President Mahinda Rajapaksa
President of Sri Lanka,
Minister of Defense, Public Security, Law and Order
Presidential Secretariat
Colombo 1
Sri Lanka
June 13, 2008
Via facsimile: +94 11 2430 590
Dear President Rajapaksa:
The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed
by your government’s policies toward journalists
who write critically about the conflict between
Sri Lanka’s military forces and Tamil
secessionists. We have seen an increase in
harassment, intimidation, and detention of
reporters, many of whom are columnists in senior
positions with well-established careers. Police
have failed to investigate threats to journalists
who cover elections or expose alleged corruption
or misdeeds. They have also never investigated
the death of a television journalist.
Those who wish to harass, harm, or even kill
journalists can operate with relative impunity in
Sri Lanka. Your government, particularly the
Ministry of Defense, has done nothing, even as
violence escalates in many parts of the country.
Based on our research, we have concluded that
your government is stifling news reporting that
it finds inconvenient precisely because those
reports attempt to accurately reflect the ebb and
flow of such a war. Suppressing journalists will
neither alter the course of the conflict nor
generate more public support for it.
Of particular concern is the fact that the
Defense Ministry has repeatedly used its Web site
to denounce and even condemn journalists, often
individually by name and at other times as a
group, for their reporting on the conflict and
the activities of the ministry and the armed
forces. In recent weeks it has accused eight
media outlets of traitorous behavior-an
incredibly strong term to use during a time of
such intense conflict, and one clearly meant to
intimidate, given that no charges have been
brought against any of the organizations. The
eight named on the ministry’s Web site were
Sirasa TV, The Sunday Leader, The Morning Leader,
Irudina (the Sinhala-language Sunday weekly of
The Sunday Leader group), the Daily Mirror, The
Sunday Times, and the Web sites Lanka Dissent
and Lanka e-news.
The ministry’s May 31 posting was exceptionally
chilling. It clearly implies that anyone
reporting negative news about the military or the
ministry’s activities is guilty of treachery or
worse:
"Whoever attempts to reduce the public support to
the military by making false allegations and
directing baseless criticism at armed forces
personnel is supporting the terrorist
organization that continuously murder citizens of
Sri Lanka. The Ministry will continue to expose
these traitors and their sinister motives and
does not consider such exposure as a threat to
media freedom. Those who commit such treachery
should identify themselves with the LTTE rather
than showing themselves as crusaders of Media
Freedom."
Our concerns grew deeper after a front-page story
ran in the June 3 issue of the Daily Mirror. The
story quoted Defense spokesman Keheliya
Rambukwella, who said the views expressed on the
Web site were the ministry’s own and did not
reflect the view of the government. Certainly,
your government ministries answer to you, and
their official statements reflect your
government’s policies. Mr. Rambukwella’s
statement is even more disconcerting given that
Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is your
brother. And as minister of Defense, Public
Security, Law and Order, you must also bear
responsibility for such statements.
Beyond these overt attacks from the Defense
Ministry, there are many recent incidents that
have caused such great concern for us:
* After 90 days in detention, senior journalist
J.S. Tissainayagam was detained for another three
months without charges, on June 6. Mr.
Tissainayagam writes political opinion,
particularly on matters relating to the Tamil
ethnic minority, for the mainstream Sunday Times
and ran a Web site, Outreach, which your
government has claimed is maintained "with the
financial backing of the LTTE"-the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam. He has been held since
March 7 by the Terrorist Investigation Division
under the Emergency Regulations of 2005. To date
he has not been charged with a crime. Several Sri
Lankan media reports say he is being held in
solitary confinement.
* The killing of popular Sirasa Television
reporter Paranirupasingam Devakumar has gone
unexplained. Mr. Devakumar was gunned down in the
Jaffna peninsula in the Northern Province on May
15, 2008, in an area that is under military
control. The unprosecuted and, as far as we can
determine, apparently uninvestigated death of one
of the few independent reporters still working in
that area of conflict has left a bitter scar not
only in the journalists’ community but in Sri
Lanka as a whole.
* The overnight abduction on May 22-23 and
vicious beating of Keith Noyahr, a deputy editor
at the English-language weekly The Nation,
remains largely uninvestigated, according to
several of our Sri Lankan colleagues. We have not
been able to communicate with Mr. Noyahr since
the incident, but suspect that he was so severely
abused because of his writing on military
matters. Our colleagues in Sri Lanka tell us they
fear he was attacked because of a piece he wrote
on irregularities in national awards in the army.
* We are also greatly concerned by the ongoing
threats directed toward Iqbal Athas, the
consultant editor/defense correspondent of The
Sunday Times, who has stopped writing his weekly
defense column as a result. He has told CPJ that
a pro-government radio station has-on an almost
daily basis-broadcast slanderous and vituperative
statements against him, in addition to attacks on
the Defense Ministry’s Web site. Mr. Athas is the
1994 winner of CPJ’s International Press Freedom
Award, and has been a longtime CPJ associate. For
such a widely respected figure to cease his work
in journalism because of threats is a travesty.
The personal security detail provided to Mr.
Athas by the government was withdrawn last
August. He tells us he continues to be followed
by people unknown to him, and is greatly
concerned that on June 3, on both the state-run
Rupavahini national television network and the
state-owned Independent Television Network,
Defense Secretary Rajapaksa singled out Mr. Athas
by name for his reporting for The Sunday Times.
* Also of concern to CPJ are the attacks on
Muslim journalists covering elections in the
Eastern province, as far as we have been able to
determine, have gone uninvestigated by local
police. According to Sri Lankan media reports,
the most recent attack came on June 5 against
M.A.C. Jalees, who was assaulted by supporters of
the ruling political party who took away his
camera. Journalists T.L.M. Joufer Khan, M.S.M.
Noordeen, and Moulavi S.M.M. Musthapha, were
either threatened or assaulted in the same area.
President Rajapaksa, we recognize that your
government is involved in an ongoing conflict
with Tamil secessionists. But the security of the
nation will not be enhanced by policies that
curtail one of the most basic rights guaranteed
in Article 14 of Sri Lanka’s Constitution-the
right to freedom of expression. We call on you to
reverse the direction in which your government
has turned, and restore to journalists throughout
the country the right to freely report without
fear or intimidation.
We eagerly await your reply.
Sincerely,
Joel Simon
Executive Director