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The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

Dharmaratnam Sivaram was shot and killed. May Chidiac was hurt in a car bomb. Both were in pursuit of their professions, but one lived to tell the tale, even though it cost her an arm and a leg for that luxury.

Last week was poignant for the fact that May Chidiac was given an award for her bravery, here in Colombo, where Sivaram's first death anniversary had been recently marked with commemorative events.

The confluence of events was stirring, for the simple reason that one journalist had died last year about this time, relatively unhonoured and unsung - - and a another was being honoured, while yet others were being shot or otherwise assassinated by brigands who were as shadowy as they were now becoming regular.

In this atmosphere, the issue of press freedom began to be seen in a complex light. Some Sri Lankans were swearing by it, while they still disrespected what press freedom stood for - which is a tolerance of ideas. Press freedom's appointed guardians in this country, we saw, view press freedom from their peculiar prism, and rarely brook the others' right to hold their views, unmolested.

But, Sivaram, when he was alive, had a short fuse for such hypocrites. This is why it seems that the issue of press freedom in this country looks today as if it is one that is a lesson in the ingraining of hypocritical values.

Those who value the freedom of the press, are the most reluctant to call a spade a spade. Sivaram called a spade a spade, and he had made a credo of it for himself to the point where he used the words 'call a spade a spade'' on everyone, to the point of irritation almost, on a daily basis.

But, if you would call a spade a spade about the issue of terrorism for example, press freedom's greatest defenders in Sri Lanka today are seen to go into a Klu Klux Klan type defensive reflex. This is why last week we saw the hypocrisy of the situation in a new light.

May Chidiac was being honoured, yet the honouring ceremony was being boycotted by some of the more sanctimonious press freedom pretenders.

That was in itself an act of intolerance, but the moral hypocrisy of it was lost on those who view press freedom as a garnishing on their personalities, more than they view it as a credo or a way of life. Chidiac, looking beautiful yet with a give 'em hell expression on her face, made short shrift of those hypocrisies by making sure that everybody heard right her views on terrorism.

Terrorism should be defeated, and all journalists should be in the forward carriage of the fight to defeat terrorism, she said, and she should know, she was almost blown to bits by a terrorist car bomb.

To defenders of press freedom here of the Colombo variety, the word terrorism is one that should be expunged from the dictionary. They think that anyone who utters the word terrorist is intolerant, is not liberal, is chauvinistic and is beyond the pale.

May Chidiac didn't give a second thought for this version of press freedom, and it was her day - and she uttered the T word, loud and clear, and in a way that she would be quoted in all of the wire services. Incidentally, she was the winner of the free world's most coveted prize for courageous journalism, and in her presence, our candle-burners for freedom should look like pygmies who have in addition to being truncated, also suffered from arrested development and cretinism.

Now these hypocrites would realise that a T word does exists in the lexicon, and that abroad, in intellectually enlightened climes, this T word could be used by courageous journalists for the purpose of condemning those who perpetrate acts that are decidedly T.

T is NOT for Tamil.

Its something that the Three Media advocates -- let's say I'm talking of a triumvirate or a near triumvirate of a gang that made a show of themselves at the free media sessions last week - should digest.

They would realise that lack of tolerance for the views of others is a form of T. T is for tolerance, and anything that goes against that T, is another form of T.

It's this journalistic T (terrorism) on the part of those who profess to love press freedom that came in for a quick unravelling last week. They were proved to be intellectually cretin-ised, because they characterised those of us who were against terrorism as being unfashionable and beyond the pale.

They hit terra firma when a plain dealer of the truth, May Chidiac claimed her courageous journalism was against terrorism. She called a spade a spade, as Sivaram did.

That's why Sivaram moved very closely with those who called a spade a spade, even those who held diametrically opposed views to his, such as myself. He didn't have time of day for those who professed to empathize with him, such as last week' s Colombo hypocrites, who grabbed microphones, undertook walkabouts and ended up in the bar rooms contemplating press freedom via their drams of amber liquid. Sivaram was a plain dealer, and to strike the personal note where its due - I say May Chidiac is a plain dealer, and so is this writer, to be sure.

Give us not the frills of press freedom, but give us the pith of it, which is that we are able to stand up for not just what's popular, but what's unpopular to boot.

What's unpopular among the Colombo breed of press freedom's sanctimonious-savants, is a man who says that he doesn't like any kind of support for subversion, whether its from civil society, or from within and without, even if its in the guise of protecting Ts (that's the Tamils) with the other Ts (the terrorists.) So, therefore, its not an accident that Sivaram's death anniversary came to be commemorated just before press freedom day was marked with a conference at which the proper contours of press freedom emerged, and the ostensible defenders of press freedom were ousted as a bunch of kooks who can't do, because primarily they are men of cant. It was happy coincidence.

May Chidiac was the icing on the cake.

The sweeter icing on the cake was to watch bemusedly folks not having the basic values to observe press freedom day decently with a champion such as May Chidiac, who was renouncing the same kinds of terrorism that caused the deaths, by direct route or circuitous routes, of the likes of Sivaram, and those who lost their lives at the Uthayan in Jaffna last week.

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