A “Dissenter” Writing For Publication In Sri Lanka

By Emil van der Poorten -June 5, 2014

Emil van der Poorten

I’ve had friends ask about my recent relative silence in the matter of writing to either the print media or on-line publications and I expect I owe them something of an explanation.

As many of you know I have, at one time or another since my return to the land of my birth, contributed to pretty well all the English-language newspapers of this country, sometimes – for obvious reasons – under a pseudonym and sometimes using the name my parents bestowed on me.  With the creeping paralysis that has overtaken the media here and which has paralleled the dictatorial conduct of the leadership of this country, outlets for opinions such as mine have shrunk to nothing.  This has happened primarily for two reasons – outright purchases or blockbuster takeovers by minions of or members of that government and self-censorship driven by commercial considerations and/or rank cowardice in the matter of being critical of those ruling Sri Lanka.

In a context where those similarly targeted by this government have met fates far grimmer than mine, it is still cold comfort to be told that “you could have been worse off!”  The fact that Lasantha Wickremetunge is dead,Frederica Jansz lives in exile in the North Western United States, a bunch of other journalists are in political exile in Britain and Western Europe, Mandana Ismail Abeywardene has seemingly taken a vow of silence andTisaranee Gunasekara, arguably the bravest and most skilled journalist in this country, cannot find a newspaper to publish what she writes is very obviously meant as a chilling reminder to any lesser lights with the temerity to raise their voices against the monumental parody of a democracy that is Sri Lanka today.

For those leopards among us who cannot change their spots, particularly when they are closer than ever to the proverbial four-score in the matter of life span, all of this statistical information is of no consequence, not because of some irresistible urge to be a 21^st Century Don Quixote but because there are some matters of behaviour – classify them as belonging in the realms of morality, ethics or principle – that one simply cannot divest oneself of.  It is as simple as that and, I’d suggest, a code that every religion and philosophy extols and all those in a country so full of self-identified “religious” and “moral” people pay seemingly never-ending lip service to.

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