{"id":6570,"date":"2008-02-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/02\/02\/media-watch-says-sri-lankan-journalists-threatened\/"},"modified":"2008-02-02T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T12:00:00","slug":"media-watch-says-sri-lankan-journalists-threatened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/02\/02\/media-watch-says-sri-lankan-journalists-threatened\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Watch Says Sri Lankan Journalists Threatened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/newsinfo.inquirer.net\/breakingnews\/world\/view\/20080130-115789\/Sri-Lankan-journalists-threatened--media-watchdog\">newsinfo.inquirer.net<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, January 30, 2008: Violence, threats, intimidation and anti-media remarks by senior politicians are threatening the safety of journalists working in war-torn Sri Lanka, a media rights group said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The safety of journalists in Sri Lanka is in serious jeopardy as serious attacks and anti-media statements demonstrate a lack of respect for media freedom,&#8221; the International Federation of Journalists said. The Brussels-based group said that the authorities &#8212; locked in a bitter war with Tamil Tiger rebels &#8212; must initiate immediate and impartial investigations into attacks against journalists. A journalist, Suhaib Kasim, working for a state-run Tamil-language daily, was stabbed by unidentified assailants at his Colombo home on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka&#8217;s powerful defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse last weekend called for censorship and criminal defamation laws to prevent journalists from reporting on &#8220;negative military news&#8221; in the war on the rebels. He said he wanted the president to bring laws to mete out harsh punishment to offending reporters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The statement is an alarming reflection of the government&#8217;s growing and overt disregard for media freedom and the right of journalists to conduct their work freely,&#8221; the International Federation of Journalists said. <\/p>\n<p>Although there is no formal censorship imposed, Sri Lankan authorities prevent journalists from traveling to areas held by rebels, who are waging a separatist conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people since 1972. The conflict has escalated since the government withdrew from the cease-fire agreement last month.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>newsinfo.inquirer.net COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, January 30, 2008: Violence, threats, intimidation and anti-media remarks by senior politicians are threatening the safety,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}