RSF writes to media minister over BBC pullout
The Paris based international media rights group Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has written to Media and Information Minister Mr. Anura Priyadarshana Yapa expressing dismay at an announcement by the BBC that it has decided to stop supplying news to the SLBC.
BBC programmes censored
Interview in Sinhala with opposition politician Mangala Samaraweera
Interview with defence correspondent Iqbal Athas
Reports about the military offensive
An interview about the murder of newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunga
“We are dismayed to learn that the BBC World Service felt obliged today to stop supplying news programmes in English, Sinhalese and Tamil to Sri Lankan state broadcaster SLBC for local FM retransmission because the SLBC, for which you are responsible, was constantly and illegally censoring them despite being bound by a commercial contract allowing millions of Sri Lankans to listen to the BBC’s programmes in the three languages every day,” Jean-François Julliard, Secretary-General of RSF said in the letter, according to a press statement.
The British public broadcaster has for 11 years been offering Sri Lankan listeners quality news programming that is in stark contrast to the SLBC’s often very official programme content.
As a result of the SLBC censoring parts of these programmes for the past several months, the BBC World Service issued a statement in London this week saying: “We have no choice but to suspend broadcasts until such time as SLBC can guarantee our programming is transmitted without interference.”
The BBC said it had noted 17 instances of interference to BBC Tamil and eight instances of interference to BBC Sinhala broadcasts between late November and early January. Sometimes whole segments of current affairs were not broadcast on SLBC.
RSF said some of the censored segments included an interview in Sinhala with opposition politician Mangala Samaraweera last December, a report on civilian victims in the north in early January, an interview with defence correspondent Iqbal Athas on January 2, reports about the military offensive and relations with India on January 5 and a BBC interview about the murder of newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunga.
RSF said that since August 2008, the SLBC had been following its retransmission of the BBC’s programmes with its own programme given an- official take on what the BBC’s journalists reported.
Sri Lankans will still be able to listen to the BBC on the short wave, on the Internet, and via a Sri Lankan commercial FM station but the suspension of retransmission by the SLBC means the number of listeners will be reduced.
“We must therefore again lament the fact that the hostility of certain government sectors to the free flow of information is depriving your country’s population of a source of independent current affairs coverage. The media and information minister has a duty to guarantee press freedom at a time when fighting is raging in the north and Tamil civilians are the victims of both a military offensive and acts of terrorism by Tamil Tiger rebels. Extremists in both camps will undoubtedly be delighted by the BBC’s decision as it gives them even more scope to incite hatred and spread the wildest rumors,” RSF said.RSF urged the Minister to give a clear undertaking that BBC World Service programmes will no longer be subjected to illegal censorship.
dailymirror.lk
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