Attacks on journalists: RSF appeals to MR

Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) yesterday appealed to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to rein in government ministers whose inflammatory comments and incitements to violence have seriously threatened the safety of many Sri Lankan journalists.

“Mr. President, it is not yet too late to restrain those of your close associates and political allies who sow trouble and fear among journalists,” the press freedom organisation said in a release. “The violent behaviour of men employed by some of your ministers, is bringing the government into disrepute, a situation that will be hard to redress, if nothing is done.”

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, said in an interview with the Sunday Lankadeepa on January 27: “Journalists should not be allowed to write on military matters. Strong action ought to be taken against those who do. We should return to the laws that criminalise defamation, in order to punish those who try to murder us.” He also criticised the Wijeya and Maharajah private press groups.

”Thugs working for Labour Minister Mervyn Silva, who is well known for his racist comments about Tamils and of his diatribes against journalists, were probably responsible for the stabbing of Lal Hemantha Mawalage, a journalist of State owned Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), on January 25,” the RSF alleged in their statement. Two men on a motorcycle, armed with knives, ambushed and attacked Mawalage, as he was returning home on the outskirts of Colombo. He and his son managed to hide in a forest, until police came. He was hospitalised with stab wounds to the hands and body.

Mawalage told several journalists that he had received death threats in the weeks that followed the violence at SLRC headquarters on December 27, when Silva allegedly ordered his men to beat up the channel’s News Director T.M.G. Chandrasekara. Terrified of the possibility of further reprisals, Chandrasekara recently asked to be relieved of his post.

After that incident, RSF contacted presidential aides to express concern about the threats to SLRC journalists.

On January 7, Social Welfare Minister Douglas Devananda, who is also the head of the pro-governmental EPDP militia, accused journalists working for Minnal, a Tamil programme on Shakthi TV, of orchestrating an interview with a Tamil opposition parliamentarian, at the behest of the Tamil Tigers. In the interview, conducted a few days before the parliamentarian was murdered in Colombo, the parliamentarian told the station he was being threatened by the EPDP.

Devananda called on the police to investigate the programme’s journalists, especially Sri Ranga Jeyaratnam. Following his comments, demonstrations were held in various parts of the country to defend Minnal, which is one of the few remaining Tamil programmes to cover politics in an independent manner.

Devananda’s thugs are also suspected of being responsible for the threatening phone call made on January 6, to the Jaffna-based daily Uthayan. The call came from Kayts, an island controlled by the EPDP. Uthayan editors told RSF that they feared for the safety of their employees.

Another journalist, a former senior member of the editorial staff of the Tamil-language daily Thinakaran, Suhaib Cassim, was stabbed by unidentified assailants, at his Colombo home yesterday. The motive of the attack is not known.

Meanwhile, the Free Media Movement (FMM) urged the police to conduct an urgent and open investigation into the stabbing of Cassim and apprehend the attackers.

“We hope that, unlike in the case of Hemantha Mawalage, the journalist from the State owned television station Rupavahini, who was stabbed earlier in the week, the Police don’t just arrest arbitrary characters and produce them in court,” the FMM said.