Sri Lankan president demands media toes the line on the war

The fact that the meeting was called at all reveals a distinct nervousness. The media in Sri Lanka is already toeing the line. Virtually all reports of the war are based directly on government speeches and military statements. There is little first-hand reporting from the war zones and no opposition to the war in the editorials and commentary.

Yet some coverage of the military’s atrocities and its indiscriminate attacks on civilians has inevitably slipped into the Colombo and international media, not simply from pro-LTTE reports but the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and various non-government organisations. As a result, there have been concerns expressed in military circles about losing the propaganda war, and calls for the suppression of “LTTE disinformation”.

Appropriately, Rajapakse began his meeting with a lie, insisting that the military was engaged purely in defensive action. “There is no war,” he declared, “but only retaliatory attacks on the part of the forces in the national interest to protect our positions.” If there were a war, he said, government forces would “fight and march forward”.

The army has already fought and tried to march forward. Rajapakse initiated military action against the LTTE on July 26. In open breach of the 2002 ceasefire agreement, he ordered the military to retake the Mavilaru irrigation sluice gate. While the president claimed that the operation was “limited” and “humanitarian,” the air force bombed LTTE targets in other areas and fighting continued even after the LTTE opened the sluice gate and provided water to farmers downstream.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/sril-a19.shtml