Talking sense in the Sri Lankan media barely happens these days

Behold a true rarity. This article in Sri Lanka’s The Sunday Leader shows that there are still a few voices of reason in that authoritarian state:

Contrary to the attempts to spin-doctor every excess of the current regime and its sins of omission by those whose names hardly need specifying to anyone familiar with the media in this country, Sri Lanka has very serious problems that stem, primarily, from the militarism, racism, triumphalism and brutality that appears to pervade society and is increasingly taken for granted, as a ”˜fact of life,’ thanks to the seemingly never-ending barrage of propaganda from writers of this ilk and those who provide them with patronage.

The fact that most of this stems from nearly three decades of violent conflict, does not provide an excuse to pretend it isn’t a problem in the here and now.

Suffice it to say that the sycophantic voices are significant and their ranks swelling, thanks to the perks that accrue to such people for providing the cloak of concealment to a regime that it is increasingly short of raiment with which to cover its moral and ethical nakedness.

Sri Lankan governments past and present are guilty of generating and presiding over this tragic state of affairs. The constant fall back of the horde of apologists when confronted with these horrors is, “They did it first,” the “they” ranging from Atilla the Hun, the Visigoths, the leaders of the Inquisition, on to Hitler, Idi Amin and the governments that invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of the last category, the very fact that their conduct was totally reprehensible and their subsequent behaviour hypocritical, does not give us the right to use them as stalking horses to visit misery on those we victimise.
And this is exactly the path that these apologists tread in their seemingly endless sycophantic posturing.

A simple phrase would describe the response of those of us who subscribe to a code of decency, morality or ethics of some description: “This is just not good enough.” Invoking the horrors of years and centuries past to justify the excesses of Sri Lanka today is just not acceptable.

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