ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක් සමග ඉදිරිය දැකීමක්
Ivan sets out his own positions and why they left him isolated. He held that the Tamil rebellion was inseparable from Tamil grievances and had to be settled by negotiation — until it became clear the LTTE would accept nothing short of a separate state or confederation, at which point he supported defeating it militarily. He backed the war publicly and predicted the LTTE’s defeat while most of Ravaya’s own writers argued it could not be won. On the killing and beating of journalists he told colleagues the blame could not be laid wholly on a government unable to move against its army commander mid-war, and was angrily rejected by Sunanda Deshapriya. He records that this was the third insurrection he supported suppressing, including the 1971 rising he took part in himself. At the presidential election his loyalty was to Rajapaksa, whose remaining task he defines as remaking the state and political system.
සිදුවූයේ කුමක්ද? විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Sri Lanka’s throat was caught in two nooses, Ivan writes — terrorism and the political system — and the first is nearly loosed. He explains his own shift: he doubted the account that armed struggle followed the failure of non-violent politics, doubted the Tamil homeland claim, and was moved decisively by the LTTE’s treatment of Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had given them more space than any Sinhala leader and whom they destroyed politically. He defends Rajapaksa’s decision as the most important and most dangerous taken since independence, and argues the war could have gone very differently had the LTTE succeeded in mass suicide attacks, a single trap killing thousands of soldiers, or coordinated massacres in fifty or sixty villages. He then judges the opposition, the courts and the press all to have acted without responsibility, and disputes the reported threatening of Poddala Jayantha and Sanath Balasuriya by the Defence Secretary.
ඊළඟට කුමක්ද?
The government went to provincial elections meaning to follow them with a parliamentary poll, and had escaped the trap set by the courts over fuel prices; with Kilinochchi taken, everything was falling its way. The Sirasa attack and Lasantha Wickrematunge’s killing two days later have thrown that picture into confusion. Any fair-minded person sees both as the government’s work, and the government’s reply — that it would be mad to do such a thing when conditions favoured it — has an argument in it but no evidence for the conspiracy it alleges instead. Ivan finds no motive on the part of the forces or their commanders, and no evidence tying them to these two attacks, though he accepts a unit attached to them assaulted Keith Noyahr and Namal Perera. Responsibility rests finally with the President as commander-in-chief. Sri Lanka investigates nothing seriously: even the site of Premadasa’s assassination was washed down at once.
භයානක ප්රවණතාවක
Amid the army’s advances in the north, Ivan writes, what is heard in the south is terrifying. A Claymore mine was used against Sirasa’s operations room on the 6th, detonated remotely — and only the security forces and the LTTE possess Claymores or know how to handle them. Two days later four men on two motorcycles stopped Lasantha Wickrematunge’s car and shot him in the head. Journalists commonly believe both attacks, and two earlier assaults, were the work of the security forces, though they do not say so publicly. Ivan grants the forces their role and their sacrifice, and asks journalists to be sensitive in wartime — but argues that using power against critics earns no public respect, and that the government’s decision to look away after Keith Noyahr and Namal Perera were attacked is now costing it dearly.
ජනමාධ්යවේදීහු සදාචාර අර්බුදයක
Journalists demand information from everyone and are scrutinised by no one, Ivan argues — and when their own affairs come into question, they close ranks. He notes that Ranil Wickremesinghe’s criticism of media conduct went undiscussed, that neither the Centre for Policy Alternatives nor Sunanda Deshapriya explained their dispute publicly, and that people inside the Free Media Movement asked him to help keep its internal investigation out of the press. He then publishes figures: two officers paid 750 euros a month by INSI for journalist safety, whose existence most journalists do not know of; a protection fund paying 5,000 rupees a month to five families of murdered journalists while paying rents of 230,000 and 178,000 to two threatened ones; trainers paid up to 38,400 rupees for a two-day workshop, who also act as coordinators and judge the essay competitions. Four journalists’ November payments are itemised, with monthly incomes reaching 326,530 rupees.