ගන්ධබ්බ තත්ත්වයකට පත්ව සිටින ජනමාධ්යවේදීන්
The Sirasa attack and Lasantha’s killing have frightened journalists, some of whom have already left the country, and many now speak of a terrible new era. Ivan argues it is not new: every administration since 1978 has done this. Under Jayewardene no mainstream paper criticised the government even over the opposition leader’s civic rights, the hooting of Supreme Court judges, or the pardon of Gonawala Sunil; only opposition papers did, and they were sealed and prosecuted for criminal defamation. Under Chandrika Kumaratunga, whom journalists helped bring to power, Satana’s editor Rohana Kumara was shot in circumstances close to Lasantha’s, and Lasantha himself was beaten and his house fired on. Yet the press has now cast her as saviour, and made Mangala Samaraweera — once the symbol of media repression, whose effigies they burned — the chief mourner. Journalists forget, and in forgetting protect the system.
ලසන්ත වික්රමතුංග
Ten days after the murder, Ivan writes about a friend he had fallen out with. Lasantha was the finest investigative journalist Sri Lanka has produced — the instinct, the persistence, the ability to read what documents concealed — but the politician inside him was a small man, wielding the pen to install a UNP government in which he expected a senior ministry. He exposed his opponents’ corruption without mercy and covered up his own side’s. Ivan recounts the 1999 Town Hall bomb, when both were to be arrested and they packed bags for Singapore until Ranil Wickremesinghe called Lasantha back; Chandrika Kumaratunga’s later claim that she stopped a minister’s plan to kill them; and the quarrel over her interview and Ivan’s book that soured the friendship. Assassination, he writes, gave the life its meaning.
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.
Where did the Bribery & Corruption Commission Go Wrong?
Responding to the removal of the Bribery Commission’s Director General Piyasena Ranasinghe, Ivan argues the Commission was already a failed institution. He cites its handling of Mangala Samaraweera’s credit cards and the Public Trustee inquiry, retired judges as commissioners, the lack of any oversight, and the career of Rienzie Arsakularatne, and proposes a body to inspect the Commission itself.
මංගලගේ ආරක්ෂාව හා දේශපාලන භූමිකාව
Mangala Samaraweera says he is an LTTE target, that his guard is inadequate and that the government will answer for anything that happens to him. Ivan agrees he should be properly protected and then declines to join the procession: he recalls what was done to Ravaya through the labour department when Samaraweera held office, and says a man who wants to start again should begin with self-criticism.
ජනමාධ්ය බිය ගැන්වීම
Threats to journalists used to come from the government; now they come from the government and from gangs. Ivan follows the Rupavahini affair from the attack on a programme producer to the armed group that told another employee’s mother he would be killed, and sets it beside the JVP’s habit of calling violence against ordinary people a campaign against a foreign army.
සෝම හිමියන්ගේ අපවත්වීමට මුවාවී චෝදනාලාභී පුද්ගල තුන්කට්ටුවක් රට ගිනි තබයි
An investigation of the leaflet campaign that followed the death of Gangodawila Soma Thera, which claimed that Ravaya was funded by American churches to attack three ‘Buddhist leaders’: Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, the Public Trustee Sarath Seneviratne and Telecom chairman Thilanga Sumathipala. The piece traces who produced and paid for the leaflets and the ‘Bodu Handa’ newspaper, and argues that the aim was to inflame religious feeling to shield men facing corruption and criminal charges.
ටෝනි නිදහස ලැබීම
Tony Fernando has been freed after serving the one-year sentence for contempt imposed by a bench headed by the Chief Justice, telling supporters his only offence was reading a constitutional provision in court. Ivan alleges the Chief Justice orchestrated the assault on him in prison. Further sections report Param Cumaraswamy’s Colombo lectures criticising the Bar Association under Ananda Wijesekera, a Dinakara article defending the Chief Justice by Nelson Perera, and new evidence of Tilanga Sumathipala’s links with Dhammika Amarasinghe.
නීතියේ පාලනය කථාවට පමණද?
The piece notes that the IGP attended a drug dealer’s birthday party, the Telecom and Cricket Board chairman Tilanga Sumathipala is accused of close links with contract killer Dhammika Amarasinghe, the Public Trustee took a bribe, and the Chief Justice faces impeachment charges, yet none has stepped down. Sections detail Sumathipala’s alleged role in sending Amarasinghe to the 1999 World Cup on a false passport, Dinakara’s use of religion to shield him, the IGP’s explanation, and the rivalry between Anura Bandaranaike and Chandrika Kumaratunga.