Rohan Jayasekera

"...told me that, like many other readers, I shouldn't have made the mistake of believing that Index on Censorship was against censorship, even murderous censorship, on principle — in the same way as Amnesty International is opposed to torture, including murderous torture, on principle. It may have been so its radical youth, but was now as concerned with fighting 'hate speech' as protecting free speech."

At a time before Irving's jailing in Austria, Jayasekera was criticised for breaking the so-called "no platform" rule. This policy – formally adopted by Britain's National Union of Students and other groups – requires, first, that fascists should not be given public forum, and secondly that if they do gain a platform other political parties and organisations should refuse to share it with them. Jayasekera declined to comply. The debate was eventually cancelled on the advice of the police.

Between 2008 and the years running up to and during the Arab Spring, Jayasekera chaired the Tunisia Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG), a campaigning group of 21 Arab and international free expression rights groups supporting dissidents in Tunisia.

There were many protests from both left- and right-wing commentators at the article. The veteran feminist commentator Germaine Greer called the item "vile vomit" and told the London Sunday Telegraph in December 2004, that:

Nick Cohen of The Observer claimed in December 2004 that Jayasekera:

Jayasekera spent much of 2003 and 2004 in Iraq working on Index on Censorship's "local media rights support" projects in Baghdad, but in late 2004 he was again involved in controversy after writing an online article that to many readers seemed to condone or justify the murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh. The article claimed that van Gogh was a "free-speech fundamentalist" who had been on a "martyrdom operation[,] roar[ing] his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities" in an "abuse of his right to free speech". Describing van Gogh's film Submission as "furiously provocative", Jayasekera concluded by describing his death as:

There was similar protest a year later when Jayasekera went online to defend Index on Censorship's refusal to cancel a charity performance of the John Malkovich film The Dancer Upstairs at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). In May 2002, Malkovich had been asked who – as the star of Les Liaisons Dangereuses – he would like to fight a duel with. He picked Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper's Middle East correspondent, and Glasgow MP George Galloway, adding that rather than duel with them, he would "rather just shoot them". Fisk reacted with outrage [1]; Reporters sans Frontieres condemned Malkovich's comments, but Jayasekera dismissed them as "flippant" in an article for the Index website. "You can cry wolf once too often over unrealistic threats", Jayasekera wrote. "It undermines the case for real action when real and present dangers to journalists raise their heads." He added:

The fundraising event went ahead in December 2002 despite a street protest outside the ICA. Index on Censorship has since changed its strategy to include a number of successful advocacy campaigns in the UK and abroad.

Between 2001 and 2004, Jayasekera ran an associated blog for the UK quarterly magazine Index on Censorship at www.indexonline.org. In May 2001, he provoked outrage from critics of the Holocaust denier David Irving by agreeing to share a stage with him at the Oxford Union to oppose the proposition that "this house would restrict the free speech of extremists". The previous year a High Court judge had found that Mr Irving was "an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism". Strong protest followed, including direct appeals to the then chair of the board, Michael Grade, and objections from some of Jayasekera's colleagues.

Jayasekera began his journalistic career as an apprentice reporter in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire in 1980, worked for a variety of London and national newspapers during the 1980s and 1990s before going abroad, covering half a dozen conflicts thereafter including Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a former managing editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and former deputy CEO of the UK quarterly magazine Index on Censorship, where he was responsible for the charity's international programmes and fundraising. He is now a freelance digital publisher managing a series of new R&D, advocacy and journalism projects on freedom of expression rights issues in conflict zones and repressive states

Rohan Jayasekera (born January 1961) is an English freelance journalist and advocate specialising in freedom of expression rights issues in conflict zones and repressive states. He was born in Holloway, North London, of mixed Sri Lankan-Scots-Irish parentage.