Rohan Jayasekera (writer)
Encyclopedia
Rohan Asoka Jayasekera is a British journalist, editor, web designer and occasionally controversial activist for free expression and media rights. He was born in Holloway, North London, of mixed Sri Lankan-Scots-Irish parentage.
, Hertfordshire in 1980, worked for a variety of London and national newspapers during the 1980s and 1990s before going abroad, covering a dozen conflicts thereafter including Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a former managing editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and is currently an Associate Editor for Index on Censorship
magazine, where he is responsible for the charity's international programmes. He briefly worked in the theatre as a producer/administrator and retains a keen interest in new playwriting and community theatre.
David Irving
by agreeing to share a stage with him at the Oxford Union
to oppose the proposition that "this house would restrict the free speech of extremists". The previous year a High Court judge had found that Mr Irving was "an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism". Strong protest followed http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/1321775.stm, including direct appeals to the then chair of the board, Michael Grade
and objections from some of Jayasekera's colleagues.
At a time before Irving's jailing in Austria, Jayasekera was particularly castigated for breaking the so-called "no platform" rule. This policy — formally adopted by Britain's National Union of Students and other groups — requires, first, that fascists should not be given public forum, and secondly that if they do gain a platform other political parties and organisations should refuse to share it with them. Jayasekera declined to comply. The debate was eventually cancelled on the advice of police.
film The Dancer Upstairs at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts
(ICA). In May 2002, Malkovich had been asked who – as the star of Les Liaisons Dangereuses
– he would like to fight a duel with. He picked Robert Fisk
, The Independent
newspaper's Middle East correspondent, and Glasgow MP George Galloway
, adding that rather than duel with them, he would "rather just shoot them". Fisk reacted with outrage http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk0513.html; Reporters sans Frontieres condemned Malkovich's comments, but Jayasekera dismissed them as "flippant" in a now-deleted online article for the Index website. "You can cry wolf once too often over unrealistic threats", Jayasekera wrote. "It undermines the case for real action when real and present dangers to journalists raise their heads." He added:
The fundraising event went ahead in December 2002 despite a street protest outside the ICA.
. The article claimed that van Gogh was a "free-speech fundamentalist" who had been on a "martyrdom operation[,] roar[ing] his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities" in an "abuse of his right to free speech". Describing van Gogh's film Submission as "furiously provocative", Jayasekera concluded by describing his death as:
There were many protests from both left- and right-wing commentators at the article. The veteran feminist commentator Germaine Greer
called the item "vile vomit" and told the London Sunday Telegraph
in December 2004, that:
Nick Cohen
of The Observer
claimed in December 2004 that Jayasekera:
Ursula Owen
, the editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship, and a co-founder of the feminist publishers Virago
strongly repudiated Cohen's account in a letter to the Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,6903,1376833,00.html. But she has also apologised for Jayasekera's original comment article, saying she didn't think "the tone (was) right". But she would not delete it from the online archives or dismiss the author from his job with Index.
Career
Jayasekera began his journalistic career as an apprentice reporter in BorehamwoodBorehamwood
-Film industry:Since the 1920s, the town has been home to several film studios and many shots of its streets are included in final cuts of 20th century British films. This earned it the nickname of the "British Hollywood"...
, Hertfordshire in 1980, worked for a variety of London and national newspapers during the 1980s and 1990s before going abroad, covering a dozen conflicts thereafter including Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a former managing editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and is currently an Associate Editor for Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship is a campaigning publishing organisation for freedom of expression, which produces an award-winning quarterly magazine of the same name from London. The present chief executive of Index on Censorship, since 2008, is the author, broadcaster and commentator John Kampfner, former...
magazine, where he is responsible for the charity's international programmes. He briefly worked in the theatre as a producer/administrator and retains a keen interest in new playwriting and community theatre.
Background
Jayasekera's maternal grandfather left Ireland as a child, fought Moselyites in Cable Street and spent the war in the Royal Navy, which exposed him to three life changing experiences: US segregation in Norfolk, Virginia; Soviet segregation in Murmansk, Siberia, and the war itself. His paternal grandfather was the first Sinhalese owner-manager of an independent plantation in what was then pre-war British Empire ruled Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).Jayasekera and David Irving
Jayasekera has been one of the most controversial members of Index on Censorship for several years. In May 2001, he provoked outrage from critics of the Holocaust denierHolocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
by agreeing to share a stage with him at the Oxford Union
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford...
to oppose the proposition that "this house would restrict the free speech of extremists". The previous year a High Court judge had found that Mr Irving was "an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism". Strong protest followed http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/1321775.stm, including direct appeals to the then chair of the board, Michael Grade
Michael Grade
Michael Ian Grade, Baron Grade of Yarmouth CBE is a British broadcast executive and businessman. He was BBC chairman from 2004 to 2006 and executive chairman of ITV plc from 2007 to 2009.-Early life:...
and objections from some of Jayasekera's colleagues.
At a time before Irving's jailing in Austria, Jayasekera was particularly castigated for breaking the so-called "no platform" rule. This policy — formally adopted by Britain's National Union of Students and other groups — requires, first, that fascists should not be given public forum, and secondly that if they do gain a platform other political parties and organisations should refuse to share it with them. Jayasekera declined to comply. The debate was eventually cancelled on the advice of police.
John Malkovich
There was similar protest a year later when Jayasekera went online to defend Index on Censorships refusal to cancel a charity performance of the John MalkovichJohn Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
film The Dancer Upstairs at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
(ICA). In May 2002, Malkovich had been asked who – as the star of Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Les Liaisons dangereuses is a French epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos.Les Liaisons dangereuses may also refer to:* Les liaisons dangereuses , a 1959 film adapted by Claude Brulé and directed by Roger Vadim...
– he would like to fight a duel with. He picked Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and the same country's...
, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
newspaper's Middle East correspondent, and Glasgow MP George Galloway
George Galloway
George Galloway is a British politician, author, journalist and broadcaster who was a Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2010. He was formerly an MP for the Labour Party, first for Glasgow Hillhead and later for Glasgow Kelvin, before his expulsion from the party in October 2003, the same year...
, adding that rather than duel with them, he would "rather just shoot them". Fisk reacted with outrage http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk0513.html; Reporters sans Frontieres condemned Malkovich's comments, but Jayasekera dismissed them as "flippant" in a now-deleted online article for the Index website. "You can cry wolf once too often over unrealistic threats", Jayasekera wrote. "It undermines the case for real action when real and present dangers to journalists raise their heads." He added:
- Over the years since (the RwandaRwandaRwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
genocide), and not without criticism, Index on Censorship has turned to reporting the areas where the right to free speech conflicts with these other rights. Index on Censorship is a journalistic enterprise, not a campaigning agency. This has freed it to make judgement calls — some say to equivocate — on when and where and how and why the freely expressed word can be a direct threat to other human rights.
The fundraising event went ahead in December 2002 despite a street protest outside the ICA.
Theo van Gogh
Jayasekera appears to have spent most of 2003 and 2004 in Iraq working on Index on Censorships so-called "local media rights support" projects in Baghdad, a period when the Index website went into decline, but in late 2004 he was back and again involved in controversy after writing an online article that to many readers seemed to condone or justify the murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo van GoghTheo van Gogh (film director)
Theodoor "Theo" van Gogh was a Dutch film director, film producer, columnist, author and actor.Van Gogh worked with the Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali to produce the film Submission, which criticized the treatment of women in Islam and aroused controversy among Muslims...
. The article claimed that van Gogh was a "free-speech fundamentalist" who had been on a "martyrdom operation[,] roar[ing] his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities" in an "abuse of his right to free speech". Describing van Gogh's film Submission as "furiously provocative", Jayasekera concluded by describing his death as:
- A sensational climax to a lifetime's public performance, stabbed and shot by a bearded fundamentalist, a message from the killer pinned by a dagger to his chest, Theo van Gogh became a martyr to free expression. His passing was marked by a magnificent barrage of noise as Amsterdam hit the streets to celebrate him in the way the man himself would have truly appreciated. And what timing! Just as his long-awaited biographical film of Pim Fortuyn's life is ready to screen. Bravo, Theo! Bravo! http://www.indexonline.org/news/vangogh.shtml
There were many protests from both left- and right-wing commentators at the article. The veteran feminist commentator Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
called the item "vile vomit" and told the London Sunday Telegraph
Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...
in December 2004, that:
- The problem with Index on Censorships position is that, by its nature, they have to publish things that they don't agree with in order to prove their own point. I would hope that by giving a fanatic a platform and listening to what he says, that people would be able to see how crazy that person is and refute his arguments. On the other hand, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/19/wneth19.xml
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman...
of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
claimed in December 2004 that Jayasekera:
- ...told me that, like many other readers, I shouldn't have made the mistake of believing that Index on Censorship was against censorship, even murderous censorship, on principle — in the same way as Amnesty International is opposed to torture, including murderous torture, on principle. It may have been so its radical youth, but was now as concerned with fighting 'hate speech' as protecting free speech.http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1371869,00.html
Ursula Owen
Ursula Owen
Ursula Margaret Sachs is a publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression.-Early life:She was born Ursula Margaret Sachs in Oxford, England, to Emma Boehm and Werner Sachs, a chemical engineer who became managing director of a multinational company dealing with non ferrous metals...
, the editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship, and a co-founder of the feminist publishers Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
strongly repudiated Cohen's account in a letter to the Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,6903,1376833,00.html. But she has also apologised for Jayasekera's original comment article, saying she didn't think "the tone (was) right". But she would not delete it from the online archives or dismiss the author from his job with Index.