Sri Lankan journalists, are facing unprecedented threats and attacks and had taken refuge by wearing religiously blessed wrist bands (pirith nool), to seek protection against the human devil, Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said last week.

"The number of journalists wearing pirith nool these days is on the increase. Some wear as many as ten pirith nools on their wrists. Obviously they are seeking protection against the human devil, who would harm them for performing their professional duties properly", he told a meeting organized by the Editors Guild and six other media organizations to pressure the government into repealing the draconian provisions of the revived Press Councils Act.

Wickremesinghe said that the implementation of the obnoxious clauses of the Pres Councils Actwould be unpatriotic since it would deny people their fundamental right to information.

"Media freedom does not belong to journalists alone but to all citizens. Suppression of the free flow of news affects the peoples right to information", he said. "Therefore everyone has the right to oppose the draconian provisions of the Press Councils Act and demand that they be repealed. Any matter pertaining to the Press Councils Act has to be approved by parliament and not by the Committee on Public Enterprises."

The tragedy of our times is that those who protected media freedom are branded as traitors while people who destroyed it are given the exalted title of patriots, Wickremesinghe said.

Some media personnel he said were acting like the "Hero of Verdun," the late French General Philippe Petain, who was entrusted with the task of stopping the marauding German army. But Petain, whose achievements were rewarded with the posts of Marshal and Chief of State, subsequently conspired with Hitler and gave half of France to Germany.

Wickremesinghe,said that as a junior to H.W.Jayawardena and H.L.de Silva in 1972, his first case was in defence of press freedom and under his premiership  in 2002, the criminal defamation law was repealed. Following the establishment of the Press Complaints Commission in 2003, he had wanted to repeal the obnoxious clauses in the Press Councils Act, but unfortunately the then President Chandrika Kumaratunga took over three ministries including the Media portfolio. Subsequently a new government was elected.