Former minister accuses Kumaratunga of attacks on journalists

IN Media Freedom | 04/04/2002
Former minister accuses Kumaratunga of attacks on journalists

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.