Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009asia: sri lankainterviews. The blast came after state media criticized the broadcaster for its coverageof military operations.The bombing was immediately followed by two violent episodes in whichmotorcyclists wielding iron bars and wooden poles attacked prominent journalists.A January 8 assault by eight men on four motorcycles resulted in the deathof newspaper editor Lasantha Wickramatunga and set off a wave of domesticand international protest. Wickramatunga foresaw his own murder, writing inan editorial published three days after his death: “Countless journalists have beenharassed, threatened, and killed. It has been my honor to belong to all those categoriesand now especially the last.”The other January attack, on Upali Tennakoon, editor of the Sinhala-language,pro-government weekly Rivira and his wife, Dhammika, came at about6:40 a.m. on January 23. This time, four men on two motorcycles severely injuredTennakoon. Soon after, the couple fled to the United States seeking asylum.The government denounced the January attacks but sought to deflectresponsibility. Anura Priyadarshana Yapa and Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, thetop officials in the Ministry of Mass Media and Information, told Colombo newspapersthere was a “massive conspiracy” to discredit the government by destabilizingthe country with attacks on prominent figures. They said a comprehensiveinquiry would be carried out to find the attackers in all three January cases. Suchinquiries had been promised in the past; as in the past, the 2009 cases led to noconclusive government action by late year.With international outrage growing, CPJ sent a representative to Colomboto investigate the assaults. Eighteen journalists were killed in Sri Lanka between1992 and 2009, according to CPJ research, and 10 of them were murdered. Noconvictions have been obtained in any of the murders, a law enforcement failurethat propelled Sri Lanka to fourth place on CPJ’s Impunity Index. The index isa ranking of countries where journalists are killed regularly and authorities areunable to solve the crimes.CPJ said the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa should be helddirectly responsible for impunity surrounding the attacks. Nine of the murderstook place after Rajapaksa rose to high office, first as prime minister inApril 2004 and then as president in November 2005. CPJ testified beforeU.S. Senate and House committees, as well as Canada’s House of Commons,about the January attacks and the history of abuse directed at journalists inthe country.The Sri Lankan government maintained a hard line of denial after CPJ releasedits findings. A Washington meeting between a CPJ delegation and SriLankan Ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya did not change the government’soutward position—no assurances were given and little responsibility was ac-cepted. The acts of intimidation and the absence of substantive government responsedrove at least 11 Sri Lankan journalists into exile between June 2008 andJune 2009, CPJ research found. Sri Lankan journalists accounted for more thana quarter of the journalists worldwide who fled their countries during that periodafter being attacked, harassed, or threatened with violence or imprisonment, accordingto CPJ research.January’s attacks and intimidation continued through the year. Typical wasthe June 1 kidnapping of the general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working JournalistsAssociation, Poddala Jayantha. He was abducted on a busy road in Colomboduring rush hour, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a suburb. Witnessesat the scene said six unidentified men in a white Toyota Hi Ace van with tintedglass windows had grabbed him; the same type of vehicle has been used to pick upantigovernment figures in the past. No arrests had been made by late year.In July, domestic access to the independent Lanka News Web was shut down.The site’s managers received no formal explanation but suspected the shutdownstemmed from a story reporting that the president’s son had been the target ofstone throwers at a Tamil refugee camp. Around the same time, the official Website of the Ministry of Defense carried an article headlined, “Traitors in BlackCoats Flocked Together,” which identified five lawyers who represented the SundayLeader newspaper at a July 9 hearing in a Mount Lavinia court as having “a historyof appearing for and defending” LTTE guerrillas. The article included picturesof three of the lawyers, making them identifiable to government supporters whomight accost them.CPJ pressed for journalists to be allowed access to the conflict zones. Boththe government and the LTTE had barred the press. Reporters who did try tocover the major humanitarian catastrophe taking place in the heart of the IndianOcean region were obstructed. A team from Britain’s Channel 4 News—Asiacorrespondent Nick Paton Walsh, cameraman Matt Jasper, and producer BessieDu—were ordered to leave the country on May 10 by Defense Secretary GotabayaRajapaksa. Channel 4 had just aired footage filmed secretly in a Tamil refugeecamp in the northern city of Vavuniya. The report included allegations thatguards had left corpses to rot, that food and water were in short supply, and thatsexual abuse was prevalent. A month later, on July 20, Associated Press BureauChief Ravi Nessman was ordered out the country when the government refusedto renew his visa.By mid-year it was clear that, even with its victory in the war against theLTTE, the government was not going to back away from its policies of intimidation.That reality was driven home on August 31, when columnist J.S. Tissainayagam,also known as Tissa, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on chargesof violating the country’s harsh anti-terror law. After his conviction, the first in140141