Editorial

Cry Freedom!

Martin Niem”ller, born in 1892, in Lippstadt, Germany, was a pacifist and a Protestant pastor. He was strongly anti-communist and initially supported the Nazis until the church was made subordinate to state authority. In 1934, he started the Pastors' Emergency League to defend the church. Hitler became angered by Niem”ller's rebellious sermons and popularity and had him arrested in July 1937. He was tried the following year, sentenced to seven months in prison, and fined. After his release, Hitler ordered him arrested again, and he spent the next seven years in concentration camps. Finally liberated in 1945, Niem”ller was elected President of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947, going on to become president of the World Council of Churches.

In the aftermath of the war, Germans were left incredulous at the barbarism to which their entire nation had stooped. How could it be that the nation that gave birth to Bach and Beethoven, to G”the and Schiller, stood idly by as millions of its citizens - Jews, dissidents, crippled and disabled - were gassed, gunned down or incarcerated? It was Niem”ller who finally gave Germany an answer to the question, "How could it have happened?" which indeed, was asked of him by a young post-war German.

"First they came for the Communists" he said, "but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the trade unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."

Today, Sri Lanka is once more at the crossroads. It is a sad moment in the life of a young nation when one can be imprisoned for entertaining an opinion. The nation has fallen among thieves, blackmailers and self advancing blackguards. Ten years of the rule of Chandrika Kumaratunga have been all it has taken to stifle dissent and criminalise liberal values. Her thirst for eternal power is such that, like her mother before her, she will stoop to any depths to have her way.

If you are old enough, cast your mind back to the 1970s. Do you remember the seizure of newspapers, the forced closure of the Davasa Group? The arrests of dissidents? The confiscation of "dissident" property, homes and businesses - yes, even the Buhari Restaurant! - through the notorious Business Acquisitions Act?

Who could forget the kangaroo courts set up in the form of Criminal Justice Commissions? Do you remember the fate of Mubarak Thaha, the businessman and UNP supporter? He was arrested for an alleged exchange control offence and suffered a heart attack. On the pleadings of his family, he was taken to hospital chained to a stretcher, but the police would not allow him to be treated until Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike had given her consent. Thaha lay in agony, gasping for breath, in chains, in the burning sun on the pavement outside the Accident Service on Ward Place for hours, as Bandaranaike was too busy to take a call that should, in the first place, never have been made to her. And there he breathed his last. Sirimavo Bandaranaike certainly had her fill of karma.

But, you might say, all that changed with Chandrika Kumaratunga; you would be wrong. It was Kumaratunga who was discussing the need to murder 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, even as her government looked the other way. Indeed it was in her regime that the Editor of this very newspaper was twice the victim of armed attacks, it being well known that one of the perpetrator's was a senior member of Kumaratunga's bodyguard. Then recall the attempted blackmail of Rauf Hakeem in order to 'persuade' him to cross over to the government and vote with the UPFA nominee for the Speaker's post.

Here is an administration to which decency is a four-letter word.

The nation has now been left with a government that has sunk into the very sewers of morality. What then, are we to do? If things today are not as bad as they were in the 1970s, it is not because we have a government that is less evil, it is because the present-day media have asserted their freedom to expose governmental excess. And for this, the media are paying a heavy price. With criminal defamation having been defenestrated by the UNF government, the mode of choice to curb free expression is now contempt of court, and it is a matter of time before newspaper editors will find themselves behind bars. If that is the price that must be paid to fly the flag of freedom over Sri Lanka, so be it.

It is no sin to be incarcerated for one's beliefs. Nay, you wear it as a badge of honour. Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew spent years in prison. Liberty is too valuable an asset and important a principle to quibble over market value. And even as upholders of freedom settle into their cells, all right-thinking politicians too, would do well to consider their options. This nation has suffered enough from political plunder and politicians whose only ambition is to enjoy the fruits of office. Politicians in our country have rarely been called upon to fight for freedoms: indeed, they did not even have to fight for independence from the British - they got it on a platter. Well, now is the time for them to gird their loins and fight the good fight. When government becomes riddled with pimps, perverts, prostitutes and all manner of vermin, prison can be a refreshing place to be, and opposition parliamentarians in particular would do well to abandon the five-star hotels of Colombo for a bracing spell in gaol.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, usually silent on almost every matter of principle that comes before him, did well to speak out last week. But he should remember that the newspapers who reported his words did so at their peril. He and the opposition he leads would do well to consider, then, their options. They need boldly to speak out, to articulate the nation's thinking. When blackmailers, murderers, arsonists and plunderers hold our nation's high offices, they need unfearingly to root them out.

The sole raison d'etre of the government today is to perpetuate itself. Kumaratunga's obsession, like her mother before her, is with remaining in power for the rest of her days, and for this she needs to abolish the presidency. This fits in nicely with the JVP's agenda, for the JVP knows that the presidency is a long way from its door. As its 39 members of parliament show however, control of parliament is a much faster and more achievable option. And so, the agenda for Sri Lanka is being set and manipulated solely for personal gain, with no thought of national interest and certainly no principle other than self-aggrandizement. Hitler's Nazi Germany was no different. Ah, what sweet irony: it seems that Velupillai Pirapaharan is the only one around nowadays with any sense of principle!

And so, civil society must take note of the lurking peril. Sri Lanka has begun to slide into the mediaeval abyss of the 1970s. The barbarians are knocking at the door. No free-thinking person is safe, and the government is poised for abuse. Our salvation will not come from politicians, for they serve only themselves: it will - it must - come out of the personal righteousness of each one of us. As for us at The Sunday Leader, it seems that all our lives have been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. We are indeed walking with destiny. And we shall not fail. Even as the forces of darkness gather about us, we shall indeed Cry Freedom.