Tourists asked to come despite terrorism

The Sri Lanka Tourist Board’s official website ‘www.srilankatourism.org’ has reported the LTTE attack on the Air Force base at Anuradhapura on October 22 despite the existence of at least four Government websites that deal with such reporting.

www.news.lk, www.defence.lk, www.nationalsecurity.lk and www.army.lk provide regular updates on such attacks and the security situation in Sri Lanka. The news about the incident which was posted on the day of the attack and headlined ‘SL Air Force base at Anuradhapura came under terrorist attack’ remained in the website’s homepage even yesterday.

Describing the attack, the official portal of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board said ‘SL Air Force base at Anuradhapura came under terrorist attack around 3 a.m this morning (October 22)’ and ‘according to defence sources, a small group of LTTE terrorists infiltrated the air base and launched an attack’ and added ‘meanwhile an LTTE light aircraft has dropped 1-2 bombs at the air base around 4 a.m., while the ground attack was on’.

However at the end of the news item the website stated there was no direct impact on tourists or tourism operations from this incident and that there was no cause for alarm for the tourism industry.

Below the news item, a press release posted September 18 and captioned ‘Germany and the UK also review travel advisories’ dealt how the two countries have relaxed their recommendations in visiting Sri Lanka and said it was an encouraging move. The press release futher added ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has further softened their travel advisory to Sri Lanka. The advisory has been reviewed and reissued with an amendment to the summary and local travel section, where it now states we no longer advise against travel to the city of Anuradhupura’.