Free Media Movement  of Sri Lanka expresses its concerns on calling two journalists to the Criminal Investigation Department, for questioning  the information regarding the investigations to the journalists and their organizations and the closure of Police Media Unit which provided easy access to the information.

As reported to us, Dhanushka Sanjaya, a  journalist of The Leader website and Thushara Vitharana, a  journalist of Voice Tube were summoned by police for interrogation. Parallelly, the Police Media Unit was closed without introducing an alternative for obtaining police information for media.

Free Media Movement understands the responsibilities of the Police and the security forces with regard to an investigation. However, the Free Media Movement wants to highlight that the right of the journalists and the citizens to be informed about such incidents has been blocked. The context violates the principles of democratic political culture promoted by the authorities.

Therefore, the Free Media Movement urges the authorities to act immediately to make police and security forces accountable for the openness in terms of public peace. Further, we request the authorities to systematically re-instate the sources of public information on such actions.