Focus on Rights

Paying the price of being intolerably controversial
I remember questions of a particular poignancy that beset me when recalling the death of a journalist, communicator and human rights activist of a particular incandescent brilliance known simply as Richard de Zoysa on his tenth death anniversary; namely, what price, commitment in a culture of brutality? Ultimately, who remembers? Who, indeed, cares?

In Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney's inspired wanderings, he talks of a Republic of the Conscience, for whose inhabitants, it is an article of faith that "all life sprang from salt in tears, which the sky-god wept after he dreamt his solitude was endless". The sacred symbol of this Republic is a stylized boat, the sail is an ear, the mast is a sloping pen, the hull is a mouth-shape and the keel is an open eye. To enter this space, there are no formal immigration procedures, "you carried your own burdens and soon, your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared".

Unlike Richard de Zoysa, journalist and editor Dharmaratnam Sivaram who was murdered this week by forces yet unknown, had less of those 'creeping privileges.' Perhaps, his views (particularly his dissimulation in regard to the undoubtedly totalitarian nature of the entity collectively referred to as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), were even more controversial than those of Richard's and could not be borne by those equally totalitarian minds that plotted and accomplished his death. Yet, both claimed, (albeit in their own indisputably different way), a committed membership to Heaney's Republic of the Conscience. And both, unquestionably, did not deserve to die for the expression of their views.

Decades after Richard de Zoysa's death, his slaying continues to throw up difficult questions at us. His murderers have been recognised, without a doubt, to be agents of the State. They have met with different fates in their own lifetimes but have not yet been officially named and condemned. From one perspective, his death remains a symbol of the senselessness of that period. From another perspective that yet prevails, it is held out as fitting retribution to those who challenge the political establishment and thereby deserve the epithet of traitor.

The context within which he was disposed of yet remains relevant. He was killed not because he spewed vitriolic and personal abuse against the political leaders of the day or engaged in deliberate acts of violence against the State. On the contrary, his death came about purely as a result of persistent reportage of human rights abuses and for perceived sympathy with the anti-government forces of the day. It occurred moreover, at a time when the state had all but succeeded in controlling the southern insurrectionists. In that sense, his death was arguably in political terms, a highly unnecessary footnote.

And it is only the extremely naïve or the extremely stupid who would deny that the brutality intertwining and culminating in Richard's death did not continue to exist in the societal fabric of the country and would not, given a particular catalytic situation, manifest itself again. The brutality symbolised by this, (with other countless slayings in the North-East and the South along with the assassination of successive political leaders thereafter), then transferred itself to purportedly normal times where one would have expected the contrary, in the absence of active conflict.

Instead, the phenomena of death, whether in relation to a journalist killed for expressing his or her views, a judge murdered because he was perceived as being an obstacle to organised criminal forces or a torture victim killed by police officers for persisting in his call for accountability of his torturers, has now become commonplace. In the absence of true mechanisms of both legal and social accountability, the country has slid relentlessly towards a further abandoning of its collective and individual conscience on so many issues, including the basic functioning of cherished institutions and norms of decent life.

In this process, the media has played a not particularly creditable role. The prevalence of agenda driven reporting, lack of professionalism and basic training led to the media contributing to the general decline of standards in civic life in the country notwithstanding exceptional efforts by some to arrest this decline. It is a predictably cruel irony that those who were killed during the past several decades of varied crises, distinguished themselves in not belonging to the common herd but rather, were meticulously professional albeit highly challenging in their writing and analysis. In the wake of Dharmaratnam Sivaram's death, it is justified in asking the question as to whether the government will bestir itself to apprehend the perpetrators any more than what was done in the case of not only Richard de Zoysa but others who succumbed to that same grim fate, including most notably Nimalarajan Mylvaganam, correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Sinhala and Tamil language services more than four years back? In all these instances (as well as in the case of the 1999 murder of Rohana Kumara, the editor of a controversial Sinhala tabloid), the investigations have been stalled midway.

In recent times, the deaths of High Court judge Sarath Ambepitiya and torture victim Gerald Perera were investigated with vigour resulting in the apprehension of those responsible within a relatively short time. It remains to be seen as to whether this impetus for ensuring accountability will continue.

Essentially however, I come back to my initial question; ultimately, who remembers? Who, indeed, cares in a political system such as ours that values and honours sycophancy if not hypocrisy, caring much for the single political objective rather than the collective common good? It is undoubted that sans genuine reform of our political and legal institutions, professing views that are either ideologically different or are perceived to be threatening to others will court lethal risks in Sri Lanka, including a flirtation with death in all its varied forms.

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