Sri Lanka arrests six in connection with news Web site
[CPJ]
The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s brazen public call yesterday to censor the media and reintroduce criminal defamation laws. The comments were published in a Sinhala-language interview by Sri Lanka’s largest weekly, Sunday Lankadeepa, according to Free Media Movement spokesman Sunanda Deshapriya and veteran Sri Lankan journalist Iqbal Athas. “If I have the power I will not allow any of these things to be written,” the minister said in reference to reporting on the military, according to the Free Media Movement translation.