Media threats hurt Sri Lanka rights - Amnesty

A human rights activist shouts slogans during a media protest in Colombo November 23, 2007.

LONDON (Reuters) - Attacks and threats against Sri Lanka's media are creating a culture of silence and lack of dissent just as abductions, killings and rights abuses rise in the island's civil war, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

The rights group said in a report that at least 10 media workers -- mostly from the ethnic Tamil minority -- have been killed in the last two years as a 2002 ceasefire between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels collapsed into all-out war.

Some of the dead journalists were covering abuses, including murders, abduction and torture blamed on security forces. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict since 1983.

"Threats and violence against the media is putting a lid on debate against a wider context of impunity and lack of accountability," Amnesty researcher Yolanda Foster told Reuters.

"It is even more worrying that it is happening at a time of rising violence. There needs to be more coverage and debate."

Experts say more than 5,000 people have died in the last two years as war resumed, with dozens or more killed in the last week in battles as well as attacks on civilian buses and the main train station in the capital Colombo.

Amnesty says the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have fought for two decades for an ethnic Tamil homeland using suicide bombing, conventional warfare, attack boats and last year even light aircraft, have a record of stifling debate.

But it says the government bears responsibility for much of the new clampdown, which it says has included threats against journalists and editors from senior officials close to President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It says a culture of fear restricts coverage.

"The LTTE has always exercised a semi-Orwellian control over areas under its influence," Foster said. "But a state such as Sri Lanka should be held to a much higher standard."

The government denies reports of abuses and say Sri Lanka is simply doing what other nations have done in the face of militants such as Al Qaeda.

Amnesty says it has not been allowed to visit the island in recent years, always being told by the government the time was not right for security or other reasons. It says the growing culture of fear is stifling open criticism or debate.

Threats against journalists have not been restricted to conflict-related issues, Amnesty says. One minister and his entourage marched into a state television station in a row over its failure to cover a speech he had made the previous day.

Another journalist went into hiding after having his police protection moved following his writing about alleged corruption in a defence deal with Ukraine.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

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