30 years after July ’83, when an English language newspaper owned and run by the State can feature as a legitimate ‘Point of View’, inflammatory and toxic writing such as that of ‘Jayantha Gunasekara’, it reveals not merely an abysmal plummeting of journalistic and editorial standards. It is evidence of what is now seen as legitimate discourse. Worse still it arguably affords a glimpse of the ideology that may lie beneath the lid of some apparatuses, auxiliaries and proxies of the state. It is an early warning that the Northern Provincial Council election, instead of constituting a portal to a better future, may trigger a reaction from the dark underside of the Sinhala psyche and the more totalitarian elements of the State itself. This reaction would not only entail a de facto ‘state of siege’, sabotage, provocation, economic strangulation, subversion and de-stabilisation amounting to a coup against the Council, but also the holding of the Tamils outside the North as a human shield and hostage for coercive collective punishment. This after all, was the demented logic that led to July 83. Of course in 1983, there had been no unanimous agreement at a World Leaders Summit of the UN, as there was in 2005, enshrining the concept that when and if the national state is unwilling or unable to protect its own citizens, that responsibility to protect, following endorsement by the Security Council, devolves on the international community. Via groundviews.org/2013/08/13/is-a-black-july-being-threatened-through-the-state-media/
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 05:54:31 +0000
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