Thursday 27 March 2008

A READER WRITES IN...

It's ironical but not entirely difficult to understand why support for Fiona MacKeown comes mainly from people who havent' met her, or personally watched her and her lawyer team in action.For some of us who have, its difficult to miss the disingenuity, after the initial two encounters. For one --- the team of Fiona MacKeown and her Indian lawyer Vikram Varma ---- are a tad too media savvy. They have worked and manipulated the media in their campaign, with a great deal of shrewd finesse.
The type of finesse, one notices these days with political parties who stage dharnas and vocal protests only after ensuring that every single TRP-hungry electronic media troupe are in attendance, to capture their simulated "anger" and air it live on television. The protest is faked and the anger is faked, and for those who have to watch such insincerity "go places", the display is disturbing.
It's this sort of posturing that makes the Fiona/Vikram Varma campaign a little insincere, and them more than a little suspect. As a fellow British media person covering the Scarlett case and her mother's "campaign" put it --- there are no angels in this script.
When Fiona MacKeown's campaign was just picking up, she already had Britain's Sky television crew trailing her. Between Varma and herself, they made sure there was enough simulated "action" to capture. So Varma would arrive at the state secretariat earlier and keep the media briefed about Fiona's imminent arrival. When she arrived in a Maruti Esteem, seven smaller children in tow, barefoot and one of them shirtless --- the camera's whirred. The family obliged with some of the angles and postures necessary for television. So did the lawyer.
The media, especially the British media, trailing her were led to government offices, where meeting were not even scheduled and the resultant long wait was posited as some more "examples" of a hard hearted administration that was "harassing the mother". It soon became apparent that the British media were being sold this story a lot more often than the national or local media. For obvious reasons.
TheScarlett case was a British cause celebre and Fiona was cast in the role of avenging mother fighting for justice from a corrupt police and insensitive government.
When the first arrest was made, based on Fiona's insistence on rape and murder charges, the British press were told police had picked up the wrong man, "small fry", to shied the bigger ones. British radio stations began calling up local journalists seeking quotes to butress claims that "the Goa police were unreliable, and given to catching anybody and framing them". The first man was arrested for statutory rape, since senior officials on the case believed the sexual acts had been consentual. With the second arrest, and murder charges levied against two individuals, Fiona continued talking about a "cover up and larger cover up", going on to levy accusations against the home minister and DGP.
The evening Fiona got her summons to depose in the case at the Panaji police station, British media persons were "presold" the story by Fiona's team that she was going to be "targeted" by police and "arrested for negligence". The British media and an Indian news agency playing ball, already ran stories of her imminent arrest and targeting by the Goa administration. When she wasn't and it was just a routine recording of a statement, there were no retractions and the Goa administration was further villianised.
Varma told the media, that the police had not dared to arrest her because of the large media presence. By now, it was becoming obvious even to more loyal members of the British media ---who had united uncritically and unquestioningly behind Fiona --- that they were being manipulated rather adroitly. "The Fiona is going to be arrested" episode was not the only sleigh of hand.
British press persons are being regularly sold stories of how Fiona was being threatened, how she was offered money for her silence, and most recently that she is forced to go underground because she had exposed the drug nexus --- all of these allegations suitably vague and cleverly unsourced. British Michael Mannion aka Masala Mike --- the man who left Scarlett to her fate --- addressed the press on how it was so difficult for a witness to give a statement in a "civilised society". When pressed, he said he had no quarrel with the Goa police, but had perceived (not actually been threatened, mind you) a threat from his former Goan buddies!!!
It's these numerous sleigh of hands to stay in the media spotlight -- this constant shifting of the goalposts to keep the media constantly engaged with a new angle, a new twist, a fresh new allegation of cover up, larger cover up, drug link, home minister-DGP involvement, CBI enquiry, court challenge, going into hiding, under threat from fresh new villains etc etc ---- that rings the Fiona MacKeown portrait of an avenging mother as untrue. Sincerity is an intangible trait, but most people can pick up insincerity. To make errors of judgement is forgivable, to be calm and stoic in the face of personal grief is understandable --- but to display no motherly remorse can be very telling indeed. So far Fiona MacKeown has expressed no remorse or criticism for her own failings --- she holds herself above reproach, while everyone else in the script is blameworthy.
The inconsistencies and "coverups" are too many to sustain belief. Scarlett was no drinker or drug taker according to her mother ---- the statements of too many people and friends of Scarlett have belied this. Scarlett was left only for a few days with boyfriend Julio Lobo, Fiona had said. When Ms MacKoewn realised that it was culturally unacceptable for a mother to consent to her 15 year old's live-in relationship, she adroitly changed the story to "I left her with Julio's Catholic aunts". Fiona glossed over details ---- forgetting to tell the press that Scarlette had been left with no money or mobile over three weeks she stayed with Julio and they were in Gokarn. Or that her other small children were often left alone at Curlie's.
For media establishments chasing eyeballs, the sensational accusations of Fiona MacKeown are just what the doctor prescribed. Critical judgement is suspended.
Having said all this, it is hoped that the higher echelons of the police also move to retain credibility. If there were more macho men than the two arrested--- who took advantage of a reckless minor girl that night, in the feudal Indian belief that fallen women are fair game --- they should be arrested and tried. If there were no more actively involved, the police should be able to say this with conviction, rather than leave it to media speculation.
The obvious "boys club" mentality that resulted in the initial cover-up by the Anjuna police, in seeming collaboration with the coroner, has disgraced the police and the state, exposing its flanks. If it is to recover its image even somewhat, justice must not only be done, butseen to be done as well. There should be no compromise on that. (ends)

13 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I guess this is probably the most apt description of how the British Media and atleast one Indian Newspaper (the one setting shop in Goa which is notorious for its aping the style & content of UK's "Tabloid Times" got their story from Fiona. But then there were some interestingly fairplay by the notoriously rabid "tehelka" too whose Senior Journalist actually told the story from the Goan point-of-view sans police, sans politician, sans NGOs, sans "Phoren-ers". But all the Media had got one thing wrong...THEY SHOULD HAVE JUST CHECKED FIONA's PASSPORT. SHE HAS BEEN AROUND FOR OVER 20 YEARS IN GOA. CHECK WITH TCI or any oldies in the Charter Trade in the beginning. She and a female called Ularique were notorious for flesh for drug & vice versa trade. Goa Police that has no record of past crimes could not nail her. Fiona did what we all know ATTACK AS THE BEST FORM OF DEFENCE OF HER PAST.

27 March 2008 at 17:58  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yawn..... tell us something that we dont know

27 March 2008 at 22:29  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Insightful display of Fiona's media savy skills.
So what if she presented her case using excellent media dissemination tactics?
Is she on trial here?

One can't help but but laugh at the stuttering Home Minister who appeared incoherrent and vindictive in his live video statements.

28 March 2008 at 07:13  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon 2...I am sure you are a journo who cares and not a fence sitter like the rest, if You know why not report it ;-)

28 March 2008 at 11:52  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

last anon: because the public also knows.

28 March 2008 at 23:36  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Both Fiona and her lawyer seem to be making a killing on the Scarlette Keeling murder case.However, while many have aptly faulted Fiona for her negligence and haphazard upbringing of her kin, it certainly does not justify the slaying of her daughter.There is more than meets the eye in the Scarlette episode for while Fiona and Verma's histrionics are nevertheless questionable, the government's conduct in this matter is not beyond skepticism.
Most crime journos in India lap up the crumbs that are thrown to them by the police or ministers. The lack of cross questioning makes most of their beats read like bedtime stories.There are several loopholes in the police version itself, complete fabrications in the key witness Mike Masala's story and an apparent attempt to hush up the case by the home minister in the false guise that it would dent the State's tourism image.
The police version that 10 people were witness to the dastardly act by Samson D'Souza is a bitter pill to swallow. It smacks of distortion of truth. How were these witnesses who simultaneously watched Samson exercising his loins unable to restrain him from knocking Scarlette unconscious? Have we Goans become so sadistic that we watch these inhumane acts with quiet abandon? None of these so called witnesses went to Scarlet's rescue but chose to report seeing her being violated. Surely ten men cannot be so helpless to overpower a brute. Moreover, what possible motive could Samson, who reportedly is a father of a child himself, have in raping a minor? Even if Samson did want to satisfy his urge with Scarlette, it would make no sense for him to display his antics at the back of a beach shack where his reputation in Anjuna area would be at stake.The IGP Kishen Kumar's script has Samson fleeing from the scene of offence when he sees someone approaching in the distance with a torchlight. Ten witnesses and Samson stops his performance with a torchlight? Seems like a pretty bad rehearsal.
The second scene is worse than the first. Enter Mike Masala, himself a drug peddler on the payroll of the police, selling his dope that Samson was threatening to eliminate him if he ever spilled the beans. Let's assume the threat was real, what would the barman achieve by eliminating Mike when he definitely should have been apprehensive of there being others watching him. Masala was neither the key nor the only witness and the criminal involved was certainly aware of it. Erasing him would be futile.
The evidence is downright flimsy. Anyone who enacts the cops version can see its drawbacks. Ostensibly, there are more persons involved and Samson could be used as a double for the real culprit who could either be a Russian mafioso or a minister's son who has stacked the police coffers to cook up a story.
Accomplices official and unofficial abound in this game of official manipulation.The state government fumbled badly on this. It dilly dallied on holding a CBI inquiry and when a government is averse to holding an independent investigation,there is a high probability that it could be protecting one of its own. Here the role of Home Minister Ravi Naik is suspect. Suddenly, following the Scarlette case, he comes out with a clever tactic of requesting the Union Ministry not to extend Fiona's visa which is due to expire shortly. The CBI has not even started working on the case and our Ponda legislator wants to wrap it up by shunting Fiona out of the country in the vague hope that it would rest in peace once she is out of his sight.This is against the principles of natural justice, since courtesy demands that Fiona should be allowed to be present in Goa until a fair, unbiased trial is conducted. Once it is carried on to the satisfaction of the judicial authorities, Fiona should not
overstep her limits. The home minister's rigmarole on checking Fiona's antecedents and the duration of her stay is simply hogwash to divert attention from the real issue: that an influential person with wads of money to finance the drug business is involved. On this count many have cast aspersions that his son too could be involved. Or else why is the home minister getting so visibly upset and ticklish about a murder Is it because Scarlet and her family happen to be foreigners? Indians get murdered in other countries too and though not all such murders may be solved, their home ministers do not start blurting out incongruous statements. This isn't the first time a murder has taken place in Goa. An usually calm Ravi has never been rattled by any of these. That includes murders of old, innocent couples. Because of the lurking doubts that linger in people's minds it is imperative that CBI be entrusted the case expedioustly. Journos too should take heed and not merely scribble notes. if it isn't Fiona who sells you a story it is the officials. But the truth has to be bought with a price, that of perserverance.

29 March 2008 at 07:19  
Blogger Pen Pricks said...

Anon 6... thats a commendable piece... we'll run it in the main body of the blog soon... thanks...

29 March 2008 at 12:28  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

'Ohmy' word, now look who's doing the lifting!

Here's what you claimed came in from 'a reader', which has been handily lifted by the now famous Korean site "Ohmy", that you claim so many Goan papers lift from. Aha! We've taught them the art too...

This post was put up, as it says, on 29 March. Yours was on 27 March. And, by the way, who is Evaristo Johny Coutinho alias jonbon?

The article is below:


Mother in Goan Tragedy Too Media Savvy

Did Fiona MacKeown and her Indian lawyer manipulate the press to their advantage?
Evaristo Johny Coutinho (jonbon)

Published 2008-03-29 05:33 (KST)

It's not difficult to understand why support for Fiona MacKeown, the mother of a British teenager murdered in Goa, India, comes mainly from people who haven't met her or personally watched her and her lawyer team in action.

For some of us who have watched, it's difficult to miss the disingenuousness after the initial two encounters.

For one, MacKeown and her Indian lawyer, Vikram Varma, are a tad too media savvy. They have worked and manipulated the media in their campaign for justice with a great deal of shrewd finesse -- the type of finesse one notices these days with political parties who stage dharnas and vocal protests only after ensuring that every single target rating point-hungry electronic media troupe are in attendance, to capture their simulated "anger" and air it live on television. The protest is faked and the anger is faked, and for those who have to watch such insincerity "go places," the display is disturbing.

It's this sort of posturing that makes the MacKeown-Varma campaign a little insincere, and MacKeown and Varma more than a little suspect. As a fellow British media person covering the Scarlett Keeling case and her mother's "campaign" put it: there are no angels in this script.

When MacKeown's campaign was just picking up, she already had Britain's Sky Television crew trailing her. MacKeown and Varma made sure there was enough simulated "action" to capture.

Varma would arrive at the state secretariat before MacKeown did and keep the media briefed about MacKeown's imminent arrival. When she arrived in a Maruti Esteem, seven smaller children in tow, all of them barefoot, and one of them shirtless, the cameras whirred. The family obliged with some of the angles and postures necessary for television. So did the lawyer.

The media, especially the British media, trailing her were led to government offices where meetings were not even scheduled and the resultant long wait was posited as more "examples" of a hardhearted administration that was "harassing the mother."

It soon became apparent that the British media were being sold this story a lot more often than the national or local media, for obvious reasons.

The Scarlett case was a British cause celebre, and Fiona was cast in the role of avenging mother fighting for justice from a corrupt police and insensitive government.

When the first arrest was made, based on MacKeown's insistence on rape and murder charges, the British press was told police had picked up the wrong man, a "small fry," to shield the bigger ones involved. British radio stations began calling up local journalists seeking quotes to buttress claims that "the Goa police were unreliable, and given to catching anybody and framing them."

The first man was arrested for statutory rape, since senior officials on the case believed the sexual acts had been consensual. With the second arrest, and murder charges levied against two individuals, MacKeown continued talking about a "cover up and larger cover up," going on to levy accusations against the home minister and Goan police.

The evening MacKeown got her summons to depose in the case at the Panaji police station, British media persons were "presold" the story by MacKeown's team that she was going to be "targeted" by police and "arrested for negligence." The British media and an Indian news agency, playing ball, already ran stories of her imminent arrest and targeting by the Goan administration.

When she wasn't and it was just a routine recording of a statement, there were no retractions and the Goa administration was further vilified.

Varma told the media that the police had not dared to arrest MacKeown because of the large media presence. By now, it was becoming obvious even to more-loyal members of the British media -- who had united uncritically and unquestioningly behind Fiona -- that they were being manipulated rather adroitly. "The MacKeown is going to be arrested" episode was not the only sleight of hand.

The British press is regularly being sold stories of how MacKeown was being threatened, how she was offered money for her silence, and most recently that she was forced to go underground because she had exposed the drug nexus -- all of these allegations suitably vague and cleverly unsourced. Michael Mannion, aka Masala Mike -- the British man who left Scarlett to her fate -- addressed the press on how it was so difficult for a witness to give a statement in a "civilized society."

When pressed, Mannion said he had no quarrel with the Goa police but had perceived (not actually been threatened, mind you) a threat from his former Goan buddies.

It's these numerous sleight of hands to stay in the media spotlight, this constant shifting of the goalposts to keep the media constantly engaged with a new angle, a new twist -- a fresh new allegation of a cover up, of a larger cover up, of a drug link or the involvement of the home minister and Goan police, the news of a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry or a court challenge, the need for MacKeown to go into hiding, under threat from fresh new villains, Etc. -- that is the cause of MacKeown's portrait of an avenging mother ringing untrue.

Sincerity is an intangible trait, but most people can pick up insincerity. To make errors of judgment is forgivable, to be calm and stoic in the face of personal grief is understandable -- but to display no motherly remorse can be very telling indeed. So far MacKeown has expressed no remorse or criticism for her own failings -- she holds herself above reproach, while everyone else in the script is blameworthy.

The inconsistencies and "cover-ups" are too many to sustain belief. Scarlett was no drinker or drug taker according to her mother -- the statements of too many people and friends of Scarlett have belied this.

Scarlett was left only for a few days with boyfriend Julio Lobo, MacKeown had said. When MacKeown realized that it was culturally unacceptable for a mother to consent to her 15-year-old daughter's live-in relationship, she adroitly changed the story to "I left her with Julio's Catholic aunts."

Fiona glossed over details, forgetting to tell the press that Scarlett had been left with no money or cell phone over the three weeks she stayed with Julio and they were in Gokarn. Or that her other small children were often left alone at Curlie's.

For media establishments chasing eyeballs, the sensational accusations of MacKeown are just what the doctor prescribed. Critical judgment is suspended.

Having said all this, it is hoped that the higher echelons of the police also move to retain credibility. If there were more men involved than the two arrested -- who took advantage of a reckless minor girl that night, in the feudal Indian belief that fallen women are fair game -- they should be arrested and tried.

If there were no more men actively involved, the police should be able to say this with conviction, rather than leave it to media speculation.

The obvious "boys club" mentality that resulted in the initial cover-up by the Anjuna police, in seeming collaboration with the coroner, has disgraced the department and the state, exposing its flanks. If it is to recover its image even somewhat, justice must not only be done but seen to be done well. There should be no compromise on that.

©2008 OhmyNews

29 March 2008 at 16:02  
Blogger Pen Pricks said...

Last anon... smart work... you beat us to it... anyone know who this evaristo is? I just contacted the writer of this piece. The writer had submitted this piece to a local newspaper. Looks like this Evaristo fella did a Robin on us -- PP

29 March 2008 at 16:38  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Penpricks has started to write in the comment section after a long long gap.

31 March 2008 at 00:53  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pen Pricks. Have you complained to the 'Ohmy' site about the plagiarism? At least that will stop the lightfingered Evaristo in his tracks.

4 April 2008 at 10:23  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

must have been robin using the pen name everisto

5 April 2008 at 20:04  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

will the real slim shady please stand up? please stand up? please stand up?

7 April 2008 at 08:40  

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