Sri Lanka / Asia

As the Sri Lankan government steps up its war with the LTTE, assaults on journalists are on the rise. So are suspicions that the government is complicit in these attacks.

February 2009News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

“The government has barred independent journalists from travelling to the war zone”–the description of the Sri Lankan conflict has been among the most often-repeated for almost two years. News outlets want the latest pictures of the war in Sri Lanka and its civilian refugees. But displaced civilians who do manage to leave the war zone…

A 2002 cease-fire between the predominantly Sinhalese government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which claims territory for an ethnic Tamil homeland, was abandoned in January. Ethnic Tamil journalists perceived as supporting independence have long been under murderous attack, but 2008 brought an escalation in physical and verbal attacks on mainstream journalists who…

In response to Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s public comments disavowing any official responsibility for attacks on Sri Lankan journalists and warning international broadcasters they will be “chased away” for a reporting bias against the government, we issued this statement…

New York, January 23, 2009–President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government must act to stem a worsening security crisis in the media in the wake of another attack on a Sri Lankan newspaper editor outside the capital, Colombo, this morning, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Our alert released yesterday about the landmark decision to convict three Colombian officials in the 2003 murder of radio commentator José Emeterio Rivas is receiving coverage around the world today. The Associated Press has stories in both English and Spanish and the Swedish-language Medie Varlden newspaper has coverage.

The murder of prominent Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickramatunga remains in the news with The New York Times running an editorial about him over the weekend. The Daily Times of Pakistan also has coverage of Wickramatunga’s death, which has garnered worldwide attention with the publication of the editor’s final column–it explained why he felt compelled to risk…

New York, January 8, 2009–With today’s murder of the editor-in-chief of the The Sunday Leader newspaper, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on concerned ambassadors in Colombo to weigh in forcefully and immediately with President Mahinda Rajapaksa to put an end to the attacks raining down on Sri Lanka’s media.