SRI LANKA: New York, July 2, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by the attack Monday evening on Namal Perera, freelance journalist and deputy head of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI), a media rights advocacy group. Perera was attacked by men with iron bars in Colombo while traveling in a car with…
Dear President Rajapaksa, The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by your government’s policies toward journalists who write critically about the conflict between Sri Lanka’s military forces and Tamil secessionists. We have seen an increase in harassment, intimidation, and detention of reporters, many of whom are columnists in senior positions with well-established careers. Police have failed to investigate threats to journalists who cover elections or expose alleged corruption or misdeeds. They have also never investigated the death of a television journalist.
New York, May 29, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the brutal murder of a television journalist in the conflict-ridden Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka on Wednesday. Paranirupasingham Devakumar, Jaffna correspondent for the Maharaja Television news channel News 1st, was stabbed to death by a group of unidentified people on Wednesday evening, according to…
New York, May 23, 2008—Prominent Sri Lankan columnist Keith Noyahr, who went missing late Thursday, returned home this morning after being severely beaten, according to the editor of his newspaper and news reports. Lalith Alahakoon, chief editor of English-language weekly The Nation, told CPJ by telephone this morning that Noyahr, who is also the paper’s…
CPJ’s Impunity Index ranks countries where killers of journalists go free New York, April 30, 2008 — Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists’ killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists…
Dear President Rajapaksa, The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by ongoing intimidation of Sri Lanka’s media. Recent events in the state-run Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation in Colombo and the treatment of Tamil journalists under investigation by the Terrorist Investigation Division both reveal how press workers face increasing threat of restriction under your government.
New York, March 11, 2008—Six people affiliated with the Sri Lankan news Web site OutreachSL have been detained by the Terrorist Investigation Division of the Sri Lankan police force in Colombo since last week, according to Agence France-Presse and local news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists urges the government of Sri Lanka to charge…
Amid South Asian Conflict, Remarkable ResilienceBy Bob DietzTraffic is sparse during a late-night run to the Bandaranaike International Airport north of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Because of insecurity caused by war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatists in the country’s north and east, the streets are given over to police and army checkpoints.…
SRI LANKA In May, senior journalist Iqbal Athas wrote to CPJ warning that press freedom conditions had deteriorated under President Mahinda Rajapaksa. By September, Athas, a well-known defense correspondent for The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka and a 1994 CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner, had to leave the country temporarily in fear for his…