Media groups in Sri Lanka yesterday accused the government of detaining a senior editor and shutting down his newspaper because the publication backed the losing opposition candidate in elections.
Press owners, editors and rights organizations issued a joint statement saying the closure of the pro-opposition Lanka weekly and the detention of Chandana Sirimalwatte was a “fatal blow to media freedom and democracy.”
“Promises made during the presidential campaign to defend press freedom and speed up the investigations into assassinations of journalists have evaporated within days,” the group said.
“The repression against journalists and media that does not obey government orders and express dissenting voices has now culminated in acts unleashed against the Lanka newspaper,” it said.
Sri Lankan authorities have not said why the paper was forced to close and its editor taken into custody.
However, the government, under criticism from international rights groups, yesterday withdrew an expulsion order against Swiss reporter Karin Wenger, who covered the island’s fiercely fought presidential election last week.
A government spokesman said that “wrong information” had led to Wenger, of Swiss Public Radio, being ordered to leave the country.
The department of information had accused her of damaging the image of Sri Lanka with “defamatory” reports.
A government minister also criticized Wenger for grilling the authorities on allegations of irregularities in Tuesday’s vote, which was comfortably won by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
International rights organizations accused the government of harassing independent journalists who it believed sided with defeated opposition candidate, former general Sarath Fonseka.
Meanwhile, Fonseka on Saturday vowed protests against what he said was his stolen victory and accused the government of removing his personal security as part of an “indirect assassination attempt.”
Fonseka lost the election by more than 1.8 million votes, in a poll that observers generally praised as well run despite a violent campaign period in which five people were killed.
“The [public] has the right to protest and they will do that. Protests are already coming,” Fonseka told reporters on Saturday. “I have become a political threat to them as I am the people’s president. People elected me and they robbed it from me.”
He said his security detail had been reduced to four police officers from 90 soldiers. On Friday, police commandoes raided Fonseka’s office and arrested 15 former military officers working for him.
“They are trying an indirect assassination attempt on me, trying to make me vulnerable,” he said.
The government has said Fonseka is now an ordinary retired army officer and not entitled to special treatment.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees
RSS