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By Charles.S.Perera

Hell hath no fury like, when a journalist is assaulted in Sri Lanka. The media federations and the humanitarian band wagon will be up blaring their hatred on all and sundry. It was the case with Keith Noyahr. While condemning all such assaults on any one, by criminals and cowards and offering our regrets to Mr.Noyahr, it has to be mentioned that too much of attention has been paid to this incident. This makes one wonder what actually is the intention of the media making this unprecedented uproar.

The reason could of course be surmised in reading through media reports of the incident and observing the innuendos, which implicate the government as the perpetrator of the crime against Mr.Noyahr. No intelligent person , least of all the ordinary educated people who may not even have heard of the existence of a Mr.Keith Noyahr, would for an instance think that the government of the President Mahinda Rajapakse would be interested in getting some hooligans to assault Mr.Noyahr. What reason could there be for the government to stoop so low to assault a little known person like Noyahr ?

· If it is for what he had written, or what had been written in the Nation, which "panders" for the LTTE terrorists taking an anti government stand, then there would be no end of beating up journalists, and anti war lobbyists for what they are writing regularly against the President Mahinda Rajapakse, his government, and his family. Take for instance the numerous websites- a few among them: Tamil Week, The Sri Lanka Guardian, Sri Lanka Watch, Lanka Dissent, LankaeNews, Lakbima, BBC, or the written media like the Leader News papers, The Daily Mirror, or the journalists like Thisaranee Gunasekara, Kusal Perera, anti-war lobbyists like Jehan Perera, Kumar Rupasinghe, not to mention Kiriella, Ranil Wickrmsinghe, Tissa Attanayake, Lal Kantha, and the whole lot of them. If the President and his government are to kidnap and assault all these tumultuous lot, they would have to have a whole fleet of white vans, and thousands of paid thugs.

The media which demands freedom to report, has also the responsibility to inform the public undiluted objective facts without making direct or indirect accusations against the government or any one as a matter of fact, unless they have verifiable evidence to prove such accusations. The FMM raises its voice at the drop of a coin, in defence of journalists without verifying whether the journalists in question are without blame.

This is more relevant in Sri Lanka which , while it has to look after its people, providing them with necessities for existence, health and medical facilities, education for the children, security and protection, and infrastructure development, has to fight a war against terrorism. Sri Lanka in that respect is unique in the world. The President Mahinda Rajapakse and his government are doing yeomen service doing its best to provide its people a respectable standard of living and at the same time delivering them from the cancer of terrorism that had infiltrated in to its social fabrics for three decades.

The Media Federation, Human rights activists, UN, and the International Community are waiting eagle eyed to find errors and omissions committed by the government, without giving credit to many development work in progress, and its achievements in the other fields such as Education, Agriculture, trade and export industry. Sri Lanka is undoubtedly one which more developed and progressive among the developing countries.

The LTTE terrorists who had given an image of an invincible force, is today reduced to a group of vulgar criminals setting up rude bombs in buses, and trains. The East which the terrorists claimed as part of their Eelam is today freed from their clutches and politically free, although the Muslim Politicians are beginning to set it on communal fire.

There is one man that deserves acclamation for all these great achievements. It is the President Mr.Mahinda Rajapksa. His leadership, his determination to take Sri Lanka safely into the 21st Century as a developed and a progressive nation has borne fruit. The media in Sri Lanka is not sharing in this remarkable achievement. It is time that the Sri Lanka media rise to the occasion and work for the communal unity, barring the foreign interference to divide the country and help the President Mahinda Rajapakse to realise the object on which he has set his eyes.

The journalists should be independent of government interference, but to enjoy that freedom from government interference the media should act with responsibility reporting objectively, and not reporting matters that are likely to put in danger the security of the Armed Forces, and therefore the country. The Sri Lanka media should not become a cats paw for the International Community to carry out their agenda to destabilize the developing countries.

It is generous to protest against any criminal assault against a media person, but one should not jump to conclusions without valid evidence that the Government or the President is responsible for such assaults. Any criminal assault is a matter for the police to investigate , and if such investigations are not made, then protests should be made against the police force, demanding the government to intervene, without accusing the government of having perpetrated the crime.

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