{"id":217428,"date":"2021-03-21T10:59:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T05:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=217428"},"modified":"2021-03-24T19:04:41","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T13:34:41","slug":"where-journalists-self-abduct-ecocide-is-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/where-journalists-self-abduct-ecocide-is-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Journalists Self-Abduct & Ecocide Is Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tisaranee Gunasekara<\/a> –<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is four. If that is allowed all else follows.\u201d__ <\/i><\/span>Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

To mark the Global Climate Action Day, the youth wing of the Wild Life and Nature Protection Society put up a massive mural decrying ecocide.
\nThe President\u2019s environmental-loving soul was lacerated by that unsightly sight. The mural spoiled the environment, he explained. Environment is not being destroyed he said. No one knows environmental protection like I do, he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sujeewa Gamage<\/p><\/div>\n

Coaxing and compelling people into denying the obvious, the self-evident, is the starting point in any experiment in reality control. The Final Eelam War was a Humanitarian Operation with zero-civilian casualties. Open prison camps in which more than 300,000 civilian Tamils were incarcerated were Welfare Villages. The loss of nearly 15 billion rupees in the Sugar scam is not a loss but \u2018foregoing of revenue\u2019. Who needs Oxygen?<\/span><\/p>\n

Forests are unruly, uncontrollable, wild badlands, like dissidents. They might even be unpatriotic since they obscure the vistas of prosperity and splendour. To protect the environment patriotically, you need proper parks, with neat trees, well-behaved wines, and disciplined bushes. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Department of Wildlife Conservation is planning a change of laws to enable the sterilisation or killing of wild animals who \u2018harm agriculture\u2019. Presidential attention has been drawn by some monks to the dearth of tame elephants. The monks and the Tame Elephant Owners Association want a short and a long term plan to deal with this pressing national issue. Capture elephant calves, tame them through violence, bind them in leg iron, and condemn them to a life of enslavement as perahara fixtures or tourist attractions. Wouldn\u2019t that be a final solution to the human-elephant conflict?<\/span><\/p>\n

In a history-making development, the head of Sri Lanka\u2019s indigenous people, Uruwarigelage Wannila Eththo (together with the Environmental Justice Centre) has filed a writ petition in the Court of Appeal about his community\u2019s loss of ancestral land. In the petition, he claims that for countless generations, his community has lived in the mountain ranges of Pollebedda and Horikana. In 2020, 6000 acres belonging to this forest reserve had been divided into 15 parcels and sold to 15 companies by the Mahaweli Authority. The resultant environmental destruction will have wide ranging implications, because of its effect on the catchment areas of the Rambakan Oya reservoir, the writ petition warns.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot have development without destroying the environment,\u201d claimed Minister Sanath Nishantha (he of \u2018why oxygen?\u2019 fame). That indeed seems to be the thinking of the current regime. But like our prudish-morality, this anti-environmental approach to economic growth is a residue of colonial thinking, and a legacy of laissez-faire capitalism which believed in subsuming everything to profit. <\/span><\/p>\n

When the American Civil War broke out, the politically powerful textile manufacturers in England feared that the end of slavery would affect their supply of cheap cotton and tried to get England to enter the war on the Southern side. England\u2019s Factory Act of 1844 banning the employment of children below 9 years of age and Mines Act of 1842 prohibiting women and girls from working underground and introducing a minimum age of 10 for boys were enacted over the objections of those who argued that the legislations would cause a decline in family income, a collapse of industry and massive unemployment. History proved them wrong. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, the skies in Beijing turned orange due to a massive sandstorm and air pollution, the direct result of environmental degradation around the city. As the UN Secretary General warned, humanity\u2019s war on nature is \u201csenseless and suicidal.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe ongoing environmental destruction is a worse danger than the pandemic,\u201d Wannila Eththo has stated. If kumbuk trees in Kataragama are being felled to facilitate helicopter landings, if the Wildlife Minister forcibly frees a timber racketeer detained by Wildlife officials, then the message is clear. Ecocide is no accident or oversight. It is Rajapaksa policy. An environment degraded beyod the point of no return might well become the only lasting Rajapaksa legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tentacles of Repression<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On Global Day for Climate Action, the director of the Environmental Police came in person to the Vihara Maha Devi Park to remove the mural decrying ecocide. Smiling benignly, the senior policeman explained that the mural uglifies our beautiful Colombo. \u201cThere was garbage everywhere in the city,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut after the new government came in there\u2019s no garbage anywhere. No dust. Everything is cleaned, flowers are planted, beautified.\u201d Then he delivered the piece de resistance. \u201cSee even this conversation about the environment is happening after our government came\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n