IPI Retains Sri Lanka on Watch List

The International Press Institute (IPI), at its board meeting in Belgrade, Serbia on June 14th, unanimously voted to keep six countries, including Sri Lanka on the IPI Watch List.

The other five countries in the list are Ethiopia, Nepal, Russia Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The IPI Watch List is a list of countries in which press freedom conditions have rapidly deteriorated.

The guiding principle behind the Watch List is to open up a dialogue with these countries before they slide into repression.

The IPI says that in Sri Lanka, where the conflict between the government and the Tamil rebels has recently escalated, journalists have been specifically targeted because of their reports.

In many occasions, authorities have threatened the media not to publish "unpatriotic" reports, and physical attacks and other forms of harassment are commonplace.

Attacks on journalists, including murder, remain unpunished, with no apparent official investigations being conducted into such crimes.