The Sri Lankan government has imposed censorship on all war related news, allowing journalists to report only information from official government sources. Recently, the team spoke with Sunandra Deshapriya, a leader of the Free Media Movement and editor of the weekly publication YUKTHIYA, about the effects of censorship on the media community and the country.

PBI: We spoke with you a few months ago, in June, I think, and at that time you seemed fairly satisfied with the government's program. The major concern was that the government media were limiting dialogue and losing credibility. How have things changed since then?

Sunandra Deshapriya: I think things have changed a little bit to the bad side. Now government media is completely dominated by government propaganda. They don't give any space to the opposition news or any dissenting voice. Even people like us are not given time in the government controlled electronic media or any of the government newspapers.... They try to suppress or silence or at least ignore the dissent. And we all know that there is this censorship as well.... What they are censoring is civilian casualties. That is really the worst part of it, a tragedy, actually.... They said they want to silence anti-Tamil or Sinhalese extreme nationalist viewpoints. But that is not happening. You see, [LTTE] attacks on Sinhalese civilians have been published with photographs and everything, but you never see a Tamil civilian killed in a photograph in a Sinhala newspaper.... In that sense I would say the government has gone back on their promise to support the media and oppose censorship.

PBI: Has there been any organized protest against the censorship?

SD: The Free Media Movement issued several statements, and we raised this issue. When we tried to lobby the ministers and things like that, we had the impression that they would remove [the censorship] after two to three weeks, but that did not happen.... It is disappointing that only the Free Media Movement tried to organize some kind of protest and issued statements and put up advertisements. Even some private television stations had refused to carry the advertisements. There might be some other reasons, but I suppose that as soon as censorship is there, this fear psychosis starts to come back and you don't want to risk yourself. The newspapers and journalist community has not really taken this challenge to fight it and show the people that there is censorship in writing.... If you look at private radio stations and government TV news, there is not one item they say is censored.... I don't know if it was censored or not, but people do not see that there is censorship. If you look at [most] newspapers, you do not see any empty space saying censored.... It is not enough action from the media community to really fight the censorship, because other things have taken over: bombs, the present Jaffna, the killing of civilians.... Censorship is not really an issue. If you want to make it an issue, then really you... should try to get the article censored [rather than removing controversial content to avoid censorship].

PBI: Have you had any of your stories censored?

SD: Yes, we sent a story about this bombing of the church and killing civilians. They censored it, but we wrote it. We wrote it in a feature, not as a news item. After that issue, we did not [self-] censor any of our news reports or feature articles, we have been writing as usual. But not everybody is doing this. There is a risk involved, but we decided to take the risk. [So far,] we have not been summoned, we have not been warned about this, nothing has happened. We also consulted lawyers [about going to court], but they said that there is no strong case. According to this government gazette, we do not have to show our things to the censor. Because it is really... a very vague legal piece. We can write whatever we want. If we write something wrong, they can... advise us not to publish it again. In the gazette notification, there is no rule saying that we have to show everything to the authorities. That was our legal opinion. [The lawyers] said that we should write whatever we want, and if the government wants to take us to court, then we should fight the battle.

PBI: You explained earlier that you've been silenced by the government media. Do you find opportunities to speak in the private media?

SD: Private media. Of course, now and then, they invite us for discussion.... [But before,] we had only the experience of fighting the government for media freedom. [Now,] very strong private electronic media stations are there, ... and we really have to fight them also because they sensationalize sometimes too much. When the Kollonawa oil tanks attack took place, they sensationalized it without giving any consideration to human suffering and the consequences. They just want to sell the news... They just wanted to say, 'this is happening, this is happening.' Not only that, we know that incidents took place and [the private media] really censored the other voice. Private stations tend to criticize the government, they are anti-government.... So if we have a kind of pro-government, or not even pro-government, if we have a critical view towards everybody like this, you get little space.... In Sri Lanka, the movement for media freedom, we have to fight both private and government media in the coming future.

PBI: And in what way?

SD: There is no strong media journalists community here fighting for editorial independence.... There is no editorial independence in the private electronic media, and they are still very young. The journalist community is also very young and there are no links, no trade unions, nothing like that.... Journalists have to organize themselves for their editorial freedom, not only from the government, but also from the owners themselves.

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