Re-dressing Victoria and other minor matters of CHOGM

[Kadawara moves from Ritigala to the London Eye just to survey the Common Welt]

 

Let's celebrate subjugation

 

There's only one thing 'common' about the Commonwealth: all members were well and truly kicked in the gut by one, Britain.  So what's there to shout about the Commonwealth?  Nothing.  If all the frills are taken out, it boils down to this:  all member states bowing down to Prince Charles and saying 'On behalf of all our ancestors robbed, tortured and killed by your ancestors, we wish to say THANK YOU YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS!'

 

 

A commonwealth of silence

 

When a member state (India) finances, arms and trains terrorists in order to destabilize another member state the Commonwealth said nothing.  When the citizens of member states such as Pakistan are attacked and killed indiscriminately by entities outside the Commonwealth (such as the USA), there is silence.  So what's CHOGM 2013 going to be about if not a grand Symphony of Silence on Important Issues?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Re-dressing Victoria

The lady is being washed and cleaned. For the CHOGM.  She is, in essence, being rehabilitated.  Sigmund Freud would have a lot to say about that, but he too is dead.  On the other hand, the lady is live and kicking in that what even now passes off for pristine local culture are the norms and values, rules and regulations, no-no things and such.  In this context it is not re-dressing that is needed but undressing, not of Victoria but Sri Lankans.  Undressed of Victorian remnant, that is.  The chastity belts of the mind. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pets we love

 

It is time to recall what Andare Smith (Grandson of Adam Smith) once said about pets: 'Some people keep cats as pets, some have pet cats and others have parrots; but all of us, without exception, take care with much love a suddha (white person) in our heads'. 

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On giving left and right

OMG, BTW, WTF and other three-letter ‘words’ which sound more like 4-letter words are relatively new.  Time was when acronym was ‘short’ for proper noun, for example a political party; there was LSSP, CP, UNP, SLFP, FP, TULF, JVP and later TNA, ITAK, SU, JHU and so on.  Maybe NGOs (yes, another 3-letter four-letter word) had something to do with it.  NGOs, or rather FGOs (Foreign Government Organizations) as veteran journalist and prolific commentator H.L.D. Mahindapala calls them, talk a language that sounds foreign to non-N/FGO people.  Nothing beats CSR, though, I sometimes feel. 

Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, sounds nice.  Wholesome.  It probably makes those who work for corporates feel good about themselves.  But CSR projects generally cost next to nothing in overall expenditure and typically corporates make a song and dance about SCR that quite out-shouts the bits and pieces of feel-good they dish around.  It is called brand positioning. 

Consider this.

Immediately after the tsunami struck Sri Lanka in December 2004 and after the immediate sense of horror, there was an outpouring of generosity. People gave and gave and gave, and gave in a thousand different ways.  There was no name to giver, to claim of giving.  People gave, as individuals and collectives.  Schools, clubs, cooperatives and groups of friends did what they could.  But there was a different class of givers too, a different colored ‘generosity’.  This was the Giving-Bragging club, one could call it.

There were corporate entities sending lorry-loads of bottled-water. With label.  Either on cap or on the side of the bottle.  With legend about who did the giving.  That’s giving of the return-envisaging kind.  It is called investment. 

Is that giving?  Is that dana? Well, it is of course unlikely that one can draw a direct line from beneficiary to some kind of advantage that the giver obtains somewhere down the line.  On the other hand, a generally positive association with a brand, product or company does pay, down the line.  Investment is recovered, often with interest.  That’s giving ‘of a kind’, but only in appearance.  In essence it is business. As usual.

Alms is not about that kind of giving.  It is not investment, it is not business.  Consider the following line from the Bible: ‘But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth’ (Matthew 6:3).  Such giving goes without name-tag.  There can be face, word and smile, due to necessity, but there won’t be thought of possible recovery, possible benefit; not of the ‘return on investment’ kind and certainly no thought of pruning tax payments.  One gives, because some urgent need is identified and because one can.  And that’s it. No more talk of it. 

If, on the other hand, the left hand knows what the right gives, then left, metaphorically speaking, is ready and able to take back, in one way or another, what was given.  With interest, one must add, because that kind of giving is not about giving X and taking back X+A (A=Transaction Cost), for business if not about a zero balance sheet but an exercise where marginal benefits must outweigh marginal costs.  Like CSR.  Like politicians doing what they are mandated to do and what they promised to do, and then spending public funds to brag about it as though it has cost them an arm and a leg, which they gladly ‘gave’ because they so love the people. 

Merit accrues. One way or another.  But if it is desired, the gloss of giving comes off.  If it is advertised, then there’s no gloss to begin with. 

If you want to give or if someone claims to give, this side of not looking a gift horse in the mouth, it is always good to check the hands, right and left, and their knowledge or ignorance of one another.  Good to ask oneself, for we are all humanly frail and unconsciously pass the buck, so to speak, from one hand to the other.  In short, we can’t do alms and CSR at one and the same time.  That would be a four-letter word, I am sure. 

msenevira@gmail.com

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Prostituting media freedom

Media freedom, like all freedoms, is not something one can talk about in absolutist language.  There are always caveats.  There are always conditions.  There are lines imposed and there are limits that come from within, the latter kind being two fold, those birthed by fear and those that are spawned by ideological or political preferences. 

For all the rhetoric about absolute freedom of expression and objectivity in reportage and comment, the truth is that everyone defines for him/herself an operational comfort zone.  There’s a lot of over-focus on pet peeves and a studious look-askance when friend or chosen ideology slips up.   

Those who disagree are probably blissfully ignorant or consciously deceitful.  

That said, there is nothing to say that the freedoms that do exist are adequate or those that don’t are not worth fighting for.  In short, things can always be better.

We live in a world that is made of surveillance. This world is people by humans and not gods. As such they are prone to error.  Systems may appear robust but there never impregnable. ‘9/11’ showed us that.  Wikileaks showed us that. There will always be people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.  There have been and will be the likes of Bradley Manning.  There will also be a Callum Macrae and Frances Harrison who in interpretive sleight of hand will string together fact and fiction, discolor by editing out context, frill with overindulgence in conjecture and such.  Only an informed, alert and intelligent public can sift fact from fiction, weed out ideological and political insert, and get something close to the true picture.  

We live in a country that was a veritable media freedom horror story.  Those who are old enough or are interested enough about history will know what the 1980s were like.  They would know what kind of media culture existed during the Chandrika Kumaratunga regime.  Few would not be aware of the constraints inevitably imposed by a war of the kind necessitated by the brand of terrorism unleashed by the LTTE.  

These are better times.  But times can be infinitely better, this should also be recognized.  While facts don’t bear out the horror stories trotted out by those who want easy passage to greener pastures or are experts at manufacturing lie for bucks, it is also true that the post-conflict media culture has been marked subtle forms of control.   

Several media houses have been purchased by persons close to the political leadership of the country.  That’s ‘business’, and loyalty in commerce is related to tangible benefits.  Politicians can be voted out, businesses can fail; the one does not result in the other.  Loyalties change hands with regime-change.

There have also been instances of journalists being intimidated by politicians.  Some have been beaten up.  These violations cannot be laid on the door of the rulers, following the adage ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but conspicuous sloth and constituent hitting-brick-wall in investigation raise questions. The longer they remain unanswered the more suspicious of those in power one becomes. 

Even if we lived in a free media paradise it is advisable to be wary, to be alert and to watch out for even the slightest erosion in freedom because things can change pretty fast.  This is why a courageous, skilled and innovative journalistic fraternity, while important no doubt, does not constitute sufficient insurance against limiting maneuvers.  This is why there are trade unions. This is why journalists should organize themselves. 

For all this, if journalists themselves are short-cut wizards without ethics or integrity, look for person gain in the name of the collective, and are willing victims of all kinds of manipulators seeking to sabotage post-conflict gains, they do more harm to media freedom than the worst enemy of these very freedoms.

The Free Media Movement (FMM) has an excellent brand.  It has, through the crooked deals of Sunanda Deshapriya and by seeking out and wallowing in a culture of NGOism where workshops, seminars, foreign tours and such fatten wallets, severely compromised the effort to secure freedoms won and expand the dimensions of these gains. 

It is now clear that the Free Media Movement is a virtual half-way house for all kinds of charlatans, a meeting place for thieves, liars and other miscreants.  Its dealings with Jacqui Park, Asia Pacific Director of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) are not shady; they are downright dishonest and amount to in-your-face fraud.  When a person with the designation Park owns openly violates immigration laws with the full knowledge of the FMM and when the FMM Convener Sunil Jayasekera utters falsehoods to defend this miscreant, the FMM ceases to be legitimate. Sadly, this is not ‘new’.  The Park-Jayasekera combine is but the current avatar of an FMM-IFJ combine ready to defraud, ready to lie. 

Journalists don’t need such people to fight for their rights.  Given the international stature that the FMM has secured for itself and considering the hanky-panky culture it has embraced, it has done and continues to do more disservice to media freedom than any government that wants to keep journalists under threat.  Add to this the fact that other journalist organizations are either thick as thieves with the FMM or are fighting for a piece of the pie, the fight for media freedom devolves to individuals journalists. 

It has come to a point where a journalist may well turn to the FMM or similar outfits and say, ‘please don’t speak for me, thank you.’ 

msenevira@gmsil.com

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Free Media Movement Busted

• ·         IFJ’s Jacqui Park violated immigration law 19 times
• ·         Convenor Sunil Jayasekera lies about Jacqui Park

Director Asia-Pacific Region of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Jacqui Park, shortly after being deported from Sri Lanka, has tweeted her sentiments thus: a) ‘Thanks to Aust FM Bishop for raising issue with SL FM.  Thanks to Aust High Comm in SL too for crucial support,’ b) ‘Good to be home. It was wonderful to have so much support from Australian and SL colleagues,’ and c) Just transiting in Singapore and please to be on my way home with Jane. Thanks for the support, especially our brave Sri Lankan friends’.  In one of these she has hash-tagged ‘pressfreedom’. ABC News, Australia, writing thereafter, waxes eloquent about Park being queried over her ‘work’ in Sri Lanka.  We shall get to that later. 

What is the context?  Jacqui Park arrived in Sri Lanka on a tourist visa along with a colleague Jane Worthington, but was not doing any sightseeing. She was attending a workshop titled ‘Freedom of Expression in Post-War Sri Lanka: Challenges and Way Forward’.  It was jointly organized by the IFJ and the Free Media Movement.  She was detained and questioned and found to have violated immigration laws of the country.  A person of her age with all the traveling she has done could not have been ignorant about visa types and which types permit or forbids what.  This was not a one-off misdemeanor.  Park has visited Sri Lanka on 20 occasions, 19 of which were work-related, each time on a tourist visa.  She is therefore a multiple and even compulsive offender.     

Lankaenews claims that the two IFJ workers and the FMM were ‘betrayed’.  No mention of violating immigration law.  AFP claimed that an ‘international media rights activist’ was detained.  The AFP report was heavily editorialized with a lot of claims and little substantiation.

APF is at pains to paint Park as some kind of media activism heroine intent on investigating alleged war crimes.  AFP has quoted FMM Convenor, Sunil Jayasekera: ‘She was meeting with us at a hotel in Colombo while on holiday; she was not engaging in any work as such but was meeting with friends she had made over many years.’

It is strange that the AFP story appeared without any reference to tangible proof that compromised Jayasekera’s ‘holiday’ statement; another website, www.srilankamirror.lk accusing ‘security forces’ (it was immigration authorities) crashing the AFP-IFJ party, carried pictures of the banner announcing the collaborative nature of the exercise.  It is strange that AFP didn’t see reason to ask Jayasekera the obvious question.  When ‘The Nation’ asked Jayasekera, he first said ‘she was not here for the workshop’.  Later, when Colombo Telegraph released the leaked emails, Jayasekra said ‘I don’t want to comment; I’ve said it all to the CID’.

While the IFJ is a trade union collective, Park is but a paid employee. AFP is yet to report on the violation of immigration law by Park and her companion. Lankaenews is a rogue outfit, little better than a gossip column, but Daily Mirror and AFP are not.  Their corrections or refusal to correct will also speak to media ethics or lack thereof.    As for Australia’s ABC News, how it is that their ‘story’ does not mention the fact that Park and Worthington had violated immigration regulations in Sri Lanka and indeed the former had done so on 18 other occasions.  Let’s not talk about the racism of Australia’s current immigration policy regime, but if some alien arrived in Australia 18 times, would ABC find fault with immigration and security authorities querying the individual on what on earth he/she is up to?  If that person had a media ID, would ABC say, ‘Oh ok, we understand, he/she is above board and should not be detained or questioned’? 

Sunil Jayasekera’s statements (to the Daily Mirror and AFP) are interesting.  This is an event co-organized by the IFJ and FMM, with the former probably chipping in with the money.  Jacqui Park’s email correspondence, leaked to and published by www.colombotelegraph.com, clearly indicate that she was not going to the elephant orphanage in Pinnawela or was planning to wallow in herbal baths in Hikkaduwa. 

For the record, Jacqui Park had penned ‘Sightseeing and holidaying’ in the ‘Reasons for visit’ box on her Disembarkation Card which she submitted to immigration authorities in Katunayake.  She could, technically, be ‘holidaying’ at Janaki Hotel although there’s not much to do by way of ‘sightseeing’ on Fife Road, Colombo 5 and got away with it too, except that that’s where an event her employer co-organized was being held.  

The leaked emails clearly indicate that it was a work-related event and one in which she looked forward to discussions with IFJ’s members in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association (SLWJA) and the Federation of Media Employees Trade Unions (FMETU). The FMM is only an affiliate since it is not a trade union.

It is indeed laughable to think that the regional director of the sponsoring outfit would be in Sri Lanka during the event and not be part of the proceedings.  Park has since confessed that she had indeed come for the workshop.  Jayasekera, in his statements to relevant officials had admitted the same.  In other words, he knew when Park was going to be in Sri Lanka and why she was visiting.  He knew it was not a ‘holiday’.  Jacqui knew who paid for her ticket (IFJ) and it is unlikely that Sunil was ignorant about the fact.  The Daily Mirror, AFM and Lankaenews are yet to publish these confessions for reasons best known to them. 

Sunil Jayasekera, like many media activists are on the JFJ’s dole-list; obtaining money for all kinds of reasons.  Park herself has once claimed that funds allocated to obtain ‘safe houses’ have been used by recipients to paint their own houses! 

Sunil Jayasekera, it must be remembered, heads an outfit that has conducted dozens of seminars and workshops on media ethics, good governance, transparency and accountability, training people on how to be better and demand better from the powers that be on the above subjects. 

He is, moreover, Co-Convenor of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence, which is part of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA).  One of his predecessors, Sunanda Deshapriya was also at one time associated with the CPA. He was forced to leave after it was found he had defrauded that organization.  Interestingly, on that occasion, the monies pilfered had been used to purchase an air ticket for this same Jacqui Park.  The CPA also advocates transparency, accountability and such, far more strongly than the FMM.  Time will tell whether or not the CPA will continue to associate persons who have aided and abetted illegal activity, feigned ignorance thereafter and finally acknowledged deceit and complicity. 

It is also revealed that at least on one occasion, Jacqui Park had accepted a cash payment from the CPA, again after a workshop at the same Janaki Hotel, Colombo, Sunanda Desharpiya handing over US$ 250.   Being a paid employee of the IJF, Park cannot receive ‘payment’ for work she is already paid for.  It is strange that Jayasekera appears to be ignorant of these kinds of transactions or finds it ‘ok’; but Park, then again, ‘is an old friend’, he has acknowledged.   

The emails leaked to Colombo Telegraph clearly indicate that the IFJ, for all its moral posturing, is fraught with intrigue associated with election-rigging (!), misuse of funds, selective partnering which raises questions over integrity of the membership etc.  To call employees of the IFJ and especially ones who have been caught sneaking into the country ‘media freedom activists’ amounts to a championing of the worst kind of chicanery and is an affront to all honest media activists.    

It is not just the FMM that has ‘treated’ Park well.  She has said during questioning that she has been in Sri Lanka before on work commissioned by many multilateral organizations, including the European Commission, UNICEF and UNESCO.  She has once attended a program organized by the Sri Lanka College of Journalists where she spoke on journalistic ethics, no less.  It is incredible that these organizations had thought fit for Park to come on an upon-arrival visa (tourist) and then engage in ‘work’.  Park also claims that she was once invited to grace an awards ceremony organized by the SLWJA, FMM and FMETU.  In light of her recently revealed illegal activity, all these organizations stand squarely indicted, more so because of their long history of shouting slogans and holding placards demanding decency, integrity, transparency, accountability etc.  If someone were to say ‘start with integrity’, they would not have a leg to stand on.

The Free Media Movement has compromised itself many times over by the shady activities of its former Convenor, Sunanda Deshapriya – he is yet to submit project reports requested from him many years ago and is charged with fraud by way of double-billing, among other scandalous self-payments.  His successors seem not to have learned anything from all that. 

A spokesperson for the SLWJA has claimed that reporting the Park-Jayasekera matter has put other journalists at risk.  Nothing puts a journalist at risk than the journalist compromising him/herself.  If the SLWJA and other media collectives want to shy away from truth, it can retire terms like ‘accountability’, ‘transparency’ and ‘integrity’, and just say, ‘we are in this for the bucks that may come our way or which we may be able to skim off’. 

Finally, since we in the age of social media, when Jacqui Park is done tweeting her relief and gratitude, will she talk about her sneaky ways, deceit, fraud and how these sit with her ‘media advocacy’? 

msenevira@gmail.com

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Ever-green Reds and other fascinating creatures

Balloth ekka bae

 

The unanticipated balu-prashne that had animal lovers up in arms when the Southern Express Highway was opened, appears to have been relocated to the area between Peliyagoda and Katunayake.  But this time the authorities were ready.  A total of 100 stray dogs loitering along the new highway had been caught and taken away.  Nets were used to catch them, so as to cause minimum harm to the creatures.  All this was done by an outfit called Animal Lovers Zone.  Now all dogs stray.  And there are many humans who 'stray', who get in the way of people who just want to be left alone, just want to get from here to there. So about a 'People Lovers Zone' that nets errant human beings who do balu-weda or 'dog-things'? 

 

Ah Sangaree!

 

The evergreen leader of the TULF is peeved at the treatment meted out to him by the likes of R. Sampanthan and S. Premachandran.  He believes that there is a conspiracy to oust him from the TNA and that there was a deliberate strategy to ensure he would be defeated at the recently concluded PC elections.  Strangely, though, the good Anandasangaree has not taken his case before the people of Kilinochchi. He's gone to a man called Rayappu Joseph, Father R.J, that is.  So is this Fr. Joseph the Overlord of the Northern Province or the Patron Saint of the TNA?  Wasn't this the same man who once supported the LTTE, directly and indirectly?  So what is Anandasangaree saying here? 

 

Rogue State identified

 

Whenever the State Department of the USA made pronouncements about 'rogue states', it smelt fishy.  The first lesson in battle is to vilify enemy and 'rogue state' (like 'failed state') is a useful tag.  On the other hand, considering all the sly stuff that Washington has bee up to (spying on friends for example), if any country on earth deserves the tag, it is the United States of America!  

Time for pandu

 

 

The United National Party (UNP) today said the Deputy Minister of Postal Services, Sanath Jayasuriya should resign from his post in the Sri Lanka Cricket Board, citing that he did not have enough time to spare for the betterment of cricket.  The reason?  'He's abroad most of the time'. 

 

We don't know how the Master Blaster spends his time, but what does the UNP leadership do, would Western Provincial Councillor Niroshan Padukka tell us? As things stand it looks like the elephants are playing pandu with one another and don't have time to do anything else, not even to go abroad and certainly not to be a halfway decent opposition. 

 

 

Right up her street?

 

Nimalka Fernando wants abortion and prostitution legalized.  Some might raise eyebrows, but this is a perfectly legitimate demand.  Nimalka knows about prostitution, all the ins and outs of the trade, for she belongs to a cartel that was ready to prostitute nation, security and peace in order to obtain preferred outcome: an extended run for Prabhakaran and the LTTE.  As for abortion, the lady is doing her best to mangle the hard-earned peace subsequent to the vanquishing of terrorism.  She did all this on the sly.  Now she wants it to be made legal.  Can't blame her.

 

 

Go Bahu Go!

 

The joint opposition (so-called) is planning to agitate during CHOGM. Guess who is leading the pack?  Why, it's Comrade Wickramabahu Karunaratne.  No offense, but Bahu?  The man can't buy a vote if his life depended on it.  If the 'Joint Opposition' is banking on Bahu to deliver anything, even discernible presence, in these protests, they are poor indeed, what?

 

 

 

 

Thinking ahead

Canada will not attend CHOGM 2013. India might not attend.  That's their business. Perhaps the Government is conscious of future boycotts and wants to take preemptive measures.  Is this why they've planned to give the names of participating heads of state to the elephants in Udawalawe National Park? Next time, if someone boycotts, a trunk call can be put through and an immediate replacement found.  Come to think of it, all the names of all the heads of state should be given to elephants.  And why limit it to elephants?  What's one animal over another, after all.  Creatures are creatures.  Any species would do. Whatever is convenient.  Better still, these creatures could have a CHOGM of their own.  It won't make much of a difference.

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Salman Khurshid’s unease

[Transcribed in a parallel universe called Humility by Kadawara]

As the Minister of External Affairs I have to be diplomatic. I have to be pragmatic.  I have to walk on eggshells, to be honest.  On the one hand, there’s Tamil Nadu, where political parties touting Tamil nationalism don’t give a hoot about Indian Tamils and even as they shed copious tears over Tamil ‘brethren’ across the Palk Straits treat ‘refugees’ from that island like untouchables.  These same politicians, unhappily, cannot be dismissed out of hand; electoral arithmetic just doesn’t permit it.  So I have to give ear to Jayalalithaa.  If that’s not a come down, what is, I ask myself sometimes.

But India, big as it is, ICC-bully though it is, is still not the USA or Russia.  Indeed, it is Lilliput to the Chinese Gulliver.  My boss, Manmohan Singh, and the entire Congress Party can be coy to Jayalalithaa, but virtually handing Sri Lanka on a platter to China is not about tickle-and-smile. 

So I said what had to be said.  I said that a no-show would cost India and added a caveat: the Prime Minister’s office has the final say regarding his participation.  That’s where we are now.  I have no idea what boss has decided or what his thinking is at this point, but I can’t seem to fall asleep.

I think of worst case scenarios.  I know that a complete boycott would cost us really bad.  Canada’s decision to boycott didn’t make any waves.   All it did was provoke a bored response, ‘so what?’  Well, not really.  Canada’s track record on human rights was taken out and aired.  Skeletons we all have and ours are easy to pull out and display.  We don’t want that to happen. 

I think of a situation where boss calls and says, ‘hey boy, I stay, you go!’  I imagine myself in Colombo looking like a sore thumb.  Well, Colombo will probably be nice to be and that is what would hurt most.  I would feel like a sore thumb sticking out. 

And it is not as though the USA were a member of the Commonwealth and had offered us the cover of announcing boycott first.  It is easy to be Uncle Sam’s South Asian pawn.  Sadly, a little more than 200 years ago, some people in that country decided to have a ‘tea party’ that the British hadn’t been invited to.  Today, Britain is client state.  The USA has robbed from Britain the title ‘Common Thief’.  It doesn’t need the Commonwealth. 

I would like to think that Britain is proxy for the USA, but that’s giving the Queen too much credit.  I tried to draw strength from British Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement about talking tough with (reading ‘talking down to’) Sri Lanka, but I know Sri Lanka and I know President Mahinda Rajapaksa.  He will smile and rattle off a few places names associated with crimes against humanity, whack poor David on his back and let out of a few gusty guffaws.  

I am terrified that I will be all alone in Colombo.  There are times when I think to myself, ‘If my boss doesn’t give a hoot about India, why should I?’  

There are times I want to resign.  There are times I actually wish I was born in Sri Lanka to Sri Lankan parents. 

Most times I break out in a sweat.  

msenevira@gmail.com

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