“Those who killed Lasantha were cowardly Barbarians”
By Dayan Jayatilleka
“…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…
…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” - WB Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’
I have a particular problem with the murder of journalists, especially editors of newspapers. The Editor’s Guild and Publishers Society of Sri Lanka annually host an awards ceremony at which the final presentation of the evening, the pinnacle prize (distinguished by a different hue from the others), is for Journalist of the Year. That award is named after my father, Mervyn de Silva. It was not donated by me or any member of his family. It was instituted by the premier organizations of the profession to which he dedicated his life. Lasantha Wickrematunge was an Editor of a mainstream English language newspaper. He was thus a member of that tribe of which my father was a renowned elder.
Mourners light candles near a portrait of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the slain editor of The Sunday Leader, outside a Colombo cemetery soon after he was buried-pic: Amantha Perera/IRIN
I do not know who killed him, but I must disclose that I do know something about his killers and those who ordered the killing. They were cowardly barbarians. They were cowards because they killed an unarmed man, and anyone who intentionally kills an unarmed man or woman is a coward. They were barbarians because they expressed their disagreement with what Lasantha wrote and did, not by opposing his ideas with the same weapons of words, but by butchering him. That conduct places one outside the borders of humanity and universal values of civilization.
There are those who may think that these are values that cannot be upheld in times of war, especially a war against terrorism. That is nonsense. One of the finest acts of humane, civilized conduct I am aware of was by one of the bravest, most daring soldiers we have amongst us, General Gamini Hettiaarachchi, iconic head of the Special Forces, highly respected by the US Green Beret trainers based at Fort Bragg, and mentor of generations of Sri Lankan Special Forces operators, including the legendary “long rangers”. His brother, a planter, was decapitated by the JVP, but when he apprehended JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera at gunpoint, he did not even deal the latter a blow, and ensured the safety of Wijeweera’s family.
Let’s say it straight out. Lasantha’s paper was, in stridency of tone, a tabloid masquerading as a broadsheet. More controversially, he and his paper were not merely soft on the LTTE but were arguably pro-LTTE. None of that justifies his murder. Lasantha did not kill anyone. He did not even carry a weapon. If his paper was objectionable, it should not have been read. Perhaps it should have been boycotted. If his writing was distorted as indeed it often was, it should have been subject to withering criticism in writing. If he had dubious connections and was engaging in political conspiracy he should have been exposed. If he was acting subversively he should have been taken into custody and prosecuted in accordance with our tough anti-terrorist laws. Nothing he said or did warranted his murder, nor can be used to justify it.
It is simply illogical to suspect that the President and the Secy. Defense were guilty of or responsible for Lasantha’s murder. A local writer on a website had likened the killing to that of Benigno Aquino and had made reference to Marcos, with the clear implication as to who was playing Marcos. This is plain stupid. Marcos was a highly unpopular President and Aquino was a well known politician returning from exile with a good chance of replacing him. Lasantha wasn’t running for office and the incumbent President is hugely popular. Lasantha posed no threat to him. As for exposes of financial turpitude, Lasantha’s English language and therefore limited circulation newspaper had little effect. Another writer had opined on how perfect the timing of the killing was, oblivious to the irony that the factor of timing works precisely against the hypothesis of high level governmental guilt. On the one hand, the wave of military successes and the prospect of electoral triumph rendered utterly needless any violent measures against domestic dissenters and critics while on the other hand, the murder could only dull the glow of the President’s success and work to his discredit.
I am not making some special excuse for President Rajapakse. At the time of Richard de Zoysa’s murder I knew that President Premadasa had nothing to do with it and was appalled by it – though I did come to know that he permitted (but did not initiate) the cover up by the state apparatus and powerful elements in the governing party, some of whom are now at the helm of that party. Though a critic, I never thought that President Kumaratunga had anything to do with the murders of Tamil youth strangled with plastic handcuffs, floating in the Diyawanna Oya girdling the Parliament or with the murder of Kumar Ponnambalam shortly after he criticized her and the Government on TV in the Sinhala language, or with the lethal grenade attack on the Shah Rukh Khan show or with the murder of columnist “Taraki” Sivaram. All of these took place on her watch, while she was Commander-in-Chief, and yet I do not think she was guilty or responsible in any direct sense, anymore than Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake was responsible for the fatal dive that Dodampe Mudalali took from the Fourth Floor of the CID building in the Fort while being questioned on an alleged plot against the UNP Government of the day.
What we must remember however, is that in all these cases – Dodampe mudalali, Richard, the Diyawanna victims, Kumar Ponnambalam, the grenade attack and Sivaram—no one was convicted. The trail ran cold or the traces were kicked over, the perpetrators got off. In each of these cases, somebody decided that the intended victim was a subversive or a traitor and deserved death, and then took it upon themselves to function as or deploy others as executioner. Others, either agreeing with the logic or feeling a far closer affinity to the killers than the victims, covered up and convinced still others to go along with the cover up, irrespective of the damage to the system and the health of the body politic. This is the logic of the Ku Klux Klan, of vigilantes, Death Squads. It is a fanatical, fundamentalist, totalitarian logic; a fascist logic. Who will be the next victim?
Almost as abhorrent ethically as the murder of Lasantha, is the justification of that atrocious crime. There are emails flying around including one that urges that it be “propagated worldwide”, especially to the media, by all Sri Lankan diplomats, which is how I got it, courtesy of a horrified friend. The most unobjectionable part of it is the point that Lasantha’s posthumous editorial was not by him at all but by colleagues, and written post facto. So what? I had assumed that as I read it – and that is a perfectly acceptable journalistic device and literary conceit. The editorialist/s had been deliberately ambiguous about it. The e-mailer then goes onto comment on the quality of the English language prose of Lasantha and Sonali Samarasinghe, a comment which might have had greater credibility if the emailed exegetical critique itself had not left a great deal to be desired in its command of the English language. Worst of all is the justification of the murder – a justification that mixes in the viciously and speculatively personal, the religious and the racial. What is ironic is that the author and distributors thought that every Sri Lankan diplomat would somehow find this garbage either convincing or helpful. What they do not realize is that however badly the LTTE is defeated on the battlefield, all that is necessary for the cause of Tamil Eelam to be recognized by the international community and carved out a la Kosovo by international intervention, is for free tickets to be given to and appointments made for a racist or “patriotic” vigilante organization to spout these views before legislatures throughout the world. Already the anti-conversion legislation which a small party wishes to bring forward in February, poses the danger that if passed, it will put us on a collision course with the Obama administration and the Democrat dominated Congress – the most popular and powerful administration and the most influential legislature on the planet.
Adesh and Avinash, the two sons of the slain editor of The Sunday Leader newspaper, pay their respects to their father-pic: Amantha Perera/IRIN
The killing of Lasantha is a blow against the image of Sri Lanka and provides a weapon for the pro-Tiger Tamil Diaspora as it tries its utmost to forestall our final victory. Their question is being raised with some credibility: if this is how ethnic Sinhalese editors of English language newspapers are treated in Colombo , how much worse will the Tamils be treated by the victorious Sinhalese?
Prabhakaran has done our country more damage than we realize. Thirty years of war has caused an atrophy of almost all institutions and the hypertrophy of some. He has also caused a degree of mirroring of the conduct of his instrument. But not all the evil within our society and system can be blamed on Prabhakaran. During the liberal UNP administration of Dudley Senanayake we spent one thousand days under Emergency rule. The political atmosphere was such that the JVP armed itself in the late ‘60s against what it feared was an imminent rightwing authoritarian takeover by the JR Jayewardene-Esmond Wickremesinghe wing of the UNP. Six years of the seven year rule of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike were spent under Emergency, and “tyre pyres” appeared in April-May 1971, as did thousands of bodies of youths with the their hands tied behind their backs, floating down the rivers. Lt. Alfred Wijesooriya, convicted of the rape and murder of Premawathie Manamperi the Kataragama beauty queen, was the only one who didn’t get away. Governments change but organizations and structures, systems and sub-systems, apparatuses and machines, learn modes of behavior which then begin to inhere unless consciously inoculated or programmed against.
If there are those who think that people should be killed because of what they express and then go onto to actually order the killing; if our institutions cannot apprehend and punish the killers and therefore they enjoy impunity; if there are those who actually justify the murder of an unarmed man however bad or wrong his views; then something very nasty and dangerous is happening to us. What kind of society is emerging? What would we have lost while engaging in the necessary war against the separatist terrorist enemy?
I find the critical commentary on the murder of Lasantha to be unhelpful because, as in the case of Richard’s killing, the tendency is to make cheap political points by pointing the finger at the national leadership. Misdiagnosis helps no one: when there is a malignancy encysted in the entrails, it does no one good to shriek about a nonexistent tumor in the brain of the body politic.
The upper middle class of Colombo have isolated themselves by not supporting the war effort, and therefore allowing itself to be seen or portrayed as unpatriotic. The contrast with Mumbai could not be starker. While the young professionals in the corporate sector in Sri Lanka belong to the so-called peace lobby, in Mumbai they were out demonstrating against the government’s ineffectual response to the terrorist attacks. While they wanted a full-on response to terrorism they were careful not to sound even the slightest anti-Muslim note. Similarly the Muslims of Mumbai were quick to condemn the terrorist attacks. In Sri Lanka by contrast, the middle class professionals are either for Ranil’s CFA and Chandrika’s PTOMS or sympathize with the Sinhala-Buddhist racist pressure groups.
We must support our military which is defeating that enemy described by Barbara Crossette in The Nation of January 6th as “pioneers of the suicide bomber and the cyanide capsule, and the most totalitarian and lethal guerrilla organization in contemporary Asia .” Bear in mind that contemporary Asia includes the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Lashkar e Taiba, the NPA, MILF and Abu Sayyaf. Our military is defeating a force rather different from some ghetto youngsters shooting off home made rockets which cause double digit casualties over a number of years. The Sri Lankan armed forces are doing this without murdering hundreds of children, and without using white phosphorus in populated urban areas. A quarter of casualties inflicted by the Sri Lankan offensive are not children and women.
While we support our military and the military effort, Sri Lanka must not enthrone militarism. Unfortunately those who oppose militarism do not support the military and the military effort, while those who support the military and the military effort do not oppose militarism. Similarly, while Sri Lanka is understandably proud of its adherence to Theravada Buddhism, it must not countenance intolerant practices. The outcome of the defeat of the Tigers must be a restored democracy and an open society, devoid of the mistakes and inequities that constituted the causes of our conflict -- not a straitjacketed social order which suffocates diversity and its expression and enthrones the values of intolerance in the name of patriotism, the nation and “cultural correctness”. After the gun-smoke of war wafts away in the tropical wind, we must not look around and glimpse the outlines of a dominant social bloc which has as its ideology a theocratic militarism and regards the popularly elected civilian political leadership as a screen of some sort. Could it be that the murder of Lasantha is part of an effort to dictate the terms of the post war order, social political and ideological; an extra-constitutional attempt to unilaterally re-draw the lines of permissible dissent? Perhaps, as Yeats warned in The Second Coming, “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”.
The history of the twentieth century, from Europe to Latin America shows that not only should the elected political leadership NOT be the target of unfair criticism, but must be recognized as the only potential counterweight against the negative forces and trends in societies such as ours, especially when the democratic opposition suffers an organic crisis of leadership.
(These are the strictly personal views of the writer).
37 Comments
Nice try! You cannot bury the truth!
Dear Dayan,
I am yet to see a article by you condemning killing of Innocient tamil cililians by the SL army. We all know how bad the action of LTTE. Please be honest. Stand up for the innocient civilians Whether they are Tamils, Muslims or Sinhalese.
OOHHH!
I get it!
According Dayan Jayatilleka the Tamil Diaspora killed Lasantha Wickrematunge to discredit the Saintly Rajapakse Bros and followers!
Even Niccolo Machiavelli would surley puke.
Good one Dayan,
You are defending the President. You are where you are now thanks to our popular Prsident. However did you not read the Editorial? It clearly points the finger at the Government, not necessarily the President. How could armed goons with revolvers fitted with silencers roam the city avoiding many checkpoints if there was no governemt involvement.
Also I think this Government is a master at timing. They were well prepared to trot out the same excuses, long before they planned it. Remember, President's brother took Lasantha to courts, preventing him from publishing anything which connects him or his ministry with it.
Good Luck
Chinthaka
Dayan, is it not the time to crack jokes!
Great Article, while some journalists and writers are Pro-LTTE , it's nice to have a this kind of writer who bring the masses to truth. We need your kind of diplomates at this crucial moment.
Dayan,
You are absolutely right about the 'enthroning of militarism'. But sad to say, when it actually happens you would have cooked up some arguement to justify it.
Ruwan, we want diplomats who can twist and turn the truth even if the dead is a fellow Singalese. Both Dyan & Professor Rajeev Wijeyasinga are masters of this art. Reading their articles are like wacthing a movie and walking away wondering what was all that about. Shame on them when they can't even stand up for their own.
Dayan, it looks as if you are scared of Rajpakse Bros KKK. If you are a journalist write the truth and not rubbish. The world knows who killed Lasantha. Even in his editorial he mentioned the killers. You must be blind.
Hi, Dayan
A very brave attempt. By the way, you have missed your profession!
'coward' is one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity. 'barbarian' means 1. of or relating to a land, culture or people alien and usually beleived to be inferior to another land, culture or people. 2. lacking refinement,learning or artistic or literary culture - according to Merriam Webster Dictionary.
Those who killed Lasantha do not fall into these categories.They were persons who had orders to carry out what they did and were not afraid of being apprehended by police or military when they followed Lasantha's car from his home along the highway, or of being apprehended by police or military while they commited murder on the highway in full view of an army checkpoint and civilians - a deed which would have needed at least ten minutes. They did it with military precision. The persons who were angry at the revelations made by the Sunday Leader are known to all who read the paper.
These are the persons who ordered the killing.
Dear Readers;
Please don't get fooled by all these so called Dr. Dayan and Dr. Rajiv articles. These two are nothing but "Spin Doctors". Also, they are bending backwards to please and deflate the criticism of their "Masters- Mahinda and Gota".
The whole world knows who committed this barbaric murder. The world's premier magazines and newspapers (London Times-Jan 17, UK Guardian, Voice of America, Outlook India and The Economist) have all published late Lasantha's posthumous editorial.
Dayan; Please show some respect for a departed soul.
Sri-Lanka takes more pride in its Theravada Buddhist heritage than anything else, even though our country is multi-ethnic. Does our current regime practice what was preached by the Buddha? It’s for you to decide.
.
This is a writer who supported terror against terror. Even after the Tinco school boys massacare and Mutur aid workers massacare he did not change his stand.
For some, these are normal when you fight against terror.
Now he is worried? I wonder why?
:-)
Dayan Jayatilaka,
His masters voice, albeit an educated one. The good life that he now leads has clearly led him to write such nonsense. You are disgracing your father - who was a professional journalist - by bringing him into this.
Dear Dr spin,
You lost your pride long time ago supporting barbaric brothers. Now you trying to defend gutter, carbage politics of sinhala srilanka.
go for it enjoy, soon you will regret.
Dayan,
You are a very educated and a very intelligent man. I am sure you can get a very good job on your own merits. I do not understand why you have to suck up to the Rajapaksa brothers like other political appointees. This kind of articles does not do any good to your already tarnished reputation. By the way your Dad is a very good man.
Please write relaistic articles than fairytales.
Bowed and afraid. Sir, please admit that. We will forgive you since you are in the state of delirium. Keep dreaming about democracy and open society.
The truth is distastefull to those pro-LTTEers and so called media personnel who are making great deal of money supporting LTTE using so- called free media, and blackmailing corrupted politicians.Now a days, media in Sri Lanka is nothing but a mafia-type-business.Dayan has exposed the real truth.thanks a lot.
Bowed and afraid. Sir, please admit that. We will forgive you since you are in the state of delirium. Keep dreaming about democracy and open society.
Yes Dayan,you are correct here. This murder has been committed not by a victorious person but a looser. The president is not responsible for this. I
t is that the UPASAKA BALALA, Ranil who has no other means of defeating the government and the victories achieved by the forces. Ranil has now got in contact with some intelligence group like RAW or LTTE AND IS EXECUTING THESE MURDERS.
Otherwise he will have no escape or future. He has gained experience for these things. With Algama he has run a toture camp under the regimes of JR and Premadasa. So he has an urgent need to put this government down the path of unpopularity.
Ranil does not care about the country or about the people. He wants to become the president of this country even for a day. He ran to Prabha and begged him for help.He agrreed to share the country with Prabha.He is a real Popnnaya and Pussa and ias driven by his weired imagination. He is also capable of doing any dirty thing not only killing a journalist.
The cases of Sirasa and Lasantha both are his creations. The looser is now panicked and trying all the ways to overcome this situation. Thare is no other person in Sri Lanka who wanted to kill Lasantha and bring disrepute to the country and the present president. There is only one person who wanted it at this time. It is Ranil. Ranil is the person and the mastermind behind this crime.
Charles
Hi Dr. Dayan, who are always behind the powerful leaders, everyone remembered what Dayan has done during late president Premadasa regime. Are you remember lesson,which was offered by srilankans at late Lalith Athulathmudali's funeral. People know who you are very well even you justified lots of LTTE activities as so call Anurudda Thilakesiri.
Do people still read articles by this gentleman (which fall into an entirely discredited catagory)? I refuse to look beyond the title!
Good one Dayan. Utter BS. Speaking from both sides of the mouth.
What else can we expect, you are a Presidents man. So is Rajiv.
Please ask the police to investigate Kotakadeniya and his JHU goons.
For those non Sinhala Budhhists in sunny Srilanka, that includes you Dayan, look out for they will now come for you.
Real coward and barbarians are the ones who come to the defence of the murderers!! We all know that you are under the payroll of cowards and barbarians as such you are paid to defend them!! Sri Lanka is full of this category.
Lasantha Wickrematunge's killing is a Barberic act of State Terrorism against Democracy in our country practised by the Rajapakse & Sarath Fonseka Junta. Lasantha was shot and Hacked to Death inside the so-called High Security Zone in Colombo, the Capital of Sri Lanka.
The Greatest Tribute to his life and work will be for his death to serve as the catalyst for a broad coalition against the Terror and Terrorists who threaten our freedom
Another Doosara by the learned spin doctor!!
Siva
What all Sri lankans should remember what Abraham Lincoln said
One who denies the freedom of others, deserve not for themself. Unfortunately the writer has not realized that Lasantha a noble man who inspired by this principles
Mr jayathilleka
Prabhakaran has done our country more damage than we realize. Thirty years of war has caused an atrophy of almost all institutions and the hypertrophy of some. He has also caused a degree of mirroring of the conduct of his instrument This comment from you is like the rapist blaming the woman because she was wearing a miniskirt. From independance to 1976, you had the opportunity to build a plural multicultural society. Instead your ilk decided to suck up to the buddhist singhala vote bank.Mr Prabhakaran did not gain the support of the thamil people till your sterling efforts of July 1983, made it plain that unless your violence is met with violence, like all bullies you will always resort to it.Yet again you had a chance in 2002.When the ceasaefire was signed. You could have come up with a power sharing arrangement which would have earned the support of the thamil nation. Remember the ISGA, you could not even come up with a counter proposl.Now that you are cock sure of military victory, even the APRC has been mothballed.The thamil people dont care what Barbara Crossette, or any other foreingner has to say about the LTTE. If you make the effort to find out what they think, no matter what happens, in the war the travails of the island of ceylon will not end till,as they will support the LTTE till they feel they have acheived a reasonable result. In the meantime you will slowly loose your freedoms, as the despots you choose consolidate their power. I read today that 4 other journalists have left the country due to fear for their lives. Dont accuse the LTTE of being the cause of that as well.
You say that you knew that Premadasa permitted coverup of Richard De Zoysa's murder, and yet you continued to be associated with him without making anything public, which makes you an accessory to that murder and other atrocities under Premadasa. In other words, you have admitted you are an evil criminal.
And if you know people who murder unarmed people are cowardly barbarians, how many barbarians have you promoted or worked closely with? Let me list a few names: Premadasa,Rajapaksa, Karuna, Devananda. In other words, despite your high-faluting verbiage, you are very much a criminal barbarian. Complete my list and hang yourself, sparing us more of your barbaric sycophancy.
I inderstand that many of you must be frustrated that no one is able to articulately point a finger at a state mechanism for this murder and back it up with evidence and motive. I mean, if all of you folks so badly want such an article, why not write it yourselves? I promise you, I'll read it.
But in the face of this dearth of a factual counter argument to that of Dayan Jayatilleka and Rajiva Wijesinghe, it's pontless to falsify the events of that day -- the murderers had silenced weapons (we don't know that), the murder took place in view of a checkpoint (utter rubbish), the shooting was done with military precision (what military precision do you need for a gangland-style killing?), Lasantha identified his killers in his posthumous editorial (we don't even know if he wrote it), he was shot and hacked to death (he wasn't hacked) in a Colombo high-security zone (he wasn't). etc.
Come on, folks, articulating your understandable frustrations through exaggeration and outright bullshit does nothing for your case. It just makes you look whiny.
In case Dayan Jayatilleke does not get it, I too was being fanciful in my earlier post!
- But I wouldn't be surprised at all if it too does actually get promoted, just like the WMD stories.
In seeking to exonerate the Rajapakse Bros of Lasantha Wickrematunge's dastardly murder, Dayan Jayatilleke is suggesting that there is a Theocratic and Militaristic Mafia behind the scenes and who are at present using the Rajapakse saints as a screen until the right time.
So then Dayan Jayatilleke is indirectly pointing at Gen. Sarath Fonseka.
And since it is now on public record that Gen.Sarth Fonseka said Lanka belongs to the Sinhala-Buddhists he makes the perfect Theocrat (Sinhala-Buddhist) with militaristic mentality and capability.
And after all the killers were able to smoothly and with impunity get around in a HSZ manned by the military, were they not!
Why is Dayan Jayatilleke doing so?
I suspect that this is a warning to the Gen. Sarath Fonseka (via Dayan Jayatilleke the messenger boy) to keep out of the lucrative politics of Sri Lanka.
Get too close and it will be easy to 'find' the 'culprit', now that the job (of fighting 'terrorism') also appears to be done!
And unfortunately for Gen. Sarath Fonseka there are very powerful foreign backers, but with there own agenda, on the Rajapakse Bros side (as long as they tow the line) – which is why the GoSL = Rajapakse Bros in full confidence that the IC would say and do nothing, declared an end to the ceasefire early last year.
This is also why Mahinda Rajapakse in his speech after the fall of Killnochi mentioned mysterious foreign interference over which he had righteously triumphed - this was of course completely off the point and quite out of context so either it inadvertently slipped out or he was getting his alibis lined up in case the future exposes his role in the loss of Lanka to those foreign powers!
A fool is a fool
But an educated fool is dangerous
a communalist is a communalist
but an educated communlist is dangerous
Dyan, don't play double game with the media. your writtings have carved in the internet preaching VIOLENCE under he jack boot rule of mahinda and you yourself have no choice but to write about the chinthana and praise all the time knowing you will be next. Don't you know that we cannot cure the stupidity.
I am also of the view that people who fancy themselves to be "intellectuals" and who hold high positions since power is what they seek, pose more dangers to society than others. E.G. SWRD and his people pleasing policies. This writer sounds so full of his own highminded ideas and does not appear to be objective or have intergrity in analysis.
I was expecting this from our great spin doctor. .
I quote a sentence from this article by Dayan to illustrate his duplicity!
“Already the anti-conversion legislation which a small party wishes to bring forward in February, poses the danger that if passed, it will put us on a collision course with the Obama”
He is with the JHU as long as they target any minorities other than Christians.
The moment JHU tries to prevent conversions he brings in even Obama to frighten JHU
Dayan is not worried about any human rights violations or about any minority rights.
He is worried only when the church is affected especially the right of Christians to convert.
Being himself a Christian this is understandable.