JOURNALISM is a risky business in Sri Lanka. At the height of fighting between Tamil rebels and Indian troops deployed in the island’s north-east, and a more vicious battle between Sri Lankan forces and Marxist Sinhalese militants elsewhere in the island, I personally had reason to fear that a death squad was after me in the capital Colombo. More than 23 years later, both wars have ended, but an undeclared war against the media has continued. Decades of inter-ethnic war and two rebellions since 1971 by mainly Sinhalese youth have ensured that the media has to contend with many deadly adversaries, and not just the state security apparatus. Nearly 20 journalists as well as employees of media organisations have been killed and many more wounded, intimidated or forced to seek refuge abroad.

The priorities in Sri Lanka shifted rapidly when the Indian Peace Keeping Force troops withdrew in March 1990. A ceasefire between the Tamil Tigers and President Premadasa was short-lived and fresh fighting erupted by June. The government was pre-occupied with renewed fighting in the island’s north-east as well as terror attacks elsewhere. The Sinhalese militants had been crushed, but dissension was growing within the government. The then President Premadasa took over the media in a manner that had never been seen in the country. Knowing that viewers tended to switch channels when state television carried lengthy reports on him, the president ordered that even private news networks must simultaneously carry the state media news reports so that television audiences could not escape him. The crisis came to a head when President Premadasa faced an impeachment motion put forward by two of his senior ministers. But towards the end of 1991, the impeachment was dropped and a badly bruised Premadasa attempted cosmetic changes.

The mainstream media was so subdued that there was hardly any critical debate in the local media. President Premadasa refused to meet foreign journalists, but his senior aides put up a valiant effort to defend him. Premadasa was eventually assassinated in what is widely believed to have been a suicide bombing. When Premadasa’s assassination was formally announced in parliament, I was surprised to see the reaction of ruling party legislators. The Sri Lankan culture is such that you do not speak ill of the dead, nor do you rejoice in the death of even an enemy, but as leftist legislator Vasudeva Nanayakkara told me at the time, Premadasa’s death was an exception. He was seen as an autocratic ruler.

Premadasa’s tight grip on the mainstream media had spawned a crop of clandestine underground news sheets. He was succeeded by his political lightweight Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga, who introduced reforms which meant these news outlets were in danger of going out of business. But the relatively free era under Wijetunga was short-lived. His successor as president was Chandrika Kumaratunga, whose campaign had been supported by media activists keen on a freedom of information act, though in power she proved a disappointment. Her honeymoon with the media ended very early into her tenure. Under President Kumaratunga, the state security unit came to be known and dreaded as a hit squad for which journalists were often the targets. Kumaratunga’s personal bodyguard was held responsible for an organised attack on press photographers who were covering an opposition protest in Colombo and was fined by the Supreme Court. Her successor, President Mahinda Rajapakse, came to power promising more media freedom and sweeping reforms, but the escalating fighting between security forces and Tamil rebels meant a bleak period for the press. It was clear that the administration would not tolerate any criticism of its military strategy or tactics.

In June 2008, the defence ministry fired its first salvo against journalists critical of its war against Tamil rebels, labelling them “cowboy defence analysts” and “enemies of the state”. In two commentaries published on its website, the ministry also railed against what it said was “crap” being written about the battle against the Tamil Tigers. The ministry presented reporters with a stark choice of being either pro-government or pro-terrorist. It said some writers were damaging morale and warned that the ministry “does not wish to entertain mere doomsayers who always try to undermine the soldiers’ commitment”. It also warned it would take “all necessary measures to stop this journalistic treachery against the country”. “Those who commit such treachery should identify themselves with the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam]rather than showing themselves as crusaders of media freedom”, the ministry said on its website.

At the end of June 2008, a journalist was attacked and his car smashed as he travelled home after work. Seven months later, in January 2009, the high profile anti-establishment editor Lasantha Wickrematunge was killed as he drove to work.

Uptil then, the government was in the habit of referring to Wickrematunge as living proof of press freedom. His death became a symbol for the suppression of free expression in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse himself expressed outrage at the killing of Wickrematunge. The president argued that the assassination was aimed at marring the military gains the security forces had been making against Tamil Tiger rebels in the north of the island. But the country’s opposition and media activists remained unimpressed.

In a recent editorial, the slain editor himself had seen it coming. Wickrematunge said reporters and private media institutions were being targeted partly because of the ineffectiveness of the country’s main opposition. “More and more, even as the opposition has fallen mute, independent media institutions have taken on the job of the opposition, serving as a mirror of public opinion”, he said in a commentary. “That is why more journalists have been attacked more in recent years than have opposition politicians”, Wickrematunge said in the Sunday Leader.

Wickrematunge had been editing the paper since founding it in 1994. The Sunday Leader did not support the government’s war effort against Tamil rebels to the same wholehearted extent as the state media. An ethnic Sinhalese, the editor had been openly sceptical of military claims. His colleague Manik de Silva, chief editor of the privately run Sunday Island, noted that Wickrematunge was undoubtedly friendly with the president at one time but had at other times been on the receiving end of angry presidential criticism on the phone. “It would be unfair to blame the killing on Rajapakse”, said de Silva. “But there are various persons in the government with their own agendas and whether any such were party to the killing remains to be seen.” If the government had no complicity, it was a good opportunity to carry out a thorough investigation and expose the killers and clear its name. That is yet to happen. Six months before Wickrematunge’s assassination, the Sri Lanka College of Journalism had asked me to conduct a brainstorming session on journalists’ safety at work: how to avoid getting beaten up, or worse. By that time, 12 journalists and media workers had been killed in Sri Lanka since 2005.

The above is an excerpt taken from the chapter ‘Journalism on the Front Line’ by Amal Jayasinghe

Excerpted with permission from Embattled Media: Democracy, Governance and Reform in Sri Lanka

Edited by William Crawley, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, UK; David Page, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, UK; and Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena,legal analyst on civil liberties and author.

SAGE Publications, India

ISBN 978-9351500629

416pp.