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The amnesia of the GoSL and “all political parties”

For the last six months of the CFA, the popular Tamil dailies, and there are many of them, have filled their pages with death squad style assassinations in the Northeast. These dailies are not fabricating the stories on a daily basis for sensationalizing the news paper. Tamil people and only Tamil people know the full truth because they are living it.

The southern media, both English and Sinhala, have consistently failed to report on the situation of the Tamils in the Northeast. This turning of one’s face away from the dark side of their government continued even as death squad style killings were accelerated over the last six months. Any student in media can take any of the cases reported in the list published by the LTTE Political Head Quarters on 26 April and see if it received adequate coverage in any of the southern media. For example,

- Two women, Yogarasa Yogeswari & Thurairasa Vathani were shot dead in their home while sleeping in Vantharamolai in Batticaloa on 7 December 2005 and a baby sleeping with them was injured in the shooting;

- A couple, Emanual Cruz & Anthoniamma Cruz, and Suganthy and her four year old son was burnt to death by Sri Lankan Navy in Pesalai in Mannar on 23 December 2005;

- Three women, mother, Bojan Arthanareeswari, and her two grown daughters, Bojan Shannuka, Bojan Renuka were shot dead in Manipay in Jaffna on 14 Januray 2006.

- Three hunters, Kuhaneswaran, Nakulenthirarasa, and Thiraviyan were shot dead in Puliyankulam in LTTE border area on 13 April 2006.

- Five friends in a three-wheeler, Gowribalan, Kannathasan, Kamalathasan, Kishorkumar, and Kaveenthran were shot dead in Puthur in Jaffna on 18 April 2006.

This history of looking away from Tamil massacres is nothing new to the southern media. It has gone on for two decades or more. After all, media and the consciousness of a people constantly influence one another. The southern media is therefore a manifestation of the southern people.

Southern people, includes the GoSL and “all the political parties represented in parliament” as phrased in the Joint Statement of the “All Party Conference” on 28 April 2006.

Has this southern people, inculding GoSL, gone so deep into its amnesia that it has entirely forgotten, that Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the third largest party, is also represented in parliament with 22 seats. TNA chose not to attend this “all party conference”?

Does this deep amnesia demonstrate in another dimension the parting of ways of the Northeast from the south?

01 May 2006

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