Live News - A Survival Guide - International Federation of Journalists

Live News — A Survival Guide for Journalistscivilians from a meeting with the LTTE. She received wounds in herhead, chest, and arms, and was blinded in one eye. Colvin shoutedthat she was a journalist but soldiers continued to fire. Accordingto her account, soldiers pushed her down on the ground and begankicking her. The Sri Lanka Department of Information said thatColvin did not have clearance to travel to the rebel-held Wanniregion, where she had spent two weeks with LTTE guerrilla forces.The statement contended that Colvin “had her own secret agendawith the LTTE”.In October 2000, veteran Jaffna-based journalist MylvaganamNimalarajan, who reported for BBC’s Tamil and Sinhala-languageservices, the Tamil-language daily Virakesari, and the Sinhala-languageweekly Ravaya, among others, was killed in his home inJaffna. Unidentified gunmen approached Nimalarajan’s home,shot him through the window of his study, where he was working,and threw a grenade into the house. Journalists suspect thatNimalarajan’s reports on vote-rigging and intimidation in Jaffnaduring the parliamentary elections may have led to his murder. Hisparents and his 11-year-old nephew were seriously injured by thegrenade. No satisfactory inquiry has been carried out.In August 2002 a group of five men forcibly entered the officesof the Tamil Thinakkathir newspaper, tied up office staff and tookaway equipment. The IFJ urged the government to protectThinakkathir and all journalists working in Sri Lanka. ChristopherWarren, President of the IFJ, wrote to the President of Sri Lanka,Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, saying: “Attacks on journalistsand the media are one of worst forms of attack on pressfreedom and civil society. There is no more serious form of censorshipthan violence.”Other countriesMany journalists are attacked or killed because they write aboutcrime or corruption.In Bangladesh, Harunur Rashid, a reporter for the Bengali-languagenewspaper Dainik Purbanchal, was ambushed and shot whileriding his motorcycle to work in Khulna. Three men took Rashid tohospital, told staff he had been injured in a car accident, and disappeared.Rashid was a crime reporter who had written on corruptionand links between crime syndicates and guerrilla groups. Thereporter had received death threats and had been provided withpolice protection.67