To­day (Sun­day), un­for­tu­nate­ly, I awoke to the front-page head­line in the Sun­day Guardian: LARA JAIL which ref­er­ences a pro­posed de­ten­tion cen­tre at the Tarou­ba Sta­di­um to deal with the high num­ber of de­ten­tions and ar­rests un­der the cur­rent state of emer­gency. The head­line aris­es de­spite the stud­ied ef­forts of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Sen­a­tor Anand Ram­lo­gan, to pre­vent such use of my name. I con­sid­er this head­line to be to­tal­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble and dis­re­spect­ful of my fam­i­ly's name.

I am now re­quest­ing of the me­dia that they de­sist from such a ref­er­ence in the fu­ture. The of­fend­ing head­line has had the ef­fect of bring­ing my name in­to an area of ma­jor con­tention and con­tro­ver­sy where it does not be­long. My fam­i­ly and I have sus­tained con­sid­er­able em­bar­rass­ment and hurt as a re­sult of this de­vel­op­ment. I am call­ing on the me­dia to de­sist from this prac­tice im­me­di­ate­ly.

Bri­an Lara

Via e-mail