Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – HL Mencken

Yes…it is tough-if you know the facts.

Actually, I live in Australia, and I can tell you that I have never belonged to any political group here, but as an individual when I have contacted MPs at state and federal level, or the local council about any concerns I have been impressed by how prompt they are in replying to me and sometimes how receptive they have been to my concerns.

Even at the basic level, down my street, my neighbour was collecting signatures for a petition about a nearby public building burglar alarm going off everyday at 2am! To be honest I have never heard it…but I signed it purely out of goodwill…hoping she could get better sleep.

Freedom of press is a pretty fundemental and non-controversial neutral issue to bring up I think.

Unless I am being naiive?

Your idea was proposed by a couple of us a while ago as a way in which international awareness could be raised on the situation in Sri Lanka in our communities.

I’ve been in touch with Sanjana also and as he’s mentioned somewhere here, one reason he set up this website was also to be a source of viewpoints that could not be found easily found elsewhere and could help support letters of the nature you suggest outside of Sri Lanka.

I’m working with other progressive minded Sri Lankans, Tamil, Sinhala (no Muslims where I live) to write letters regularly – but we need more voices doing the same. A few won’t make a difference.

And safety outside is also a concern it seems – I read on the web that a Tamil activists house was ransacked in France / Paris? It’s sometimes tough to write even outside of Sri Lanka. Tougher to stay silent though no?

What do you think of the suggestion that Sri Lankans living overseas in a safe environment write to media outlets, local MPs etc. and make people aware of the dire consequences that you outlined to Uvindu, of journalists exposing government officials?

Ideological convictions invariably influence our perception of “informative reliability” or put another way, our perceptions on Truth and Justice. The reporting of events and processes in turn influence, over time, the formation of ideology. This symbiosis is what makes the thrust and parry of divergent viewpoints in the media so important – and rather than say there is one TRUTH, it is in my opinion more useful to think of a journalist as someone who eschews this simplistic notion and instead explores the existence of multiple truths. As the adage goes, truth has many facets, and any one of them alone is a lie.

Sure we need to do something – and you clearly are. But Shantanu’s point is well taken – without champions of what you propose as alternatives in positions of power, such as the media, your lone voice in today’s context won’t possibly add to much.

Don’t also forget that though J’accuse was written by Zola it was published in L’aurore, owned and edited at the time by Georges Clemenceau, who later went on to become a Prime Minister that led France to World War I. As a student of terrorism, one notes that it was Clemenceau who introduced the concept of “total war” and though he had a dictatorial bent, perhaps his media training led him to say, at the height of the war, that “The right to insult members of the government is inviolable”. The point is that Zola was not really a “lone voice of Truth and Justice”, but he was supported by media institutions and by media personnel partial to his personal quest for democracy.

Who are those that you would turn to, in a similar vein, today?

I agree with you. But my main point is this;

The main enemy of free media is the domination of ideological conviction over informative reliability. Another enemy is blindness, which leaves one able to make only trite observations. In a democratic country the media are tempted to use exclusive information leaked from secret services, but these leaks are just an attempt to steer the media from out side, to manipulate public opinion.

Any way we need to do some thing. If not as Zola said “the phantom of an innocent man, suffering in dreadful tortures for the crime he did not commit, would haunt us at night”

Uvindu