Former minister accuses
Kumaratunga of attacks on journalists
By Christine Jayasinghe, Indo-Asian News Service
Colombo,
Nov 6 (IANS) A former Sri Lankan minister, accused by President
Chandrika Kumaratunga of plotting to kill newspaper editors, parried the charge
by saying she had been privy to plans to murder journalists.
Former
parliamentary affairs minister S.B. Dissanayake, a friend-turned-foe of
Kumaratunga, said Tuesday that the president had known that party henchmen had
plotted to attack several journalists. He was reacting to charges by
Kumaratunga Monday that he had planned the murders of two editors while he was
a cabinet minister.
Dissanayake
went public Tuesday with a four-page letter he wrote to Kumaratunga saying she
was aware of the murders and other crimes committed by a presidential
bodyguard, who himself was mysteriously killed while driving his vehicle
Friday.
"Physical
attacks against journalists, artistes, opposition politicians and the shaving
of heads of two singers were done with your knowledge," Dissanayake, who
is now with the main opposition United National Party, told Kumaratunga.
"All these things were done with your knowledge and ... members of your
Presidential Security Division."
He
charged that Kumaratunga had plotted to kill several journalists and set fire
to their offices but the plans could not be executed due to lack of support
from other ruling People`s Alliance members. Kumaratunga told a meeting of
supporters Sunday that Dissanayake had suggested killing editors to save the
government from collapse, the state-owned Daily News reported.
"Madam,
the government is very weak and it could collapse at any time,"
Kumaratunga quoted the minister as saying. "If necessary I will kill an
editor or two critical of the government." Dissanayke left the coalition
government last month after an increasingly acrimonious feud saw him accuse the
president of corruption and mismanaging a political crisis.
A
rights organisation, the Free Media Movement (FMM), said the murders of
journalists and attacks on others in the past few years could "now be seen
in a new light." It was clear that the murders and attacks had been
discussed without any inhibition at the highest level of government. "This
also explains why no proper investigations have been carried out into the
murder of two journalists, attempted murder of a number of editors and assault
of journalists in the past seven years," it said.
The
FMM had accused Kumaratunga`s security unit of carrying out the September 1999
killing of Rohana Kumara, an editor of the militantly anti government newspaper
Satana. The case remains unsolved.
Another journalist, Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, who worked for the BBC`s Tamil and
Sinhalese language services, was gunned down in October last year.