Sri Lankan police have launched a campaign to trace more than 80 local people who have appeared in pornographic films by printing their pictures in newspapers. Earlier this week more than three dozen porn actors were pictured in a full-page advertisement in one local newspaper.
Police plan to publish images, taken from the films, of around 50 more in the coming days. The mug shots have been obtained by a special police squad viewing films "round the clock", officers said. Of the 83 actors police hope to identify, three are men, said Superintendent Prishantha Jayakody, a police spokesman. He said police had requested permission from a magistrate for the new initiative because they had become increasingly concerned by the phenomenon of schoolchildren downloading and exchanging clips of locally made pornographic films on their mobile phones.
Other initiatives have also seen Sri Lankan police cracking down on so-called "moral crimes". In June police in Colombo, the biggest city, launched a campaign against "indecent" advertising on film billboards and posters in Colombo. Officers from the bureau told the BBC at the time that the move had been prompted by the sense that the younger generation of Sri Lankans were disrespectful to women whom modern culture treated as commodities.
This year has also seen hundreds of young couples arrested in Sri Lanka for alleged indecent behaviour. Colombo-based analyst Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu said such crackdowns were "periodic events". Sri Lanka is a very tolerant place. There is no religious basis for that in our religious traditions," he said. A majority of Sri Lankans follow Buddhist teachings, though there are substantial Hindu and smaller Muslim and Christian minorities.
However Savaranamuttu said that with the end of the year civil war 18 months ago there was a "certain relaxation" in the island nation as tight security was dismantled, the threat of violence diminished and the economy took off.
