Global IssuesRIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Young Girl’s Suicide Ignites Public Debate
By all accounts, 14-year-old student Anuthara Jayawardene was an unobtrusive child. But her death, by hanging herself inside a toilet in her school premises on July 22, has brought her right into the middle of media attention. Her name and the circumstances surrounding her death are now at the centre of a public dust storm.
Jayawardene, an only child, committed suicide after the prefects of her school -- Museaus College -- recovered a mobile phone in her possession and two other students.
The College, a popular girls’ school in the capital, prohibits the use of mobiles phones among its students. It declined to comment for this story.
Details on what was discovered on the phone or whether it was in fact owned by the victim have remained murky and got even more confusing in the public debate that has erupted in newspapers and on the Web following the tragedy.
A Facebook group, called ‘Kavindi Gave Lesson (to) All of Us’, has attracted a large following among Sri Lankan youth, in the country and overseas. To date, it has generated some 2,700 members and over 180 wall postings.
Messages on the popular social networking website have been poles apart at times. Some have been sympathetic towards the victim and blamed her school authorities while others have tried to defend the school against any wrongdoing, arguing that it was a private issue.
'I feel really really sorry about sister......just now I Got to knw the real story...... I felt lyk.....so blooody angry n disappointed,' one man wrote in a distinct Web lingo on the group’s page. Others debated whether the school authorities had reacted to the incident properly.
'What’s de big deal in bringing a mobile phone to school??? After all its just a phone, not a bomb or something!...omg (oh my god)... really strict rules and regulations...the school is too strict...! if it hadn’t gone to de extent of punishing her she wouldn’t have done it! ps: I bring my phone to school everyday..no complaints from my school..even tho they know it,' wrong a young girl.
Others weighed in to defend the school and its staff.
An email sent by a woman close to the victim’s family, and now based in Canada, has been doing the rounds, with recipients forwarding it to thousands of others. In the letter, the author tries to rectify what she feels are erroneous representations of the victim in public domains.
'Since the Police have found out that Kavindi is not the owner of the mobile in question, there were no porn in the mobile, there were no nude photos or sms (Short messages) directed to Kavindi, then why isn’t the school issuing a statement about the true owners of the mobile phone or the actual contents of the mobile?' asked the sender, adding that the phone’s owners were other students. The writer also revealed that two other students had tried to commit suicide subsequent to Jayawardene’s own death.
'One by stabbing herself with a bottle and the other by consuming some toilet detergent, when they realized what they had done to their classmate Kavindi and their guilty consciousness took the better of them,' the letter said.
The country’s mainstream media, too, has found itself in the centre of a public argument on the media’s role during incidents like Jayawardene’s. The English language weekly
‘The Sunday Leader’ ran a story on August 2, titled 'The school that failed,' on the suicide and soon found its coverage and the writer turning into a story themselves.
The newspaper has since been inundated with emails, calls, and letters reacting to the story. For two weeks running, it has carried two page spreads on the reactions. 'Some of the calls and the letters have been very abusive,' Ranee Mohamed, the journalist who wrote the story, told IPS.
'At the outset, I would like to tell u (you) how dreadful the title, The school that failed, sounds! Whatever school you have studied (if you ever have) should be ashamed of you and that school should take the blame for making persons like you,' one letter said. Another was even more critical. It read: 'I don’t like to call you sir. In your newspaper that article which was written by the dog/b...h named Ranee Mohamed has insulted my school a lot. I wonder what the hell he/she knows about my school.'
Letters kept coming even three weeks after the suicide and the letters themselves received reactionary replies. Some supported ‘The Sunday Leader’ and its daring to go out and report on the suicide and surrounding details.
'Thank you for having the courage to continue to discuss the very sad ending of 14 year old (Anuthara) Kavindi. I hope this will ensure that it never happens again and also that the eyes of parents, teachers, educational officials open to the major problem facing our younger generation,' one such letter said.
Mohamed said that despite the supportive responses, the anger evident in some of the negative reactions she and her newspaper have received has shocked her. 'The negative responses have been really bad,' she told IPS.
The catcalls and cacophony of abuses hurling around has drowned a valid argument--the role the media plays in delicate situations like this.
'My only appeal to you is, despite misleading information by the media and complete silence maintained by the relevant school, to think logically about Kavindi’s name unduly tarnished along with her parents reputation,' said the mass-circulated email by the family friend in Canada.
'I wanted to tell the truth, or at least as far as I knew it, there was lot of wrong reporting that was going around,' Praveen Indranama, who has actively taken part in the web debates on the suicide, told IPS.
Mohamed said the media has a job to do -- to highlight relevant and important issues, no matter what the consequences would be.
'The child’s father had a real fear, that his daughter’s death would be forgotten and (the) school’s silence would hasten it. That was when I got to the story,' she told IPS. 'Reactions -- positive, negative, abusive, in whatever manner they come -- mean that the story has been read, that people have not forgotten this tragedy.'
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service