සාකච්ඡා කිරීම හා සටන් කිරීම
Accused at a public forum of helping the government’s war, Ivan answers by setting out
thirty years of his own dealings with power: the twenty-odd statements he has given the CID,
the night J.R. Jayewardene ordered him to drop a column and the month he obeyed before
resuming it, the raid on the Ravaya office five days after he declined President Premadasa’s
invitation, and the meetings with Chandrika Kumaratunga after attacks on journalists.
Journalists, he argues, should be able to telephone anyone in the country; the fault lies
only in misusing the connection.
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.
සිරසේ සිරසට පහරදීම
The Claymore detonated inside Sirasa’s operations room symbolises the security forces, whoever ordered it: only the forces and the LTTE hold Claymores or know how to handle them, and if the forces did this the signal it sends is more frightening still. Ivan traces the campaign that preceded it — Wimal Weerawansa’s JVP putting up posters nationwide calling Kili Maharaja and Sirasa a front for the LTTE after Sirasa depicted Weerawansa as a donkey, Mervyn Silva calling the channel a Tiger supporter, and public accusations over its coverage of the airbase attack on the day Kilinochchi fell. The attack was the logical outcome of that campaign. Naming political opponents as LTTE supporters, and rejoicing when they are killed by the LTTE, is an established habit here: SLFP supporters let off firecrackers when Premadasa was assassinated, and UNP supporters painted a pottu on Chandrika’s posters in 1994.
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.
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.
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.
Democratising a rotten system
The political system has fallen so low that reforms are now demanded not only by political parties but by civic organisations. What is on the table — the commissions, the media provisions, the end of the rule that costs an expelled member his seat — and what it would take to get agreement on it.