Posts Tagged ‘Sri Lanka’

Uthayan's website was inaccessible at the time that this press release issued (see cached version). Reporters Without Borders and its partner organization, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), firmly condemn a pre-dawn armed attack on the Tamil-language daily Uthayan's headquarters in the northern city of Jaffna on 13 April, just 10 days after a similar attack on Uthayan's distribution office in the town of ... Full story

Reporters Without Borders and its partner organization, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), are very concerned about Rathimohan Lokini (also spelled Lohini), a Sri Lankan journalist of Tamil origin who could be expelled from the United Arab Emirates despite having United Nations refugee status. She is one of a group of 19 Sri Lankan refugees who are under threat of being deported from the ... Full story

Reacting to April 3 armed attack on the Tamil newspaper Uthayan in the northern city of Kilinochchi, Reporters Without Borders and its partner organization, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), call on the authorities to do whatever is necessary to prevent journalists from being harassed and physically attacked. Two employees were seriously injured when six masked men armed with cricket stumps staged a pre-dawn ... Full story

The state-owned Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) has repeatedly censored its FM retransmission of the BBC's Tamil-language broadcasts since 16 March, a day after the start of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council's latest session, which has been looking at the issue of war crimes in Sri Lanka. “The replacement of the BBC's coverage of the Human Rights Council's activities by completely unrelated programming is ... Full story

Reporters Without Borders and its partner organization, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, firmly condemn an attempt to murder Sunday Leader journalist Faraz Shaukatally on the night 15 February, when he was shot and wounded by gunmen inside his Colombo home. Doctors say his life is no longer in danger. “This appalling shooting suggests that the enemies of media freedom are trying to silence those ... Full story

See the interview with former editor of the Sunday Leader, Frederica Jansz, now in exile, at the end of the press release On the the third anniversary of the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, a freelance cartoonist and political analyst who worked for the Lanka-e-News website, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) reiterate their call for justice and condemn the ... Full story

Reporters Without Borders condemns the threats and insults that defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president's brother, made against Sunday Leader editor Frederica Jansz during a phone interview on 9 July. “We call on defence secretary Rajapaksa to stop threatening journalists who are doing their job,” Reporters Without Borders said. “In many countries, a government official would have to resign for making such comments and would ... Full story

Reporters Without Borders is relieved that the eight SriLankaMirror and SriLankaXNews journalists and an office assistant arrested on 29 June were released the next day by Judge Kosala Senadheera of Colombo court No. 8 on the grounds that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had failed to produce evidence of actual wrongdoing. According to an article on LankaeNews, an influential, trilingual news website based abroad, the ... Full story

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns today's police raids on the offices of two Colombo-based news websites, the SriLankaMirror and SriLankaXNews, in which eight of their journalists and an office assistant were arrested. “We call for the immediate release of all those detained,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The exact reasons for the raids on these two news websites, which the authorities have had in their sights ... Full story

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the reasons that led the management of the newspaper Ceylon Today to force its editor in chief Lalith Allahakkoon to resign on 13 June. The journalist, who received no letter of dismissal, arrived at his office on 16 June to find that access to his computer had been blocked. “The dismissal of Lalith Allahakkoon by Ceylon Today is worrying,” ... Full story