Sri Lanka plans to amend press law to include websites

By Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez | Reuters

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Sri Lanka will amend a decades-old media law in order to bring in all news websites and electronic media under regulation, the government said on Monday, a week after it raided and temporarily closed down two anti-government websites.

The amendments to the Press Council Law enacted in 1973 will allow the government to order websites and electronic media to follow media codes in addition to print media.

Parents of dead Sri Lankan Tamil prisoner 'denied last rites'

By Charles Haviland | BBC News

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The parents of a prisoner who died in obscure circumstances in Sri Lanka are locked in a battle with officials who say his body cannot be taken to his home town for the last rites.

Ganesan Nimalaruban died and several other inmates, all Tamil Tiger suspects, were reportedly injured after a failed prison mutiny in the north.

Gota goes berserk: "You journalists are pigs who eat shit!"

By Frederica Jansz | The Sunday Leader

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Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa went berserk when contacted by The Sunday Leader to clarify and find out if he was aware that the management at SriLankan Airlines had taken a decision to change a wide bodied A340 scheduled to fly to Zurich on Friday July 13, to a smaller A330. The change was to be made so that a SriLankan Airline pilot, who is dating a niece of President Mahinda Rajapaksa could personally fly the aircraft that would carry a ‘puppy dog’ for Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa from Zurich.

The Sunday Leader was told by senior airline pilots that 56 passengers would have had to be off-loaded if the aircraft was changed.

Deported to Torture: UK shame over Tamil refugees

By Paul Canning | Care 2

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The British government is continuing to deport Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka despite more evidence emerging that some of those removed are being tortured.

As I reported last year, there is a wealth of evidence that Sri Lankan authorities continue to practice torture on political opponents. Yet British authorities have insisted that the country is safe and hundreds of those fleeing the country have been returned.

The ‘chilling’ of free expression in Sri Lanka

By Kishali Pinto Jayawardene | The Sunday Times

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Is there any other country in the civilized world where the police act under a repealed section of the penal law when making arrests and that gigantic mistake is then sought to be justified by government ministers in the legislative assembly by resorting to the most annoying twaddle?

This is a pertinent question in the wake of recent arrests by the police of opposition web journalists under Section 118 of Sri Lanka’s Penal Code. This Section was however repealed in June 2002 by Penal Code Amendment Act, No 12 of 2002. Section 118 of the Penal Code relates to attempts to bring the President into contempt by contumacious or insulting words or signs and was repealed under the hand of the United National Front government along with the sections relating to criminal defamation.