Behind closed doors

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 June 1998, 23:59 GMT]
On 5 June 1998, the Sri Lankan President once again imposed censorship on foreign and local media barring them from reporting 'sensitive military information'. The PA promised to introduce legal and institutional reforms to strengthen the freedom of expression when it came to power in 1994. According to ARTICLE 19, the international censorship watchdog that has studied press freedom in Sri Lanka in detail, none of these reforms have been implemented. The following report is based on their research.

Under previous Sri Lankan governments, a culture of self- censorship had become prevalent within government institutions and the wider society, due to systematic official censorship. In its election promises, the PA stressed freedom of expression as one of its fundamental objectives.

However, according to ARTICLE 19, under the PA government, harassment of the press has actually increased. Newspaper offices have been raided and editors charged over reporting on the President. Reporters have been intimidated, detained and deported. Access to the war zones and areas not under government control has been denied to the press.

Meanwhile, humanitarian organisations (such as the ICRC) have been publicly attacked by the government for revealing details of civilian casualties and conditions in areas the media do not have access to. NGOs also came under physical attack by other parties after (perhaps because of) such government condemnation.

These attacks have followed a consistent pattern, generally being carried out after the organisation concerned has issued a public statement on a subject or in a manner that the government objects to. The attacks have led to concerns that the freedom of association and expression which such organisations need in order to carry out their work is being increasingly threatened.

However, the greatest threat to freedom of expression in Sri Lanka, according to ARTICLE 19, is censorship - imposed under emergency regulations - to restrict reporting on Sri Lankan military activity, which together with the military's refusal to allow journalists to travel both to the zones of actual conflict, and to areas which remain under LTTE control and where many of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the fighting currently reside.

In December 1996, when the Sri Lankan Media Minister was asked in an interview whether censorship did not conflict with the PA's election manifesto, he was reported as saying "forget about the manifesto.", reported the Weekend Express newspaper. He went on to say "Media freedom is one thing. But when it comes to national interest, the latter takes precedence, and should be given priority."

The Sri Lankan President was widely reported in mid 1996 as saying that "certain newspapers may have to be closed down on the advice of the military". The freedom of the press, she reportedly said, was "for some newspapers·the freedom of the wild ass".

During the last period of total military censorship in September - December 1995, the Secretary to the Media Ministry, Edmond Jayasinghe, was appointed as the Competent Authority for Censorship, and was responsible for approving or censoring news and comment prior to publication. (By contrast, the current censorship rules are even tighter, with the Sri Lankan military taking direct responsibility for this role).

Soon after it was imposed, Sri Lankan newspapers complained that the censorship was being applied in an arbitrary manner and that text was being cut on issues which clearly fell outside the scope of the regulations. Even text discussing the operation of the censorship itself was sometimes cut - despite the fact that this subject was not contained within the regulations.

At one point, Mr. Jayasinghe apologised for the "errors of judgements of his staff" when complaints about the operation of the censorship were brought to his attention, and said these were being addressed. However, arbitrary censorship and the deletion of text which contained no clear threat to national security or which fell outside the remit of the regulations, continued well after that date.

The censors cut material which they deemed unsuitable out of news reports. In many cases, they even altered the reports to the point of being misleading. Information that was particularly susceptible to this included Sri Lankan military and LTTE casualty figures, civilian casualties figures and circumstances they were incurred in, numbers of civilians displaced by military action and conditions they were living in, etc.

It is clear that the censors cut arbitrarily and inconsistently. A report banned one day was sometimes passed with minor changes the following day. Reports cut from newspapers sometimes appeared on the radio. Matters of general public knowledge (such as the distance between Colombo and Jaffna or the name of the army commander) were sometimes cut. Under the latest censorship regulations introduced by the government, the competent authority decided to even delete sections of speech made by the President that appeared in a newspaper last weekend.

The censors cut text on subjects which fell well outside those specified in the already broadly phrased regulations. Some of the cuts appeared trivial, but some had very serious human rights or humanitarian implications and others contained no obvious threat to national security.

Some cuts appeared to be intended to restrict information reaching the Sri Lankan public about important public issues or criticism of government policy.

Apart from concealment of information, there were also instances where information was deliberately altered by the censors. In 1995 for example,in one of many reports on the SLA's Operation Riviresa - based on officially announced figures - army casualties of 450 killed and 1500 wounded were cut to 250 killed and 600 wounded!

With regards to the current censorship, some observers point out that the government wants to hide the difficulties the army is facing in the Vanni in view of the provincial council elections in August. The PA leadership is worried that reports in the press about the heavy losses sustained by the year long Operation. Jayasikurui in recent weeks could be exploited by the main opposition party, the UNP, to discredit the war effort, a cornerstone of the government policy.

Others say that the army, which has been hit in recent years by manpower shortages, is worried that reports in the press of soldiers getting slaughtered and wounded in large numbers in the ongoing Vanni operations could further compound the crisis in recruitment and hit morale.

They argue that the current censorship regulations are a reflection of the deepening military crisis faced by the Sri Lankan government.

When first imposed, the censorship regulations applied to both local and international news reporting on Sri Lanka. However, it soon became clear that subjecting the international media to censorship regulations was impractical for two important reasons: not all news on military matters originated within the country (e.g. the LTTE issues its press releases from its London offices); and foreign correspondents could, in any case, have their copy filed from another country.

In 1995 the government lifted censorship on foreign media reports within a few days of imposing the regulations. In practice, this did little to improve things: the military maintained its ban on all journalists - both local and foreign - from travelling into the main conflict zones. It thus remained impossible for even the international press - who were freed from formal censorship - to report openly and fully about events in the war zones.

Thus, most news reporting depended upon statements put out by government or military spokespersons on the one hand, and - in the case of the international media - statements by the LTTE on the other. A few foreign journalists were also able to publish interviews with displaced people from the north who made their way to Vavuniya, which was as far north as journalists were permitted to travel, though this was not always easy.

Foreign journalists complained of major obstacles placed in their way by the Sri Lankan armed forces. The military only permits access to 'cleared' areas (i.e. areas under its control). This is supposedly on 'security' grounds, though this was not based on any known official regulation.

Some journalists experienced other obstructions: an Indian TV crew was detained, a British TV crew were deported, video tapes (of interviews with the LTTE) were seized from an Associated Press correspondent, 4 Danish journalists were held for days and then abruptly deported. Several Indian correspondents who entered LTTE held areas had their rooms searched and were interrogated by the military.

Paul Watson of the Toronto Star said of the situation: " There's no end to what Sri Lanka's military will do to stop the outside world from knowing what's really going on here. It's a lesson in what happens to a fragile democracy when war breaks out - the generals feel their power and civil rights are the first to die. Lying to journalists is just part for the course."

Overall, the Sri Lankan government and military have been successful in denying reporters access to the warfront. Many of those who witnessed and suffered the repercussions of Sri Lanka's censorship regulations have told Article 19 that seasoned journalists have not experienced official and unofficial censorship to this degree in other countries at war.

Most ominously, references to the impact of war on civilians were cut by the censors, and access was denied to the vast majority of the displaced who had suffered the effects of the conflict. Even where there was access, such as in Vavuniya town, reporters were not always free to conduct their interviews without impediment.

For example, one foreign journalist told ARTICLE 19 that he was ordered off the premises by police when he tried to interview some Roman Catholic nuns who had recently arrived in Vavuniya, while at the same place, interviewers from the state-owned radio, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation , were heard asking the displaced people to answer their questions in a manner aimed obviously at boosting the government's propaganda campaign.

Humanitarian organisations which sought to report violations of humanitarian and human rights law by the Sri Lankan military came under strong public attack from the government. This was sometimes followed by direct physical attacks and threats by other parties against these organisations. There is no indication that these attacks were directly orchestrated by the government. However, it does appear that some elements in society may interpret the government's statements as signalling official encouragement or license for other forms of attack.

When censoring civilian casualties, the censors took particular care to ensure that the numbers of civilian casualties in specific battles were removed. ARTICLE 19 says that this insidious censorship, which clearly had nothing to do with protecting national security, again exemplified the government's intention of ensuring that only its own version of the conflict (i.e. that it was a 'clean' war) was available.

The local media was censored for much longer than the foreign media in 1995. In 1996, the local media were censored from 19 April to 8 October. During this period, the SLA suffered its greatest debacle at when its Mullaitivu base was overrun, an SLA operation on Kilinochchi displaced over 200,000 civilians and destroyed the town, and the LTTE took control of much of the island's vast eastern province. Reporting of all these were heavily censored.

Apart from affecting the printed media, the imposition of censorship had a drastic impact on the broadcasting of television news bulletins on Sri Lanka which originated from other countries. TV stations simply operated a policy of blanket censorship of news on Sri Lanka for fear of unwittingly falling foul of the censors.

According to the Free Media Movement , this practice "thus ... deprived [the Sri Lankan public] of valuable information regarding foreign perspectives of events and developments in this country and developments abroad of relevance to this country.".

The Free Media Movement also said that the lifting of censorship on the foreign media alone undermined the original justifications for imposing censorship (if the objective was to prevent the LTTE, which has several international offices, from accessing the censored data), and that it also discriminated against the Sri Lankan public, who were "deprived of information ... while the rest of the world is kept informed. This is a serious violation of the [Sri Lankan public's] basic right to information."'

Overall, the censorship isolated the wider Sri Lankan public, (i.e. those with little access to international news resources) and severely restricted access to information on issues of vital public interest.

As informed public opinion is considered a highly effective instrument for preventing various violations of international human rights standards, ARTICLE 19 says that any restrictions that affect the free flow of information during war-time cannot be such as to block efforts to monitor compliance with, and publicize violations of, humanitarian law obligations.

In the long term, if the government fails to implement the human rights (including freedom of expression) reforms it has promised for the benefit of all Sri Lankans, in all parts of the country, the prospects of reaching an enduring peace settlement may become even more remote, says ARTICLE 19.

As Paul Scott Mowrer, a one-time war correspondent, put it, "the final political decisions rest with the people. And the people, so that they may make up their minds , must be given the facts, even in time of war, or perhaps especially in times of war...."