Plus - Letter to the Editor

Persecution of writers goes on

By S. Jayawardene, Kelaniya

George Bernard Shaw said: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.” (Remember Lasantha?). One is also reminded of words of the 19th-century poet Heinrich Heine, who said, “Whenever books are burnt, men also, in the end are burnt.”

The first recorded victim of censorship was Socrates who, in 399 BC, was forced to drink poison for “denying the gods and introducing new divinities”. In China, in 213 BC, Emperor Shih Huang-Ti had all writing not pertaining to agriculture or medicine burnt. His target: The thoughts of Confucius. Present day China is no better.

In the last century, the Communists most systematically censored books and hounded their authors. Writers in every communist country, from East Germany to Vietnam, were forced into concentration camps. Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Milan Kundera, Czeslaw Milosz and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were just a few.

Hitler’s Nazi Germany burnt the books of Jewish writers and liberals, exterminating thousands in their notorious gas chambers and forcing others to flee.

In Sri Lanka, more than 14 journalists, the majority of them Tamils, have been killed in the past three years. Many more journalists have been abducted, beaten and intimidated to keep them from writing the truth.

In today’s day and age it is no longer possible to stop the message or the truth getting out by killing or imprisoning the messenger.

If this sorry state of affaires continues, this country will be known the world over as “The Autocratic, Dictatorial Banana Republic of Sri Lanka.”

 
Top to the page  |  E-mail  |  views[1]
 
Other Plus Articles
What's the buzz? - It's Colombo Art Biennale
Peace through artists’ eyes
Persecution of writers goes on -- Letter to the Editor
Mother jumbos ‘imprisoned’ with babies -- Letter to the Editor
Soldier and the street dog -- Letter to the Editor
Elegy for a student who died young -- Letter to the Editor
Thaaththa was my greatest hero -- Appreciation
Cherished friend, doting mother and teacher of teachers -- Appreciation
Popular vet, charmer, entertainer and life of the party -- Appreciation
A friend like you is hard to find -- Appreciation
Priest, inspiring preacher and God’s soldier for justice -- Appreciation
Military minds its mine studies
The soldier is first
Century-old temple now a sacred site
A new recipe from Indu & Koluu –“How to catch a man”
Something rare on the screen these days
SLDA wows New Zealand audiences with ‘Sankranthi’
Choir of St. Francis of Assisi in Gospel musical
75 years on Well Mudliyar still brings on the laughter
A new oasis in the city
Sandamini wins Light of Asia 2009 award
From battlefield to making music
International conference on Frontiers in Molecular Life Sciences
Events in brief
Chaaarge!
An eye on the past and the future

 

 
Reproduction of articles permitted when used without any alterations to contents and a link to the source page.
© Copyright 2009 | Wijeya Newspapers Ltd.Colombo. Sri Lanka. All Rights Reserved.| Site best viewed in IE ver 6.0 @ 1024 x 768 resolution