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Police censorship on polls violence
By Asif Fuard
Police have clamped down a censorship on the media by placing a blackout of news on polls-related violence and the misuse of state propert by politicians.
Police Chief Chandra Fernando, The Sunday Times learns, has taken this decision after consulting Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake. However, Mr. Fernando told The Sunday Times that “there is no censorship but we are not releasing the figures because we are not keeping a record of the statistics.”

But SSP Rienzie Perera, who is the police spokesperson, had a different story. He said details of violent incidents and other related matters were not being released in a bid to help reduce violence. “Comparing with previous years the number of incidents has dropped by around 50%.

“In previous years we used to give the statistics relating to election violence to the media but now we have learnt by the statistics going public it might aggravate situations and might lead to public unrest,” SSP Perera said.

“For instance if we say that party “A” made 500 complaints party “B” will try to make more complaints to beat the number of complaints made by party “A”. This race to beat the number of complaints will result in violence,” he said.
“If one uses the term ‘violence’ people will get the impression that there are serious election offences occurring. But as a matter of fact most of the election violence related incidents comprise intimidation and poster related offences which could be taken as minor incidents,” he said.

“By publicising the election violence statistics it will result in creating a bad image of Sri Lanka in the eyes of the international community. So that’s why the IGP has ordered us not to publicise the election violence statistics,” he said.

But, other police sources said that by not giving details of election violence, police would not be under pressure to act on the cases or take any action against persons misusing state property.

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