Free Press Issues in Sri Lanka

I noted in my last entry that both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have grievances to repay as well as sins committed. Most of the world decries the LTTE as a terrorist organization- the “bad guy” in this situation, and while I cannot disagree, I must also point out that the government is no saving grace either. While skimming the news recently I have come across several articles on the Sri Lankan government’s oppression of free press in Sri Lanka.

In one New York Times article about wounded civilians near Trincomalee (in the northeastern part of the country), the reporter mentioned not only the numbers of civilians killed and wounded, but also the rarity of a reporter making it to the conflict zone. He said that:

“The Sri Lankan government has barred reporters and most foreigners from the
conflict zone, so the accounts of the injured here in government-controlled
territory provided a rare glimpse into the predicament of at least 100,000
civilians trapped behind the front lines.”

From the way that the rest of the article described the scene in the conflict zone, it is no wonder that the government doesn’t want the world to see it. According to the author, there were 368 patients (including children, nuns, and the elderly) being treated at the hospital he visited (for wounds inflicted by both the LTTE and the government, by the way), and another 160 set to arrive in a few days. A doctor reported that most of the wounds were infected and that humanitarian aid was having a difficult time finding the patients who needed it.

That is, for those who can still use humanitarian aid- many civilians are killed as they try to escape the conflict zone. One elderly nun was reported as saying that “at least 10 to 15 people die a day, and no one is there to bury them.”

Because of the situation and the intensity of the war, the army has tried to block access to refugees in camps and the wounded in hospitals. The New York Times reporter was in fact only reluctantly allowed into the hospital.

For me, the issue here is separate from the arbitrary killing that is going on (as terribly tragic as that is). The issue here is that the government doesn’t want anyone to know what is going on. This tells me that they are doing something wrong- and they know it. It tells me that the LTTE’s accusations have at least some basis in truth, and that the government IS responsible for some of the killings, accidental or otherwise. They thought that they could keep it a secret, and maybe they could have 20 years ago. But in this day and age, everyone knows everything about everyone. Secrets are hard to keep, especially one of this magnitude. In trying to keep theirs, however, the Sri Lankan government is denying basic human rights to their people and probably making the world more suspicious in the long run than it would otherwise be.

In fact, the oppression has gotten so bad that extrajudicial killings have been resorted to. In a very personal article in TIME magazine, journalist Jyoti Thottam writes about the late Lasantha Wickrematunge, a Sri Lankan contrarian journalist. Wickrematunge disagreed openly with the government through his paper, the Sunday Leader, for the past 14 years. He criticized government officials and politicians of every party with “cheeky” editorials and exposés alleging corruption and other shady dealings. What’s more, he was openly critical of a government which demanded absolute loyalty and conformity of thought form its people. According to Thottam, Wickrematunge was completely against the ideology expressed in 2006 by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa:

"You decide whether you should be with a handful of terrorists or with the
common man ... You must clearly choose between these two sides."

This viewpoint has prompted the government to make the war zone “all but off-limits to the media,” a fact which Wickrematunge vehemently opposed. For his views, Wickrematunge was killed while driving to work on January 8. Of course, there is no clear evidence pointing to who is responsible.

In his last editorial, Wickrematunge noted prophetically:

"Much of the media has been bought, or cajoled and bullied into silence. Dozens
of journalists are dead and others have been incarcerated without trial for
months…. Who then survives to provide the public with a contrarian view?"

Unfortunately, it seems to me that Wickrematunge was right in saying that those reporters providing a “contrarian view” are fewer and fewer. It also seems to me that the government, as well as the rebels, is growing more desperate as the war reaches its end (or perhaps just its climax). They have reached a new level of desperation indeed when they are resorting to simply murdering their opponents (while it cannot be proven that the government is responsible for Wickrematunge’s or other journalists’ murders, all signs do seem to point that way). I just hope that the war ends before they feel much more pressure to keep the media silent.

Even though the Sri Lankan government is trying to keep the rest of the world from finding out about their restrictions on the press, the rest of the world can’t be fooled for long. Earlier this month, the BBC reported that it would suspend its broadcasts on FM radio through the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) after receiving news that many of its reports in English, Tamil, and Sinhala had been disrupted or only partially broadcast. Oftentimes, the current events portion of the report was not broadcast, and although the BBC spoke directly to the SLBC Chairman, Hudson Samarasinghe, their broadcasts allegedly continued to be disrupted.

In a statement, Samarasinghe told the BBC that because of “terrorist attacks” on Sri Lanka, his organization had a duty to “restore peace and harmony” in the country. He also said that “some foreign news centers created fabricated news items about Sri Lanka,” including the BBC. He further accused the BBC of trying to broadcast the voice of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on rebel “heroes day” this past November, and said that the SLBC is not allowed to broadcast Prabhakaran’s voice.

The BBC plans to keep up its AM transmissions in Sri Lanka in English, Tamil, and Sinhala, as well as its web component.

In this dispute, I side with the BBC. For one thing, the BBC has a record of good journalism, and all official forces in Sri Lanka (the government, the rebels, the media, etc.) have records of (accusations of) bad journalism. Combined with other reports of the government’s oppression of the free press, it is not surprising that officials wouldn’t want even their own people to know what’s going on in the country.

In all, this whole situation is an unfortunate mess. I for one never think in a war like this about the cost of individual freedoms, such as speech and the press, which we in America take for granted. It seems unimaginable for a journalist to be killed for simply telling the truth, or for current events just not to be broadcast. It is ridiculous that the Sri Lankan government is so ashamed of what they’re doing and so worried about it getting out that they have resorted to these measures. Even if they defeat the LTTE and Sri Lanka is at peace, there may be another war in store to get rid of this government, or at least elect a more liberal leader.



P.S. After having finished this blog entry, I found another blog which perhaps sums up the free press issues in Sri Lanka better than I did. The author- who as a part of the Pulitzer Center is in Sri Lanka now- knows more about the situation, so he puts it in context better and emphasizes its direness. So... click here. The September 5, 2008 entry really speaks to what I wrote about.