Sri Lanka: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Sri Lanka: Conversations On The Good, The Bad And The Downright Ugly -- The State Of Freedom Of Expression And Opinion In Sri Lanka Currently

The Asian Human Rights Commission has compiled and published in sequence, the recent exchanges of views regarding the column on ‘the appalling silence of the good among us’ in the Sunday Times 'Focus on Rights’ column of August 9, 2009 by Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena.

This conversation commenced upon an attack by Rajpal Abeynayake on Pinto-Jayawardena titled ‘Rice-fed rascality’ published in the Lakbima News of August 16th 2009 which purported to impugn her credibility as a human rights defender as a result of the acceptance of the citation for the Woman of Courage award from the United States Department of State in 2007.

The original article by Pinto-Jayawardena called upon the public conscience to be voiced more strongly in regard to mass killings of civilians during Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. Abeynayake’s response was to accuse her of demonizing the present administration while trying to excuse the excesses of the former regimes. In counter-responding to this attack, the Asian Human Rights Commission’s Executive Director Basil Fernando engaged Abeynayake in a series of debates in the Sri Lanka Guardian website which called upon Abenayake to acknowledge the core point in the debate, namely that the present cannot be said to be better than the past in terms of human rights violations. This point was however bypassed.

In her response of August 20th 2009 also published in the Lanka Guardian, Pinto-Jayawardena strongly refuted Abeynayake’s attempt to give a political colouring to her article and reiterated that her demand was about public accountability despite whichever government was in power. The sexist, chauvinist and scurrilous language used by Abeynayake in replying to Pinto-Jayawardena in the Lanka Guardian of August 21st 2009 (both of which were also published in the Lakbima of August 23rd 2009) indicates the degenerative levels to which the editor of a supposedly mainstream newspaper in Sri Lanka has descended to.

However, apart from the nature of the language used, the Asian Human Rights Commission has compiled these exchanges and is forwarding them both in Sri Lanka and internationally in order to correct the misapprehension on the part of some that this may be purely a personal attack by Abeynayake on Pinto-Jayawardena.

Rather, the hidden reason for this attack is clearly disclosed in Abeynayake’s response published on Lanka Guardian of August 21st 2009 and the Lakbima of August 23rd 2009 where he refers to the Report of the Udalagama Commission of Inquiry, from which an alleged extract was published in the Lakbima of 26th July 2009 edited by Abeynayake, in which civil society organizations which represented families of the victims in the killing of seventeen aid workers in Mutur in August 2006 before the Commission of Inquiry are accused by the Commission of having an ulterior motive to discredit the army in their interventions.

This extract was referred to by Pinto-Jayawardena in her original article on the ‘appalling silence of the good among us’ (Sunday Times, August 9th 2009) in the following manner;
'The full report of the 2006 Commission of Inquiry, which investigated these and other cases but was stopped midway in its proceedings, has not been made public. The authenticity of extracts of the report that have been conveniently 'leaked' to selected newspapers are being denied by some Commission members, whom we assume, (this being the kindest interpretation), lack sufficient courage to make their dissatisfaction public. But more to the point than aggrieved egos, should we just brush these cases away and forget about the gravity of the crimes thereto?
Abeynayake takes strong exception to this claim, which however emerges only in his latest response (Lanka Guardian of August 21st 2009 and the Lakbima of August 23rd 2009) thus;
...and I dare anyone to contradict one word in that commission report, or to quote any of the commissioners to the effect that they don’t stand by that report, which expressly blames lawyers including Pinto for misleading the commission into believing that the army did it.’
Given that it was the Lakbima which had published this impugned Commission extract in its newspaper, Abeynayake’s ferocious anger may now be understandable. However, the actual reason for his attack becomes revealed only later when Abeynayake himself comes under attack and finds it difficult to sustain his original argument, thus exposing him too as now part of the government’s misinformation game.

The Asian Human Rights Commission forwards these conversations on the good, the bad and the downright ugly which include not only the original articles but also comments from readers at the time of compilation in the belief that this exchange of views in this regard is important for indicating the subtle agendas at play in this background. Readers are thus able to form their own opinion as to the manner in which freedom of opinion and expression is currently under threat in Sri Lanka from overt as well as covert disinformation agencies. The upsurge of racism among some, including those from the media community, should also be seen in this context.

It is also a reflection on the state of journalism in the country that whereas journalists should be calling for the full Udalagama Commission report to be published in order to enable sustained scrutiny of its contents, instead, a section of the media is content to publish alleged extracts and scurrilously attack any person who criticizes the same. The worth of a newspaper is not to purely highlight corruption or one or two examples of police abuse. Rather, its most important task in the current context is to examine the question of state accountability for human rights violations, past and present in order to correct the dysfunctional collapse of the Rule of Law in all respects. The failure of some newspapers in this regard shows, in some sense, the manner in which the media itself has become part of the problem in Sri Lanka today.

(For the full text of the articles please refer to: http://material.ahrchk.net/srilanka/AHRC-PAP-004-2009.pdf)

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

ENDS

© Scoop Media