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Lankan censor works havoc with Sunday newspapers

Sri Lanka's military censor played havoc with the Sunday newspapers yesterday, slashing all war-related news and prompting one weekly to brand his action as ''censorship with a gun''.

The Sunday Times, whose popular ''situation report'' on the ongoing war in the north-east was completely disallowed by the censor, had ''censored'' stamped across the largely blank op-ed page.

It said the military censor, Major General Jaliya Nammuni spared only two paragraphs of the full-page report.

Another weekly, The Sunday Leader, said its lead story, running into 18 paragraphs on the battles in the north and the casualty figures, was completely censored.

''We, therefore, regret to inform our readers our inability to provide details of the current status in the battle zones,'' it said in a front-page box.

The government imposed censorship on the local and foreign media on Friday, a day after hundreds of combatants were killed or wounded in a fierce battle in the north.

The UNI correspondent's dispatch on the battle, submitted to the censor yesterday at a specially set up cell outside the gates of the army headquarters, was returned by fax after about three hours with a slash across the page and signed by Major General Nammuni.

''The war is the single most important issue in the country today, but the government apparently does not want the people to know too much of what is going on,'' said The Sunday Times in its editorial.

''While we agree that details of operations which will give a military advantage to the LTTE cannot be and must not be published, there is a need for military debacles or setbacks to be discussed,'' it said. It described the appointment of a military officer as the censor as ''unfortunate and drastic step''.

''So far, the censor has been a civilian. What happened on Friday was virtually a surrender by the media ministry of a function traditionally exercised by it to the military,'' it said.

''We hope this is not the first step towards martial law, though the trend seems to be fearfully similar to how such situations develop in other countries,'' it added.

UNI

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