JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lankan police have assured a Tamil journalist that officers will no longer ask reporters to disclose their confidential sources after the country's largest journalists' union raised the issue with the Inspector General of Police, the journalist said.
The assurance was given on Sunday to Murukaiya Thamilselvan, a Kilinochchi-based journalist, during a meeting at the office of an Assistant Superintendent of Police in Jaffna. Officers there recorded a detailed statement from him concerning a dispute that began after he published surveillance footage from the Jaffna Teaching Hospital.
Mr. Thamilselvan said officers told him they would inform both the Police Headquarters in Colombo and the Jaffna Police Station that journalists should not be asked to reveal confidential sources in future investigations. He also said the officers agreed that compelling journalists to identify their sources was inappropriate and conducted the meeting in a professional and courteous manner. The police have not publicly confirmed Mr. Thamilselvan's account.
The dispute began on April 20, when Mr. Thamilselvan published CCTV footage on Facebook showing an altercation at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital involving a medical specialist and a hospital security officer. The video circulated widely on social media and drew significant public attention.
Dr. Sellakkuddy Selvaganesh, a plastic surgeon at the hospital, subsequently lodged a complaint with the Jaffna Police, requesting that investigators determine how Mr. Thamilselvan had obtained the footage.
Mr. Thamilselvan was summoned to the Jaffna Police Station on May 24. He said investigators repeatedly asked him to identify the source of the video, but he refused, arguing that journalistic ethics required him to protect confidential sources. Instead, he urged police to investigate the authenticity of the footage itself rather than its origin. He said the complaint was the third occasion on which he had faced pressure to reveal a source.
The case was later taken up by the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, which met with Inspector General of Police Priyantha Weerasooriya in Colombo and formally protested police attempts to compel journalists to disclose their confidential sources. The association urged the police to end the practice.
According to Mr. Thamilselvan, Sunday’s meeting took place after the Inspector General instructed the senior officer responsible for the Jaffna Police Division to review the matter.
Sri Lanka has no comprehensive legal shield protecting journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources, despite longstanding calls by press-freedom organizations for stronger legal safeguards. Media rights groups have also expressed concern that the Online Safety Act, which grants authorities broad powers to investigate certain categories of online speech, could further discourage investigative reporting.
Sri Lanka ranked 134th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, improving five places from the previous year but remaining in the organization’s “difficult” category for press freedom.
