Even in Victory, Secrecy and Evasion Prevail

The Sri Lankan government may finally have beaten the Tamil Tigers, but now stands in imminent danger of defeat in the crucial battle for public opinion.

Colombo needs massive international aid. It also needs to bind up the wounds of a fatally divided nation. Yet it is doing neither of those things, opting instead for the secrecy and evasion that dogged its conduct of this civil war.

Does it matter, now the conflict is over, that international reporters are still cooped up in Colombo hotels, unable to visit the scene of the Tigers' last stand hundreds of miles away, or to gauge the suffering of the 200,000 or so Tamil civilians trapped by the fighting?

Of course it does. This is a public relations disaster, with two fingers raised to charities, broadcasters and diplomats alike.

Keeping independent journalists and UN observers far away from the action might - just - be defended while a bloody war reached a bloody conclusion. But now there are no excuses left. The world wants to see for itself.

Sri Lanka, under the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa, has a lousy press freedom record which would put any proper democracy to shame.

Sixteen reporters and editors have died there in the past five years. Lasantha Wikremetunge, the editor of the Sunday Leader, was one such victim. He had a national and international reputation and his murder reverberated far beyond Sri Lanka. Tamil writers, like JS Tissainayagam, of OutreachSL, have been arbitrarily locked up for questioning the conduct of the war in moderate, concerned terms.

Simply put, this isn't good enough for a government claiming freedom's ways or freedom's aid. It sets Rajapaksa apart from his Indian, Bangladeshi or even Pakistani neighbours, and it mocks the rule of law.

Press repression and suppression has to stop. Sri Lanka once had a vibrant, often courageous press that helped define its democracy. If Rajapaksa - a lawyer himself, ironically - spurns that inheritance, then more than his country's reputation is at stake: for there is no reconciliation under cover of darkness, either.