Basil Fernando

The British Broadcasting Commission humiliated the Sri Lankan government last week, showing pictures of how TV broadcasts are censored in Sri Lanka. BBC showed this every half-hour during a whole day. Other international broadcasting agencies extensively reported on the issue. Local and international human rights groups expressed concerned. The Foreign Minister himself expressed that censorship serves no purpose. However, a severe censorship continues still and is defended by some government ministers.

Meanwhile, a major humanitarian and human rights crisis continues in Jaffna Peninsula. A population of about 
500,000 is faced with problems of security and possible problems about food and medicine. Over 40,000 soldiers are trapped in the peninsula and may face serious threats to their lives.

In the South, people do not know what is going on. International callers to friends and families in Sri Lanka get requests for information. One student group sent out an email saying, 'we are staved of information about what is going on; kindly send us whatever information you have.'

Obviously the reason for censorship is not security. And obviously, the extent of the censorship exceeds all the limits recognized in the constitution and in the international human rights instruments to which Sri Lanka is a party.

Many have begun to blame the government for misinforming the people regarding the true nature of the war, particularly during the last four years. The government seems to be facing a major political crisis in the South, from an angry people who have begun to feel that they have been grossly misled. The purpose of the censorship seems to be to deprive these dissatisfied people of information that may increase their dissatisfaction against the government.

What seems to be pre-occupying the government (as well as opposition, which has more or less similar political positions to the government) is not so much what is happening in Jaffna peninsula and its consequences to the soldiers and ordinary civilians, but what might happen to them in near future. The war propaganda on which people were fed for decades now, seems to have lost its efficacy and the political establishment that lived on the basis of this propaganda is now depleted. Pleasing the southern electorate may not prove an easy task any more.

In such circumstances, all that the establishment (including the opposition) has is repression. The opposition makes sure that it will not challenge repression in any effective manner. It makes a few verbal protests and then quite clearly supports the repressive policies, including the censorship.

In these circumstances, the ordinary people have no way to get out of the situation. Dead bodies arrive from the front all the time and all sorts of rumors spread. The only thing that the people know for certain is that there is something radically wrong with their political system and that there is nothing that they can do about it.

A peace settlement in the North, if it can be arrived at now that there are many countries interested in the issue, will be a great boon to the South. It will provide them with a breathing space to think of the future. It will save them from war propaganda, which the two major parties have been able to hide behind and amass wealth for themselves, when the young people from both communities have been dying in the battlefield.

The censorship, directed only towards self interest of some political party, needs to be condemned. The right to information needs to be asserted as a basic right of the people; a right essential for their security. All peace initiatives need to be supported as the means to ending a meaningless and exacting war, which has more or less destroyed the basic democratic fabric of the entire country. To save the democracy of the South, peace in the North is a precondition. The sooner there is peace in the North, the happier the people of the South will be.