17 February 2012
Journalists in Sri Lanka began a campaign on January 25 in memory of colleagues who fell in the quarter-century long civil war in the island nation. This day of protest united all Sri Lanka’s principal professional journalism bodies and was planned as a reminder to those in power that the vital task of national reconciliation requires more than token gestures.
The campaign was also aimed at dispelling the climate of impunity for attacks on the media which was a feature of the years of ethnic strife, and at allowing a free voice for human rights defenders who stand up for a fair and just society.
Government spokespersons began to mobilise their own campaign of hostile rhetoric soon after the alliance of professional bodies announced plans for the January 25 observance.
IFJ sources in Sri Lanka report that in the second week of January the government-owned TV channel launched an attack, bristling with unseemly aggression, against the Free Media Movement (FMM), a voluntary body which some of Sri Lanka’s finest journalists have been associated with for close to two decades. While playing old footage of these journalists and activists from past campaigns, the TV channel ran a commentary on its main news programmes, attacking them in virulent terms.
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