutional obligations, as well as the policies and principles of the government, all Sri Lankans have a long standing tradition of being respectful of each other”.
What is the fall-out?
The photographs, audio and video recordings of the violence in Dambulla have gone global. They cannot be erased. Incensed by this incident and those who led it, there are now growing threats of violence by sections of the Muslim community, though there are many voices, including the Muslim Council, who are calling for calm, and a more reasoned approach to the transformation of this conflict, noting that the actions of a few are not indicative of the nature of the majority.
There is a real danger that unaddressed or if simply glossed over, this militant religious extremism can very quickly and very seriously undermine Sri Lanka’s post-war reconciliation, and contribute to new, more geographically dispersed violent conflict. Extremists from both the Sinhala-Buddhist community and the Muslim community can also use this incendiary incident in Dambulla to stoke up communal tensions, leading to heightened fear and anxiety.
What can we do?
The shameful behaviour and expression employed by the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter, along with the monks he led and the crowd of thugs is not remotely associated with or reflective of the philosophy of the Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha, or the way in which a Buddhist monk is supposed to behave and speak. Many online have already expressed their dismay and deep concern over the actions of a few, placing Sri Lanka in the media spotlight again for all the wrong reasons.
We have a choice, but time is running out. Speak up. Put your name in a comment below, in English, Sinhala or Tamil. Say that last week’s violence was not in your name. Renounce a fringe lunacy and resist extremism. By putting your name below, oppose mob violence and bigotry as ways to resolve disputes.
If we have to fight, let’s fight to keep Sri Lanka free of extremists who threaten not only what they seek to destroy, but also who and what they claim to represent.
Put your name down, resist violence, pass on the message
https://notinournamesl.wordpress.com/category/english/
Showing posts with label Sri Lanka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sri Lanka. Show all posts
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Crime And Punishment, In Rajapaksa Sri Lanka
For the Tamil families of Dilithura, a small village of mostly estate workers in Elpitiya, Galle, the Sinhala and Tamil New Year was not to be an auspicious one. Their tragedy, which ended in burnt homes and looted possessions, began with a simple, everyday inconsequence: a young villager not calling a soldier on holiday, ‘sir’. The enraged soldier reportedly responded to this non-crime with disproportionate and extra-judicial punitive action. According to the ‘Ada Derana’ Tamil website, he assaulted the young man, as well as another Tamil youth who tried to mediate. Subsequently, “around 30 youths had gathered at the location, beaten up the two Tamil youths and set fire to seven houses, push cycles, motorcycles and three wheelers. They had also got away with money and jewellery…” (Sri Lanka Mirror 16.4.2012). The villagers informed the police. Instead of arresting the perpetrators, the police detained two Tamil youths!
When seven Tamil families loose their homes and all their possessions because one Tamil boy did not call a soldier ‘sir’, does it not smack of collective punishment? If an outrage of this order can happen in the South, in 2012, what could not have happened in the North, in the midst of a total war without witnesses? If a soldier on leave can take the law into his own hands with such alacrity and impunity, in Galle, what cannot the tens of thousands of soldiers on duty do, in those villages beyond Omanthai, and beyond the reach of law?
The soldier’s actions would have been explicable if he believed, however mistakenly, that the Tamil youth was a Tiger. He did not. Military personnel suffering from Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) commit crimes, including homicide and suicide. The soldier’s assault on the Tamil youth could have been explained away as a result of (unacknowledged and untreated) PTSD, but not the subsequent orgy of looting and arson. The composite picture points to a crime of an entirely different order, a crime premised on and informed by the primordial identities of the perpetrators and the victims and the total imbalance of power between the two.
In the North, Sinhala soldiers rule; Tamils have only one right – the right to obey. Such a state of affairs is bound to habituate even the most junior soldier into being treated with grovelling obsequiousness by every Tamil. That mindset, born in the North, is permeating the South, affecting the manner in which the armed forces, as an institution, perceive and deal with Tamils, as a community. This does not mean that every serviceman will act as criminally as the soldier in Dilithura did; some will; many, due to an innate sense of decency or kindness or an inborn aversion to excess, will not. But all will have the capacity to do so..
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2012/04/22/crime-and-punishment-in-rajapaksa-sri-lanka/
When seven Tamil families loose their homes and all their possessions because one Tamil boy did not call a soldier ‘sir’, does it not smack of collective punishment? If an outrage of this order can happen in the South, in 2012, what could not have happened in the North, in the midst of a total war without witnesses? If a soldier on leave can take the law into his own hands with such alacrity and impunity, in Galle, what cannot the tens of thousands of soldiers on duty do, in those villages beyond Omanthai, and beyond the reach of law?
The soldier’s actions would have been explicable if he believed, however mistakenly, that the Tamil youth was a Tiger. He did not. Military personnel suffering from Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) commit crimes, including homicide and suicide. The soldier’s assault on the Tamil youth could have been explained away as a result of (unacknowledged and untreated) PTSD, but not the subsequent orgy of looting and arson. The composite picture points to a crime of an entirely different order, a crime premised on and informed by the primordial identities of the perpetrators and the victims and the total imbalance of power between the two.
In the North, Sinhala soldiers rule; Tamils have only one right – the right to obey. Such a state of affairs is bound to habituate even the most junior soldier into being treated with grovelling obsequiousness by every Tamil. That mindset, born in the North, is permeating the South, affecting the manner in which the armed forces, as an institution, perceive and deal with Tamils, as a community. This does not mean that every serviceman will act as criminally as the soldier in Dilithura did; some will; many, due to an innate sense of decency or kindness or an inborn aversion to excess, will not. But all will have the capacity to do so..
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2012/04/22/crime-and-punishment-in-rajapaksa-sri-lanka/
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Sri Lanka, thirty one years after: Burning of the Jaffna Public Library, May 1981
Destroying a Symbol: the checkered History of Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Public Library
by Rebecca Knuth:
Despite (or, in some cases, because of) modern revulsion for book burning, the destruction of libraries in the last century has continued unabated. My new book, Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction probes the dynamics of library destruction and devotes significant attention to the disturbing phenomenon of ethnic biblioclasm.. Seeing themselves as defenders of a beleaguered people, extremist groups (such as religious nationalists), execute book and library destruction as a high-stake, high-affect tactic in battles over clashing belief systems. With their own community sanctioning their actions, perpetrators operate with relative impunity. Extremism, however, breeds extremism. In Sri Lanka, the destruction (by the Sinhalese) of the Jaffna Public Library, the Tamil minority’s primary cultural institution, led to full-scale civil war. The shattered library served and still serves as a symbol of violation and ethnic violence..
The Jaffna Public Library began as the private collection of the scholar K.M. Chellapha, who began lending books from his home in 1933. In 1934, a committee set up a formal library, with Chellapha as secretary. Initially, 1000 books, newspapers, and journals were kept in a single room, but soon the collection was shifted into a building on Jaffna’s main street and was opened to subscribers. The library was so popular that a cross-section of prominent members of the community began raising
funds to build a permanent, modern building. A noted architect designed the new building, and prominent Indian librarian S.R. Ranganathan served as an advisor to ensure that the library was held to international standards. Educated members of the community donated books. The main building opened in 1959. The children’s section and an auditorium were added later. The collection became well known internationally and was popular with Sinhalese and Tamil intellectuals, as well as the general public. It became the major repository for all known literary source materials of the Tamil people. By 1981, it had almost 100,000 Tamil books and rare, old manuscripts and documents, some written on dried palm leaves and stored in fragrant sandalwood boxes.
Burnt shell of the post event library
Some books were literally irreplaceable: the Yalpanam Vaipavama, a history of Jaffna, was the only existing copy. The library held miniature editions of the Ramayana epic, yellowing collections of extinct Tamil-language newspapers, and microfilms of important documents and records of the Morning Star, a journal published by missionaries in the early twentieth century (“Civilization and Culture…” 2003). It held historical scrolls, works on herbal medicine, and the manuscripts of prominent intellectuals, writers, and dramatists. Indeed, one could think of the Jaffna Library as a national library even though a Tamil nation had not yet come into being...
The Sinhalese claimed power in Sri Lanka on both demographic and ideological grounds. Their destiny as an ethnic group was inseparable from their religious beliefs. Though Buddhists are generally perceived as pacifists, the Sinhalese believed that their charge of preserving the “true” Theravada Buddhism justified violent measures. Post colonial antiWestern sentiments fueled Buddhist nationalist claims that the Sinhalese jatiya (race or nation) had been weakened by the influence of Christianity, modern lifestyles, and foreign commerce. Throughout the 1970s, ethnic conflict was aggravated by the breakdown of traditional norms and the population’s frustration with inflation and economic problems.
Authoritarian measures used to maintain control pitted the government not only against the Tamils but also against civil society, liberalism, and moderation in general. United National Party (UNP) politicians and merchants hired gangs of “thugs” (a term that was common parlance in Sri Lanka) and used state-owned buses to transport them to sites where they broke up political meetings and protests and harassed opposition parties, trade unions, workers, and public employees. The thugs threatened judges, artists, and writers. They beat up Sri Lanka’s best known dramatist Ediriweera Sarachchandra, who had satirized the decay of cultural values brought on by the government’s policies. No one was ever prosecuted or arrested for these attacks. Rather, paramilitaries and the police were empowered by legislation that outlawed “terrorism,” which was the word used to describe dissent in any form.
A renewed sense of national pride grew alongside of an opposition to pluralism. Buddhist nationalism was constructed in direct opposition to the Tamils who were viewed as as “parayo”--foreign inferiors who had to be controlled or cast out if catastrophic disorder was to be avoided. Buddhist extremists promoted the notion that Buddhism was under attack by the Hindu Tamils, who dominated the northern part of the country and the city of Jaffna. “Threat” was magnified by the existence of millions of Tamils in nearby India. The Sinhalese propaganda recast the Sri Lankan Tamils as longstanding enemies and the Sinhalese as chronically having had to fend off Tamil invasions. The violence that erupted was cyclical: when the Tamils balked at Sinhalese-only and other discriminatory policies, whether through peaceful protests or isolated terrorism, the Sinhalese government and people responded in a “mood of savage paranoia”.
The Sinhalese targeted the Tamils in violent riots in 1956, 1958, and 1977. These riots were similar to pogroms in that they were semi-organized and instigated as a frenzied response to atrocity stories and rumors that spread quickly and elicited first horror and then retribution. Systematic discrimination plus mob violence in turn radicalized many Tamils. During the 1970s, a budding culture of resistance, expressed first through literature, became increasingly politicized. In 1973, at its 12th Convention, the major Tamil political party, the Federal Party, invoked the recognized principle of the right to self-determination and resolved that the Tamils were fully qualified to be regarded as a separate Nation by virtue of their language, culture, history, and territory. In the second half of the 1970s, civil disobedience by Tamils increased. Youth groups embraced terrorism as a method of self-defense and viewed themselves as engaging in a holy war against the Sinhalese state. They confronted the government with guerilla tactics and through murder and robbery. They were not well organized, but the desire for a separate state had moved from the “lunatic fringes” into the center of Tamil political calculations and events were building to a showdown.
Flashpoint arrived in Jaffna in 1981 during long-awaited elections in which Tamils hoped to redress a lack of political representation. The Sinhalese UNP party, however, was determined to control the results and sent a contingent of police, paramilitaries, and thugs to intimidate Tamil voters. On Sunday, May 31, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) held a rally at which three Sinhalese policeman were shot, two fatally. That night the Sinhalese police and paramilitaries began a pogrom that lasted three days. The TULF headquarters was burned, as were the offices and press of the Tamil language newspaper. Statues of Tamil cultural and religious figures were defaced and demolished. A Hindu temple and over one hundred Tamil-owned shops and homes were looted and torched. Four Tamils were taken from their homes and killed. Late on the first night, eyewitnesses saw uniformed police and Sinhalese gang members set fire to the Jaffna Public Library. Two Sinhalese Cabinet members who watched it burn from the verandah of the nearby Jaffna Rest House claimed that it was “an ‘unfortunate incident,’ where a ‘few’ policeman ‘got drunk’ and went on a ‘looting spree,’ all on their own”.
National newspapers did not cover the event or the pogrom that accompanied it. Sinhalese politicians expressed no regrets and used subsequent parliamentary discussion to drive home the message sent by the library’s destruction: if the Tamils were unhappy, they should leave Sri Lanka and return to their homeland, India. The Tamils reacted to the loss of the building and collection with intense grief. Immediately afterwards, a journalist found a “heartbroken” local lecturer wandering through rooms thickly carpeted with half-burnt pages: He quoted him as saying “The Sinhalese were jealous of the library”. Twenty years later, the mayor of Jaffna, Nadarajah Raviraj, still grieved at the recollection of the flames he saw as a college student. For the Tamils, the devastated library became an icon of the “physical and imaginative violence” of Sinhalese extremists...
Read more: http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/119-Knuth-en.pdf
Also see: Sri Lanka's historic Jaffna library 'vandalised' (November 2010):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11668352
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffna_Library
A comment by Rohini Hensman: An excellent article, I like it very much. There are just two nuances where I would have put things differently. The author says that 'one could think of the Jaffna library as a national library, even though a Tamil nation had not yet come into being.' But I think it WAS a national library in a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic Sri Lanka, and the loss of it was a loss for Sri Lankan culture as a whole. There is not the gulf between Sinhala and Tamil that has been created by nationalists on both sides. For example, of the major Tamil epics, several (I think five) are Buddhist ones, contrary to the usual view that all Buddhists are and always were Sinhala-speaking. Also I would not use 'the Sinhalese' in such a sweeping way ('the Sinhalese claimed power')- many Sinhalese did not see Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese nation!..
Books on the burning of books:
Rebecca Knuth (2003), Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. New York: Praeger.
Rebecca Knuth (2006), Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction. New York: Praeger.
by Rebecca Knuth:
Despite (or, in some cases, because of) modern revulsion for book burning, the destruction of libraries in the last century has continued unabated. My new book, Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction probes the dynamics of library destruction and devotes significant attention to the disturbing phenomenon of ethnic biblioclasm.. Seeing themselves as defenders of a beleaguered people, extremist groups (such as religious nationalists), execute book and library destruction as a high-stake, high-affect tactic in battles over clashing belief systems. With their own community sanctioning their actions, perpetrators operate with relative impunity. Extremism, however, breeds extremism. In Sri Lanka, the destruction (by the Sinhalese) of the Jaffna Public Library, the Tamil minority’s primary cultural institution, led to full-scale civil war. The shattered library served and still serves as a symbol of violation and ethnic violence..
The Jaffna Public Library began as the private collection of the scholar K.M. Chellapha, who began lending books from his home in 1933. In 1934, a committee set up a formal library, with Chellapha as secretary. Initially, 1000 books, newspapers, and journals were kept in a single room, but soon the collection was shifted into a building on Jaffna’s main street and was opened to subscribers. The library was so popular that a cross-section of prominent members of the community began raising
funds to build a permanent, modern building. A noted architect designed the new building, and prominent Indian librarian S.R. Ranganathan served as an advisor to ensure that the library was held to international standards. Educated members of the community donated books. The main building opened in 1959. The children’s section and an auditorium were added later. The collection became well known internationally and was popular with Sinhalese and Tamil intellectuals, as well as the general public. It became the major repository for all known literary source materials of the Tamil people. By 1981, it had almost 100,000 Tamil books and rare, old manuscripts and documents, some written on dried palm leaves and stored in fragrant sandalwood boxes.
Burnt shell of the post event library
Some books were literally irreplaceable: the Yalpanam Vaipavama, a history of Jaffna, was the only existing copy. The library held miniature editions of the Ramayana epic, yellowing collections of extinct Tamil-language newspapers, and microfilms of important documents and records of the Morning Star, a journal published by missionaries in the early twentieth century (“Civilization and Culture…” 2003). It held historical scrolls, works on herbal medicine, and the manuscripts of prominent intellectuals, writers, and dramatists. Indeed, one could think of the Jaffna Library as a national library even though a Tamil nation had not yet come into being...
The Sinhalese claimed power in Sri Lanka on both demographic and ideological grounds. Their destiny as an ethnic group was inseparable from their religious beliefs. Though Buddhists are generally perceived as pacifists, the Sinhalese believed that their charge of preserving the “true” Theravada Buddhism justified violent measures. Post colonial antiWestern sentiments fueled Buddhist nationalist claims that the Sinhalese jatiya (race or nation) had been weakened by the influence of Christianity, modern lifestyles, and foreign commerce. Throughout the 1970s, ethnic conflict was aggravated by the breakdown of traditional norms and the population’s frustration with inflation and economic problems.
Authoritarian measures used to maintain control pitted the government not only against the Tamils but also against civil society, liberalism, and moderation in general. United National Party (UNP) politicians and merchants hired gangs of “thugs” (a term that was common parlance in Sri Lanka) and used state-owned buses to transport them to sites where they broke up political meetings and protests and harassed opposition parties, trade unions, workers, and public employees. The thugs threatened judges, artists, and writers. They beat up Sri Lanka’s best known dramatist Ediriweera Sarachchandra, who had satirized the decay of cultural values brought on by the government’s policies. No one was ever prosecuted or arrested for these attacks. Rather, paramilitaries and the police were empowered by legislation that outlawed “terrorism,” which was the word used to describe dissent in any form.
A renewed sense of national pride grew alongside of an opposition to pluralism. Buddhist nationalism was constructed in direct opposition to the Tamils who were viewed as as “parayo”--foreign inferiors who had to be controlled or cast out if catastrophic disorder was to be avoided. Buddhist extremists promoted the notion that Buddhism was under attack by the Hindu Tamils, who dominated the northern part of the country and the city of Jaffna. “Threat” was magnified by the existence of millions of Tamils in nearby India. The Sinhalese propaganda recast the Sri Lankan Tamils as longstanding enemies and the Sinhalese as chronically having had to fend off Tamil invasions. The violence that erupted was cyclical: when the Tamils balked at Sinhalese-only and other discriminatory policies, whether through peaceful protests or isolated terrorism, the Sinhalese government and people responded in a “mood of savage paranoia”.
The Sinhalese targeted the Tamils in violent riots in 1956, 1958, and 1977. These riots were similar to pogroms in that they were semi-organized and instigated as a frenzied response to atrocity stories and rumors that spread quickly and elicited first horror and then retribution. Systematic discrimination plus mob violence in turn radicalized many Tamils. During the 1970s, a budding culture of resistance, expressed first through literature, became increasingly politicized. In 1973, at its 12th Convention, the major Tamil political party, the Federal Party, invoked the recognized principle of the right to self-determination and resolved that the Tamils were fully qualified to be regarded as a separate Nation by virtue of their language, culture, history, and territory. In the second half of the 1970s, civil disobedience by Tamils increased. Youth groups embraced terrorism as a method of self-defense and viewed themselves as engaging in a holy war against the Sinhalese state. They confronted the government with guerilla tactics and through murder and robbery. They were not well organized, but the desire for a separate state had moved from the “lunatic fringes” into the center of Tamil political calculations and events were building to a showdown.
Flashpoint arrived in Jaffna in 1981 during long-awaited elections in which Tamils hoped to redress a lack of political representation. The Sinhalese UNP party, however, was determined to control the results and sent a contingent of police, paramilitaries, and thugs to intimidate Tamil voters. On Sunday, May 31, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) held a rally at which three Sinhalese policeman were shot, two fatally. That night the Sinhalese police and paramilitaries began a pogrom that lasted three days. The TULF headquarters was burned, as were the offices and press of the Tamil language newspaper. Statues of Tamil cultural and religious figures were defaced and demolished. A Hindu temple and over one hundred Tamil-owned shops and homes were looted and torched. Four Tamils were taken from their homes and killed. Late on the first night, eyewitnesses saw uniformed police and Sinhalese gang members set fire to the Jaffna Public Library. Two Sinhalese Cabinet members who watched it burn from the verandah of the nearby Jaffna Rest House claimed that it was “an ‘unfortunate incident,’ where a ‘few’ policeman ‘got drunk’ and went on a ‘looting spree,’ all on their own”.
National newspapers did not cover the event or the pogrom that accompanied it. Sinhalese politicians expressed no regrets and used subsequent parliamentary discussion to drive home the message sent by the library’s destruction: if the Tamils were unhappy, they should leave Sri Lanka and return to their homeland, India. The Tamils reacted to the loss of the building and collection with intense grief. Immediately afterwards, a journalist found a “heartbroken” local lecturer wandering through rooms thickly carpeted with half-burnt pages: He quoted him as saying “The Sinhalese were jealous of the library”. Twenty years later, the mayor of Jaffna, Nadarajah Raviraj, still grieved at the recollection of the flames he saw as a college student. For the Tamils, the devastated library became an icon of the “physical and imaginative violence” of Sinhalese extremists...
Read more: http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/119-Knuth-en.pdf
Also see: Sri Lanka's historic Jaffna library 'vandalised' (November 2010):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11668352
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffna_Library
A comment by Rohini Hensman: An excellent article, I like it very much. There are just two nuances where I would have put things differently. The author says that 'one could think of the Jaffna library as a national library, even though a Tamil nation had not yet come into being.' But I think it WAS a national library in a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic Sri Lanka, and the loss of it was a loss for Sri Lankan culture as a whole. There is not the gulf between Sinhala and Tamil that has been created by nationalists on both sides. For example, of the major Tamil epics, several (I think five) are Buddhist ones, contrary to the usual view that all Buddhists are and always were Sinhala-speaking. Also I would not use 'the Sinhalese' in such a sweeping way ('the Sinhalese claimed power')- many Sinhalese did not see Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese nation!..
Books on the burning of books:
Rebecca Knuth (2003), Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. New York: Praeger.
Rebecca Knuth (2006), Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction. New York: Praeger.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
SRI LANKA: Ministers threaten dissident journalists with violence
Minister Mervyn Silva, addressing a public rally, threatened to ‘break the limbs’ of government critics ‘in public’. He also gloated that he was responsible for an attack on the former president of the Sri Lanka Working Journalist Association (SLWJA), exiled journalist Poddala Jayantha, who was abducted and had both his legs broken.
April 2, 2012: The Alliance of Media Organizations is disturbed by the recent wave of hate speeches and slanderous personal attacks directed against media personnel and human rights activists in the country, in the aftermath of the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka. Last week, Minister Mervyn Silva, addressing a public rally, threatened to ‘break the limbs’ of government critics Sunanda Deshapriya, Nimalka Fernando and Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu ‘in public’. He also gloated that he was responsible for an earlier attack on the former president of the Sri Lanka Working Journalist Association (SLWJA), exiled journalist Poddala Jayantha, who was abducted and had both his legs broken by his abductors.
On 27 March, Minister Silva reiterated his threat and suggested that ‘traitors be executed’. In a climate of increasing intolerance and jingoism, state media are conducting a malicious smear campaign against critics of the current regime, including media activists. SLWJA President Gnanasiri Koththigoda, for instance, has been targeted in a sinister character assassination campaign by the government controlled television channel, ITN.
On its news telecast on 22 March, ITN stated it would soon be exposing a ‘traitor’, while showing pictures of Koththigoda in the background. The news anchor noted that a group of ‘media traitors’ had earlier fled the country, and added that the government controlled news channel would soon be exposing another ‘traitor’ who had been aiding and abetting the Tamil Diaspora through his news reporting from Colombo.
On 23 March, Koththigoda complained to Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene about the malicious personal attack levelled against him by ITN. Minister Abeywardene contacted Sudarman Raddeligida, the disgraced news director of the ITN who had previously unsuccessfully contested to be elected to Parliament on the ruling party ticket. After a conversation with Raddeligoda, the Minister assured Kottegoda that all personal attacks would cease forthwith. However, in spite of such assurances, ITN has been continuing with its smear campaign against Koththigoda.
The ITN programme is part of a government orchestrated campaign of discrediting dissenting voices. Given the degree of impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of attacks against media, as evidenced by Minister Mervyn Silva’s crowing about of the attack on our colleague Poddala Jayantha, the Alliance of Media Organizations is deeply concerned about the recent personal attacks directed against media personnel and rights activists including our colleague Gnanasiri Koththigoda. We are worried such attempts at character assassinations could well be a precursor to something far more ghastly.
We call on the government to end the manifold threats directed against its critics, including media personnel. We believe it would be in the interest of Sri Lanka, should the government direct its energies to foster a more tolerant and pluralistic society.
Sunil Jayasekara: On behalf of the Alliance of Media Organizations
http://www.lankanewsweb.com/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1637:smear-campaign-against-dissident-voices&catid=1:general&Itemid=29
April 2, 2012: The Alliance of Media Organizations is disturbed by the recent wave of hate speeches and slanderous personal attacks directed against media personnel and human rights activists in the country, in the aftermath of the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka. Last week, Minister Mervyn Silva, addressing a public rally, threatened to ‘break the limbs’ of government critics Sunanda Deshapriya, Nimalka Fernando and Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu ‘in public’. He also gloated that he was responsible for an earlier attack on the former president of the Sri Lanka Working Journalist Association (SLWJA), exiled journalist Poddala Jayantha, who was abducted and had both his legs broken by his abductors.
On 27 March, Minister Silva reiterated his threat and suggested that ‘traitors be executed’. In a climate of increasing intolerance and jingoism, state media are conducting a malicious smear campaign against critics of the current regime, including media activists. SLWJA President Gnanasiri Koththigoda, for instance, has been targeted in a sinister character assassination campaign by the government controlled television channel, ITN.
On its news telecast on 22 March, ITN stated it would soon be exposing a ‘traitor’, while showing pictures of Koththigoda in the background. The news anchor noted that a group of ‘media traitors’ had earlier fled the country, and added that the government controlled news channel would soon be exposing another ‘traitor’ who had been aiding and abetting the Tamil Diaspora through his news reporting from Colombo.
On 23 March, Koththigoda complained to Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene about the malicious personal attack levelled against him by ITN. Minister Abeywardene contacted Sudarman Raddeligida, the disgraced news director of the ITN who had previously unsuccessfully contested to be elected to Parliament on the ruling party ticket. After a conversation with Raddeligoda, the Minister assured Kottegoda that all personal attacks would cease forthwith. However, in spite of such assurances, ITN has been continuing with its smear campaign against Koththigoda.
The ITN programme is part of a government orchestrated campaign of discrediting dissenting voices. Given the degree of impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of attacks against media, as evidenced by Minister Mervyn Silva’s crowing about of the attack on our colleague Poddala Jayantha, the Alliance of Media Organizations is deeply concerned about the recent personal attacks directed against media personnel and rights activists including our colleague Gnanasiri Koththigoda. We are worried such attempts at character assassinations could well be a precursor to something far more ghastly.
We call on the government to end the manifold threats directed against its critics, including media personnel. We believe it would be in the interest of Sri Lanka, should the government direct its energies to foster a more tolerant and pluralistic society.
Sunil Jayasekara: On behalf of the Alliance of Media Organizations
http://www.lankanewsweb.com/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1637:smear-campaign-against-dissident-voices&catid=1:general&Itemid=29
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