Sri Lanka much safer for journalists today

By Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne-2018-02-01


Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on the Pakistani authorities to do whatever is necessary to guarantee the safety of Taha Siddiqui, a well-known and courageous freelance journalist who narrowly escaped a kidnap attempt recently in the capital, Islamabad. Taha Siddiqui was on his way to the airport in the morning; a vehicle blocked the path of his taxi and forced it to stop. Ten or twelve gunmen got out of this and another vehicle, one pointed a rifle at the taxi driver and pulled out Siddiqui from the taxi.

They then threw him to the ground, beat him and threatened to shoot him if he continued to resist. Siddiqui nonetheless managed to get away by running across the expressway and flagging down another taxi in which he rode for a few kilometres and then sought refuge in a police station.

"This kidnap attempt is extremely worrying in a country where the lack of security for journalists and impunity for crimes of violence against them is a structural problem," said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF's Asia-Pacific desk. However, according to RSF calculations on safety of media people, Pakistan placed at 139, while Sri Lanka is below at 141. Sri Lanka is today much safer, but it was a bad place for journalist during the previous fascistic regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Perhaps the rating is still low as investigation and judicial processes are not yet completed for the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge and the disappearance of Pradeep Ekneligoda. On the other hand, though Siddiqui has been harassed and threatened for months as a courageous journalist whose investigative reporting, has implicated the military when appropriate. In Pakistan, criticizing the armed forces is very dangerous for journalists. It was similar during the Mahinda regime, but we have come out of such military violence at least in the South. Hence we must urge the RSF to reassess the situation in Sri Lanka.

It is the duty of all democratic organizations in Sri Lanka too, to urge the Pakistan authorities to make every effort to guarantee his safety. We are told that last May, Siddiqui received several threatening phone calls from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), an Interior Ministry offshoot, in which he was repeatedly ordered to report to the FIA's counter-terrorism department for questioning. However, Siddiqui avoided. This recent event shows that step was well-founded.

A very well-known reporter, Siddiqui is the Babel Press bureau chief in Islamabad, a position that includes being the correspondent of France 24 and World Is One News (WOIN). Unlike in Sri Lanka, the Army is a State within the State in Pakistan. It is often impossible for the media to cover a story properly without mentioning the military because of frequent cases of intimidation of journalists.

Pressure from the international human rights movement brought human rights and press freedom increasingly into the political agenda of numerous countries and diplomatic negotiations. All countries in the Indian subcontinent, in SAARC were also pressed to improve press freedom and humanrights conditions. Originally, most such pressures came from France and the UK. In the 1970s American organizations moved beyond rights for Americans to partake in the international scene, and around the turn of the century the movement became so global in character that it was no longer possible to ascribe leadership to any particular country. The global human rights and press freedom movement has become more expansive since the 1990s, including greater representation of women's rights and economic justice as part of the human rights umbrella. Economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights gained new prominence while press freedom became a cornerstone of such movements.