April 28th, 2010
The newly elected President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa,
appointed Mervyn Silva as the deputy minister for media and information on Friday. Silva is a politician with a
notorious reputation for physically and verbally attacking journalists and other members of the press, including
one incident in December 2008 where he and a large group of men stormed a television station and assaulted its news director. The appointment angered
Reporters sans frontières, it asked “In what country do you appoint an arsonist to put out fires?”
April 16th, 2010
BBC World Service has
restarted its FM broadcasts with SLBC, the Sri Lankan national broadcaster after a 14-month long absence. In a
press release yesterday, Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC Global News guaranteed that programmes in English, Sinhala, and Tamil will have uninterrupted broadcasting, and that the BBC will remain true to “specific editorial values that include impartiality, editorial independence and seeking a relevant range of views on any topic”.
March 31st, 2010
Last Monday,
hundreds of protestors attacked the offices of the Maharaja Television offices in Colombo, injuring four workers and smashing many windows and cars. The incident is over hip-hop artist Akon’s latest music video “Sexy Bitch”, which depicts images of bikini–clad women dancing in front of a statue of Buddha, causing offense to the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese population. Akon, due to play a concert in Sri Lanka in April, has been refused entry into the country as a result of the uproar.
March 30th, 2010
Expatriate Sri Lankan author, Sarah Malini Perera,
has been arrested in whilst on holiday Sri Lanka for writing two books— From Darkness to Light and Questions and Answers—about her conversion from Buddhism to Islam. Perara, who has lived in Bahrain since 1985, was detained last week after apparently causing offence to the largely Buddhist Sinhalese population of the country. Authorities have declined to comment on the situation.
March 19th, 2010
Following our report on the
Sri Lankan press crackdown, the office of the president has issued a
statement on Tuesday denying the existence of the
leaked government “hit-list” that contained 35 journalists, lawyers and activists. One of the top targets on the list, J. C. Weliamuna, the chairperson of Transparency International Sri Lanka, faces imminent arrest this week
according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.
March 15th, 2010
Opposition voices targeted to silence them before parliamentary elections says Index’s Rohan Jayasekera
The word McCarthyite is all too easily tossed about these days, but it’s hard not to apply it to what’s happening in Sri Lanka, as President Mahinda Rajapaksa prepares to follow his snap re-election with a blitz parliamentary vote and a ruthless crackdown on political critics and independent media ahead of it.
Rajapakse’s January re-election and last year’s military victories over separatist Tamil Tiger insurgents have not slowed his habit of publicly denouncing his critics without evidence; fully aware that his words put his targets at risk from gangs of armed supporters.
“This is clearly a politically motivated practice of making accusation of disloyalty or treason without proper regard for evidence,”says journalist and rights activist Uvindu Kurukulasuriya. Brad Adams, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch describes it as “a carefully coordinated witch hunt… extremely dangerous and irresponsible in a country where journalists and activists have often been threatened and killed.”
With less than a month to go before parliamentary elections, Kurukulasuriya tells Index that the main aim is simple censorship. “It is a psychology of fear through abductions, killings and other form of pressure that is brought in,” he says. “It’s not so much about what is written, but what you should not write. For instance, we are asked not to refer to this and that, or to the President, or to the Secretary of Defence. Media in Sri Lanka certainly (suffer from) a certain censorship, but this is beyond the norm.”
Since the January 2010 presidential election, the government has engaged in a campaign to silence and discredit journalists and non-governmental organizations, a trend that reached a peak with the publication on March 3 of an apparently leaked government surveillance list of more than 30 journalists and activists.
Two of the names high up the list, Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) Executive Director Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and J.C. Weliamuna, Executive Director of Transparency International, Sri Lanka (TISL) warned there are reasonable grounds for fear about the physical liberty and safety of those named.
“There has been no justice or punishment served by recourse to the criminal justice system in the numerous cases of killings, enforced disappearances and abductions,” they wrote to Rajapakse this week, “and the entrenched culture of impunity, arbitrariness and the ineffectiveness of law enforcement have only encouraged further abuses.”
“There is a fundamental misconception that opposition to specific actions and policies by the government is equal to support for the opposition,” said Saravanamuttu and Weliamuna. “It is not only a fundamental democratic principle but also part of the fundamental rights declared and protected by the constitution that Sri Lankans are entitled to the freedoms of thought, conscience, opinion, expression, association and occupation.”
“This smacks of retaliation for reporting on violations during the presidential election,” says Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director. “Despite the elections and the end of the war against the Tamil Tigers, the government seems to have a hard time getting rid of the habit of repression.”
Both the CPA and TISL played a key role in monitoring the January presidential election, reporting on electoral violations and the government’s misuse of state resources to campaign in favor of incumbent Rajapaksa.
Dozens of journalists and activists have fled the country and am atmosphere of impunity and intimidation that has worsened since January. Journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda of Lanka eNews disappeared on January 24 and remains missing, despite calls for a serious investigation. On March 9, the parliament voted to extend emergency regulations, widely used to target activists, until after April’s elections.
“In the run up to the legislative elections slated for April, the Sri Lankan government is clearly trying to divert criticism from itself after the egregious violations perpetrated against the press and other opposition candidates during the recent presidential election,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of US based free speech group Freedom House this week. “This is yet another example of the government acting with impunity and trying to discredit voices of dissent.”
March 12th, 2010
The
Sri Lankan Attorney General has assured exiled journalists that they will not be prosecuted if they return to the country. Mohan Peiris said that he will offer protection to any of the nation’s reporters that left the country after the disputed presidential election earlier this year. “Speaking for myself, and I’m fairly sure the government will back me up on this, there is no question that the government needs our journalists,” he said.
February 25th, 2010
The
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the release of Chandana Sirimalwatte, editor of the opposition Sinhala newspaper Lanka, on February 16 after 18 days in detention without charge. Lanka is aligned with a political party that had strongly backed the rival candidate.Sirimalwatte was taken into custody on January 29, two days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa was declared
re-elected to a second term in office. According to IFJ sources, Sirimalwatte’s unconditional release was ordered by a magistrate’s court after the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the Sri Lankan police failed to present charges against him.The IFJ meanwhile continues to be concerned for the welfare of
Prageeth Eknaligoda, a senior journalist and political commentator who has been missing since January 24.
