Lots of talk but little progress in Sri Lanka over journalist murders
It was the police line-up from hell. Forget all those “Law and Order” scenes where a victim stands anonymously behind a one-way mirror. Sri Lankan journalist Namal Perera had to stand eyeball-to-eyeball with 42 army intelligence officers in April, each of whom, Perera explained to me while demonstrating his fiercest tough-guy glare, faced him with…
CPJ welcomes new probe into murder of Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga
New York, September 27, 2016–Sri Lankan police today exhumed the body of slain journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga as part of a new investigation into his death in 2009, according to news reports. A Sri Lankan judge this month granted permission for the police to exhume the editor’s body due to contradictory post-mortem reports–two months after a…
Sri Lankan president should ensure improved climate for press freedom
Dear President Sirisena: The Committee to Protect Journalists, an international press freedom organization, is writing to congratulate you on your recent victory in Sri Lanka’s presidential election. As Sri Lanka readies itself for a new chapter in its history, we urge your government to take concrete and meaningful steps to improve the climate for press freedom.
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.
Sri Lanka’s woeful January way-points
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…
Attacks on the Press 2010: Asia Analysis
Partisan Journalism and the Cycle of Repression by Bob Dietz and Shawn W. Crispin Lal Wickramatunga’s family and publishing house, Leader Publications, have paid dearly in Sri Lanka’s highly charged political climate. While Leader’s newspapers, including the weekly Sunday Leader, are widely known for tough, independent reporting, they have been caught up in a partisan…
One year later in Sri Lanka, little has changed
Even by Sri Lanka’s standards, January 2009 was a brutal month for journalists. On January 6, on a quiet road on the outskirts of Colombo, the country’s main independently owned TV station, Sirasa TV, was raided at 2:05 a.m. by 15 to 20 masked armed men working with military precision. At 2:35:31 they detonated an…