MEDIA-SRI LANKA: Press Clamours Against Government Curbs

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, May 7 1998 (IPS) - Sri Lanka’s independent media has for once set aside internal rivalries to sit together and demand their constitutional “right to freedom of expression” — eroded by years of civil strife here.

Media managers from the print and electronic media, editors and reporters, sat together for the first time last week, at a series of meetings in Colombo, to discuss the issue of press freedom and the social responsibility of a free media.

At the end of three days, they resolved to introduce a ‘code of ethics’ for journalists, that would spell out social commitments and convince managements into accepting that the media is not just a profitable business.

The recommendations, called the ‘Colombo Declaration’, will be presented to Sri Lanka’s Parliament which has appointed a parliamentary committee to study media reforms.

The Declaration has been approved by the Free Media Movement, the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka and the Newspaper (Publishers) Society of Sri Lanka while a fourth group, the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association said it would ratify the agreement after its executive committee endorsed it.

The meeting last week also recommended that the fundamental right to “freedom of expression” should be redefined on account of frequent spells of emergency imposed on the island nation.

For the past 15 years, Sri Lanka has been wracked by civil war. Tamil separatist rebels are fighting for a separate homeland in the island’s north and east for the country’s minority Tamil community.

The abrogation of civil rights under emergency rule imposed by a besieged government has meant that the war zones are out of bounds for the media and all information from the battle field is filtered through military spokesmen in Colombo.

At the Colombo meeting, reporters and editors pleaded for a “freedom of information act to ensure transparency and open government.”

Other recommendations stated in the Declaration call for the legislation of a new “press committee act” that would articulate the freedom and responsibilities of the print media and also repeal laws relating to criminal defamation.

Censorship rules, they said, should be made within the framework of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Also there was need for a new law that would protect journalists’ sources of information.

Yet another demand made was for the repeal of the controversial 6th amendment of the Constitution — which deals with secession and according to the media, impinges directly on the freedom of expression right.

Sri Lanka’s press is at present more free than it was under the previous government. The United National Party (UNP), that ruled Sri Lanka for close to 17 uninterrupted years kept the press on a tight leash.

Those who were critical of ruling party policies were assaulted and even killed. Richard de Soysa, the Inter Press Service