14 Journalists Killed in 2009; 2 in Sri Lanka

Lasantha Wickramatunga, The Sunday Leader
January 8, 2009, Colombo 

Wickramatunga, editor-in-chief of the weekly Sunday Leader, was a prominent senior Sri Lankan journalist known for his critical reporting on the government. He was killed at around 10 a.m. in his car on his way to work on a busy street in a mixed suburban and semi-industrial suburb of  Colombo. According to his brother Lal Wickramatunga, chairman of the paper's parent company, Leader Publications, the editor had been receiving anonymous death threats by phone for months. Lasantha Wickramatunga's wife, Sonali Samarasinghe-Wickramatunga, told the CBC that they had been followed earlier in the morning by two men on a motorcycle as they ran errands, and that threats had been on the rise in recent days. He received phone calls and text messages threatening to kill him if he did not stop criticizing the government. Samarasinghe-Wickramatunga eventually left  Sri Lanka  after her husband's death. The couple had married about two weeks before the attack. 

 

Puniyamoorthy Sathiyamoorthy, freelance

February 12, 2009, Mullaitheevu district

FSathiyamoorthy, a supporter of the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), wrote for many pro-Tamil publications and frequently contributed to official LTTE media. His live commentaries from conflict zones were widely seen and heard on pro-Tamil television and radio broadcasts, many in Canada . According to independent Tamil news sources as well as the LTTE's, he was killed in a Sri Lankan artillery barrage while he was in a "safe area" proscribed by the Sri Lankan Army.

Colleagues outside of the conflict area, not all of them Tamils, said Sathiyamoorthy's reports and commentary were measured, and that he strove to maintain journalistic standards and an accurate representation of the wartime situations in which he found himself. His work had a global reach, beyond Sri Lanka to the large numbers of Tamils living overseas.

4. SRI LANKA As the government pursues a military victory over the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a surge in violence against journalists, including the fatal stabbing of television correspondent Paranirupasingham Devakumar, pushed the South Asian island nation up from five to four on the index. Government pledges to investigate and punish violence against the press proved hollow as journalists continued to be targeted by both Tamil groups and the military. At least nine journalist murders have gone unsolved.
Impunity Index Rating: 0.452 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million inhabitants.
Last year: Ranked 5th with a rating of 0.408.

Another Sri Lankan journalist attacked

New York, June 1, 2009--The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka today, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb, according to a release by the association and two colleagues who spoke to him. 

The attack came on a busy road during rush hour at 5:15 p.m. Jayantha's colleagues said witnesses at the scene told them six unidentified men in a white Toyota Hi Ace van with tinted glass windows grabbed Jayantha as he was walking home in the well-to-do suburb of Nugegoda. The same type of vehicles have been used to pick up anti-government figures in the past, CPJ research has found. The journalist was left on the side of the road about half an hour later.

"This is a chilling example of the intentions of the Sri Lanka government as it pursues its all out military solution in dealing with the LTTE," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia program coordinator. "CPJ welcomes the reported end of military hostilities in Sri Lanka, but we once again appeal to the Rajapaksa government to reverse its policies of silencing the media and immediately release the detained Tamil doctors."

Privately, however, he sat down in his office and composed a powerful, valedictory column, accusing the government of his still-to-be-committed murder. "When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me," he wrote in this obituary, which he left for publication after the expected assassination.