තත්ත්වය ඛේදජනකයි
The year opened with the killing of a member of parliament — the third since the government took office, and all three Tamil. Ivan sets out what is alleged about the reduction of the murdered member’s guard after he voted against the budget, and asks how a country’s human rights position can improve when members must leave it to stay alive.
Media Reform
An interview with Ravaya editor Victor Ivan on media reform: the campaign to abolish criminal defamation, the proposed Freedom of Information Act, plans for a Media Training Institute, and his argument that Sri Lankan journalism has acted as a creator of disputes rather than an arbitrator of them.
The truth is out there
The accusations and counter-accusations in the quarrel between S.B. Dissanayake and the President are extremely serious, and both sides are holding fire — refraining from using all the bullets at once, and firing one or two at a time.
The Richard factor in the FMM
A mention of Richard de Zoysa in an earlier article, questioning the purpose of a government photographic exhibition, has become a great controversy. This is Ivan’s answer to it, and the most personally exposed thing he wrote in the Sunday Times.
Criminal defamation Vs. Media freedom
Media freedom is treated as an essential part of a democratic system, and by accepted standards Sri Lanka is among the countries with least of it. The media minister told his first press conference that the government had been brought to power mainly by the media.
Election under a commission
The ban on meetings and demonstrations has been lifted, and so has the censorship of foreign news — but publishing in the local media what the foreign media print about the war is still forbidden. The world outside has been given the right to know the truth about the war in the north.
Against whom are the draconian laws?
The government has declared military rule with a parliamentary election due before the end of August. Conditions in the coming period may be worse than they are now, and the government still cannot, under any circumstances, refrain from holding the election.
Circle of a crisis
Sri Lanka has become a country caught in a vicious circle of crises with no way out, and the special feature of that circle is that each crisis is bigger and more dangerous than the one before it. Five passages of this column were removed by the censor and stand in the printed text as the single word Censored.
Why president’s office sent an angry reply to me
There is no disgrace for an elephant who breaks his tusks on a diamond rock. Reading the reply the President’s office sent to his answer to her January interview, Ivan writes, he felt they were living in an abuddassa age, in which the diamond rock pursues the elephant in anger and hatred.
A new age of terror
The government called the harassment of the singers Rukantha Gunatilaka and Chandralekha Perera a robbery, and the levelling of Anoja Weerasinghe’s house at Moneragala a personal grudge. Set those explanations beside each other, Ivan argues, and a pattern appears that the country has seen before.