Looking Down The Road

By Ranil Senanayake -January 10, 2014 

Ranil Senanayake

It was about 1916 when the freedom fighter, F.R.Senanayake began organizing a response to the wanton killing and displacement of traditional villages, living on the land that businessmen wanted. Agri-business was after land, the people who opposed them and supported the villagers, were accused of being subversive due their ‘public service work’.  As the Hon D.S.Senanayake, the first leader of democratic Sri Lanka stated when taken into custody by the British,   “We prisoners were taken to the Police Headquarters and questioned about our public service work. “ Public Service Work had become a threat to the empire. Working in the interest of the people was frowned upon, working without a financial profit motive, was suspicious.  In the face of all this suppression they strived and helped bring about our current nation.  One would assume that this spirit of ‘Public Service’ that led to our independence, should have flowed into the present and produced a content, equitable society living in a clean, beautiful and healthy land. But looking around the land today, one sees a frighteningly different reality.

Sri Lanka has been betrayed! Our people have been poisoned in both body, as seen from the soaring rates of cancers and organ failures and  mind, as seen from the soaring rates of suicides, murders and violence towards women and children.  No amount of political spin can erase these realities.

There is also a disturbing pattern of media spin on critical issues, matters of serious public concern are trivialized, when media control is complete they are inverted.  As great parts of China are severely affected by choking smog,  a recent  announcement in the ‘Chinese Global Times’, a response this smog, a product of their Unplanned Economic Development, was forcing closure of schools and creating  health issues. So they claimed that smog has its own benefits and offers these (translated) rationalizations as to why smog can be good.

1. It unifies the Chinese people.

2. It makes China more equal.

3. It raises citizen awareness of the cost of China’s economic development.

4. It makes people funnier.

5. It makes people more knowledgeable (of things like meteorology and the English word haze).

There is of course global astonishment, even amusement at these comments. But it does illustrate the dire need for people to question the inane statements that are offered as a rationale to justify the process eroding our fundamental human right, the right to life!                                       Read More