Reflections on legal murder: the eye-for-an-eye argument

Troy Davis, a US citizen and a black man, wrongfully sentenced over the killing of a police officer in 1989, was executed by way of a lethal injection yesterday.  ‘Wrongfully’, because the entire case against Troy was based on eyewitness accounts that were horrendously compromised. ‘Wrongfully’, because seven of the nine ‘witnesses’ recanted; some admitting that they were arm-twisted by the police to manufacture their ‘testimonies’.   

Troy is dead.  He was not the first to be legally murdered and will not be the last.  If, as it very likely, he was innocent, then he was not the first innocent person punished for a crime he did not commit.  He probably would not be the last either.   Troy is no more, but before he went, he opened a door.  I intend to walk through it, and hopefully, invite others to accompany me.  This is about the death penalty. Capital punishment.  The practice of extracting an eye as payment for eye-extraction.  This is about making the world safe.  It is about social purification.  It is about deterrence. 

The US ‘justice sytem’ will do as it pleases.  Barack Obama, according to Press Secretary Jay Carney has said that it was not appropriate for the President to weigh in on specific cases like this, which is a state prosecution, although he does a lot more than ‘weigh in’ in the affairs of the world without even a by-your-leave.  Each country has laws and ways of dealing with crimes, punishment included.  Their enactment is the product of histories. Sri Lanka too, has ‘ways’.  Capital punishment is part of these ‘ways’, although it has not been implemented in over a quarter of a century.  More than a decade ago, MP (People’s Alliance) Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra tabled a motion in parliament, demanding that capital punishment be ‘brought back’.  Now I hear that relevant authorities are looking for executioners. 

Troy Davis makes me write.  He makes me revisit Albert Camus’ brilliant and immensely influential essay ‘Reflections on the Guillotine’.  Point by point. Here’s the first: punishment should fit the crime.

So if you rob Rs. 100.00, the state steps in to take back the same amount (plus of course procedural costs incurred) as compensation. Break a house and your house is broken.  Pinch someone and you get pinched back. That kind of thing? 

How about death?  You kill someone and you deserve to die, to get killed.  Well, that theory, if taken to its logical conclusion, should require punishment to duplicate crime.  If you poison someone, they you need to be poisoned in return.  Troy Davis (if he was guilty) ought to have been shot by the same kind of murder weapon, from the same distance at the same time of day and from the same angle. 

Here’s something I wrote on this issue a couple of years ago: Isn’t it true that no murderer puts his/her victim through the kinds of torture that a condemned person is put through, legally, by the state? Which murderer, Albert Camus asks, tells his/her victim the date and time of death, offers elaboration on the method of execution, and subjects the victim to the torture of being held captive with little chance of the decision being overturned in a confined space? No premeditated murder can match the premeditation that the state imposes on a person, slammed, with the penalty of death.

Troy Davis was innocent, I am convinced, or, in the very least, the many question marks pertaining to the procedure add up to enough material to squash the ‘beyond the shadow of doubt’ caveat.  Even if he were guilty, there’s no equivalency in what the victim suffered and what he was made to suffer.  These were words he penned while awaiting his moment of destiny:

Where is the Justice for me? In 1989 I surrendered myself to the police for crimes I knew I was innocent of in an effort to seek justice through the court system in Savannah, Georgia USA. During my imprisonment I have lost more than my freedom, I lost my father and my family has suffered terribly, many times being treated as less than human and even as criminals. In the past I have had lawyers who refused my input, and would not represent me in the manner that I wanted to be represented. I have had witnesses against me threatened into making false statements to seal my death sentence and witnesses who wanted to tell the truth were vilified in court.

For the entire two years I was in jail awaiting trial I wore a handmade cross around my neck, it gave me peace and when a news reporter made a statement in the local news, “Cop-killer wears cross to court,” the cross was immediately taken as if I was unworthy to believe in God or him in me. The only time my family was allowed to enter the courtroom on my behalf was during the sentencing phase where my mother and sister had to beg for my life and the prosecutor simply said, “I was only fit for killing.” Where is the Justice for me, when the courts have refused to allow me relief when multiple witnesses have recanted their testimonies that they lied against me?

He added, ‘Am I to be made an example of to save face? Does anyone care about my family who has been victimized by this death sentence for over 16 years? Does anyone care that my family has the fate of knowing the time and manner by which I may be killed by the state of Georgia?

Take away the racism, inhumanity and flaws that remain uncorrected in the US ‘justice system’, even the guilty are made to suffer far more agonies than what they put their victims through.  But then again, someone might ask, what of the victim, the victim’s loved ones, when and how they obtain closure and other such questions.  The loved ones of the dead police officer have stated ‘relief’ and added ‘finally!’  Understandable.  Still, grief-alleviation is not the business of the state.  Compensation of material kinds can and are extracted from wrongdoer, but not so the relatives can sleep better at night. 

A killer, i.e. a known one, is a threat to society and it is incumbent on the state to protect the citizenry from such threats.  Killing a person who is in no position to harm anyone (assuming jails are break-safe) is not necessary for this.  Killing assumes that correction is impossible and in addition implies that states have some kind of divine eye to assess such things.  Most importantly, execution makes revoking in the event of error being detected impossible. 

We are not living in lawless times when lynching, or collective delivery of justice (or maybe we are!), because facilities such as prisons did not exist or could not be maintained effectively in ways that insulated society from murderers.  Troy Davis was not an exception. Thousands of innocents have been executed.  The families and loved ones of the murdered may or may not have obtained ‘closure’, but those of the victim of premeditated, legal murder would never have found that kind of relief. 

Gandhi said, famously, ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’.  He was wrong.  The world was and is blind, and that’s why it keeps gouging out eyes and gouging out other eyes to compensation for inflicted/suffered myopia. 

Troy Davis spent 22 years and 30 days awaiting (as it turned out) a day called September 21, 2011.  I don’t know how many times he died during the more than 2 decades spent in jail.  I don’t know in how many ways he died.  I know that he will not die again.  Is this justice?  I really don’t think so, and not because of the massive question mark that hangs over the US judicial system.

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 24, 2011]

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Those who die and those who are to die

Death is the great leveler, they say.  Just yesterday, by way of jest, I asked a colleague a question:  ‘when people die, the sages say, they don’t take anything…is this true?’  Shelly looked at me half-amused and answered in the affirmative.  ‘Not even their clothes?’ I asked.  ‘I knew something like that was coming,’ she responded with a laugh.  Then I went on and on about tattoos, body odours and other add-ons, designed and natural.  I also asked whether the thousands who died at 1.09 pm (the question was asked at 1.10 pm) were all moving around in the hereafter together, the old, the still-born, tyrants, prostitutes, petty thieves, the saintly, accident victims, the murdered and executed, the dismembered and congenitally deformed, all naked regardless of nationality, religious faith, political affiliation and such.  That was a time to laugh.  This is not.

Joe, as 'Vannihami' in Prasanna Vithanage's 'Pura Handa Kaluwara' (The Darkness of the Full Moon)

‘Death’ arrived in two ways.  It had two names.  Joe and Troy. From 1957 to 2006, from Saradama to Dheewari, Joe Abeywickrama entertained audiences in innumerable ways on the silver screen.  He gave life to screenplay, fleshed out characters and made characters inhabit our thoughts and inform our own life-engagements in ways that few actors did or can.  Many are the accolades and awards he won over his acting career.  Others can enumerate. I just can’t forget him in Daesa Nisa (Nirudka), Siribo Aiya, Soldaadu Unnahe (Soldier), Baddegama (Silindu), Kolamba Sanniya (Andare), Bambaru Avith (Anton Aiya), Madol Duwa (Loku Iskola Mahaththaya), Maldeniye Simiyon, Pooja (Jamis the Executioner), Purahanda Kaluwara (Vannihami), and Malata No-ena Bambaru (Sunny). 

My friend Anasuya Subasinghe describes him thus: ‘Joe Abeywickrama passed away last night. An actor of phenomenal capacity. One of the best I’ve seen in my lifetime. No method acting schools. No affected superstar bullshit. Just a simple man who was put on this planet to perform with his instinct and never failed to entertain! If only there were more like him…’  He, perhaps more than any other actor of his generation, could with utmost ease call upon the widest range of emotions to settle on countenance.  In his eyes were resident hundreds of characters and character traits.  He was that versatile.  He not only had control over each and every facial muscle but could order each and every one of them to play to multiple scripts.  He passed.  And that’s era-end, for me. 

Troy is still with us.  Marked for death, not dead.  Troy Davis can be executed by lethal injection any minute now. Originally scheduled to be murdered (yes, that’s the word) at 7:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, USA, on September 21, 2011, the ‘moment’ had been delayed since judges were deliberating on a stay-execution plea.

What’s his story?

He has been wrongly convicted over the killing of a police officer in 1989. Absolutely no physical evidence has been found that implicates him in the killing. No murder weapon has ever been found.  Seven of the nine witnesses whose evidence helped the prosecution secure a guilty verdict have since recanted or altered their version of the relevant incident and related events. Five have signed statements saying they were coerced by police to testify against Davis, a common element of many racist “legal lynchings” targeting Black people.   

The real killer has been named by three people.  Troy is black. That counts, it seems.  In the negative.  Robert O. Blake, like Barack Obama might say ‘We stand by our actions’, but this means that ‘due process’ is observed in the breach when it comes to justice in the United States of America.  Good America (yes, there is also ‘Bad’, ‘Ugly’, ‘Racist’ etc versions) has objected in Troy Davis was executed many forms and with the strength of numbers.  People have stood up across that country and all over the world. 

I wrote the title before I wrote this article. It is wrong.  Troy Davis would not know or care but I feel bad.  I leave it because that is how things were when I wrote it.   It is 10.56 am, September 22, 2011 here in Colombo Sri Lanka.  It is 1.26 am in New York.  Troy Davis would not know.  two minutes ago. Death maybe a leveler, but life is wobbly and wobble-life does not level out.  There is nothing to laugh about. 

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 23, 2011]

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A butterfly story

Write something beautiful, I was told.  About butterflies, for example, I was advised.  I am not sure if I was being asked to write beautiful or write beautifully.  I don’t set out to do either.  I can, however, write about butterflies, although I cannot guarantee ‘beauty’, in description or shapes crafted by word choice. 

Butterflies remind me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and the incidental character Mauricio Babilonia who was always followed by yellow butterflies.   Babilonia has an affair with Renata Remedios, better known as Meme, and gets shot on the orders of the girl’s mother who claims he’s a chicken thief.  He is paralyzed and is bedridden for the rest of his solitary life, while Meme rebels by going silent, leaving her mother to take care of the issue of their surreptitious liaison. 

Yellow butterflies take me to the world of Marquez’ Macondo and that particularly eloquent rendering of Latin American history as some have argued.   I see a yellow butterfly and the characters, their eccentricities, pathos, craziness, triumphs, love affairs and memory-laden longevity dance before me.  Or maybe it’s ‘within me’, I am not sure.   

Butterflies also take me to a story in the Grade 2 Sinhala text book.   Back then, we had to buy school text books.  I loved smelling those books.  Fresh-book-smell is one of my earliest and most enduring memories.  The books were purchased a few weeks before the new school term began and I would read all the stories in the Sinhala and English texts.  This particular story was about Samanala Kanda, also called Adam’s Peak (but not, one notes, ‘Aadamge Kanda’) and how butterflies in their thousands make a ‘pilgrimage’ to the peak held sacred by those of all faiths, and perish.

It is a butterfly story I’ve re-related to my daughter.  This was when she was two or three years old.  That was a time when I had to make up new stories all the time and not being very creative in crafting tales, I would usually do spins on stories I already knew.   It so happened that there was a small butterfly flitting around and that sparked memory.  It was easy after that to talk about the butterflies, their shapes and sizes; the butterfly pilgrimage, the possibility of straying and getting lost, the ways of returning to fold and path, and to describe the journey and the landscapes the butterfly thousands travelled across.

Butterfly, then, was a kind of code word or key that opened doors to worlds real and imagined, magnificent and magical.  It was a time-lock opener that took me to Grade 2 and the fragrance of a fresh text book and a story therein so I could hold my child’s hand, not as father but as friend, a fellow-inquirer as inquisitive and as ready to be spell-bound by narratives whose truth value was not questioned. 

She knows more about butterflies now than I do, for she is a keen observer of her surroundings, the insects and birds, the work of worms and the destruction of pests.  She is scared of frogs for some reason but is ok with butterflies.

I’ve heard that someone once said that when the first child laughed for the first time, it broke into a thousand pieces and went tripping along happily and that this was the beginning of fairies.  If the first child’s first laugh did break up in this manner, then I think it is more likely that it was the beginning of butterflies and not fairies, but that’s my personal opinion.  I think that it is also possible that there must have been a child whose first smile was butterfly-birthed. 

When innocence caresses innocence it is now fire that is produced, it is augmented innocence.  That’s a land that does not require visa or any other form of permission to visit.  Maybe we don’t visit it often enough. Maybe we’ve forgotten that it exists, or worse, forgotten that visitation is not forbidden.  But last night, as she lay sleeping, wrapped in a sheet and cuddled up against her mother, the little girl, now 10, was not child, but butterfly.  I kissed her as softly as I could because I don’t want lips or love to damage her so very fragile wings. 

I asked myself what kinds of pilgrimages she might make, who her companions of choice would be, the landscapes she would prefer to explore or be forced to walk across and then decided, ‘butterfly-pathways are for butterflies to pick; you can just watch and be amazed’.  And that, friends, is my butterfly story. 

The End.

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 22, 2011]

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Dimensions of our abilities

The nature and perhaps limits of our independence and dignity but perhaps not our tolerance became apparent when Robert O. Blake, ex-US Ambassador and current Deputy Secretary of State thought fit to lecture us on how to run the Police Department. That’s as local and ‘grassroots’ as one can get when it comes to poking fingers in domestic affairs and even ‘fingering’, someone might say. 

Nothing that is done add up to ‘enough done’.   Worse, some countries can ‘do’ and say ‘we stand by our actions’ and deny others the same privilege, even if what they ‘did’ amounts to crimes against humanity and what those others did and do are misconstrued and misnamed as ‘war crimes’.  It’s an uneven world where proven fact is footnoted or erased from agenda and a circus is made around allegations. 

I’ve heard people complain about the situation in Sri Lanka, especially of Tamils in certain parts of the country.   I’ve been to countries which are ‘home’ to the complainants.  I’ve seen the living conditions.  I’ve seen squalor, poverty, criminality, neglect, marginalization, zero access to decent education, zero access to healthcare, and brutal terms of exchange that entrench disparities, accentuate subjugation and perpetuate misery.   In India, for example.  In the USA too.  I’ve been to IDP facilities.  I’ve been to the most marginalized villages in this island.  I am convinced this is heaven, in comparison. 

Does our neighbour’s squalor and his/her inability to clean it up give us a license or a feel-good sense in being ‘squalorly’ ourselves, or being happy with our relative neatness?  No, obviously.  We do what we can, knowing very well that we will be vilified for not doing enough.  That’s Sri Lanka’s post-war story in a nutshell, take it or leave it, as per your political preferences. 

I know that there are Tamils living outside Sri Lanka who have helped in ways big and small, doing their bit and a little bit more to make recovery of life and dignity less rough than it is.  I am pretty sure that very few of the chest-beating agitators in Western capitals have tossed even a penny in the direction of their brethren in whose name they scream and on account of which screaming they can continue to cling to their refugee status and alleviate guilt. 

No one seems to be happy.  Not even the rich and filthy rich.   And yet, it’s all relative, isn’t it?  A friend of mine, Theja, responded to an article I wrote yesterday (‘Learning from disabilities’, Daily News, September 20, 2011) thus: ‘The courage of children with disabilities and the strength they produce to cope with their day to day existence puts us to shame, each time we complain of slight inconveniences in our lives. I know of a grandmother who started a school for hearing impaired children after her grandson was found to be hearing impaired after suffering from Encephalitis. She has been carrying on with the minimum funds and now finally managed to purchase a building for her school.’

The name of the school is Narada Savana Padanama, ‘Narada’ being the name of her grandson. ‘Years of training, coaching and requesting for funds has gone into this project which started in 1999 and today runs a pre-school to prepare the children for regular school; you can Google for more information,’ she says.

Just can’t help thinking that this world is made of lovely people.  And some pretty bad ones too.  We make our miseries, sure, but others pile things on.  And yet, we bat one, despite our disabilities.  Or perhaps because of them. 

There will always be complainers, crybabies and hate-mongers.  Their shrill objections notwithstanding there will always be work to be done.  There are children who need childhood, widows who will not be consoled but nevertheless have to make ends meet, the limbless who will continue to feel the itch in the body-part they’ve lost but nevertheless have to get from A to B, now to death etc.    If we want inspiration, the fact that they are not all weeping is empowerment enough. 

I don’t know about these the nuts and bolts of rehabilitation and recovery, the dimensions of dignity and righteousness, or the how-to of the getting-there, wherever ‘there’ might be for the relevant he or she, but writing this article was delayed by a quick visit by a man and a little girl: Senaka Edirisinghe and his daughter Jiwanthi.

Senaka used to work in the hotel trade but gave up his job to take care of his child, whom the article referred to above was about.   He happened to be in Colombo, to show her to a physician and dropped in.  He had a story to tell. An epic, in fact.  I will write it, I promised myself. 

He spoke of finding the little girl crying in school one day because the class teacher had twisted her ear.  He was in tears, relating the incident and I find it hard to write it right now.  I have never seen any father being as proud as he looked when he told me how she had gone up on stage one day to sing ‘I have a dream’ (ABBA) and how she sang ‘Master Sir’ (Neela Wickramasinghe) to the wonderment of the Governor of the Central Province and well known actor, Rodney Warnakula. 

As happens when floored by the talent, courage and tenderness of a 13 year old child who is as innocent as a 6 year old, I am left speechless. 

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 21, 2011]

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Returning facsimiles of loot does not compensate, sorry

On February 21, 2008, during a debate between then candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton took a stab at Barack Obama: ‘"If your candidacy is going to be about words, they should be your own words," said Clinton. "Lifting whole passages is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox."

The reference was to Obama using some lines penned by a friend who suggested that he use them.  Clinton’s prepared barb fell flat.  She was booed and subsequently lampooned in the media but not before Obama came up with the classic ‘this is where we get into the season of silliness’. 

Xerox is a Fortune 500 global document-management company. Its range of range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo-copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies has such a huge share of the US market that brand name is now used for product.  In the USA, people don’t photocopy; they xerox.

Obama and Clinton have since that debate proved that they are both experts at xeroxing age old US policy preferences in global and globalized thuggery, theft, sanitization of crimes against humanity, brazen double-standards and many-tongued ways of diplo-speak.  No surprises there.  What brought the xerox-silliness to mind was a news item and a comment about an insult dressed up as a compliment and a favour. 

What the British did was no different.  This is reproduction, but the act itself was hardly 'facsimile'.

‘A Return to Sri Lanka’ is the appropriate title of an exercise that lacks taste and is utterly in-your-face insulting in these particularly obnoxious xeroxing days. It’s a travelling exhibition (September 14 to November 24) and is ‘blurbed’ thus: ‘covers nearly 300 years of the country’s history through 150 digital facsimiles of materials from major British collections, including maps, manuscripts, prints, drawings and photographs as well as other artifacts’.   I asked myself: ‘Only 150?’  

It brought to mind Juliet Coombe’s brag that she protested moves by the British Museum to charge a fee.  She acknowledged that the facility held a lot of artifacts robbed from this country.  She has not protested, to my knowledge, the fact of theft nor agitated for the return of stolen goods to rightful owners, the people of this country.    It’s all same-old, same-old with the organizers of this particular exhibition, isn’t it?

The Country Director of the British Council Colombo, Tony Reilly, has described the exhibition as ‘a partnership (!) event where accessibility is a main feature by first and foremost traveling across the Island but by also having an online version of the exhibition which can even be logged onto from your mobile phones. He has stressed that ‘the main aim of the exhibition is to share it , to experience, to enjoy, to argue and talk about 300 years of cultural diversity described in each piece’.  He has left out ‘theft’.

At the end of the tour, ‘A Return to Sri Lanka’ is to be donated to the Ministry of National Heritage.  Perhaps Tony and the co-curators of the show, Menika van der Poorten and John Falconer expect us to say ‘thank you, thank you, you are so kind, we are so undeserving!’    If so, the ‘undeserving’ part would make sense.  Only that.

In the news item referring to the exhibition, Sumaya Samarasinghe of The Sunday Leader waxes eloquent about Falconer describing ‘with calm and passion’ the work and the artists he admired most.  The ‘dedication’ of the organizers, especially Falconer, is saluted and we are told that this is all the more reason for us to go see it.  It gets better.  The exhibition is funded by the ‘World Collections Programme’.  I was thinking: ‘spawn of that other collections programme called ‘imperialism’?’ And it’s endorsed by the Ministry of Heritage, I am told.  Says a lot about that ministry’s sentiments on the subject.

All I know is that it was not facsimile versions of my ancestors who were slaughtered by the thousands by the British.  It was not facsimile versions of temples and libraries that were burnt down and churches erected on their foundations.  It was not facsimile versions of forests that were torn down to plant coffee and tea.  It was not facsimile versions of gems, spices, statues and countless other treasures that were taken and later housed in the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museums, the Natural History Museum, London and other loot-holding facilities. It was not facsimile versions of our whatnots that are getting played here and I doubt that van de Poorten, Reilly and Falconer are unaware. 

I can always trust my always-alert fellow Yaka and long-time friend to put things in perspective in his own English dialect and unique syntax:  ‘they fokkin' brazen aint they? so let's see, they steal and then show us pix of what they stole but wont return? No one asking for reparations or loot? Is there a catalog of the stolen in collections? Is Keppetipola's skull still in Scotland?’

This is not a ‘return’ to Sri Lanka.  This is about slapping one cheek and slapping the other too for good measure.  ‘Returns that can be Xeroxed’ sums up the season of plunder that does not seem to have ended after the British ‘left’.   They could return what they robbed and keep the facsimiles in their collections, after all. 

This is adding insult to injury, humiliation to insult.  This is xerox we can do without, really.  

[Courtesy, Daily Mirror, September 20, 2011]

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Learning from disabilities

Chalindha Peiris is the son of one of my cousins.  I first met him when he was about 3 years old.  This was at my cousin’s house after the funeral of his grand uncle.   He struck me as a bubbly, always-with-a-smile kid.    I vaguely remember my father telling me that Chalindha suffered from some disorder of the nerves which impaired mobility.  The next I saw him was a few years ago when he came to my late mother seeking advice regarding applying to universities in the USA.  He had changed, naturally.

He was now a young man who had just done his A/Ls.  He was on crutches.  Taller, naturally.  Long hair.  Same always-with-a-smile bubbliness.  I have since taken the trouble to find out what this ailment of his was.  The name never stuck and I find myself asking his mother, my cousin, ‘what’s it called?’ many times, including just a few minutes ago. 

Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, apparently.  It affects both motor and sensory nerves and since motor nerves cause muscles to contract and control voluntary muscle activity such as speaking, walking, breathing, and swallowing, those afflicted can be severely hampered in ways that those are not probably find hard to imagine.  Progression of symptoms is gradual, they say, and I noticed this in Chalindha; when he was very small, i.e. the first time I saw him, he was walking around but with a slight wobble in his gait.  The pain can range from mild to severe and some, like Chalindha, need to rely on foot or leg braces or other orthopedic devices to maintain mobility.

Chalindha came to mind a few days ago when I received an email from someone whose daughter suffers from dyslexia on account of Cerebral Palsy.  She is 13+ years old with the development of a 6 and a half year old.  She attends a special education programme at St. Anthony’s College, Katugastota, after having suffered some unpleasant experiences at her earlier school.  What is most remarkable about Jiwanthi Edirisinghe is the fact that she had recently taken part in an all island singing competition at the Sri Lanka Festival for the Performing Arts (affiliated to the British and International Federation of Festivals for Music, Dance and Speech), had won a great deal of admiration from the British adjudicator for her rare talent and was highly rewarded for her performance. She had competed in the ‘Under 14’ category, along with talented and able children her age. 

Reading that email I realized, again, that no one is helpless and that we all have what it takes to deal with our various disabilities.  Things cannot be easy for Jiwanthi and are not likely to get easier either.  The same with Chalindha.

I remember my mother asking me to go through an essay he had written as part of his applications to US colleges.  He had written about making it to the stage, all on his own, to collect a certificate at a school prize giving.  And through all the pain, discomfort and perhaps the frustrations of not being able to do what his friends do and what he probably wants to do, Chalindha has retained his smile. He’s now in his third year in a university in the USA. 

What is also relevant here is that not all schools are equipped to handle people like Chalindha and Jiwanthi.  There are special education facilities, but disabilities are so numerous, with each case often requiring specialized attention.   There are children with physical disabilities and those who suffer from conditions such as autism. 

We are not a rich country and what the state already does in the sphere of education is incredible all things considered.  A lot of positive changes, both in policy and implementation, can be seen with respect to improving accessibility.  Individuals and institutions have played their part.  My cousin has described in glowing and grateful terms about how St. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia (where her son had his early education) supported Chalindha by making all kinds of accommodations.  Ladies College, Colombo, takes great pains to provide as normal a learning environment as possible for children with learning disabilities.  It’s both kindness and professionalism. 

They empower us, these children.  They teach us determination. They show up our flaws.  They make us want to be better.  Just by doing what they do. Just by smiling through it all.  Or singing they hearts out.  I am just wondering if I do enough.  How about you?   

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 20, 2011]

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An unreserved apology to Sunanda Deshapriya

A few days ago, Keerthi Warnakulasuriya wrote in the Divaina about an exchange between long-time terrorist sympathizer and known NGO racketeer Sunanda Desharpiya and the President of the Maldives in Geneva, subsequent the screening of ‘Lies Agreed Upon,’ a visual rebuttal of Channel 4 charges against the Sri Lankan security forces.  It provoked a comment by me in these columns (‘On freedom of expression a la Sundanda Deshapriya’).

Sunanda has since claimed that Keerthi is lying and that no such exchange took place.  Clearly someone is lying here and it might take a statement by the Maldivian President to clear up the confusion.   Sunanda doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to truth-telling (and that’s putting it mildly), but in this instance I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt.  I had fun writing that piece, playing mainly on Sunanda allegedly questioning the Maldivian President’s right to comment on things Sri Lankan.  I will say now, without reservation, that I ought to have cross checked sources before assuming that Keerthi’s story was accurate and then playing with the relevant exchange.

So, let me put it straight.  I am sorry Sunanda.  If I caused any pain of mind with respect to what transpired in Geneva, I apologize.  Please forgive. 

That said, let me add that this apology in no way amounts to a recantation of other assertions, especially not to Sunanda’s history including fund-pilfering and hanky-panky with finances.  Neither does it constitute a withdrawal of charges against the Free Media Movement’s current leadership, their manifest reluctance to investigate wrongdoing and point black refusal to submit to the kind of scrutiny they demand from other people. The FMM remains averse to transparency and accountability and until such time there is a change of heart they will remain foot-shot in the matter of being effective advocates of media rights. 

What I found really interesting was how certain groups have responded to this confusion regarding Keerthi’s ‘story’.  A group calling itself NFR and claiming to be a network of Sri Lankan journalists and human rights defenders living outside the country, has condemned what it calls ‘falsification of the proceedings’ (in Geneva) and claiming that this is part of some conspiracy to ‘intimidate Sri Lankan press freedom and human rights campaigner Sunanda Deshapriya’.  What I found amusing was how this outfit has described Sunanda.  When a terrorist-lover calls himself or is called a ‘human rights campaigner’ neither he nor his describers do themselves any favours.  When a propagandist for terrorists and a man who has no qualms about lying through all orifices is called a ‘campaigner for press freedom’ it is even more laughable. 

The NFR and the website that carried the story, ‘lankanewsweb’ refers to Sunanda as a former convenor of the FMM, but is deafeningly silent on his sorry history in that organization.  That’s not ‘slant’, that’s irresponsibility and amounts to an abdication of right to pose as responsible and self-righteous defenders of media freedom, not to mention use the tag ‘journalist’. 

Sunanda himself, in a blog post recently, has carried a one-to-one ‘report’ by another of these mischievous groups, this one calling itself ‘srilankamirror’, claiming that I was being considered for some job in an ‘NGO’.  Quite apart from the general (and tired) tags referring to ethnic and religious identity, the ladies and gentlemen have demonstrated that a) they are ignorant about me, b) don’t know the fundamental difference between an ‘NGO’ such as the ones I’ve taken issue with over the years (e.g. Centre for Policy Alternatives, Free Media Movement, National Peace Council, Transparency International) and cooperatives, and c) lack the basic intelligence and sense of responsibility to get the names right. 

What was most illuminating in Sunanda’s reproduction was the virtual admission that he’s quite wet behind the ears in the matter of reporting.  So when he is described as ‘Senior Journalist’ or is quote-sought by equally wet behind the ears journalists such as Sara Nic, we can only obtain a sense of the abysmal character of the human resources that those who have an axe to grind with respect to Sri Lanka have to work with. 

If I were to assume that Keerthi was, as Sunanda claims, engaged in fabrication and so too was the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation,  then I have to state also that all the news agencies, media rights advocates and journalists mentioned above are as guilty when it comes to fabrication. 

Never mind.  In this instance, I can still say something to Sunanda Deshapriya.

‘I am sorry.  I don’t expect you to be sorry though for crimes of omission and commission, and certainly not for the rewards collected.  That’s the preserve of those with a conscience.  Have a nice day, Sunanda.’

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 19, 2011]

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