The recent deportation of the BBC Channel 4 news team from Sri Lanka highlights the Sri Lankan government’s marked duplicity towards independent media coverage of the humanitarian fallout of the war, leading media rights groups in Sri Lanka said yesterday.
The Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association; Federation of Media Employees Trade Union; Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum; Sri Lanka Tamil Journalists Alliance and the Free Media Movement said in a statement that last week a Channel 4 news team that reported conditions in a Wanni refugee camp were deported on charges of having discredited and defamed the Sri Lankan government and the army through their broadcast over Channel 4 in Britain and widely available on the YouTube on the web,Channel 4 news correspondents Nick-Paton-Walsh, producer Bessie Du and cameraman Man Jasper were arrested and told to get out of Sri Lanka on Saturday and left the country on Sunday.
“Our organization considers this action by the Government an affront to media freedom and one that ridicules their avowed commitment to giving free access to the media to assess and report independently on the humanitarian conditions close to the theatres of war,” the media groups said.
They said Channel 4 team had entered Sri Lanka legally and with proper credentials but their shocking coverage of conditions in a displaced people’s camp may have embarrassed and subsequently angered the Sri Lankan Government and Defence Ministry in particular.
The media groups said the coverage by the Channel 4 team was possible only by subterfuge, since independent local and international media was not allowed access to cover ground conditions in these refugee camps.
“There was no effort by the Sri Lankan government to engage with Channel 4’s coverage, aside from its usual blanket denials and tired accusations of such coverage being pro-LTTE. No effort was made to open up these areas for other media, domestic and international, to contest or confirm Channel 4’s coverage. We can only believe therefore that Channel 4’s coverage was accurate, providing insights into a reality the Sri Lankan Government finds inconvenient,” the rights groups said in their statement.
They said the lack of any constructive engagement with Channel 4’s revealing news productions and the action taken to deport these journalists from Sri Lankan very clearly indicates the intolerance of dissent and independent media by the Sri Lankan government.“We unequivocally condemn the deportation of Channel 4 news team. We have repeatedly called upon the Government to open up camps for independent scrutiny. In the light of the Channel 4 fiasco, our five organizations urgently demand that the Government meaningfully supports independent media in Sri Lanka. We do not believe peace can be achieved or sustained without media able to freely report in the public interest,” the statement said.
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