Are The Chickens Coming Home To Roost…?
Emil van der Poorten
To complete the title of this piece appropriately please complete it by adding “…or is this simply an aberration?”
The editor of the Sunday Island has displayed the kind of integrity that many who’ve known him over the years have attributed to that veteran journalist by carrying on the front page of his paper of April 25th the unequivocal apology tendered by one of Sri Lanka’s most reprehensible writers who has long paraded his skills in support of the most violent and corrupt government in the history of this land, supping very heartily at its trough.
I speak here of Malinda Seneviratne and the fact that he has tendered an unequivocal apology to a much-respected retired civil servant whom he accused, without an atom of supporting evidence by his own admission, of settling “estate Tamils” in areas subsequently deemed to be part of Eelam by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
For starters, I would suggest that Colombo Telegraph stops publishing the poorly disguised excuses for aSinhala Buddhist Sri Lanka that this man keeps producing from a mind that I would far rather not choose to describe. It was not so long ago that CT black-listed Vickramabahu Karunaratne for far less reprehensible conduct.
The old dictum applied to those plying the journalists’ profession used to be “Facts are sacred, comment is free.” I trust that CT has not consigned that cornerstone of journalism to the garbage heap of history thanks to the influence of the Malinda Seneviratnes of this world.
I expect that a side-bar at this point would not be out of place. Malinda Seneviratne’s father who, I understand served in the Civil Service at approximately the same time as did Dr. Devanesan Nesiah, has been only too ready to rush to his son’s defence on several previous occasions. Perhaps, he would care to comment on the conduct of this seed of his loins subsequent to the admission of deliberate falsehood published as news and/or comment? One can but wait with bated breath to see whether it is or is not true that the fruit does not fall far from the tree?
