Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in SRI LANKA. New York, April 4, 2000 — Shortly before midnight on April 3, an explosive device was detonated at the home of Nellai G. Nadesan, a columnist for Veerakesari, the country’s leading Tamil-language newspaper. Nadesan was not injured in the blast, though the explosion…
By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…
[Click here for full list of documented cases] At its most fundamental level, the job of a journalist is to bear witness. In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels’ atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. In…
Sri Lanka’s increasingly violent political climate has heightened the danger for the country’s journalists. The 16-year-old civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a guerrilla movement fighting for a separate homeland for the country’s ethnic Tamil minority, continued, and has so far claimed more than 61,000 lives.…
Dear Mr. Kamalasabeyson: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is greatly concerned by the lack of progress in the case involving Iqbal Athas, defense columnist for The Sunday Times, and his alleged harassment by two Air Force officers, who have been indicted for criminal intimidation of Mr. Athas, criminal trespass and unlawful entry into the journalist’s home on February 12, 1998.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the December 31 murder of Vasthian Anthony Mariyadas, a free-lance radio reporter who was on assignment for the state-run Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation when he was shot dead in the northern town of Vavuniya.
New York, December 21, 1999 — Two Sri Lankan broadcast journalists were among 22 people killed in an assassination attempt against President Chandrika Kumaratunga at an election rally on Saturday, December 18. Five other journalists were injured by the blast, which also injured Kumaratunga and scores of onlookers. According to reports, a suicide bomber detonated…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply dismayed by your administration’s recent expansion of censorship regulations on media coverage of the civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The latest restrictions follow news reports that as many as 1,000 government troops may have been killed by LTTE forces last week.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the murder of Rohana Kumara, chief editor of the Sinhala-language newspaper Satana. At around 10 p.m. on September 7, unidentified assailants shot and killed Kumara on the road leading to his home in the Colombo suburb of Mirihana. The assailants reportedly fled the scene in a silver Toyota 300 car. Kumara had received a phone call earlier that night notifying him that a group of men had entered his home and threatened to harm his wife if she did not reveal her husband’s whereabouts.