"Clearly, the 1973 law is designed to protect governmental privileges, rather than serve any public purpose..."

Sri Lanka: The Press Council Law Expands

The Sri Lankan government earlier this week approved the amendment of its controversial Press Council Law, which regulated paper media outlets, to include electronic and ‘new’ media - i.e. social media, blogs, etc - in its purview. In addition to the amendment to the law - known in full as the Sri Lanka Press Council Law (No. 5 of 1973) (with ‘Act’ and ‘Law’ being used interchangeably in official and media reports ) - a National Development Media Centre is to be set up, that will “function under the Mass Media Ministry to convey accurate information on Government policies and development efforts to the public.”

According to a January 6th statement by the Ministry of Mass Media (and published on the ministry’s website),

The Sri Lanka Press Council has been set up to prevent any prejudice to the public through press coverage and to establish a cordial relationship between journalists and the public. The provisions are restricted to newspapers only. It has been identified that the Press Council should be reformed to cover electronic, print and new media as a tribunal for journalists and media institutions and as a centre that promotes media education,

In a report on the decision by the government to approve a proposal for “the appointment of a committee to study the amendment the Sri Lanka Press Council Act”, Mass Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said that “The freedom of citizens must be protected along with media freedom” and that the government would not take “unilateral decisions” in regards to Sri Lanka’s media outlets. The move to increase the regulatory spread of the Press Council and the Press Council Law - which was brought back in 2015 after being scrapped earlier in the decade - and by extension the government of Sri Lanka, however, has journalists, activists, people in the arts and others worried about growing control and worsening of the right to freedom of expression.

Established in 1973 as an act of Parliament, the Sri Lanka Press Council and the Press Council Law have long been condemned by journalists and activists in and covering Sri Lanka, arguing that they “allowed the authorities to impose severe sanctions, including imprisonment, on journalists”, with the International Federation of Journalists then-General Secretary Aidan White remarking in 2015 that

Clearly, the 1973 law is designed to protect governmental privileges, rather than serve any public purpose, such as the right of the people of Sri Lanka to be informed about the processes under which they are governed.

Decades of press and activist freedom violations, including violence and in some cases murder (though predominantly by non-state and para-state actors) over the course of the country’s decades long civil war (1983-2009), in tandem with the PCL, have created an atmosphere of distrust and self-censorship, alleviated slightly with the aforementioned scrapping of the PCL, before the latter was then resurrected along with the Press Council in 2015. Sri Lanka currently ranks at 127 out of 180 countries according to Reporters Sans Frontiéres’s World Press Freedom Index.

Prior to the November 2019 election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa - who previously served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence in his brother (Mahinda Rajapaksa)’s cabinet, and which led to a worsening of journalist and activist intimidation - there had already been reports of people being arrested for social media posts over the past year.

Shakthika Sathkumara, an award-winning poet and author, was arrested in April 2019 (and then released in August of the same year) for sharing one of his short stories, Ardha, on Facebook, that reportedly violated Articles 291 B of the country’s Penal Code and Article 3(1) of its ICCPR Act, in its reported allusion to same-sex relationships between Buddhist monks. According to PEN America, the organisation for global freedom of expression and literature,

Article 291 B of the Sri Lankan Penal Code states that ‘[w]hoever with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of persons, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both,’ while Article 3(1) Sri Lanka’s ICCPR Act (2007) states that ‘no person shall propagate war or advocate national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence’ and makes any such crime a non-bailable offense which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Although he has since released, Sathkumara is currently waiting to find out if he will be formally charged and convicted on the aforementioned charges; if he is found guilty, he will be imprisoned for ten years. A hearing on his alleged violations had been planned for July of 2020, but has since been delayed until March 2021.

Ramzy Razeek, a journalist, was also imprisoned in April 2020 until September of the same year for a Facebook post over allegations that he had violated Sri Lanka’s cyber crimes legislation and ICCPR Act. According to Freedom House’s Freedom on The Net 2020 report, which gave Sri Lanka 52/100,

it is believed that the post that led to his arrest discussed discrimination and hateful content against the Muslim community and called for an ideological struggle using “the pen and keyboard as weapons.” Before his arrest, Razeek had reported online death threats due to the post and had announced that he would no longer post about politics or national issues out of concern for his children’s safety.

The country report by Freedom House also highlights people being charged, imprisoned or visited by police after questioning the government online, or even after “pretending to bribe a cardboard cutout of a traffic police officer.”**

Cases such as these, some of which have attracted international attention, have led to people being sceptical about the sincerity and intentions of the Sri Lankan government. In a December 2020 interview, Mass Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, when asked about social media and and the mainstream media said,

First and foremost, let me assure you that we have no plan to impose any censorship on social media. But we need to register social media pages and sites that provide information to the public.

There is this discourse of freedom of expression and other elements. It is a challenge to strike a balance. Anyone is entitled to freedom of expression. At the same time, we all must be mindful that all of us citizens have the right to claim freedom of conscience. Any libel or defamation in the name of freedom of expression must be therefore condemned. That is where we try to strike a balance. It is a challenge.

The minister is correct in that a balance must be struck. “libel or defamation in the name of freedom of expression must be therefore condemned”, however, is a fishy and broad line, one that can lay the groundwork for charges that, as we’ve seen above, have more to do with censoring anything that embarrasses the authorities than any threats to social harmony.

It is inevitable that electronic and ‘new’ media will be the subject of government oversight and regulation, especially as the former have been shown to have significantly greater reach and influence than traditional media or media types - one has only to look at Brexit in the UK, or what’s happened in the United States since the 2010s. What is vital, however, is that the government of Sri Lanka, as anywhere, take onboard the voices of activists, journalists and ordinary citizens, as well the input of independent self-regulatory bodies such as the Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka (PCCSL), set up by the Sri Lanka Press Institute (“established by the Newspaper Society of Sri Lanka, The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka, the Free Media Movement, and the Sri Lanka Working Journalist Association”), to ensure there is truly freedom of expression for citizens of Sri Lanka, without fear of intimidation.

Pakistan: Death sentences, prison for alleged “blasphemy” charges

This past Friday saw an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Pakistan hand out death sentences to three people for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad* on social media, and a 10 year jail sentence to a college professor for a “blasphemous” in-class lecture, according to Al Jazeera. The ruling on the charges, which had been filed in 2017, mark, as Digital Rights Monitor points out in their own report, “the first case of blasphemy on social media in Islamabad wherein sentences have been handed down to the accused.” It is likely that the defendants will appeal the sentences, and will be able to do so.

The reports by Al Jazeera and Digital Rights Monitor are both vague as to what the “blasphemous” material in each case may have been, though this is unsurprising - aside from the nebulous and subjective definition as to what actually constitutes blasphemy, there is also the very legitimate worry of inflaming tensions and causing mass riots etc, as witnessed in the wake of the infamous Jyllands-Posten Muhammad caricatures and the framing of a young Christian girl by a Muslim cleric of burning pages of the Quran, that led to her and her family seeking refuge overseas, but to name a few. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Interior Minister in the previous Nawaz Sharif government, had in 2017 said that Pakistan would ask for the extradition of anyone found to have to committed blasphemy online overseas (again, very broad, nebulous and subjective).

Even prior to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act being enacted in 2016 - and which itself gives powers to the government to block “blasphemous” material online - the Pakistani university lecturer Junaid Hafeez was accused of making blasphemous comments on Facebook in 2013 (it’s likely that being a moderate liberal he was targetted by the student wing of the powerful far right Islamic fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami political party). In 2014, his lawyer, Rahid Rahman, was gunned down in his office, and in December 2019 Hafeez was given the death sentence, where he currently sits.

With spaces for dissent and liberal discourse rapidly shrinking offline and now online in Pakistan, rulings and sentences such as the ones this past Friday highlight the dangerous situation that Pakistanis find themselves in.

* According to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, being found guilty of allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad carries the death penalty and a fine.