Lankan Supreme Court scraps press censorship

Lankan Supreme Court scraps press censorship
ASHWANI TALWAR

COLOMBO, JUNE 30: Media censorship in Sri Lanka came to an abrupt end today with the Supreme Court trashing the two-month long restrictions on war-related news as illegal.

In a ruling which thrilled the media fraternity, the Court ordered re-opening of The Sunday Leader, which was shuttered down for violating Emergency Regulations. The three-judge bench ordered that The Sunday Leader be paid Sri Lankan Rs one lakh (Indian Rs 60,000) as legal costs. The paper has said it would now sue for loss of revenue over the five weeks it remained shut.

While the Emergency Regulations remain, the Supreme Court ruling has meant that the censorship imposed under it is over.

Soon after the ruling, the government's Information Director Ariya Rubasinghe who was the `Competent Authority' to censor news, said he was now `refraining' from vetting any newspaper copy. A government proclamation -- presumably announcing the lifting of censorship -- was expected late tonight, officials said. The Court said the notification clamping censorship had to be ratified within seven days by the Parliament. The Government has not done it so far and told the court that it had assumed this was not necessary under Emergency Regulations.

The government clamped censorship on May 4 as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam advanced towards Jaffna town. Under censorship rules, any report on military matters or anything which could create communal trouble had to be submitted to the Competent Authority for clearance.

After a few weeks, Colombo-based foreign journalists were freed from the restrictions. But censorship continued on local papers. A Jaffna-based Tamil paper Uthayan was the first ordered closed. Action against The Sunday Leader followed when it published a tongue-in-cheek account of a war in `fantasyland.' It carried a banner headline saying, `Palaly not under attack.'

It was a `negative' story, in the true sense of the term. It said heavy fighting was not taking place in northern Jaffna and the military complex in Palaly was not being shelled by Tamil Tigers.

When its presses were ordered shut, Leader's sister publication in Sinhalese was also forced to stop publication. Though the censorship was condemned widely by media organisations, the Leader Group was the first to move court. The Opposition had called censorship an attempt to muzzle political criticism ahead of a General Election, rather than an attempt to safeguard information related to military operations.

Ironically, the humbling court verdict comes just when the Government was preparing the ground for lifting censorship ``on its own accord''. Only yesterday, it had put out a statement saying that it was considering relaxing Emergency Regulation provisions. And earlier this week, President Chandrika Kumaratunga had ordered slashing the tenure of the six-month ban on The Sunday Leader.

In some ways, the lifting of the censorship will not change things. Reporters still remain barred from travelling to the North, and the Sri Lankan press traditionally practices a considerable amount of `self-censorship' when dealing with reports from the North.

Meanwhile, ruling People's Alliance (PA) and Opposition United National Party (UNP) failed to conclude their talks on a devolution package today -- the `deadline' set by Kumaratunga.

But a joint statement reported agreement on several matters, including the appointment of judges of superior courts. The two delegations will meet again on June 7.