New York, October 28,
2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by ongoing threats to
“Our concern is that these most recent threats, like so many others, and the deaths of 11 journalists since President Mahinda Rajapaksa came to power in 2006, will remain unexplained and those behind them will remain unprosecuted,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “The air of impunity surrounding violence against the media is having a chilling effect on journalists.”
The written threats are “almost
identical to what Lasantha got three weeks before he was murdered,” Jansz told
CPJ in an e-mail message. No one has been charged or prosecuted in Wickramatunga’s
death. The editor was killed in his car on his way to work on a busy street in a suburb of
According to Jansz, the two
letters she and Mushtaq received on October 22 are identical—written in red
ink, postmarked October 21. Both letters threatened: “If you write anymore, we
will kill you and slice you into pieces,” Jansz said. The Sunday Leader has a long history of being critical of the government,
but Jansz said she thinks the latest threat stems from a controversy
surrounding an interview she gave to Al-Jazeera about footage aired by Britain’s
Channel 4 News that apparently showed a man in a Sri Lankan military uniform executing
Tamil prisoners, some unclothed and with their hands tied behind their
backs. The government denied the video’s validity, and claimed Jansz’s comments
supported claims of the video’s accuracy.
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