The media organizations have written to the IGP C.D. Wickramaratne requesting him to immediately stop pressuring journalists for provide their personal information and to create the free environment for them to carry out their activities freely and independently. According to the media organization, journalists have been called to police stations for informal inquiries and are being questioned about their media activities and information coverage.
The Media Organizations Collective says that the most recent incident was that the Secretary of the Batticaloa Journalists’ Association, Selvakumar Nilanthan, was summoned to the CTC in Batticaloa for questioning for nearly three hours, where he was pressured to provide his email address and Facebook passwords, WhatsApp number and even his bank account number. It is not strange that after obtaining the personal communication passwords of the journalists, his or her communication confidentiality can be revoked and anyone else can make any changes or insertions. This letter points out Batticaloa journalist Punyamoorthy Sasidharan had also been summoned to the police station for questioning on several previous occasions. It is not legal to pressurize a journalist to divulge his or her highly personal information if any investigation is conducted into a complaint or other incident.
Hence, it is requested that immediate action be taken on these incidents to prevent such obstacles faced by journalists and to create a suitable environment for them to carry out their media activities freely and independently. This letter has been sent to the IGP with the signatures of the Secretary of the Federation of Media Workers’ Trade Unions Dharmasiri Lankapeli, Convener of the Free Media Movement, Media Collective Sita Ranjani, President of the Sri Lanka Professional Journalists ‘Association Duminda Sampath, President of the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum NM Amin, Secretary of the Tamil Media Forum Kanapathipillai Sarvananda, Secretary of the Sri Lanka Young Journalists’ Association Indunil Usgoda Arachchi.
-Shani-