Sinhala Extremists Hijack Daily Mirror Newspaper On Aluthgama Riots
Champika Liyanarachchi
June 21, 2014
The Daily Mirror newspaper edited by Champika Liyanarachchi which failed to report on the anti Muslim violence in the Aluthgama area for the past five days published a series of pictures in its newspaper today of Sinhala homes that had been damaged in the violence on Sunday.
However it published a series of photographs of Sinhala families whose homes had been damaged in the riots while JHU MinisterChampika Ranawakawas on a visit to a Sinhala settlement in the Dharga Town area in its Saturday edition.The newspaper editors had claimed the under reporting of the religious riots in the south were born of a desire to refrain from inflaming communal tensions further in the light of the incidents, sources within the Daily Mirror Editorial told Colombo Telegraph.
“It has exposed our prejudice. We are standing for aggressors of minorities we will stand up for the majority community but never ever for the minorities” a journalist at Daily Mirror told Colombo Telegraph.
The journalists said that it was a grave miscarriage of justice to fail to report on the fate of Muslims while attempting to portray the victimisation of the Sinhala community alone.
“We could have balanced it and written about it but we just stayed silent” the reporters said.
The newspaper has come into serious criticism for its failure to effectively report on the anti Muslim violence the past week. It has also condemned the social media users for updating about the violence on their private networks. The Daily Mirror position on social media has been no different to that of the state media newspaper Daily News which called Twitter users ‘vultures‘ for their reports on the issues in Aluthgama.
Saturday’s report and pictures of Sinhala settlements attacked were published under the title US creating another Taliban in Sri Lanka – words of JHU Minister Ranawaka who claimed the US was not taking a stronger stance on Muslim extremists operating in Sri Lanka.
Liyanarachi is alleged to be on intimate terms with the JHU minister Champika Ranawaka.
