Sri Lanka Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Committee to Protect Journalists

Thai website editor Chiranuch Premchaiporn faces criminal charges. (AFP/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

Attacks on the Press in 2011: Regulating the Internet

February 21, 2012 11:36 PM EST

Legislation for Internet security can quickly turn into a weapon against the free press. Cybercrime laws are intended to extend existing penal codes to the online world, but they can easily be broadened to criminalize standard journalistic practices. By Danny O’Brien

Attacks on the Press in 2011: Sri Lanka

February 21, 2012 12:22 AM EST

The government’s effort to silence critical media has been brutally effective as politically motivated deaths, attacks, and disappearances go uninvestigated and unprosecuted. The sister websites Groundviews and Vikalpa became the last independent news sites based in Sri Lanka, after a series of attacks on Lanka eNews. Arsonists attacked the offices of Lanka eNews in January,…

Sri Lankan journalists stage the "Black January" protest, demanding the government punish the culprits responsible for killing journalists. (AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

Black January? A foreign plot, says Sri Lankan government

January 25, 2012 3:46 PM EST

On Monday, I wrote about two demonstrations scheduled for Sri Lanka this week. Both were meant to commemorate the ugly string of anti-press attacks in recent Januaries, which has included journalists killed and abducted, television stations bombed, websites attacked, and media offices torched. But Wednesday’s Black January effort, publicized by the Free Media Movement (FMM)…

Sandhya Eknelygoda and sons Sanjay and Harith. (CPJ)

In Sri Lanka, Eknelygoda asks that humanity trump cruelty

January 23, 2012 5:28 PM EST

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:

Sri Lanka’s woeful January way-points

January 9, 2012 4:28 PM EST

For Sri Lankan journalists, January might be the cruelest month. In January 2011, Sonali Samarasinghe wrote about the death of her husband Lasantha Wickramatunga two years earlier on January 8, 2009. In January 2010 I reported in “Sri Lanka: A year later, still failing to fight media attacks” about the government’s inactivity in investigating Wickramatunga’s…