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“The real no-go area for the local media is the defence estabilishment. Because of the various attacks on media institutions, they went into self-censorship mode and it hasn’t quite got out of it. So what they won’t touch is any criticism of the Defence Secretary unless it’s by a columnist. They won’t really cover what is actually happening in the North and East. So anything to do with the whole issues of war crimes and the number dead they don’t really cover. They will be critical of governance issues in the South. So largely it’s a self-censorship of the most sensitive areas. Arguably the most powerful man next to the President is the Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. There hasn’t been a single cartoon depicting Gotabye in the last five or six years. They are terribly scared.”Via http://www.nouse.co.uk/2013/11/26/not-quite-paradise/