Sri Lanka's main opposition calls upon government to ensure safety of nation's free press

Sri Lanka's main opposition United National Party (UNP) says that it has become customary for whispers and speculation of impending elections to be followed up by brutal onslaughts on what remains of the country's free press. Head of the UNP's Communications Unit, parliamentarian Mangala Samaraweera issuing a statement said that it is a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate the media into silence ahead of crucial polls about the crimes and lapses of a completely corrupt incumbency. "It is not surprising therefore that a dangerous trend is being set, commencing with twin attacks on the Uthayan newspaper publishing in the country's north in the space of less than a month and followed up with a threat against the Sirasa Media Network," he noted. The opposition lawmaker called upon the Government to ensure the safety of the premises, equipment and personnel of the Sirasa Media network and the Uthayan newspaper. "For too long the incumbent regime has left questions unanswered about repeated and debilitating attacks on this country's Fourth Estate. Scribe killers, white vans and armed groups terrorizing media institutions have roamed outside the ambit of the law for long enough. It is a travesty that as such crimes against the nation's free press go unpunished," Samaraweera said condemning "this culture of intimidation and suppression unreservedly." According to him, this consistent assault on independent media institutions is a gross infringement of the people's fundamental right to free expression and impedes their right to information. "I call upon all media institutions to shed their differences and stand together in the unequivocal condemnation of this latest threat against Sirasa and Uthayan in the knowledge that while today it might be their turn, the suppression will not end until each and every newspaper, radio station and television station is effectively silenced and subjugated," Samaraweera further said.