Evidently the Sri Lankan government is looking to reform its image in the international media. How? By chiding journalists for the poor job they have done! Prime Minister D M Jayaratne recently stated that it was the duty of the foreign press to create a 'positive image' of the country. The local press, meanwhile, might be forgiven for being a bit wary of any official claim about an attitudinal change towards the media. After all, President Mahinda Rajapakse had to reassign Meryvn Silva from his post as deputy media minister scarcely two weeks after his appointment, as it became apparent that Silva was responsible for serious attacks on journalists. In public remarks, Silva had stated that Lasantha Wickrematunge, the senior journalist murdered in January 2009, 'went overboard. I took care of him. Poddala [Jayantha, a journalist assaulted in June 2009] agitated and his leg was broken.' Evidently, Silva had also taken to physically and verbally attacking members of the press himself, just the kind of hands-on attitude one would appreciate from a public servant under different circumstances. In seems that it would be helpful if responsibility for creating a 'positive image' for the country were to begin falling to the government itself. Meanwhile, the top ministerial job related to governing the media has now gone to Keheliya Rambukwella, the former defence-affairs spokesman.
Sri Lanka sat near the bottom of Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index for 2009, at number 162 – just ahead of Saudi Arabia and Somalia, and behind, well, pretty much everyone else. In the government's defence, to mark World Press Freedom Day in May, it did pardon Jeyaprakash Tissainayagam, the Tamil journalist who had received a 20-year sentence for his writings. Attorney-General Mohan Peiris has also been making soothing statements about the safety of self-exiled journalists, if they were to return to the island. Of course, with an impunity ranking of fourth in the world by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Peiris might find his comments more reassuring if he acted on long-ignored cases of violence against journalists. Otherwise, the press might think it is safer to be behind bars than working the beat in Sri Lanka.
The Internet has recently moved a step – though only an itty-bitty one – closer to transitioning from a tower of babble to the Tower of Babel. ICANN, the organisation vested with the responsibility to assign Internet domain names (for a fee), has recently permitted, for the first time, web addresses with no Latin characters. Actually, though, the new change refers only to the diminutive tag, or 'root', following the 'dot' (ie, 'dot-com'), which will now allow countries to assign a country name in their native script. The first to be rolled out is Arabic. Particularly interesting will be how this will play out in places where language and nation are at loggerheads – a postcolonial feature particularly prominent in the countries of our region. For instance, Tamil is slated to follow soon, which will have interesting ripple effects on diasporic Tamil-nationalist sentiment.
Just to show us what a bhai-bhai globalised world we live in, the fallout from the recent South Park episode satirising the prohibitions on free speech – by putting the Prophet Mohammad in a bear suit to, technically, dodge having to depict him – has reached the Subcontinent in dramatic and hysterical (dis)proportion. While many find the depiction of the prophet offensive, others found not being able to depict the prophet offensive as well. Enter Facebook: A group of artists responded to the slight by asking people to 'draw a Muhammad' on 20 May, via a Facebook group page and WordPress blog. It was quickly deluged with comments like, "Burn in hell, you morons! Islam is about peace!" (In that order. In the same comment.)