The hopeful step of a fresh walk to the grave

Not for the first time, I went to a certain graveside this warm January morning, to observe a chronic grief as the year shifts gears into election mode later in 2024.

Many other fellow travellers and companionable pilgrims on journalism’s journey were there. As always mindful of the black hole as regards justice in our once bankrupt nation-state where their erstwhile colleague is concerned.  

We were all there on an annual pilgrimage to commemorate a ‘people person scribe’, who still casts long shadows. Over wounded hearts, broken thoughts and a crippled law-enforcement milieu that has miles to go before it sleeps. 

After ‘the usual suspects’ had spouted their poetic arias, spewed philosophical ayes about the hope that springs eternal and sung a tear and prayerful amen or two, we trudged back over gravel and through muddied paths to sludge that we lucky few left alive would consider greener pastures if only we didn’t know better.    

Every year, we muse and ponder – after the idealists rail and thunder – what gain or glory there is in grinding through such observances? Year after year, decade after half a decade, a full fifteen years since the brutal assassination of an iconic gadfly editor!

Again, as we were since the hiatus of life that swallowed up such morbid concerns behind the mask of COVID-19 and the marginalisation of the economic crisis, we had mixed feelings about the meaningfulness of what we are doing, time and again.

The fresh step: A brighter day has dawned, at least in terms of war and conflict. Can we move on?

Walk to the grave: In a seemingly de-militarized milieu as prevails today, it is easy to forget the vagaries of state terror that was once brought to bear on citizens and the indelible scars that the traumatized still bear…

There were two schools of thought around the sepulchre of that fearless journalist untimely slain. 

On the one hand, given the depredations our people suffered by default as a result of the depraved designs of a few, there was no sense in persisting for renewed, weakening, unvoiced calls for justice, peace and closure of this emblematic case. 

That now, more than ever, is the time – to give up the ghost, in the aftermath of moral and fiscal bankruptcy, and in the face of heavy burdens on the path ahead – to stop hoping that the perpetrators of those crimes of the century would get their just desserts.

For then, as now, there is a latent anguish at not only the deliberate assassination of an editor and the accidental deaths of a myriad others – nameless, faceless, casualties of war, hatred and sundry conflicts manufactured by men, machines and movements; but also at the seemingly perennial evasiveness of justice with peace and closure for millions of dead or missing or grievously handicapped victims. 

On the other hand, a sneaking sense: that there was never a better moment than this to persevere with small victories in the face of general desolation. Because even in – perhaps especially in – an election year, ANYTHING could happen.     

ANYTHING – as in the ambition of a traditional government to grind its nemeses into the dust as a matter of expediency! After all, the architects of the post-Aragalaya milieu may well want to shake off the monkeys on their back?  

SOMETHING – such as the emergence of a fresh-faced young national leader – lose though he may this time round but rally for a further foray 10+ years down the track – who would dearly love to rebalance the scales of justice.

Or, NOTHING – as has been the case for 15 stone-cold-dead years, in which ‘good governance’ as much as ‘grim reapers’ have dragged their feet and hoped it would all disappear into the mists of time and chance as the electorate grew increasingly forgetful and more mindful of its own hearths and homes.

The fresh step: A new year – especially one where elections are to be held – holds out a new hope.

Walk to the grave: We would be naïve to assume justice would be done automatically or on the strength of polls alone – not until or unless would-be elected representatives are reminded of duty…

Until everything is clearer, we continue to commemorate, critique and commend to the powers that be – including, possibly, emerging coalitions desirous of righting old wrongs; or a fresh dispensation of idealistic young political aspirants – that we, I, you, they, could or should persevere in this symbolic case. 

A brutal, broad-daylight killing and a brace or more of botched investigations; bringing up the body in mockery of justice, the corpse a silent witness to realpolitik being played out in the corridors of power where grim men grow as old as the sad widows grey and continue to grieve. 

The usual suspects – not the vigilant graveside pilgrims of today, and every 8th of January since 2009; but the vague and perverse mandarins of a bygone but not-quite-gone regime – cynically laughing off any allegations of their complicity or culpability together with the cohort that continues to protect them. 

That master sleuth with the tell-tale clues being himself indicted and eventually disappearing into the oblivion where nuisances to the regime and scapegoats of administrations majoring in impunity go. 

Years passing in slow, often agonizing silence for shattered spouses, bereft friends and family, and forlorn colleagues.

And breakthroughs made by brave investigators in a milieu where those who dared to expose the misdeeds of arrogant governors were abducted and tortured, made to disappear or had the full force of yon unjust law enforcement in the pay of political mercenaries turned on them…

On yet a third side, the loving children of the criminally slain editor seem to have made inroads in the international courts of law, as well as scoring high in terms of public opinion being roused up against the so-called ‘heroes’ ‘messiahs’ and ‘saviours’ that an entire nation once worshipped or bowed before in abject, cowering fear… 

The fresh step: The visionaries, idealists and wounded healers among us continue to agitate tirelessly and relentlessly in favour of a more accountable milieu.

Walk to the grave: Until and unless the old political culture (realpolitik, cronyism/corruption, client-patron ethic, etc.) are critically engaged, dismantled and replaced with a new ethos, it will be a shambles.

It is this tension between pessimism and positivity that permits us to face the future with any degree of confidence.  

In a milieu where millions of Sri Lankans face severe cost-of-living related challenges – leave alone a third of the total population not  knowing where their next meal will come from – it may seem selfish and self-serving to divert media and public attention to unsolved political murders of yesteryear.

And yet, even in the midst of hardships that are ratcheting up ahead of arguably one of the toughest years on the road to hopeful national recovery and consolidation, it is perhaps what may serve to keep us human and honest to thirst for justice for others – in the heart of our own deprivation.

A call for justice for egregious excesses of state actors past and present is not a luxury – even in/especially in hard times such as these.

It may not have any immediate survival value in the short term… In the medium term, though, it is precisely what will give our recovery any value. In the long run – as that economist said – we are all dead…

Thus let us not walk blindly, bound to the grave that our silence on state crimes is digging for all of us. 

Let us with a renewed vigour look to the fresh hope of a new dispensation amid an alienated people still clutching the old, false gods of pragmatic politics. 

| Editor-at-large of LMD | Erstwhile Chief Sub Editor of The Sunday Leader (1994-1998) |