Media Freedom Still a Distant Dream in Sri Lankaøs North and East
From OneWorld.net’s Yahoo Service
Champika Liyanaarachchi in Columbo
While last week saw the launch of the first regional Tamil daily in Sri Lanka`s war-torn Eastern province, press freedom in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ruled North and East still remains a mirage.
Predictably, with the LTTE still ruling most of the areas in these two provinces with an iron fist, ten out of the 11 Tamil papers published here are strongly supportive of the rebels.Comments Dr K Vigneswaran, the former Secretary of the Northern and Eastern provincialcouncil, "There are one or two papers which are promoting the LTTE because they believe in it. But the majority are doing it out of fear, aware
that their survival will be threatened if they publish anything against the rebels."
Enthuses the editor of the new daily called Thamil Alai (Tamil wave), S.Venugopal,
" Marketing the paper will be a big challenge because people here have not cultivated the habit of reading a Tamil newspaper daily."
The paper`s launch in this region, coming as it does after a decade, marks a media milestone. It promises to publish information on events in the rest of Sri Lanka, of course confining itself primarily to Tamil issues. Says Venugopal, "Those in the districts war-torn areas were long kept in the dark about what exactly is happening in the rest of the country."
While time will tell how the pro-LTTE paper fares, the only anti-LTTE paper in this region, called Thinamurasu (Daily Drum Beat), is the target of constant rebel harassment. Although the paper is supposed to be a daily, low circulation has ensured it remains a weekly.
Selling just 30,000 copies, the paper often reports human rights violations including abductions and murders by the rebels. It supports the LTTE`s key rival Tamil group - the Eelam Democratic People`s Party (EPDP).
Comments the convener of the progressive media rights organization Free Media Movement (FMM), Sunanda Deshapriya, "Pro-LTTE papers boast a higher circulation than those which oppose it. Except for a paper like Thinamurasu, which is backed by a political party, no one would dare stick their necks out for fear of their life."
Take a recent example. Last month, the rebels burnt 5000 copies of Thinamurasu while it was being transported to the Eastern town of Batticoloa. On August 7, a group of 50 LTTE rebels stopped the bus carrying copies of the paper, and set them afire. Following the incident, the paper`s management sent a letter of complaint to the Nordic foreign monitoring team overseeing the peace process.
Media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres also urged the LTTE to put an end to harassment against the media, in a strongly worded letter to LTTE political wing leader, S.P. Thamilselvan.
Two months earlier, LTTE leader in Sri Lanka`s Northern Mannar district
issued death threats to the paper`s local correspondents. In April 2002, the paper`s main distributor in the Eastern province terminated his contract after receiving death threats. The following month the LTTE banned the distribution of the paper in the entire province.
It was only after the interference of ceasefire monitors that the paper`s management could resume sales in the East, which are now one-third of the pre-ban figure.
Surprisingly, the paper`s doughty editor T. Baskaran remains unfazed, remarking that, "Exposing LTTE human rights violations comes with a big price. But that will not deter us from our mission. We will never become immune to harassment, instead regarding it as a challenge." He adds that, "It is quite a challenge to report independently on human rights issues."
Unlike him, there are a slew of other papers that voluntarily support the LTTE. Says editor of Jaffna-based regional newspaper Uthayan (Rising Sun), N. Vithyatharan, "Ours is a paper which faced problems from both government troops as well as the LTTE. In September 90 our office was bombed by the Air Force, killing the circulation manager and maiming two others."
Uthayan, the Northern regional Tamil daily with the largest circulation,sells 10,000 copies. Curiously, at the time of the bombing, Vithyatharan had alreadyreceived court summons to appear in a LTTE regional court the next day. The reason? The failure to give a a pro-LTTE twist to a particular story.
The bombing helped him escape LTTE punishment, but took the life of his circulation manager and destroyed his printing machines. Declares a chastened Vithyatharan, "We support the LTTE because we believe only the rebels can successfully bargain with the Sri Lankan government and get them to accord equal treatment to both the Tamils and the Sinhalese."
All the other regional papers in the North are equally loyal to the LTTE, including Thamil Alai in the East. Apart from these, the rebels publish their own paper Eelanadam (Eelam voice) mainly for distribution in the LTTE stronghold Wanni, in the Northern province. It prints 2400 copies.
The most die hard propagator of the LTTE, Thinakkural (Daily voice) boasts a circulation of about 50,000. One of the most sophisticated publications, Thinakkural publishes a lot of local and foreign news gleaned from websites as well. The paper is run by a private Colombo-based company.
Dedicated to the promotion of the Tamil cause, the TamilNet website spotlights human rights issues, though with a strong LTTE bias. Its detractors allege that it doesn’t publicize rights violations by the LTTE.
Remarks editor, D.Sivaram, "We focus on issues pertaining to ordinary Tamils and violations of their rights. No one can dispute the fact that the LTTE has fought to win the rights of Tamils and has been publicly accepted as their sole representative. So invariably they get their share of publicity."
Sivaram was himself attacked by a group of thugs in December 2002 after being branded an LTTE spy by a certain section of the media. He had to get six stitches in his head.
Comments Baskaran in rather pessimistic vein, "Media freedom in the North and the East will remain a distant dream as long as the LTTE In a scathing critique of the prevailing scenario, he adds that, "But when even political dissent is crushed here, with the government passively watching a string of political murders, how can one expect media freedom ?"