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Email to FriendSRI LANKA: Bishop denounces attacks on media
"The current unabated wave of violence against media personnel must be a serious concern to all citizens of the country," said Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera of Colombo in a July 7 statement. "Intimidation against the media is a violation of the rights of the people to information," said the statement.
The week before, on July 2, scores of media workers took part in a protest march to the residence of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse demanding an end to killings, abductions and assaults of journalists in the Indian Ocean island that is embroiled in a protracted civil war between government forces and Tamil rebels.
On June 30, a British embassy political officer, Mahendra Ratnaweera, and an independent defense writer, Namal Perera, were attacked while they were driving together on a busy Colombo street.
Prior to that, journalists said J.S. Tissainayagam, a well-known columnist, had been held in custody without charge since March by the government's anti-terror squad. In addition, they said, Keith Noyahr, a defense reporter for the Nation newspaper, was abducted in May and beaten up before he was released, apparently after he had written on controversial military activities.
Some journalists have fled Sri Lanka and several senior journalists are said to have stopped writing on sensitive military operations against Tamil rebels after the defense ministry was reported to have labeled journalists writing on reports seen as critical of the military action against the Tamil rebels as, "enemies of the State."
According to the Free Media Movement, 12 media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka since August 2005, with 11 of them dying in government-controlled areas. Nobody has been brought to justice in connection with these deaths.
"The inability of the authorities to investigate the several acts of violence and prosecute the perpetrators cannot simply be attributed to incompetence or the absence of evidence," said Chickera. He noted that "a very sophisticated intelligence system prevails in the country."
Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council to which Roman Catholic and Protestant churches belong, said, "Nearly all reports in the media today are indicative of military success with little [information] about the costs." Perera, a Catholic, noted, "This is partly on account of the voice of dissent in the media being virtually silenced in the face of repeated assaults and threats of violence."
The government says it has killed more than 8,000 rebels from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebel group as against the loss of 1,000 its forces in the renewed fighting since Rajapakse won the presidential election with the support of Sinhala nationalist groups in 2005.
However, some independent observers have questioned the government figures, as thousands of Tamil civilians are reported to be among those perishing on a daily basis in Vanni, said to be the last bastion held by the Tamil Tigers, which has been pounded by government forces.
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