Arrest this thug!

A few years ago, a man called Poddala Jayantha was abducted.  He was found not too long after that.  His abductors had assaulted him and caused him grievous harm.  A journalist and an advocate for media freedom,  Poddala Jayantha was also a man with a poor track record when it comes to accountability, integrity and honesty.  This is evident in ‘the lack of clarity’ in well documented transactions associated with media advocacy organizations.

Poddala Jayantha, however, has never been charged with wrongdoing by those who ought to have.  He is a citizen and as such should not have been harmed in any way. Moreover, having been harmed, the authorities ought to have found his abductors and assailants.  This has not happened.

Minister Mervyn Silva has now openly stated that he was responsible for Poddala Jayantha leaving the country.  Now no one knows where Poddala Jayantha is, but it is clear that he could make a case that his life was in danger.  Silva’s reference to Jayantha was said in the same breath with which he threatened to personally break the limbs of Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Sunila Abeysekera and Nimalka Fernando. 

These three individuals, Silva claimed, had conspired against Sri Lanka during the recently concluded sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.  They had in fact stated that they have been subjected to ‘a barrage of attacks and intimidation from various quarters, including state and non-state entities.  The trio have certainly been criticized and not without cause, including ‘lack of clarity’ in financial dealings, intellectual sloth and operating as apologists of one form or the other for terrorists.  They have not used the wide spaces in the media available to them to clear their names.  Criticism is not coterminous with vilification or intimidation, but this is not something they have intimated to their friends in Geneva who shed many a tear on their behalf.  Integrity is not their strong point, clearly. 

Closely linked though they are to LTTE groups, none of them can be called thugs.  They state their positions and refuse to respond to critique, but don’t go around with clenched fists and knuckledusters.   If anyone threatens them (or anyone else) with physical harm, it is a serious matter.  When the man who threatens has a track record of strong-arm tactics, it is even more serious.  When this individual claims that he caused a man who was abducted and assaulted to leave the country it is time for the authorities to stop pretending to sleep.  It is a confession, nothing less. 

While many would find most of Silva’s antics funny, this is no laughing matter.  The country’s detractors would market these threats as confirmation of the lies agreed upon by the likes of Saravanamuttu.  That’s something that the country cannot afford.  Silva is a political risk for the President and it will be he (the President) who has to pay for the incomprehensible levels of indulgence.  Silva’s antics must be arrested immediately by the President, for his own good and the larger good of the nation in these trying times.

Silva, more importantly, has now virtually confessed to involvement in the abduction of Poddala Jayantha.  Thuggery cannot be condoned, ever, and least of all in the name of the nation.  It is not ‘nationalism’ as Silva purports it to be, just as much as Gulags set up in the name of Marx is not Marxism or the Crusades in the name of Jesus is not ‘Christianity’.  Indeed, nationalism is, among other things, about law and order, the freedom of expression and the greater worth of debate (over fisticuffs). 

Mervyn Silva has implicated himself.  Inextricably.  The President must take action, in the name of the nation.  The nation demands it.