Censorship in Sri Lanka is threatening to overwhelm the media. Since 4 May, the owner of a television station has been intimidated, newspapers have been closed, programmes taken off the air and Internet sites cautioned.

With the spotlight of the world’s media focused on other international events such as Sierra Leone and the Ethiopian-Eritrean war, difficulties have intensified and the media in Sri Lanka appear to be under a state of siege.

The origins of the present crisis can be traced back to increased tensions caused by the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in the north of Sri Lanka.

In response to this mounting crisis, the Sri Lankan government enacted war powers under a Public Security Act. Invoked on 4 May, these powers placed swingeing restrictions on the media. As a consequence, the government has the power to ban live broadcasts of all television and radio programmes; ban newspapers and seize their means of production; as well as ban public meetings of more than five people, trade union action and criticism of the president and the government. All of these restrictions have been enacted in the name of national security and are equivalent to censorship existing under conditions of war.

As a result of these all-embracing restrictions, the government has censored every news story and, in recent days, has strengthened its grip on the media by closing down two media outlets and threatened the owner of a television station.

The first sign of the government’s willingness to exercise these draconian measures to their limits came on 11 May, when executives of the state-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) took the Sinhala and Tamil news programmes, produced by the BBC World Service, off the air. They were replaced by music programmes. On the same day, BBC and CNN reports on the war in Sri Lanka were blocked by the word “censored” on SLBC’s Channel One.

During the same week, the government exercised its power of arrest under the emergency laws by detaining five individuals for spreading rumours “in support of the LTTE”. These arrests provided further depressing evidence that the government was prepared to go to extreme lengths to control the spread of information.

On 15 May, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to the censorship of media reports on the war in the northern peninsula. According to the Special Media Information Centre, the court rejected a petition filed by non-governmental human rights organisations and affirmed the governments right to introduce the restrictions.

The attacks on freedom of expression culminated in the closing of two newspapers under the Public Security Act. On 21 May, the Uthayan, a Tamil language newspaper printed in Jaffna, was closed and on 22 May, the Sunday Leader was shut down after police raided its offices. A police presence remains in the office to prevent further publication. (Both of these organisations had sought to push the regulations to their limits in an attempt to preserve press freedom.) According to the Leader, ” [they] received one warning on account of a cartoon published, but no other [warning] prior to [the] press being sealed”.

Moreover, the electronic media is also under pressure to fall into line. Telshan Network Limited, a television station run by the brother of the Leader of the Opposition, Ramil Wickremasinghe, has been visited by the police and threatened with closure. Authorities were apparently unhappy about coverage of a bomb attack in the eastern town of Batticaloa. In a move against new media, owners of Internet sites were also warned that they are subject to the restrictions.

Another aspect of censorship of the media is the uneven manner in which the restrictions are being applied. Censors appear to be acting in an erratic and inconsistent manner and the same news passed by one censor is often rejected by another. Without proper guidelines, the media is having extreme difficulty in determining which articles are acceptable to the government and which are not.

In a reaction to the present situation, the European Union has urged the Sri Lankan government to lift restrictions on freedom of the press and civil liberties. A spokesmen for the EU stated, ” the EU regrets the restrictions …introduced by the government of Sri Lanka and calls on it to lift them as soon as possible”. Johann P. Fritz, Director of the International Press Institute, also called for the ban on the press to be removed immediately. Describing the censorship laws as “repressive in the extreme”, he went on to say, “Censorship is a destructive force in any society; no democracy can hope to flourish in a climate that fails to tolerate freedom of information.”