Sri Lanka – Page 48 – Open Minds!

Mallika Wanigasundara: Trail-blazer in issue-based journalism

I seem to be writing many obituaries and tributes these days. Following the several I wrote on Sir Arthur C Clarke and the blog post I did on Cambidian photojournalist Dith Pran, I want to share this tribute I wrote today on a senior Sri Lankan journalist who embarked on her final voyage this weekend.

Mallika Wanigasundara:
Trail-blazer in issue-based journalism

Mallika Wanigasundara, who passed away on 4 April 2008 aged 81, was a talented and sensitive Sri Lankan journalist who went in search of causes and process that shape the everyday news headlines. In doing so, she blazed new trails in issue-based journalism, covering topics ranging from health and environment to children, women and social justice.

It was only last year that the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Press Institute presented her the Lifetime Achievement Gold Medal for Excellence in Journalism.

Mallika was associated with the Sri Lankan media in one capacity or another for over half a century. Starting her professional career in 1956 with the Sinhala evening daily Janatha, she later moved on to English language journalism at Lake House where she worked first in The Observer and then at Daily News. It was as Features Editor of this oldest English daily that she played a key role in practising and nurturing development journalism. She helped evolve the genre to new levels of professionalism, liberating it from the typecast of politically motivated, sometimes fabricated ‘sunshine’ stories that had been forced on the state-owned Lake House newspapers during the 1970s.

Mallika also helped put Sri Lanka on the world map of development journalism. Beginning in the early 1980s, she contributed Sri Lankan stories to Depthnews, published by the Press Foundation of Asia based in Manila, and to Panos Features, syndicated globally by the Panos Institute in London. In those pre-web days, these services – when printed in newspapers and magazines – were among the most dependable sources for ground level reporting from far corners of the world. (Alas, both services have since gone the way of the Dodo – not to mention Asiaweek, South and Gemini.)

Although I grew up in the 1980s reading her writing in Daily News, my own contacts with Mallika were few and far between. The first was indirect and happened in the late 1980s, when as an eager young reporter I started contributing to Panos Features, syndicated from London to several hundred newspapers around the world. Mallika remained the Panos Sri Lanka correspondent and I was merely a stringer. Donatus de Silva, then head of programmes at Panos London, somehow found a clear niche for both of us. At the time, Mallika and I exchanged occasional communications.

As a novice, I studied Mallika’s approach and style, and emulated them both. Hers was an easy, reader-friendly prose: it brought in both expert views and grassroots insights, but with none of the technicality or pomposity – and very little editorialising. Although she was fully supportive of the various social and environmental causes, she didn’t allow activist rhetoric to dominate her journalism. She also ventured beyond the predictable ‘green’ issues to cover many ‘brown’ issues. Two decades after the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development (1987) that thrust sustainable development into the global agenda, it’s precisely this kind of journalism that’s needed to make sense of our fast-moving, slowly-baking, topsy-turvy world.

Mallika continued to be an active freelancer after she retired from Lake House. She seemed more prolific in retirement – she continued to chronicle the rise of the environmental movement in Sri Lanka, which emerged from citizen campaigns to save the Sinharaja rain forest from state-sponsored logging and evolved through crises and protests in the 1980s and beyond.

In 1990, she was selected by the United Nations Environment Programme for the Global 500 award that recognised environmental achievements of individuals and organisations. She was the first Sri Lankan journalist to be thus honoured, and one of only four Sri Lankans to be inducted into this global roll of honour that eventually included over 600 persons or entities worldwide.

At the time, I was hosting a weekly TV quiz show on Rupavahini (national TV) and decided to set one of my questions on Mallika receiving the Global 500. I phoned her to offer my congratulations and asked for a photo that we may use on the TV show. She was happy to be the basis of a question, but declined giving a photo, saying: ‘I don’t look good in photos or on TV’.

It was characteristic of many accomplished journalists of her generation that they remained mostly in the background, shaping news coverage and analysis. Some even didn’t nurture a personal by-line, writing under pseudonyms or simply not signing their names on their work. What a contrast with the image-conscious, in-your-face radio and TV journalism of today, where even respected newspaper editors eagerly pursue parallel careers as talk show hosts or TV pundits.

Read my essay on environmental journalism 20 years after Brundtland, published in SciDev.Net in April 2007

TVE Asia Pacific says Thank You to Sir Arthur C Clarke

In his 1992 book How the World Was One, Sir Arthur C Clarke described a dream: one day in the near future, CNN founder (and then owner) Ted Turner is offered the post of World President, but he politely turns it down – because he didn’t want to give up power!

Just three years later, the then Secretary General of the UN suggested that CNN should be the 16th member of the Security Council. Sir Arthur was fond of quoting this, and once famously told Turner: “You owe me 10 per cent of your income”.

These references – illustrating the power of globalised satellite television – are recalled in TVE Asia Pacific‘s official tribute to Sir Arthur C Clarke, who passed away on March 19 aged 90.

“With the death of Sir Arthur C Clarke, TVE Asia Pacific has lost a long-standing friend and supporter,” the tribute says.

It adds: “Since our establishment in 1996, Television for Education Asia Pacific – to use our full name – has been engaged in pursuing Sir Arthur’s vision of using the potential of moving images to inform and educate the public. Our founders chose to focus on covering development and social issues, with emphasis on the Asia Pacific region – home to half of humanity and where Sir Arthur spent the last half century of his life.”

Although he never held a formal position at TVEAP, Sir Arthur was an informal adviser and mentor to the regional media organisation whose work across Asia Pacific is only possible thanks to the comsat that invented and the web that he inspired.

By the time TVEAP was created in the mid 1990s, the satellite TV revolution was well underway in the Asia Pacific region, and the internet revolution was just taking off. In informal discussions, Sir Arthur advised us to always keep our eyes open on what’s coming up. In the ICT sector, he cautioned, being too closely wedded to one technology or system could lead to rapid obsolescence.

The tribute mentions Sir Arthur’s specific support for the Children of Tsunami media project, and the Communicating Disasters publication.

We also talk about Sir Arthur’s concerns about using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to benefit the poor and other disadvantaged groups – a process that he aptly described as ‘geek to meek’.

We end by recalling how TVEAP recorded and uploaded to YouTube Sir Arthur’s last public video address – his 90th birthday reflections in December 2007.

Read TVEAP’s tribute to Sir Arthur C Clarke, 1917-2008

Arthur C Clarke: My Vision for Sri Lanka in 2048

Sir Arthur Clarke, who died last week, was buried at Colombo general cemetery at his request. That ended a 52-year-long association the author had with his adopted home.

His interest in diving and underwater exploration led him to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he settled down in 1956. He pioneered diving and underwater tourism in Sri Lanka through his company Underwater Safaris, and played an active role as a public intellectual and as a patron of art, science and higher education. He served as Chancellor of Sri Lanka’s technological University of Moratuwa from 1979 to 2002.

Although he became the island nation’s first Resident Guest in 1975, Sir Arthur always remained a British citizen. The Sri Lankan government presented him the Lankabhimanya (‘Pride of Lanka’), the country’s highest civilian honour, in 2005. In December 2007, government officials, scientists, artistes and diplomats came together to felicitate Sir Arthur on his 90th birthday.

During the past few days, there was a good deal of coverage, editorialising and reminiscing in the Sri Lankan media about Sir Arthur, whom a former foreign minister once called a ‘one man cheering squad for Sri Lanka’. Most of this coverage looked back to recall the highlights and anecdotes of the sarong-clad, table tennis playing, myth-busting icon.

As Sir Arthur would have said, that was necessary – but not sufficient. His business was talking about the future and helping to shape it. So I dug up from my own archives a 1,100-word essay that I had written for The Sunday Observer in Sri Lanka a decade ago, for a series titled Sri Lanka in 2048. There, leading artistes, scientists and other public figures were asked to outline their personal vision for the year Sri Lanka would complete 100 years of political independence (the series marked the Golden Jubilee of this event).

Upon re-reading the essay, which was in Sir Arthur’s first person narrative, I found that it was still fully valid, and even more relevant a decade later than when it was first written. So I passed this on to Pramod de Silva, editor of The Daily News, the sister newspaper of the Observer, which ran it on 22 March 2008 – the day of Sir Arthur’s funeral. I found that quite appropriate – the physical remains were going on their final odyssey, but Sir Arthur’s vision would – hopefully – propel Sri Lanka to a better future for decades to come.

Here’s how he opened the essay, My Vision for Sri Lanka in 2048:

“A guest must be careful about what he says of the host: contrary to popular perception, I am not a Sri Lankan citizen — only a resident guest. Yet, having lived here for 41 of my 80 years, I now regard this alone as home, and have visions and hopes for my adopted land.

“Half of all Sri Lankans alive today were not even born when, in December 1954, I had my first glimpse of the then Ceylon — when the P&O liner Himalaya carrying me to the Great Barrier Reef paused at the Colombo harbour for half a day. What I saw on a single afternoon tempted me to come back a year later to explore, and by the end of the 1950s, I had developed a life long love affair with the island.”

Taking stock of Sri Lanka’s already high human development indicators, Sir Arthur noted:
“It has been said that the biggest remaining challenge in terms of human health and welfare is not so much to add years to life, but to add life to years. For a country like Sri Lanka that has already achieved high levels of life expectancy and other impressive social indicators, this is indeed the next major challenge. The vision for the next fifty years should be to develop ways of improving the quality of life of all Sri Lankans. Difficult though it certainly is, such development will have meaning only if it is socially and environmentally sound.”

He then talked about two areas that were crucial for the socio-economic development of his adoptive land: energy and telecommunications. But he knew these physical improvements would not, by themselves, create a better society until and unless lasting peace could be achieved:
“The biggest challenge for all Sri Lankans in the coming century would be achieving better communications and understanding among the different ethnic, religious and cultural groups and sub-groups all of who call this their motherland. For material progress and economic growth would come to nothing if we allow the primitive forces of territoriality and aggression to rule our minds.“

Read the full essay on the Daily News website

Photos by Rohan de Silva, Sir Arthur’s personal photographer

Arthur C Clarke: Of Nukes and ‘Impotent Nations’

The past few days have been particularly hectic for me as I was Sir Arthur Clarke’s spokesman for the past decade, and remain so for the time being. While handling literally dozens of media queries and requests from all over the world, I somehow managed to find the time to write an op ed essay on Sir Arthur’s life-long crusade against nuclear weapons.

This essay is based on a feature I wrote in 2002 for the now defunct (and sorely missed) Gemini News and Feature Service, but I rewrote it completely before sending it off to my newspaper editor and senior journalist friends across South Asia. It has so far appeared in full in:
Daily News (Sri Lanka), 22 March 2008
New Age (Bangladesh), 23 March 2008
The Hindu (India), on 30 March 2008
The News (Pakistan), 30 March 2008
Excerpts have been carried on the website of Himal Southasian (Kathmandu).

Here’s the 900-word essay in full with the Gemini illustration that accompanied my original article.

Arthur C Clarke: Of Nukes and Impotent Nations
by Nalaka Gunawardene
Colombo, Sri Lanka: 22 March 2008

“Do you know about the only man to light a cigarette from a nuclear explosion?” Sir Arthur C Clarke was fond of asking his visitors a few years ago.

Clarke, the celebrated science fiction writer and space visionary who died on March 19 aged 90, loved to ask such baffling questions.

In this instance, the answer was Theodore (Ted) Taylor, a leading American nuclear scientist who designed atomic weapons in the 1950s and 1960s. Apparently he just held up a small parabolic mirror during a nuclear test — the giant fireball was 12 miles away – and turned light into heat.

“The moment I heard this, I wrote to Taylor, saying ‘Don’t you know smoking is bad for your health?'” Clarke added with a chuckle.

In fact, he took an extremely dim view of both smoking and nuclear weapons, and wanted to see them outlawed. But he was aware that both tobacco and nukes formed strong addictions that individuals and nations found hard to kick.

Years ago, Clarke had coined the slogan ‘Guns are the crutches of the impotent’. In later years, he added a corollary: “High tech weapons are the crutches of impotent nations; nukes are just the decorative chromium plating.”

Living in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey was acutely aware of tensions between neighbouring India and Pakistan – both nuclear weapon states.

British-born and calling himself an “ethnic human”, Clarke offered a unique perspective on nuclear disarmament. His interest in the subject could be traced back to his youth, when he served in the Royal Air Force during Second World War. As a radar officer, he was never engaged in combat, but had a ringside view of Allied action in Europe.

Shortly after the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the War, he wrote an essay “The Rocket and the Future of Warfare”. In that essay, first published in the RAF Journal in 1946, he said: “The only defence against the weapons of the future is to prevent them ever being used. In other words, the problem is political and not military at all. A country’s armed forces can no longer defend it; the most they can promise is the destruction of the attacker….”

Arthur Clarke’s continued his advocacy against the weapons of mass destruction to the very end. The lure and folly of nuke addiction is a key theme in his last science fiction novel, The Last Theorem, to be published later this year. He completed working on the manuscript, co-written with the American author Frederik Pohl, only three days before his demise.

From his island home for over half a century, Clarke was a keen observer of the subcontinent’s advances in science and technology. He personally knew some of the region’s top scientists – among them Indian space pioneers Vikram Sarabhai and Yash Pal, and Pakistan’s Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam.

When India carried out nuclear weapons test in May 1998, Clarke issued a brief statement saying: “Hindustan should be proud of its scientists – but ashamed of its politicians.”

He chided the mass euphoria that seemed, for a while at least, to sweep across parts of the subcontinent. He signed the statement as “Arthur C Clarke, Vikram Sarabhai Professor, 1980”.

That was a reference to three months he spent at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabd, in western India, lecturing about peaceful uses of outer space. It was the only time he held the title ‘professor’.

Clarke’s direct associations with India went back further. In the early 1970s, he advised the Indian Space Research Organisation on the world’s first use of communications satellites for direct television broadcasting to rural audiences. Preparations for the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) Project were underway when India carried out its first “peaceful explosion” of an atom bomb in 1974.

“I can still remember Vikram telling me how Indian politicians pleaded with him to ‘build a teeny weeny (nuclear) bomb’,” Clarke recalled in an interview in 2002.

Cartoon: Indo-Pak nuclear and missile rivalry as seen by Himal Southasian

He returned to the subject when delivering the 13th Nehru Memorial Address in New Delhi in November 1986, which he titled ‘Star Wars and Star Peace’. He critiqued the Strategic Defence Initiative (which President Reagan called ‘Star Wars’) – a nuclear ‘umbrella’ over the United States against missile attacks. Clarke argued that SDI was conceptually and technologically flawed, and that its pursuit could hurt America’s lead in other areas of space exploration.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi rejoined from the chair: “Forty years ago, Dr Clarke said that the only defence against the weapons of the future is to prevent them from being used…. Perhaps we could add to that, we should prevent them from being built. It’s time that we all heed his warning….I just hope people in other world capitals also are listening…”

While campaigning against nuclear weapons, Clarke was equally concerned about all offensive weapons. “Let’s not forget the conventional weapons, which have been perfected over the years to inflict maximum collateral damage,” he said in a video address to the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Pugwash Movement in October 2007. “If you are at the receiving end, it doesn’t matter if such weapons are ‘smart’ or stupid…”

As tributes to Arthur C Clarke from all corners of the planet confirm, he commanded the world’s attention and respect. His rational yet passionate arguments against warfare were heard, though not always heeded in the corridors of power and geopolitics.

For such people, he had the perfect last words from his own hero, H G Wells: “You damn fools – I told you so!”

Pugwash Movement on the death of Sir Arthur C Clarke

Arthur C Clarke embarks on his Final Odyssey…

AFP/Getty Images

Sir Arthur C Clarke’s funeral was held on March 22 afternoon in a manner that he would have approved: no decorations, no gun salute or any other governmental involvement, no religious rites of any kind, and no funeral orations.

Both his families – the Clarkes and Ekanayakes – were present, as were hundreds of his friends, fans and Sri Lankans from all walks of life. The local and international media bore silent witness. The Sri Lankan police and army soldiers stood by, in silent salute.

Everything went according to plan, and there was no commotion or chaos. Even the weather was cooperative: it seemed as if friends in high places ensured that afternoon thunderstorms that have characterised most of March in Colombo didn’t happen.

Tamara Ekanayake, the second daughter of Hector and Valerie Ekanayake – Sir Arthur’s adopted Sri Lankan family – made a single, short and passionate speech.

She said:
“You gave your time, your undivided attention and most importantly love to those around you so readily.
We thank you for the times you listened; we thank you for the times you laughed; we thank you for more than you could imagine.”

She added:
“As family, we feel so privileged that you left your mark on us. Your footprint will never fade, if anything it will only magnify what we do.”

Tamara also revealed what Sir Arthur had wanted on his tombstone:
Here lies Arthur C Clarke
He never grew up
But didn’t stop growing.

Goodbye, Uncle Arthur – Read full text of Tamara Ekanayake’s tribute
for-web-goodbye-uncle-arthur-by-tamara-ekanayake-22-march-2008.pdf

As wished by Sir Arthur, the funeral was short, secular and devoid of any pomposity that so often characterises Sri Lankan funerals. It was all over in a few minutes.

Sir Arthur’s final odyssey also united all of Sri Lanka’s radio and TV channels, who observed one minute’s silence from 3.30 to 3.31 pm on March 22, even as the author’s burial was underway. Although this unity lasted for all of 60 seconds, it was no mean feat, as the cacophony of over 16 terrestrial channels and more than two dozen FM radio channels almost never speak in one voice (which is to be celebrated as media pluralism). The request for this minute came from the Sri Lankan government whose offer of a state funeral was earlier politely declined by the late author’s family (as he wished no involvement by either British or Sri Lankan governments).

Many international news wire services and websites have carried stories about the funeral. See, for example:
ABC Australia coverage
Reuters AlertNet story
AFP story

AFP Getty Images photo

AFP/Getty Images photo shows Sir Arthur’s younger brother Fred Clarke paying his respects to his illustrious brother on March 21.

Images courtesy AFP/Getty Images as available on Daylife.com

As Sir Arthur’s spokesman, I also want to thank all our friends in the media – journalists, producers and photojournalists from national and international media – for their interest, cooperation and solidarity in the past few days. Yes, they chased me like a pack of newshounds day and night, but it was all in the line of duty. And I hope they were happy with how I did mine – being always available, willing and forthcoming with information, voice cuts, TV soundbyes and image access.

Image courtesy Daily Mirror Online

Sir Arthur C Clarke, 1917-2008: The Final Goodbye from Colombo

Later blog post on 23 March 2008: Arthur C Clarke embarks on Final Odyssey

‘This is Arthur Clarke, saying goodbye from Colombo….’

This was the characteristic signing off Sir Arthur C Clarke used whenever he made a video greeting to an international meeting on some important issue somewhere on the planet.

From disarmament and new communications technologies to space exploration and conservation, he would offer the uniquely Clarkian take on the subject – in his witty, insightful and funny style.

I have worked with and for him for half my life – 21 years – as part of his personal office in Colombo, Sri Lanka (not to be confused with the government-run Arthur C Clarke Institute which he had nothing to do with). In that time, I helped film a significant number of video greetings to gatherings of the world’s movers and shakers.

Some of these were assemblies of sombre men and women in suits at the United Nations, Davos or Pentagon. Sir Arthur would deliberately poke fun at the pomposity and self-importance of these types, in a way that they could still laugh – even at their expense.

Other events were less formal, but no less important: glittering gatherings of Hollywood or Silicon Valley professionals – some of who have more ‘soft power’ worldwide than military generals or secretary generals. Again, he would challenge the boundaries of imagination of these professionals whose mega-billion industries were built largely on imagination.

In all these and more, Sir Arthur demonstrated another quality: the great economy of words. He hardly spoke for longer than ten minutes, or 600 seconds. The Grandmaster of the Soundbyte that he was, he knew just how to pack the right mix of power, fun and sense of wonder into each second.

Confined to a wheelchair in Sri Lanka – the country he adopted – in later years due to Post Polio, Sir Arthur used either satellite links or the web to connect to many important scientific, literary and entertainment gatherings in far corners of the planet.

And yes, he did often remind his eager listeners that he invented the communications satellite in his spare time in 1945 – and one of short stories (Dial F for Frankenstein) inspired a British computer scientist to invent the world wide web.

When Sir Arthur said his Final Goodbye from Colombo in the early hours of 19 March 2008 at Colombo’s Apollo Hospital, there was no global witness. He was in the company of just five people – comprising family and staff.

Aptly, however, the news of his demise went right around the world at the speed of light thanks to the comsat and web. In less than an hour, the whole world knew.

And now its the world’s turn to say Goodbye to its most trusted ‘Man in the Future’. The world remembers, salutes and celebrates his genius, humanity and imagination.

In doing so, many have turned to the last video greeting that Sir Arthur made, just a few days ahead of his 90th birthday (16 Dec 2007). This is about how that video was made.

For once, there was no specific invitation from anywhere. But for several weeks running up to his birthday, we had seen considerable media and fan interest on how he feels like completing 90 orbits around the Sun.

So in the last days of November 2007, I suggested to Sir Arthur that we should film a short video message – openly addressed to the whole world, sharing his reflections on turning 90. He liked the idea, and as has been the custom in recent years, asked me to draw up his speaking points.

I spent several days going through dozens of his essays and speeches, both published and unpublished. When I had a draft, we worked long and hard on it to get everything just right. I saw how he could still ‘Clarkise’ any piece of writing, which showed no sign of wear and tear for the 90 orbits.

This was a ‘no-budget’ production. Sir Arthur’s personal photographer Rohan de Silva had done many video greetings using a home video camera, but he and I agreed that this should be done more professionally. I mentioned the idea to our friends at Video Image (Private) Limited, the country’s top production company who had filmed with Sir Arthur for so many global TV channels and international clients. They immediately agreed to do it – for free.

We didn’t have a tele-prompter, but realised the importance of Sir Arthur looking straight at his audience. So in just a couple of days, Brian Ratnasekera of Video Image improvised a working unit.

I directed the shoot with Video Image crew on 5 December at Sir Arthur’s home. Allowing several breaks for him to catch his breath, our filming took the better part of that morning.

The filming got off to a bumpy start. First the improvised tele-prompter had some teething problems, but these were quickly sorted. Then, in a very rare moment of disagreement, Sir Arthur said he wanted to be filmed wearing his Nehru jacket (which he affectionately called ‘My Doctor No suit’).

We had already donned him in a colourful bush shirt and crew and I felt that this was the right attire for a message that was intensely personal and somewhat wistful. The shirt with large prints was far more characteristic of Arthur C Clarke than any formal suit. At that moment, I was the shoot’s director and not his long-standing spokesperson who would be more agreeable with his views and wishes.

A few tense moments passed. Then one of Sir Arthur’s valets had a brainwave. Why not use the casual NASA jacket that Sir Arthur often wore when he felt the air conditioning was getting a bit too cold?

That saved our shoot. He compromised, trading Nehru for NASA. Within seconds, he was back to his normal cheerful self. When the shoot got underway, he was at ease, speaking right to the camera and looking straight at millions of unknown viewers who would watch it for years to come.

Reading our text scrolling gently upward on the tele-prompter, he missed out just one word out of nearly 900. We only needed to do a single re-take. That was impressive for a man who’d recently had cataract operations in both eyes.

In the end, I knew we had a great piece – one where he looked back at a most remarkable career of our time, and looked forward to what lies in store for humanity.

Over the next two days, my colleagues at TVE Asia Pacific did a simple edit – stringing together the few segments he’d filmed with breaks in between. Our IT Specialist Indika Wanniarachchi uploaded it to TVEAP’s YouTube channel on 9 December 2007. The next day, VideoImage uploaded it to their YouTube channel.

This itself made some international news and and soon became a hit on YouTube.

Read the full transcript on TVEAP website

After surveying what has, by all measures, been a highly remarkable life and the astounding rate of technological development he has witnessed, Sir Arthur listed three ‘Big Wishes’ that he wanted to see happen – ideally in his life time (alas, that was not to be).

Finally, he offered some personal views on posterity – a subject on which he’d been ambivalent at times.

This is perhaps the most consequential of his birthday reflections. In his own words: “I’m sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I’ve had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter and science populariser. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer – one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.”

He ended the message by quoting another English writer — who, coincidentally, also spent most of his life in the East — Rudyard Kipling:
“If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.”

That’s also how he ended his 9-minute birthday video – but upon reflection, it seems to me that he used that to bid a fond farewell to his millions of fans and readers worldwide. Perhaps his famous crystal ball told him something…

He signed off: This is Arthur Clarke, saying Thank You and Goodbye from Colombo!

And this is Nalaka Gunawardene, saying Thank You and Goodbye to Sir Arthur. It was the greatest privilege of my life to have worked with you.

Photos by Shahidul Alam, Drik Picture Library, taken in Sir Arthur’s study in Colombo in Feb 2007

Read Shahidul’s recollections: Venturing into the impossible

Posted on 23 March 2008: Arthur C Clarke: Of Nukes and Impotent Nations

Posted on 23 March 2008: Arthur C Clarke: My Vision for Sri Lanka in 2048

Unseen women, unheard agonies

In January 2008, I wrote about Lakshmi and Me, a recent Indian documentary that portrayed a domestic worker woman whom my friend Kalpana Sharma aptly called an invisible superwoman.

A colleague who read my piece reminded me about a series of five short films on working women in Sri Lanka that I had executive produced in 1999-2000. Produced originally in Sinhala for a national audience, the series was titled Oba Nodutu Eya (The Unseen Woman). In fact, it featured not one but several women workers in two different sectors in the country’s informal economy: the coconut husk (coir) industry in the south and agricultural settlements in the Dry Zone in the north-central areas of the island.

The following is adapted from a story I wrote about this series for a book that TVE Asia Pacific published in 2002. I have not gone back to my sources to check how much – or how little – has changed in the past several years.

This is Yasawathie. She has suffered physical and mental abuse most of her adult life. Her alcoholic husband beat her regularly for years, but she dared not complain for fear of reprisal.

“He injured my head, stabbed me and once fractured my arm” she says, showing a scar of a healed wound.

As if this suffering was not enough, she lost sight in one eye a few years ago in a bizarre hospital accident. She had gone to the government hospital seeking treatment for a chest ailment. There were more patients than beds, so she was forced to sleep on the floor. While sleeping, a nurse carelessly dropped a saline stand on to Yasawathie’s face.

The entire incident was hushed up, and the poor woman was intimidated into silence. “Sometimes patients even die at our hands,” the nurse told her threateningly.

Injured by the healthcare system, battered by her own husband and pressurised by her family circles to keep quiet about, this middle aged Sri Lankan woman has run out of options. She was not aware she could claim damages for the accidental loss of her eye. She does not realise there is legal redress for domestic violence – her family and in laws wouldn’t allow it in any case.

Sadly, Yasawathie is not alone. There are tens of thousands of women like her who live on the margins of society, and whose suffering goes largely unnoticed. The island nation is often cited as a South Asian success story: its women were the first in Asia to vote; female literacy is nearly universal; and a higher percentage of girls and young women are in school than boys.

But hidden beneath these national accomplishments, there are huge gender-based disparities and gaps, especially in economic, labour, family and property related matters. Studies have found that many women, particularly the poorer ones, don’t know their human and legal rights.

And even women who do know their civil and political rights often do not assert their right to safeguard themselves from domestic violence or gender-based discrimination in family and society.

Yasawathie’s story was one of several that were featured in a television documentary series that probed how Sri Lankan women’s economic and legal rights operate in the real world. Produced in 1999-2000 by TVE Asia Pacific in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Environmental Television Project (SLETP), the series went beyond the oft-repeated claim of women’s emancipation in Sri Lanka. It uncovered a shocking reality of wide spread rights denial, physical abuse and gender-based violence.

The series used a mixture of short drama segments, interviews and background commentary. “These films don’t offer comprehensive surveys of the situation, but they provide useful glimpses of how economic and legal rights apply at the grassroots for women,” said accomplished fim-maker Inoka Satyangani, who directed the series. “We raise broader concerns, and point out changes that society needs to make to ensure that women can assert their rights.”

Violence against women is both a public and private matter in Sri Lanka, says the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a body of global experts which monitors whether governments are honouring their commitments to the 1981 United Nations’ Women’s Convention. Although violence affects women of every class and ethnicity, it is seldom reported.

In recent years, human rights abuses in Sri Lanka’s conflict ridden north and the east have received international scrutiny; both the government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels have committed atrocities. But violence against women is not confined to the war or the conflict-affected areas: as one rights activist has remarked, “everyone becomes part of the larger system of brutality”.

CEDAW has stressed that Sri Lanka needs specific legislation to address violence behind closed doors.

The TV series also found how women get paid less than men for agricultural manual labour, and how government-driven land development schemes favour men to inherit state land distributed among the landless. Government agricultural extension programmes help male farmers to obtain skills training, credit and subsidies while women farmers are constantly ignored. Women interviewed had stories that shattered the myth of women’s liberation and equality in Sri Lanka.

Read individual synopses of the five films in The Unseen Woman series

Read recent blog post: Half the sky, most of the suffering and seeking everyone’s attention

When citizens turn on journalists…

My latest op ed essay has just been published by Asia Media website of the University of California Los Angeles.

It’s titled: When citizens turn on journalists
Nalaka Gunawardene describes the disturbing trend of vigilantism against professional and citizen journalists

Once again I talk about the multiple pressures and risks faced by mainstream and citizen journalists alike when they try to cover matters of public interest in my native Sri Lanka. This is particularly so for photojournalists and videographers who simply must go out with tools of their profession.

Here are the few opening paras:

Friday, February 29, 2008

Colombo — For over two decades, Sri Lanka’s state-owned radio and television stations — located next to each other in residential Colombo — have been heavily guarded by police and army. This fortress-like arrangement is due to their being high on the list of targets for Tamil Tigers engaged in a bitter separatist war for a quarter century.

The joke is that the stations are just as likely to be attacked by outraged listeners or viewers. Considering the endless state propaganda they dish out day and night, that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

But shooting the messenger never solves any problem, as Sri Lanka’s deeply divided combatants — and their die hard supporters — need to be constantly reminded. Attacks on journalists and media organisations have increased several fold in the past two years, and the World Association of Newspapers ranked Sri Lanka as the third deadliest place for journalists (six killed in 2007) — behind only Iraq and Somalia.

As if this was not depressing enough, we have seen another disturbing trend emerge: authorities and citizens alike turning on reporters and photojournalists in public places, suspecting them to be agents of mayhem and terror.

Read the full essay on UCLA Asia Media

Communicating Disasters book launched among communicators

TVE Asia Pacific’s latest publication, Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book, had its Sri Lankan launch on 19 February 2008.

The multi-author book focusing on how information, education and communication can help create disaster resilient communities across the Asia Pacific was released at the auditorium of Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) in Colombo.

We had invited all contributing authors who are based in Sri Lanka. Six of our 21 contributors currently live in Greater Colombo, and four of them made it: Patrick Fuller, Buddhi Weerasinghe, Manori Wijesekera and myself. We missed Sanjana Hattotuwa (who is overseas) and Chanuka Wattegama.

The news story on the launch event can be read on TVEAP website.

Here are some additional photographs of the event, attended by close to 50 persons working in media, communication and humanitarian sectors.

Above and below: Nalaka Gunawardene introduces the what, why and how of the new book

Contributing authors (L to R) Patrick Fuller, Nalaka Gunawardene, Buddhi Weerasinghe and Manori Wijesekera talk about their chapters in the book.

Buddhi Weerasinghe responds to an audience question

Above: Manori Wijesekera talks about Children of Tsunami

Above and below: Sections of the audience

Photos courtesy: Indika Wanniarachchi and Wipula Dahanayake, TVE Asia Pacific

Fighting for our right to ‘shoot’: A struggle in New York…and Colombo!

Courtesy AP

Photojournalists usually bear witness to unfolding events, and then share it with the rest of us. It’s not everyday that they make the news themselves.

This photojournalist, Gemunu Amarasinghe working for Associated Press in Sri Lanka, just did. Earlier this week, he was detained, questioned and released by police — all for taking photographs near a well-known Colombo school.

According to news reports, Gemunu was apprehended by a group of parents who formed the school’s civil defence committee. They had handed him over to soldiers on duty near by, and he was briefly detained by the Narahenpita police. Sri Lanka’s Free Media Movement has already protested to the police chief on this – the latest in a series of worrying incidents.

This might seem a minor incident in the context of highly dangerous conditions in which Sri Lankan journalists operate today. It was only a few days earlier that the World Association of Newspapers ranked Sri Lanka as the third deadliest place for journalists (6 killed in 2007), behind only Iraq and Somalia.

In an op ed essay published today on the citizen journalism website Groundviews, I have discussed the far reaching implications of this latest trend – when misguided citizens turn on professional or citizen journalists simply taking photos in public places. That’s still not illegal in Sri Lanka, where many liberties have been curtailed in the name of anti-terrorism.

Read my full essay: Endangered – Our Right to ‘Shoot’ in Public

As I write: “Gemunu’s experience is highly significant for two reasons. Firstly, it is depressing that some members of the public have resorted to challenging and apprehending journalists lawfully practising their profession which responds to the public’s right to know. Battered and traumatised by a quarter century of conflict, Sri Lankan society has become paranoid. Everything seems to be ‘high S’: practically every city corner a high security place; every unknown person deemed highly suspicious; and everybody, highly strung.

Cartoon from Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka

“Secondly, far from being an isolated incident, this seems to be part of a disturbing new trend. Anyone with a still or video camera in a public place is suspected – and presumed guilty until proven otherwise. This endangers everyone’s basic right to click for personal or professional purposes.”

I mention some examples of this cameraphobia. In recent months, pedestrians who filmed public bomb attacks on their mobile phones have been confronted by the police. One citizen who passed on such footage to an independent TV channel was later vilified as a ‘traitor’. Overly suspicious (or jealous?) neighbours called the police about a friend who was running his video editing business from home in suburban Colombo.

None of these individuals had broken any known law. Yet each one had to protest their innocence.

It may not be illegal, but it sure has become difficult and hazardous to use a camera in public in Sri Lanka today. Forget political demonstrations or bomb attacks that attract media attention. Covering even the most innocuous, mundane aspects of daily life can be misconstrued as a ‘security threat’.

I stress the point that, unlike journalists working in the mainstream media, citizen journalists lack trade unions or pressure groups to safeguard their interests. The citizen journalist in Sri Lanka is very much a loner — and very vulnerable.

And it’s not just in war-torn Sri Lanka that the right to take photos or film video is under siege. I cite a recent example from what is supposed to be a more liberal democracy: in the US, where New York city officials last year proposed new regulations that could have forced tourists taking snapshots in Times Square and filmmakers capturing street scenes to obtain permits and $1 million in liability insurance. The plans were shelved only in the face of strong public protests, spearheaded by an Internet campaign that included an online petition signed by over 31,000 and a rap video that mocked the new rules. Photographers, film-makers and the New York Civil Liberties Union played a lead role in this campaign, which asked people to ‘picture New York without pictures of New York’.