June 9, 1998
Your
Excellency,
The Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned over your
government's imposition of censorship regulations on
media coverage of the civil war between the government of
Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE). Censorship is incompatible with democratic
governance. We call on you to act immediately to lift the
press restrictions and allow the Sri Lankan people access
to free and unbiased information regarding the
conflict.
On June 5, Secretary to the
Defense Ministry Chandrananda de Silva announced that you
had ordered a ban on news about the civil war through
regulations "prohibiting the publication and transmission
of sensitive military information." The regulations are
to apply to both foreign and local news
media.
The Defense Ministry statement
said print and electronic media were prohibited from
carrying news about military and police operations. They
are also barred from making "any statement pertaining to
the official conduct or the performance of the head or
any member of any of the armed forces or the police
force."
No reason was given for these
drastic regulations. On June 6, the ministry announced
that all photographs, news reports and television
material on the war must be submitted to screening by the
military. This is the first time that Sri Lanka has
appointed a military censor; similar press restrictions
on war coverage were administered by civilians for
several months in 1996 before being
lifted.
In an editorial, the Sunday
Times of Sri Lanka said, "We hope this is not the first
step towards martial law." In protesting the censorship,
Sri Lankan newspapers left columns blank over the
weekend.
As an organization of
journalists dedicated to defending the rights of our
colleagues everywhere, we deplore these new regulations
in the strongest possible terms. We are further reminded
that your government came to power in 1994 pledging to
strengthen democratic institutions in Sri Lanka. Instead,
you have imposed the harshest form of control on the Sri
Lankan media.
It is our belief that a free and
vibrant press is the cornerstone of democracy. We agree
with our colleagues in the Free Media Movement of Sri
Lanka who said in a statement on Tuesday: "It is a
flagrant violation of the commitment made by this
government in its election manifesto to defend media
freedom...The Free Media movement believes that the
imposition of censorship is aimed at preventing the media
from reporting the truth about the war to the people of
this country."
We call on your excellency to
act immediately to restore press freedom in Sri Lanka and
to rescind the harsh censorship restrictions imposed by
your government.
Yours
sincerely,
William A. Orme,
Jr.
Executive Director