Dispelling the ghost of impunity

SRI LANKA moved down two places in the 2015 Global Impunity Index issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in a report published on 8 October. 

Last year, Sri Lanka ranked fourth in the world with a rating of 0.443 while this year the situation has improved marginally with a rating of 0.242, bringing Sri Lanka to the sixth spot largely due to the current Government’s greater political will for justice, the report stated. Only Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Philippines and South Sudan are placed higher and thereby have worse records of impunity in cases of violence towards the media.

The island’s improvement on these rankings however is not due to the initiation of prosecutions but the fact that no journalists have been murdered for their work since the end of the civil war. The change in government therefore has less to do with this improvement than the natural effect of years of media self-censorship which kept journalists out of harm’s way.

This is hardly surprising considering the fact that, apart from the few Army officers who have been arrested in connection with the disappearance of cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda, little has been done or in fact achieved in terms of other landmark cases including the murder of The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge back in January, 2009. Sri Lanka still maintains an unblemished record in terms of impunity in journalist slayings. Wickrematunge’s murder is just one of five other cases recorded and marked as unsolved by the CPJ while justice in these cases now seem an unrealistic target considering the years that have rolled by.

President Maithripala Sirisena’s commitment towards press freedom has at times been questioned as well. Before his election as President, Sirisena’s mission to put an end to direct and indirect threats and intimidation against print media personnel and their owners was clear. Still, the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) together with international media freedom watchdogs vehemently condemned the reappointment of the Sri Lanka Press Council, which was reconvened during former President Rajapaksa’s tenure, claiming that the President was re-introducing the dormant legislation that provided for wide-ranging punitive powers including that of imprisoning media personnel.

In the backdrop of what can be perceived as inaction but may indeed be the failure to fulfil unrealistic election promises, the Government and Sri Lanka are now on the brink of another major step. The passing of the Right to Information (RTI) legislation now seems imminent and its significance will surely be felt throughout the coming years as it could potentially change the political and journalistic landscape of the country.

The proposed law aims to grant every citizen a right to access official information which is in the possession, custody or control of a public authority – a ministry, government department, public corporation, a private company where the state has a majority shareholding, local authorities excluding the Cabinet.

Sri Lanka and its Government are making strides, however slowly, towards a system that is free of impunity as suggested by the report. Emerging from a decade of fear and self-censorship, the media is regrouping; entire journalistic careers spent under the heavy thumb of Government scrutiny now have the opportunity to spread its wings.

However, the justice that was promised to the families and colleagues of those who were disappeared or killed during the previous regime’s time in power still outlines the biggest question mark over whether Sri Lanka has made any significant progress or not. As long as those responsible for these deeds roam free, the media will remain shackled and jaded. Until that dark cloud is dispelled these rankings only serve as a reminder for how little Sri Lanka has progressed in its democratic journey since the end of the war.