Aiyathurai Nadesan Archives - Committee to Protect Journalists

People protest Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa outside his office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 11, 2020, demanding investigations into disappearances during the civil war. Journalists are wary of the Rajapaksa brothers' return to power. (AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

Sri Lankan journalists turn to self-censorship under Rajapaksas as hope for justice fades

April 28, 2020 2:40 PM EDT

Nadesapillai Vithyatharan is a rare survivor, one of the few journalists abducted during Sri Lanka’s civil war who lives to tell the story.

Political activist and writer killed

August 17, 2004 12:00 PM EDT

New York, August 17, 2004—Amid increased political violence, Bala Nadarajah Iyer, a journalist, writer, and political activist with the opposition Tamil group the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), was shot and killed yesterday, August 16, by unidentified assailants in the capital, Colombo. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is investigating whether the murder was related…

Journalist killed

June 1, 2004 12:00 PM EDT

New York, June 1, 2004—Aiyathurai Nadesan, a veteran Tamil journalist, was shot and killed on Monday, May 31, by unidentified assailants in Batticaloa, a town on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka and 135 miles (216 kilometers) from the capital, Colombo, according to international news reports and local journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)…

Attacks on the Press 2001: Sri Lanka

March 26, 2002 12:02 PM EST

Sri Lanka’s mettlesome media endured another year of extraordinary political volatility. Although the administration of President Chandrika Kumaratunga finally lifted onerous censorship regulations and eased restrictions preventing journalists from reporting fully on the country’s long-running civil war, journalists were still routinely threatened and harassed for their reporting. Impunity for crimes against journalists continued to be…