Rauff Hakeem, the current leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) commenting on the death of an LTTE leader (I cannot remember if it was V Prabhakaran, A Balasingham or S.P. Thamilselvan), quoted John Donne, ‘Any man’s death diminishes me.’
That’s an easy and oft-used ploy to dodge difficult questions. Death is a serious matter. Regardless of how the dead person conducted him/herself, one tends to think of the aggrieved, the family and friends. Track record is shelved for later perusal.
Then we have commemoration. The first death anniversary tends to be remembered. Then it becomes less and less grand. Then we come to round numbers. The tenth, the fiftieth, the centenary etc. On such occasions, depending on who died, who is lamenting and whether or not lamentation can yield political mileage (in certain cases), memory is dusted of cobweb and the deceased is resurrected.
Let’s begin with the last. A few questions would illustrate the issue. What’s special about Wasim Thajudeen? Ekneligoda has gone missing, is assumed to have been disappeared; what’s special about him? Why is it that they are remembered at moments that are politically useful to those who do the remembering? Is it because politics and politicians are implicated in the murder and disappearance, respectively? That’s defensible, certainly. Then, however, we have to ask further questions. Are they the only individuals whose disappearances and deaths were politics-related? Why are they remembered and others forgotten?
We haven’t heard of these two individuals in some time. Perhaps, when the next elections come around, we might. We heard instead of Lasantha Wickramatunga.
January 8, 2019 was the 10th anniversary of Lasantha’s murder. It’s one of those ‘nice numbers,’ or a ‘commemoration-demanding number’. Fair enough.
Those who were close to him, i.e. family, friends and colleagues at the Sunday Leader, wrote about Lasantha. There were personal recollections and there was, naturally, political comment as well. The Sunday Observer dedicated almost the entire newspaper of January 10, 2019 to Lasantha. That itself tells a story about the politics of commemoration and selective memory.
Laasantha was, clearly, a very good news reporter. He had contacts, he had skills and he had courage. He had a good notion about who to target. The ‘why’ of it tells us his political preferences. Lasantha went hammer and tongs at Thilanga Sumathipala when the latter was with the UPFA, but went dead silent when Thilanga crossed over briefly to the UNP. During the time the UNP was in power (2001-2004) he picked and chose which corrupt ministers to attack.
He was entitled to his political convictions, but they did mar his credibility. For example, in Celigny, Switzerland in late February 2006, at the end of a short media moment just prior to the commencement of negotiations between the Government and the LTTE, Lasantha gave the chief negotiator of the LTTE, Anton Balasingham, a thumbs-up sign. This doesn’t mean he was partial to the LTTE of course; it probably meant that he operated on the premise ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. At that moment, that is.
Let’s get to his murder. Nothing was proven, then or now. The jury is out regarding the murderer(s). However, as I pointed out on several occasions, the onus was (and is!) on the government to ensure that Lasantha’s murder(s) is (are) brought to book. Lasantha’s politics, his preferences, his vocation and conduct are all immaterial to matter of justice. There was vilification and there was sloth, both pointing to guilt or complicity on the part of the political leadership of that time, namely Mahinda Rajapaksa. His killers are still unknown although names have been mentioned. To be fair, it was not only the Rajapaksas that Lasantha attacked in his newspaper. He came down hard on the then Army Commander. There are theories that the Rajapaksas had to protect Fonseka because he was spearheading operations against the LTTE at the time. All that must be considered conjecture until the truth is out.
Now let’s move to the aftermath. There was the widely circulated ‘Editorial from the Grave’ purportedly written by Lasantha. Even a cursory glance at Lasantha’s writing would reveal the huge gap in style (between his writing and the said editorial). That was politics. That politics has not abated. He was used as poster-boy by groups, local and foreign, who had axes to grind with the Rajapaksa regime. He is still being used, in this sense.
This brings us to the next question: why Lasantha and why only Lasantha?
The scribes at Lake House as well as others such as Rasika Jayakody have called the period ‘the darkest hour for the media’. It’s as though the entire decade of the eighties has been blocked and deleted from memory. Those were days when newspapers came with large swathes in black (sections censored by the ‘Competent Authority’). Of course it was not just media personnel who were targeted. Playwrights had to use Russian names for their scripts to get by the Censor. Not a single newspaper dared censure the UNP regime of the time.
This does not give license to anyone who came after to do what the UNP-JVP combine did of course. However, in the matter of commemoration, how is it that those who are ‘political’ in their remembrance of Lasantha are quiet about the horrendous crimes against humanity committed by the UNP regime? Have they not heard about the death squads, the billas, the K-Points (Killing Points), the vigilante groups such as PRRA, Green Tigers, Ukussa, Black Cats, Yellow Cats etc., whose work makes the whole White Van Syndrome seem like mild excesses on the part of state agencies? Have they not heard of arbitrary arrests, proxy arrests, torture, people being burnt alive etc?
There were, even at the time, names that got mentioned and thousands (well, some 60,000) that were relegated to statistics. At that time, even those few who belong to the same social strata that has been using Lasantha as a poster boy for political projects, spoke only about Richard De Zoysa. They didn’t talk of Ranjithan Gunaratnam, not of the Geography student Dissanayake of Peradeniya University who was literally drawn and quartered and whose body parts were hung on a tree in Katugastota. Thrimavitharana, the medical student, had nails driven into his head and while still alive tied to the back of a jeep and dragged around.
Forget the names, for when massacres take place, enumeration is hard. However, the massacre itself demands mention. But no, not for the majority of those who made and still make political capital out of Lasantha’s murder.
Just after Lasantha’s murder, Sanjana Hattotuwa, who was in charge of the website Groundviews, asked people to express in poetic forms their sentiments. I responded immediately and I believe Vivimarie Vander Poorten also wrote a few days later. I titled my poem, ‘For Lasantha and others’. Here are some excerpts:
Speaking of Lasantha now,
he was not the just-another-guy
not because he was right
(he was wrong a lot of times;
hard to agree with too),
but he wrote his politics regardless
he made his allegiances clear
protected friends
(and some of them were unsavoury creatures too);
it does not matter, though.
He was flawed as the next person
but was more a citizen than many of us,
he spoke his mind,
he screamed.
I saluted him then. I said, ‘There is a finger that is itching to point, let us point it at ourselves.’ I asked, ‘Who are we, who am I in these times of omission and commission?’
That’s one way to talk about Lasantha (and others). It doesn’t seem to be very popular though.
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