EDITORIAL

Freedom Of The Despots

Since Karl Marx wrote his Das Kapital and with Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, the name of this political theorist has been used in vain by countless dictators and despots to justify the suppression of free peoples. Unemployed for most of his life, Marx was what we would today label a resounding failure, a verdict endorsed by history. Nevertheless, the creed he spawned has generated so much sadness that Marxists have been rendered a pariah class across the planet.

Since the Russian Revolution of October 1917, Marxism achieved a fashionability that few political creeds have rivalled. It spawned a breed of bloodthirsty and murderous despots that turned the clock of history back to the age of Atilla the Hun and Genghis Khan: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chin Min, Kim, and countless lesser megalomaniacs. Marxism became a synonym for 'a greedy few who suppress and oppress the many.'

Just as religion feeds on the emotionally vulnerable, Marxism breeds on human misery. No prosperous country has entertained Marxism as a political philosophy. Having been tried throughout the developing world, it is a philosophy that has now been roundly rejected. The only nations who now seek to preserve Marxism are those governed by dictators: North Korea and Cuba. Across the rest of the world, Marxist political parties have about as much credibility as societies dedicated to the study of little green men from Mars.

Heaven knows Sri Lanka has had its share of grief. Since independence in 1948, democratic political parties have blotched their copybooks in such extravagant style that it has become a breeding ground for up and coming Marxists. Indeed it is surprising that Marxist parties win only about 10% of the popular vote: they could garner much more. The laissez faire attitude mainstream political parties adopt towards Marxism is such that Marxist teachings and political claims are more ignored than contested. That folly will cost them dear.

Last week, in his speech to the joint JVP-SLFP anti-peace rally in Colombo, Propaganda Secretary of the JVP, Wimal Weerawansa threatened, "It will not only be Temples Trees that will be surrounded; those biased media institutions will also be surrounded; that cannot be prevented." Unfortunately, the English word 'surround' does not fully convey the intimidatory connotations the Sinhala carries.

Indeed, by holding this rally, the JVP and SLFP were exercising their right to free association guaranteed by Article14(1)(c) of the Constitution. That they should use that freedom to threaten the media, which enjoys the right of free expression and publication in terms of Article14(1)(a) of the Constitution is, to say the least, ironic. It is a naked threat, thinly veiled as a prediction, that independent media institutions would be physically surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people such as those attending the JVP-SLFP rally. Why does the JVP fear free expression? It is because like all Marxists, they cannot bear to hear the truth.

The JVP has embraced a repressive and bloodthirsty creed, the like of which the world has known few equals. Millions of innocents have been murdered in cold blood by Marxist dictatorships. The words 'dissident,' 'defector' and gulag came into common English usage through Marxism. As if that were not bad enough, as it is there for all to see in post-Soviet Russia, Marxism has been a resounding economic failure, enriching the few at the top of the party hierarchy at the cost of the many who sweat and toil, stripped of their fundamental freedoms, under threat of death or worse. Remember Rohana Wijeweera in his Benz and the extravagant Ulapane estateand the present day leaders in their Defender luxury vehicles? The matter-of-fact descriptions of the true terror of Marxism in Nobel literature prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago should be made compulsory reading for all aspiring Marxists.

What then, are we to expect of an SLFP-JVP government? Heaven knows the precedents are there. Cast your mind back to the 1970-77 regime of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, from whose womb sprang Anura Bandaranaike, and in whose bosom he was nurtured. Do you remember the confiscation of houses and property? The never-ending, draconian emergency? The vindictive harrying of political opponents? And the sealing of the Davasa Group's newspapers, a blow from which that company was never to recover. Besides, who was it who nationalised Lake House? None other than the SLFP, which now, hand in glove with the JVP, threatens yet again to intimidate the media.

But, you might say, all that changed with Chandrika; you would be wrong. It was Chandrika who discussed murdering newspaper editors with her ministers. It was she indeed, who sealed The Sunday Leader, a decision subsequently overturned by court. It was she who saw to it that government advertising did not go to newspapers she thought were critical of her. And it was in her regime that the dissident journalist Mariyadasan Nimalaranjan and Satana Editor Rohana Kumara were brutally murdered. Indeed it was in her regime that the editor of this very newspaper was twice the victim of armed attacks, it being well known to all that the perpetrator was a senior member of Chandrika's bodyguard.

What of the JVP? Now they are talking of surrounding media institutions. Who was it then, that killed Premakeerthi De Alwis and Thevis Guruge? When has the JVP even expressed regret at those attacks on the media? We invite Wimal Weerawansa, the cardboard Sando, to pick up the courage to name the media institutions the JVP and SLFP will surround. We say, for all his fire breathing rhetoric he is too much of a coward to do so publicly without the cover of parliamentary privilege.Indeed, we dare them to surround our office. There is no greater form of cowardice than that of a man who rather than argue with his perceived critics, threatens to have their offices surrounded.

We do not know which media organisations this cardboard sando was referring to but The Sunday Leader stood up to Chandrika Kumaratunga, unbowed and unafraid, despite all her threats and intimidation. To think that we would cower under our beds as a result of Wimal Weerawansa's threats and puerile rhetoric is surely sublime. If the families of the thousands of innocent people the JVP slaughtered between 1987 and 1992 surrounded the JVP offices, we would like to know who would be hiding under their bed?

Weerawansa would do well to remember that it was the media that cleansed the JVP's bloody image when in 1994 it entered the mainstream of national politics. It was the media that helped the JVP to gain a semblance of respectability. The JVP would be grievously in error to take that latitude for granted. Never have common criminals been treated so generously. Rhetoric may be one thing; threats are quite another. It is time the media began treating the JVP for what it is, exposing its bloody and perverted past, ridiculing it for the fact that its leader lives a life of idle luxury in London, and questioning closely as to where its funds originate: embarrassing questions indeed.

The SLFP and JVP might well have linked arms in adversity, but they would both do well to respect the common freedoms our nation has won through hard struggle and sacrifice. Otherwise it could well be the owners of 'Tintagel' that find themselves surrounded - and by the common people, not the media.