Sri Lanka
Summary
No journalist was killed in Sri Lanka in 2012
but the government continued to pile up more pressure on the country’s already
weak news and media organizations, especially the independent ones.
Sri Lanka’s state-controlled media called journalists
“traitors”. The “traitor” accusation against journalists followed a UN Human
Rights Council call for an investigation into the country’s alleged abuses in
2009 during its war against Tamil separatists. The state television did not
name the journalists who participated in a UN Human Rights Council meeting, but
it accused them of “betraying the motherland.”
Efforts by journalists' professional bodies
to highlight the issue of impunity have been attacked by official spokespersons
as akin to high treason. State-controlled media, the Sri Lanka Broadcasting
Corporation, the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, Channel ITN and the Lake
House publications, have become forums for verbal abuse and vilification of
independent journalists and human rights defenders, often with dangerous
implications for their physical safety and wellbeing.
Journalists and human rights defenders who
have joined national and international platforms calling for justice and
accountability for human rights abuses committed during the quarter-century
long civil war, have been at particular risk. The large groups of journalists
in exile are continually named by official spokespersons, especially over
state-owned media, as "anti-national" elements working against their "motherland".
In a related incident, the Daily Mirror,
quoted the Minister of Public Relations, Mervyn Silva, as warning that he would
“break the limbs of some journalists who have gone abroad and made various
statements against the country, if they dare to set foot in the country.” Silva
had previously, in 2007, gone into a state-run television station and assaulted
the news director allegedly, because a speech he had made the previous day had
not been fully reported by the station.
In March, Sir Lanka’s military authorities
told news and media organisations that they would need to obtain prior approval
before releasing text or SMS news alerts containing any news about the military
or police. The restrictions on reporting on the military were formally lifted
in August, 2011.
Journalists and media defenders have been
constant targets of violence, threats and propaganda. The censorship of
websites, especially those based abroad, has increased since the beginning of
2011.
The Distributed
Denial-of-Service Attacks (DDoS) have been disrupting web traffic of
TamilNet.com. The service provider is struggling to keep the website online. On June 29,
Colombo city police raided the offices of two news websites, took staff into
custody and impounded their equipment. A fortnight later, the Media Ministry
issued a directive reaffirming the registration requirement for news websites
and announcing an additional requirement to pay an annual fee for
renewal.
News websites hosting content on Sri Lanka
have been subject to arbitrary rule changes and frequent obstruction. In
December 2011, the Media Ministry in the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL)
introduced a rule requiring the registration of all websites hosting
news content on the country. An FMM petition challenging this notification
under fundamental rights clauses was dismissed by
the Supreme Court in May on grounds that the petitioners had no local standing
in the matter, since the websites themselves had complied with the registration
requirement.
In June 2012, the government announced a
"National Action Plan" (NAP) to give effect to the recommendations of
a commission on national reconciliation, appointed at the end of the civil war.
Recommendations included steps to prevent attacks on media personnel and
institutions, the investigation of such events from the past and deterrent
punishment where appropriate. It also urged the restoration of full rights to
free movement for media personnel and the enactment of a right to information (RTI) law. The NAP does not set
down any time-line for the passage of an RTI law and does not address the
climate of impunity for attacks on the media.
Progress in the investigation of newspaper
editor Lasantha Wickramatunge's murder in January 2009 and the disappearance of
cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda in January 2010 has been negligible.
The new owner of the Sunday Leader sacked
editor Frederica Jansz just two months after she received death threats from
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The Sunday Leader and its journalists
have until now faced regular attack. The newspaper's editor, Lasantha
Wickramatunge, was assassinated on his way to work on 8 January 2009. Nobody
has ever been prosecuted for the crime. Later, on 19th October 2012,
The Sunday Leader formally apologised to Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa
for reporting he had threatened the then editor with death.
