prageeth eknelygoda

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CPJ welcomes arrests in 2010 disappearance of Sri Lankan journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda

New York, August 24, 2015–At least four Sri Lankan army officers were arrested on Monday and accused of involvement in the January 2010 disappearance of Prageeth Eknelygoda, a political cartoonist and columnist, according to news reports. Another army officer and two civilians were arrested earlier this month, reports said. The arrests come following a pledge…

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Prageeth Eknelygoda's wife and sons are still seeking information on him. (CPJ)

BBC coverage of Prageeth Eknelygoda’s disappearance

A short follow-up to yesterday’s alert about Sandhya Eknelygoda–“Sri Lankan journalist missing for 500 days”–and her attempts to get assistance from anyone in the Sri Lankan government or at the United Nations to help her learn more about the disappearance of her husband, Prageeth. The BBC’s Colombo correspondent Charles Haviland produced a story about Eknelygoda…

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One of Prageeth Eknelygoda's last cartoons.

U.N. to investigate Prageeth Eknelygoda’s disappearance

Tuesday’s letter from CPJ and four other groups to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon apparently had some impact. The Canadian Press reported today that Ban has asked the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNESCO, which oversees press freedom, to look into the case of Prageeth Eknelygoda, a Sri Lankan columnist and cartoonist missing for…

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Cartoons by Prageeth Eknelygoda of Sri Lanka

Before he disappeared on January 24, Prageeth Eknelygoda was a journalist, columnist, and cartoonist. Here are some examples of his cartoons from a show at Colombo’s Lionel Wendt Gallery in May. His wife, Sandhya, has given us permission to use them. « Previous Image   |   Next Image »

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14 years on, wife of missing Sri Lankan journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda fights for justice

“I don’t know how long it will take, but I will get justice for my Prageeth,” Sandya Ekneligoda, wife of abducted Sri Lankan journalist and government critic Prageeth Ekneligoda, told CPJ via video call. It has been 14 years since Prageeth’s disappearance. Prageeth, a then 50-year-old cartoonist and columnist for the news website Lanka e…

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Prageeth Ekneligoda

Ekneligoda, a 50-year-old cartoonist and columnist for the news website Lanka e News was last seen by his family and colleagues in the suburbs of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo on January 24, 2010, two days before the elections that gave incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa a sweeping victory, his wife Sandya Ekneligoda told CPJ. The journalist’s family has been repeatedly…

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In Sri Lanka, justice for Eknelygoda is a waiting game

Three years ago, on January 24, 2010, columnist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda vanished on his way to work to cover the final campaigning in Sri Lanka’s bitterly contested presidential election. He has not been heard from since. The pro-opposition website he worked for, Lanka eNews, has been repeatedly attacked, its offices hit with arson, its staff…

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Sandhya Eknelygoda speaks for Sri Lanka’s disappeared

When I first met Sandhya Eknelygoda in May 2010 in her home outside Colombo, she was a distressed mother of two young boys whose husband had gone missing. He was last seen four months earlier, just prior to the elections that returned President Mahinda Rajapaksa to power after the end of the decades-long war with…

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Sri Lankans are calling for a boycott of U.S. products after the U.S. sponsored the U.N. Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into possible war crimes. (Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte)

Eknelygoda’s wife latest victim of Sri Lankan intolerance

On Thursday and Friday, we wrote about the ugly government backlash to last week’s U.N. Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into Sri Lanka’s alleged abuses of international humanitarian law during its war with Tamil separatists.

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Sandhya Eknelygoda and sons Sanjay and Harith. (CPJ)

In Sri Lanka, Eknelygoda asks that humanity trump cruelty

A couple of weeks ago, I described the terrible incidence of anti-press abuse that has come each recent January in Sri Lanka. Media activists have come to call the month “Black January” for good reason, as this email message details: 

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