2009

New York, March 6, 2009–A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists met yesterday with the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United States and called for a comprehensive and transparent investigation into a series of recent attacks against the press that may have involved government forces. 

January 6, 2009: The main control room of Colombo’s TV Sirasa is bombed. January 8, 2009: Prominent independent editor Lasantha Wickramatunga is killed by a hit-squad that attacks his car while it is blocked in traffic. January 23, 2009: Pro-government editor Upali Tennakoon is attacked under similar circumstances by a similar hit-squad. He is injured, but…

New York, March 6, 2009–The Sri Lankan government should release a journalist and his two colleagues who have spent a year behind bars on terrorism charges for publishing magazine articles, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Yesterday’s arrest of Nadesapillai Vithyatharan in a suburb of Colombo was a continuation of the killing, jailing, harassing, and intimidating of Sri Lankan  journalists–and the feeling is that it if it hadn’t been for the quick response of the international community, Vithyatharan’s situation could have gotten a lot uglier.

New York, February 26, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists questions charges leveled against Sri Lankan newspaper editor Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, who was arrested this morning. According to friends who were with him at the time, police detained Vithyatharan while he was attending the funeral of a friend in Colombo. The arrest comes at a time when…

As the Sri Lankan government steps up its war with the LTTE, assaults on journalists are on the rise. So are suspicions that the government is complicit in these attacks.

February 2009News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

“The government has barred independent journalists from travelling to the war zone”–the description of the Sri Lankan conflict has been among the most often-repeated for almost two years. News outlets want the latest pictures of the war in Sri Lanka and its civilian refugees. But displaced civilians who do manage to leave the war zone…

A 2002 cease-fire between the predominantly Sinhalese government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which claims territory for an ethnic Tamil homeland, was abandoned in January. Ethnic Tamil journalists perceived as supporting independence have long been under murderous attack, but 2008 brought an escalation in physical and verbal attacks on mainstream journalists who…

In response to Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s public comments disavowing any official responsibility for attacks on Sri Lankan journalists and warning international broadcasters they will be “chased away” for a reporting bias against the government, we issued this statement…