The media in Kerala is fast becoming another axis of repression of marginalised communities and of human rights activists. The latest example is really bizarre. A documentary film was screened and a play performed at Lenin Balavadi in Trivandrum on Sunday,28th November. The documentary is by Someetharan, a film maker of some renown and was on the genocide of ethnic Tamils in Srilanka. It captured in terse images of gore and lament, a war waged by the Srilankan state against its own people. The play was by a theatre group from Pondicherry; some of the group members were traditional performing artists. It examined in great detail the algebra of ethnic hatred and violence and the absurdities that it throws up for us to grapple with. Both the documentary and the play were poignant and hard hitting and I left Lenin Balavadi late that evening feeling angry and sad. As the organisers point out, Srilanka is so near, yet we know so little about what is going on there. I told my friends about those images of war-ravaged bodies and landscapes which refuse to go away from my mind.
The next day, the organisers show the Mathrubhumi report on that evening’s proceedings. The report called it a “secret meeting” to propagate the cause of Tamil nationalism in Kerala and read it together with alleged infiltration of LTTE in the Kerala coast to consolidate its remaining forces. The “secret meeting”, any way, was included in Mathrubhumi’s “today’s programmes in the city” on that day. It quotes sources in police and intelligence to substantiate this argument and links all kinds of disparate pieces of information and misinformation. A bunch of concerned citizens meeting to understand what is going on in a neighboring country become terrorists and extremists at the hands of this newspaper. It is high time that we watch the media for such instances of repression and spread of misinformation. The mainstream media not only refuses to bring out the voices of marginalized communities, but also aids state repression through misreporting, slander and vilification. Sadly, the repression in this instance is directed against theatre and film. These fratricidal tendencies among media tell us that we live in interesting times: A time when an evening gathering becomes human rights activism at personal cost and risk.
* the link to the report http://www.mathrubhumi.com
