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Rajapakse government bans Lanka News Web in Sri Lanka |
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2009-07-13 | 11.45 AM |
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The Sri Lankan government has banned Lanka News Web in Sri Lanka from yesterday (11) night in complete violation of the people’s right to information. |
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Lanka News Web viewers in Sri Lanka feel that the closest reason for the banning could be a story carried on the website at about 7 p.m. on the 11th. The story in question was carried under the title “A shower of stones for Namal from the IDPs in Menik Farm.”
Although this story could be considered as the closet reason for the banning of the news website, the real reason has to be look at more deeply.
The government has taken steps to silence media institutions and journalists who are not under government control to be engaged in news reporting in a manner that suits the Rajapakse government. As a result, some private media institutions have gone a step beyond and are now acting in favour of the government even more than the state media institutions. Some other media institutions have stopped being critical of the government. A few websites have even stopped operating.
Our website that was being operated outside the country due to these conditions in the country has now become a victim to the state media suppression. The first indication of the suppression being unleashed against website was first revealed by another media organization.
Our website was closed down for two days by the authorities after they got officials of the Lankadeepa newspaper to lodge a complaint against us.
Due to the government’s failure to close down the website even after that, we kept receiving information of various actions taken by the government in the past few days to shut down the website.
However, since our website was being operated from outside the country, the threat brought upon us was minimal.
The government finally decided to ban our website in Sri Lanka from the 11th.
The first website to be banded in Sri Lanka was Tamil Net.
This incident proves yet again the Rajapakse government’s violation of the people right to information.
Although our website has been banned in Sri Lanka, viewers could access the site by going through http://www.proxybrowsing.com/.
It is now time the government came out of the misconception that banning the website would prevent the news from flowing to the people. |
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