Sri Lanka - Human Rights and Media

Human Rights and Media

Main articles: Human rights in Sri Lanka and Media in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (formerly Radio Ceylon) is the oldest-running radio station in Asia, established in 1923 by Edward Harper just three years after broadcasting began in Europe. The station broadcasts services in Sinhalese, Tamil, English and Hindi. Since the 1980s, a large number of private radio stations have also been introduced. Broadcast television was introduced to the country in 1979 when the Independent Television Network was launched. Initially all Television stations were state controlled, but private television networks began broadcasts in 1992. As of 2010, 51 newspapers (30 Sinhala, 10 Tamil, 11 English) are published and 34 TV stations and 52 radio stations are in operation. However in the recent years, freedom of the press in Sri Lanka has is alleged by media freedom groups to be amongst the poorest in democratic countries. Alleged abuse of a newspaper editor by a senior government minister achieved international notoriety because of the unsolved murder of the editor's predecessor who had also been a critic of the government and had presaged his own death in a posthumously published article.

Officially, the constitution of Sri Lanka guarantees human rights as ratified by the United Nations. However human rights in Sri Lanka have come under criticism by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as the United States Department of State. Both the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government of Sri Lanka are accused of violating human rights. A report by an advisory panel to the UN secretary-general has accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government of alleged war crimes during final stages of the civil war.

The UN Human Rights Council has documented over 12,000 named individuals who have undergone disappearance after detention by security forces in Sri Lanka, the second highest figure in the world, since the Working Group came into being in 1980. The Sri Lankan government has confirmed that 6,445 of these are dead. Allegations of human rights abuses have not ended with the close of the ethnic conflict.

Read more about this topic:  Sri Lanka

Famous quotes containing the words human, rights and/or media:

    “Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort. Do not talk to him about the interests and rights of the human race; that little private business of his for the moment absorbs all his thoughts, and he hopes that public disturbances can be put off to some other time.”
    —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

    “In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
    —James Madison (1751–1836)

    “Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
    —Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)