Media of Sri Lanka - Press Freedom

Press Freedom

Press freedom is a major concern in Sri Lanka. Both sides in the war make efforts to silence inconvenient reporters. Around 15 reporters received death threats from one faction or the other in 2004 The assassinated reporter Aiyathurai Nadesan, correspondent in Batticaloa for several Tamil media stated just prior to his assassination in 2005:

We are caught between a rock and a hard place. It is very difficult for us to check reports either with the security forces or the Tamil Tigers. And when a news item on local events is datelined Colombo, it puts us at risk of reprisals on the ground.

In 2005, the Tamil newspaper Thinakkural was threatened by Karuna. Copies of the newspaper were burned in the Eastern provinces. On the other hand, distribution of the Tamil weekly Thinamurasu is blocked by the LTTE because it is close to another armed group, the EPDP.

BBC World Service stopped its broadcast in Sinhalese and Tamil for fear of reprisal against its reporters.

During the Rajapaksa administration, press freedom in Sri Lanka became the "worst in any democratic country", according to the Reporters without borders index, ranking 165th among 173 countries in the index. On 21 November 2008, a twelve-member group of masked men, forcibly entered the printing press of Sunday Leader, Morning Leader and Irudina Sinhala weekly and set fire damaging printing machines and copies of newspapers printed ready for distribution. The state jammed transmission of BBC programs which contained content the government disliked. The main private TV network Sirasa was repeatedly threatened by minister Mervyn Silva, attacked by a petrol bomb on 2.1.2009 and raided by gunmen on 6.1.2009, who set on fire the main control room. This was in response to SLBC criticizing Sirasa's coverage of the capture of Kilinochchi.

According to the head of the company, Chevaan Daniel: "It's either that the citizens of Sri Lanka are able to drive around attacking institutions armed with weapons and grenades, or there is a hand behind it."

Lasantha Wikramatunga, the chief editor of the English Weekly Sunday Leader, was assassinated on the Thursday January 8, 2008 by unknown gunmen. The newspaper and its editor as well as the editor of Morning Leader have been harassed and threatened continuously during the preceding three years. All Leader publications are very critical towards the government and exponents of opposition political views. According to Reporters without Borders, the Rajapaksa administration blocks investigations into the murder of journalists.

Defence minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa threatened to chase Chris Morris, a BBC journalists, out of the country, if he does not act responsibly.

Local reporters in the country continue to be threatened, as was the case with 54-year-old M.I. Rahmathulla, who was beaten in April 2009 for reporting on political corruption in the Batticaloa region of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province.