Awards 2009 |Announcement of the Awards | Eynulla Fatullayev | Naziha Réjiba | Mustafa Haji Abdinur | Anthony Lewis On March 7, 2008, J.S. Tissainayagam, editor of the news Web site OutreachSL and a columnist for the English-language Sri Lankan Sunday Times, went to the offices of the government’s Terrorism Investigation Division to ask about…
Over the summer, as a book I’d written about the lives of murdered journalists went to press, a crusading human rights reporter from the Russian republic of Chechnya was shot dead. I was not surprised by the details of her murder, just as the Chechen reporter was not surprised she’d become a target for execution:…
New York, August 31, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists announced today that it will honor imprisoned Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam with a 2009 International Press Freedom Award. Tissainayagam, left, sentenced today to 20 years in prison on specious charges of violating anti-terror laws, is one of five journalists who will be honored by CPJ…
Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered Britain’s Channel 4 News Asia correspondent Nick Paton-Walsh, cameraman Matt Jasper, and producer Bessie Du, to leave the country on May 10, 2009, according to Channel 4 and international news reports.
There should be no doubt that the government is continuing its offensive against the media following its military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). On Wednesday, Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena confirmed what had been rumored for more than a week: The defunct Press Council, which was put to rest in 2002,…
Sri Lankan journalists flee under severe pressure in the past year. Iraq and Somalia, two deadly countries for the press, also rank high in numbers of journalists forced into exile. Hundreds of journalists have been driven into exile this decade. By Karen Phillips
New York, June 1, 2009–The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka today, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb, according to a release by the association and two colleagues who spoke to him.