Another C-4 problem
Editorial-October 13, 2013, 8:33 pm
It has been reported that state intelligence agencies are looking for a Channel Four journalist believed to have come here with his partner. The purpose of their visit is said to be unclear, but it is said they could be on a campaign to discredit Sri Lanka or on some private business.
Channel Four propaganda against Sri Lanka is blatantly lopsided and obviously aimed at ruining its tourism industry besides backing the LTTE’s war crimes campaign. Therefore, the government’s concern about well organised vilification campaigns carried out by a section of the international media is understandable. But, restrictions or bans on foreign journalists are ill-conceived and unacceptable. Such draconian measures are also counterproductive, especially in the run-up to the forthcoming CHOGM.
The government policy, in our book, should be to allow foreign journalists to come and see for themselves regardless of the media organisations they represent. The North has now been opened up and a provincial council elected, and anyone should be able to visit that part of the country or any other area for that matter and meet people freely. Now that UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has been here as part of an assignment to prepare a report widely expected to be adverse to Sri Lanka’s interests, there is no reason why the government should try to prevent foreign journalists from entering the country.
The Information Super Highway has effectively rendered a person’s physical presence in a particular geographical location unnecessary for him or her to ascertain information. Neither a journalist nor anyone else has to travel to faraway countries to conduct interviews or gather propaganda material needed to prepare reports or make propaganda movies; he or she could do so without venturing out of his or her office or home. Even the UNHRC chief need not have come here all the way from Geneva to collect information for her report; she did so to assert herself and make the government feel small.
Sri Lanka ought to be different from Jayalalithaa’s Tamil Nadu, which is on a witch hunt against anti-LTTE Sri Lankans. What the elusive Channel Four journalist who is said to be here has up his sleeve, we really don’t know. But, searches for journalists in any country, their harassment and deportation cannot be countenanced unless it could be proved beyond any doubt that they are involved in criminal activity.
The problem Sri Lanka is faced with is not that Channel Four is producing films against it, based on mere hearsay and unsubstantiated allegations derived from handout material from vested interests. Its propaganda cannot be stopped and people dissuaded from watching its programmes by preventing its journalists from entering this country or throwing out those who succeed in gaining entry by way of deception. The real problem is that Sri Lanka has failed to get its message across effectively.
People of the North have been able to exercise their franchise freely and elect their own provincial council; the democratic northern political parties are no longer under the gun and they don’t have to take orders from the LTTE; children are back in school without being abducted, brainwashed and turned into cannon fodder; more than 12, 000 ex-LTTE combatants including child soldiers and female cadres have been rehabilitated and reunited with their families, ex-combatants and family members of LTTE leaders have taken to mainstream politics and the government’s development drive in the North has been praised by even visiting foreign dignitaries. The best way to counter anti-Sri Lankan propaganda is to make these irrefutable facts known to the international community.
Anyone who has taken a principled stand to pledge solidarity with WikiLeaks chief Assange, who has had to take refuge in a foreign embassy in London and former National Security Agency worker Snowden, trapped in a Russian airport as they have antagonised the US, cannot approve of ‘manhunts’ for journalists anywhere in the world.
