(17 January 2024 Sri Lanka Brief) The Kaduwela Magistrate’s Court has issued a conditional order on 16 January 2024 to a group of employees of the “News Centre”, a YouTube channel to refrain from broadcasting false and defamatory statements about the “Hiru” Media Channel and Duminda Silva in the future.
The Kaduwela Magistrate’s Court issued this order after considering a request made by Asia Broadcasting Corporation (Private) Limited (Hiru) under the Online Security Act.
The petition was filed after the news centre broadcast a statement about Deputy Minister Nalin Hewage and Duminda Silva on a television channel.
The petition has named the Director of the News Center, Manjula Basnayake, and a group of others as respondents.
Accordingly, an order has been issued to prevent the broadcasting of the relevant statement as well as the dissemination of defamatory and false statements regarding the “Hiru” Media Channel in the future. The Magistrate’s order states that this order is issued under Section 24 (2) of the Online Security Act.
This conditional order will be in effect until January 23rd and the order states that if any arguments against this order, they must be submitted before the court within a period of two weeks.
However, the Magistrate has emphasized in his order that this order should be obeyed and acted accordingly, and that failure to do so will result in punishment under the law.
When the bill was introduced in Parliament, media organizations alleged that this bill would be used against media institutions. Although this bill has been used to obtain orders against media institutions in the past, this is the first time that a media institution has gone to court against another media institution under this bill.
(Translation of l News item was published in WhatNews web site in Sinhala – SLB)