Lanka eNews

18 results arranged by date

Newspapers announce the election victory of Maithripala Sirisena, who has pledged to improve conditions for the press in Sri Lanka. (AFP/Lakruwan Wanniarachchi)

How Sri Lanka’s new president can ease decade of repressive press measures

The stunning defeat of Sri Lanka’s incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa by challenger Maithripala Sirisena on Friday has given way to questions about what changes, if any, will come for press freedom in a country that had grown deeply repressive under the previous leadership.

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Attacks on the Press: Missing

Police never bothered to look for cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda. It’s not unusual. By María Salazar-Ferro

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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 Lanka Supreme Court slams door on websites

On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court slammed the door on a case about the shutdown of four websites that had failed to register with the government. In handing down its decision, the Court appeared to rule that freedom of expression in Sri Lanka is not an absolute right and can be restricted–and you don’t need…

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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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Sri Lanka’s savage smokescreen

Sri Lanka’s former attorney general Mohan Peiris, who is now the senior legal adviser to the cabinet and who many Sri Lankans say is aiming to become the next Supreme Court Chief Justice, has made conflicting statements about missing journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda. The discrepancies do more than point up the government’s indifference to Eknelygoda’s fate…

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Sri Lankan government blocks websites

New York, November 7, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by reports that access to at least five Sri Lankan websites has been blocked by the country’s government.

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In Sri Lanka, anti-government website blocked

New York, October 19, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that access to anti-government news website Lanka eNews has been blocked inside Sri Lanka, according to the site’s exiled editor and users inside the country. All three language versions of the site, English, Sinhala, and Tamil, have not been available since Tuesday. 

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Sri Lanka’s Groundviews back online after takedown

A note for the Sri Lanka watchers who visit CPJ.org regularly. Sanjana Hattotuwa, the founder of the citizen journalism website Groundviews messaged me this morning to say that the site is up and running again after suddenly going down within Sri Lanka over the weekend. Hattotuwa is the driving force behind the site, which is…

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Sri Lankan authorities ban Lanka eNews

New York, April 28, 2011–Sri Lankan authorities should immediately rescind the temporary suspension of pro-opposition news website Lanka eNews, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The ban is the latest in a series of attacks against the website.

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