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| Sunday, 26 March 2006 |
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The Rajpal Abeynayake column: Seeing communal bones in journalists - sans X-Ray Its amazing how long people can propel themselves and their trademark untruths forward by peddling a wrong idea consistently. For example, being against all foreign/and or alien influences - in the form of money and inducement - has been interpreted through some cock-eyed form of liner logic as somehow being anti Tamil! So, when in the lecture circuits someone intones that "so and so did not have a communal bone in his body" what's also meant is that there are several others who are communalists for the reason that they refused to purchase the prevailing culture of being NGO diapered and NGO pampered. Interestingly, the canard is now said to be in motion that certain nationalist elements have taken over organisations such as the one that runs this newspaper. Before certain leaders of Non-Governmental Organisations can even coin the appropriate words for it, they are beginning to realise that there are some people who are emerging as opinion-makers that are dangerously non conformist, and above all fiercely non NGO. To the people who have made conflict their rice and curry, this phenomenon they call as 'emergent nationalism' is what they never thought they would live to see. Having a newspaper that is half Neanderthal in its layout (with exponentially reducing circulation) being against the non-governmental thinking of the day was to them, a minor irritant. But to have the English newspaper with the highest circulation in the country to eschew NGO inspired thinking is a massive red flag to the leadership of rear-guard NGOism, which is hell bent on providing a last strut for NGO harrumphed methods of conflict-resolution. So, when they see an emergent newspaper culture in which Editors do not simply say 'we must solve this problem'' but also point out alternative ways of solving it, these NGO leaders take it as an affront to their exclusive rights to opinion making on how best the Sri Lankan conflict should be approached. Therefore, when the editors of newspapers take an approach that says certain truths about the LTTE, for example, there is a violent reaction in the minds of the 'Perera-doctrine' NGO association for example. If for simple example, the Editors carry a story that the LTTE has carried out such a number of ceasefire violations after the Geneva round of talks, this has given cause to apoplexy. In the spacious verandas and patios of well-appointed NGO domains, there is incredulity. They say that an anti peace horde is making a nonsense of a peace process, by throwing by the board all the canons of peace journalism while having the temerity to do so with some newly found ballast. The process is then set in motion, to annihilate by association. Any Editor seen as being against the NGO principle for conflict resolution is first guilty of anti peace-journalism, and second, he is deemed to have more than one communal bone in his body. There will certainly be no music for him under a thatched NGO patio when he is dead, even of natural causes, even if it is going to be decades from now. But, leave alone a communal bone, such editors may not have so much as a communal cartilage in their very pacifist anatomy. But how would that satisfy the NGO lobby, which sees the red flag of usurpation in their journalism? Years of carefully nurtured conflict resolution practises for which the handbook has to be bought from the nearest NGO store, has to be upended now because of this new journalism in which journalists call a spade a spade and the LTTE what it should be called, when it should be called. Even more tragically, the structure in which the LTTE could be palmed off as a pro Tamil-rights entity is under a sudden almost seismic threat. Whatever the LTTE has said and done, the NGOs whether of the co-existential brand or the Perera prototype, have sold and trademarked the LTTE as being pro Tamil-rights in a land that is painted by them as at best indifferent to the just demands of the Tamil people. But, when someone, particularly in a largest circulation newspaper says that the facts do not support that reality because Tamil child recruitment is not by the government but by the LTTE, this is seen as unnecessary over-emphasis. Tamil chid recruitment has to be shown as a fact by the UNICEF, and it has to stop right there at the UNICEF Colombo office front-door. Who are these newspaper editors to write about Tamil child recruitment from newspapers that were traditionally run by NGO partial puppets -for the NGOs and on behalf of the NGOs?? What emergent heresy is this - this is rotten, and it's not even imported from Denmark. At about this time it is appropriate to strike a personal note. It's a badge of honour as far as I'm concerned to be part of this rotten- though not imported from Denmark - journalistic tendency. There will be nobody in the non-governmental lecture circuit to say when I depart this world, (whenever that may be....) that "there wasn't a communal bone in his body.'' No elegy under a thatched patio for me, certainly. But who wants testimonials about bone structure when all that one could ask for goes in the lines of this: "Abeynayake told the truth, even if a large brigade of peaceniks tried their darndest to append nationalist a.k.a communalist badge on him for doing so." To re-make that point about child solders, the NGOs want an unwritten rule that says that child recruitment and any other LTTE atrocities have to be condemned only by specific international organisations, which have the mandate for it. Anybody else who does so while the peace effort is in progress, is a peace spoiler, even if he happens to be uttering the unalloyed truth. Truth according to the journalists' canons of the NGO-lobby is a premium quantity in journalism. But that's only when they are conducting seminars on the subject of the media. When they are on the subject of peace, truth-telling suddenly becomes anathema. The meat that was recommended at yesterday's media seminar suddenly becomes the poison of today's peace conference room. Which is how media men who tell the truth about the LTTE - even while endorsing a peace process that advocates negotiations - become men who are seen to have so many communal a.k.a. nationalist bones rattling in their body. No musical interlude under a thatched patio when they die. That's reserved for NGO wallahs, even of NGOs such as the International Centre for Ethnic Studies whose founder was rudely assassinated by a LTTE suicide bomber even as he was contemplating the utter lack of any communal bones in his body. |
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