MEDIA-SRI LANKA: Right to Information Clipped By Gag on Officials

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 10 2000 (IPS) - A running feud between the Chandrika Kumaratunga government and Sri Lanka’s independent media has again intensified, after authorities last week reminded public officials that they are barred from speaking to the press.

The Information Department said the Cabinet has decided to strictly enforce sections of the Establishments Code, which permits only a Secretary (top bureaucrat in a ministry) or a head of department to provide information to the press.

“The information in all cases should be confined to facts and statistics and on no account should any expression of opinion be proffered,” it said. It noted that facts or statistics embarrassing to the government should not be revealed.

The regulations, which political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda calls an “archaic and outdated piece of legislation”, was inherited from colonial British rulers, and have been in force for many years but government officials have used their own discretion while speaking to the media.

While no explanation was given for its sudden enforcement, official sources said it was because of rising concern that police and military officers were speaking freely in the media.

“There have been various interviews given to newspapers by senior police officers attacking other colleagues and also army officers in the field complaining of shortcomings,” the source, who naturally did not want to be identified, told IPS.

Media watchdogs described the latest move by government to restrict public information as “blanket censorship.” Sunanda Deshapriya, secretary of the Free Media Movement (FMM), said the government move has put the country on reverse gear.

“This censorship will affect, especially officials in the north and the east. They will be barred from spotlighting shortcomings in the administration. Even school authorities won’t be able to say they don’t have facilities,” he told IPS.

Sri Lanka’s north and east are torn by a civil war raging since 1983. The fighting between Tamil ‘Tiger’ rebels and government troops has claimed more than 75,000 lives, and displaced millions of people, destroying their homes and villages.

While some journalists in the state-run media defended the decision saying they were old regulations that were being enforced, others pointed out that by silencing the officials, the government has snapped the media’s access to public information.

A journalist who attended a Health Ministry press meet on the outbreak of measles in the country, later called one of the officials present at the meeting to clarify some figures, only to be told that his lips were sealed by the Establishment Code.

“It is sad that the government is resorting to such strong measures,” Uyangoda, a political scientist at the University of Colombo, was quoted in the ‘Sunday Times’, Feb. 6.

Tyronne Fernando, a former information minister and opposition United National Party (UNP) parliamentarian, said the government’s action suggests it has something to hide.

“The world trend is on (giving) citizens right to information whereas in Sri Lanka public servants are being gagged. Public servants are not the private slaves of ministers. They should be subject only to the Official Secrets Act,” he said.

President Kumaratunga’s government, re-elected to power last December, has frequently clashed with the independent media owners, ever since newspapers first began exposing corruption in the government in mid-1995.

Attacks on Kumaratunga’s lifestyle in newspaper columns have angered the president, who has filed at least four criminal defamation suits. In 1997, the ‘Sunday Times’ editor Sinha Ratnatunga was found guilty of criminal defamation and sentenced to a two-year jail term. The appeal is being heard.

Journalists say the government has also failed to implement its 1994 election manifesto promises to free the media from shackles like the Public Security Ordinance, Press Council Law, Official Secrets Act, Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Act and criminal defamation laws.

“After a near five-year long administration, all these laudable intentions announced in the manifesto remain dead letters. Not a single promise has been implemented. All the obnoxious laws remain on the statute,” ‘The Island’ newspapers said in an editorial, Sep. 17.

Laws relating to “criminal defamation have been revived and journalists are being prosecuted under this archaic law,” noted the newspaper.

A government censorship on war news has been in force since mid-1998 while efforts earlier last year by the government to enforce the Official Secrets Act to prevent publication of sensitive Cabinet news failed only because of media opposition.

Rohan Edrisinha, a constitutional expert at the University of Colombo’s Law Faculty, said “the government was talking of a Freedom of Information Act but now seeks to gag the public servant violating the freedom of speech and expression.”

Several journalists have been attacked or threatened with death. On Sep. 7 last year, Rohana Kumara, editor of a tabloid Sinhala weekly critical of the government, was assassinated. His assailants are still at large.