11 Jul 13 | Asia and Pacific
In an interview with the UK’s Press Gazette this month, Lal Wickrematunge, brother of murdered Sri Lankan newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, lamented the self-censorship of his country’s press, and warned that UK hacks should fight for their own freedom of speech as an example to others, saying “Those who are in safer climates must keep the drum beating because these are the standards that other journalists in troubled areas look to.” Padraig Reidy writes
The Sri Lankan regime is not noted for its commitment to media freedom, with Reporters Without Borders declaring the president and his brother, the defence minister “predators of the press” in May 2013.
Wickrematunge’s comments echoed the response of the The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka to Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals for press regulation. In a statement in response to Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations, the island’s editors said:
“The almost draconian legislature contemplated in the United Kingdom would serve oppressive governments around the world, and especially in the Commonwealth with a convenient example to maintain tight controls over an independent media.
“In the future, any statements from the British Government on the freedom of the press would sound hollow in the face of such legislation.”
They were not wrong. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa wasted little time in drafting a code of media ethics designed to stifle country’s already under siege press. Draft guidelines were released in June.
In very best Leveson language, the authorities stressed that the restrictions aimed “to ensure that the Electronic and Print media and Websites in Sri Lanka are free and responsible and sensitive to the needs and expectations of the receivers of the message it sends out whilst maintaining the highest standards of journalism, and to uphold the best traditions of investigative journalism in the public interest, unfettered by distorting commercialism or by improper pressure or by narrow self-interests which are against the bare norms of media freedom.”
The code then went on to ban everything, from information that could damage the foreign relations, to stories containing “details of a person’s family life, financial information, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability and one’s home or family and individuals in hospitals unless it has a direct relevance to the public interest.”
There is some confusion about the status of this new code. Sri Lanka’s media minister Keheliya Rambukwella, has said that the code is not about to made a law, but in the same breath suggested that it was to be introduced because of the absence of a criminal defamation law. President Rajapaksa meanwhile, suggested that editors write their own code, adapted from the government’s.
Despite this, it’s clear that the government is firing warning shots at the newpapers’ bows to remind them of their limits.
Sri Lankan journalists are looking ahead to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Colombo in November. While British Channel 4 News and Australian ABC journalists will be wondering if they will even allowed into the country, after the president took umbrage at their coverage of his brutal final push in the civil war with the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lankans will be wondering if, post-Leveson, David Cameron will be able to look the likes of Rajapakse in the eye and talk about press freedom.
09 Jul 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Sri Lankan defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa reportedly verbally abused Sunday Leader editor Frederica Jansz during a telephone interview last week. Jansz had asked the minister if he was aware that an aircraft scheduled to fly to Zurich was to be changed to accommodate a personal friend. During the conversation Rajapaksa told Jansz people “will kill you — you dirty fucking shit journalist”, and threatened to sue the newspaper if they ran the story. The Sunday Leader won the Index/Guardian Freedom of Expression award for journalism in 2009.
23 Mar 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Sri Lankan journalists have been dubbed “traitors” by state television, following the adoption of a UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into the country’s alleged abuses of international humanitarian law during its war with Tamil separatists. After the passing of the motion on Wednesday, state television said journalists in support of it were helping the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels and “betraying the motherland.” The broadcaster added that, although the journalists who took part in Council sessions were not named, Sri Lankan state television “repeatedly zooms in on thinly disguised photographs of them, promising to give their names soon and ‘expose more traitors.'”
10 Feb 12 | Asia and Pacific
“I believe a journalist can change the world,” says exiled Sri Lankan journalist Sonali Samarasinghe, “if not why are we here then”. Sonali is one of three exiled journalists, from the minority Tamil and majority Sinhalese communities, whose stories are told in a new Norwegian film, Silenced Voices, by Beate Arnestad previewed last night at the Fritt Ord Foundation in Oslo.
All three paid an enormous price for that faith in the power of a journalist. Sonali is the widow of murdered Sinhalese journalist Lasantha Wickrametunga, who is famous for having penned his own obituary just before he was killed in January 2009 at the height of his country’s civil war. She’s shown in the film, alone in a tiny bedsit in New York, starting a news website, persevering in her profession, trying to interview a top army general over allegations of war crimes who’s now posted to the Sri Lankan mission to the UN. The scenes of the man dodging and fobbing her off will be familiar to any reporter, but this is very personal to Sonali since she still wants answers about who killed her husband in broad daylight in the capital. They’d only just got married and she could easily have been sitting next to him when he was killed.
Bashana is a Sinhalese journalist living in Germany, responsible for exposing war crimes committed by Sri Lankan soldiers from his own majority community. His organisation, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, obtained the horrific video broadcast by Channel 4 of naked, bound prisoners being executed by men wearing Sri Lankan army uniforms. While waiting for his asylum application to be processed, Bashana and his wife lose their home and are shown rolling out sleeping bags on the floor of a human rights office where they’re allowed to sleep at night. Some of the saddest scenes in the one hour film are of Bashana’s wife, Sharmila, who pours all her feelings of loneliness and sadness into beautiful but desolate photographs of frozen ice and empty winter landscapes. She says how much she just wants to go home.
Bashana’s extraordinary friendship with a Tamil journalist who worked for the pro-rebel news site, Tamilnet, is central to the film. They didn’t meet in Sri Lanka, but from exile Bashana helped Lokeesan apply for scholarships abroad, translating all the necessary documents. There are tense scenes when the film maker, Beate Arnestad, visits Lokeesan in southern India only to find out that Indian intelligence are watching her and she may have put Lokeesan at risk. He quickly goes into hiding elsewhere and she takes the next flight out. Months later Lokeesan escapes and finally meets the Sinhalese man who had helped him. Lokeesan told me he had never spoken to a Sinhalese civilian all his life, because he’d grown up in rebel territory in northern Sri Lanka and the only Sinhalese around were staring down the barrel of a gun at him.
Lokeesan and Bashana sit together in exile watching appalling footage that Lokeesan shot from inside the war zone in 2009, as hundreds of thousands of civilians were shelled and bombed by the advancing army. A young woman’s dead body is sprawled on the ground and by her side a little girl howls, asking why she’s left them all alone to wander the world as orphans.
As Silenced Voices plays out in public for the first time to a packed house in Oslo, Lokeesan cannot control himself as he watches the footage he took of dead bodies and government shell attacks. He’s inconsolable, sobbing with his face hidden in a checked handkerchief, unable to relive the tragedy he saw repeated again and again as a reporter in those dreadful months of war. Quietly Bashana, who’s also teary eyed, puts a hand on his leg in a quiet restrained gesture of human comfort that doesn’t intrude or interrupt the grief spilling out, three years later. Across the ethnic divide, they’ve stretched out the hand of friendship. It’s an example to the Sri Lankans in the audience some of whom come and thank the journalists for their sacrifices.
Silenced Voices is a very powerful film that tells the story of the invisible misery of scores of journalists forced into exile for just thinking they could change the world.
Frances Harrison’s book about the civil war in Sri Lanka Still Counting the Dead will be published by Portobello Books in the summer
