The Associated Press (AP) bureau chief in Sri Lanka, who reported on civilian death tolls in the government’s recent final push against Tamil Tiger rebels, has been denied permission to stay in the country. Ravi Nessman’s expulsion is the latest in a series of incidents highlighting a government backlash against foreign correspondents who don’t toe the government line in their reporting. Sri Lanka already has a well-documented record of abuse directed at local Sri Lankan reporters.
Nessman also reported on a government document setting down a plan to keep hundreds of thousands of refugees in camps for up to three years.

The International Press Institute (IPI) is concerned at the treatment of both foreign and domestic media in Sri Lanka and at apparent efforts by the government to only tolerate reporting that casts it in a positive light.

“In deciding not to renew Nessman’s visa, the  Sri Lankan government is once again damaging its own reputation and reaffirming the fact that it has no interest in listening to critical voices, said IPI Director David Dadge. “While the conflict has come to an end, it remains vital that foreign and domestic media are allowed to question and criticize those events. If journalists are to be prevented from doing this, the Sri Lankan government will inevitably leave itself open to accusations that it is seeking to sanitize the recent past.”

An AP report on the expulsion quoted AP’s senior managing editor for international news, John Daniszewski, as saying:  “We find this failure to renew Ravi’s visa disturbing,”

Lucien Rajakarunanayake, director of international media in the office of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said the government had not forced Nessman out. He said it was standard for foreign correspondents to spend two years in Colombo.

Nessman’s predecessor as AP bureau chief in Sri Lanka, Dilip Ganguly, spent 10 years there, from 1997-2007.

Nessman received a one-year journalist visa when he arrived in Sri Lanka in July 2007, and it was renewed a year later. The government refused to renew it for a third time.

Nessman’s expulsion is made all the more suspicious by the fact that the Sri Lankan government has in the past threatened foreign correspondents with expulsion.

Earlier this year, according to an AP article posted on the International News Safety Institute (INSI) website, Sri Lanka warned Western diplomats, foreign journalists and aid groups that they would be “chased” out of the country if they appeared to side with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa singled out CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera in his criticism of foreigners, accusing them of being biased.

He also claimed that certain foreign media reports were damaging the security forces.

On 9 May, the Sri Lankan defence ministry ordered the arrest and expulsion of three journalists with Britain’s Channel 4 stating that they were tarnishing the image of the Sri Lankan army.

Channel 4’s Asian correspondent Nick Paton-Walsh, producer Bessie Du, and cameraman Matt Jasper were covering the conflict between Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers. In a 5 May report by the three journalists, Channel 4 News broadcast interviews with aid workers, who claimed there had been ill-treatment of Tamil civilians interned in a camp in the north of the country. The Sri Lankan government denied the allegations.

Sri Lanka’s record on its treatment of the domestic Sri Lankan media is even worse.

Sixteen journalists have been killed in Sri Lanka since 2004, according to the IPI Death Watch. 

Sri Lanka holds one of the world’s worst records when it comes to prosecuting killers of journalists – the results of the investigation into the 8 Jan murder of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge have not been released to the public by the government.

IPI’s Justice Denied Campaign has highlighted the problem of impunity by calling for justice for another slain news worker, Subramaniyam Sukirtharajan. The photojournalist was killed in 2006 soon after the Sudar Oli, the popular Tamil-language daily for which he worked, published his photographs of five murdered Tamil high school students. The photographer’s killers remain at large.

Earlier this month, IPI, along with eight other groups, wrote to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to ask him to redress the perilous media environment in the country.

The letter also pointed out that since 2007 security forces have been allegedly responsible for kidnapping, beating and threatening at least 30 journalists and media workers.

In addition, the letter drew attention to the plight of imprisoned journalist J.S. Tissainayagam and his colleagues B. Jasiharan and V. Vallarmathy, who have been detained since March 2008 under the country’s Emergency Regulations, and were later charged under the 2006 Prevention of Terrorism Act.