"FMM has credible evidence that on behalf of the president an emergency cabinet paper was submitted to the cabinet meeting held on 27th June 2007 in this regard. It was put on hold as three ministers opposed the reintroduction of the criminal defamation," FMM said.
"Criminal defamation had been used extensively in the past in order to silence critical reportage and to persecute editors and journalists."
> Five cases were filed in the High Court of Colombo against Victor Ivan, the editor of the Ravaya newspaper, at the beginning of 2002, and four other mainstream newspaper editors had also faced criminal defamation charges.
The rights body says criminal defamation had been used to suppress investigative journalism on corruption and independent media institutions and penal provisions of the law were for partisan purposes and to restrict information to the public.
"The repeal of the law was supported by all political parties represented in the government and unanimously passed," FMM said.
"This attempt to reintroduce criminal defamation by the government clearly shows the hollowness of its promises to protect freedom of expression rights in Sri Lanka."
Free Media Movement said it was urging national and international media and press freedom organisations to rally round to defeat any attempts to bring back the law and the re-introduction of the law would be a major setback for media freedom in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka has been described as one of the most dangerous places for journalists to work after Iraq.
We are seeing grate success in combating terrorism, yet we seeing lots of misleading information published on the internet to discredit our people, government and security forces by the LTTE supporters and the government oppositions.
ALL governments in power do not like media freedom as none of them are/were "clean".
In other countries, Free Media are a bedrock of democracy.
All Rights Reserved.