COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, August 25, 2007: With seven media workers killed, three news organizations attacked by gunmen and scores of journalists fleeing for their lives, Sri Lanka’s tumultuous Jaffna peninsula is one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists, media watchdogs said. A report on Friday from a group including Reporters Without Borders and International Media Support blamed government-backed “death squads” for the violence that has spiraled since the collapse of a cease-fire between security forces and separatist rebels 21 months ago.
One newspaper publisher told The Associated Press the threats were so bad that an editor and a top writer have not left his offices in 16 months for fear of assassination. “It’s like we have to look for someone willing to die even to do the deliveries,” said Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, publisher of the Jaffna-based Uthayan newspaper, one of three Jaffna-based media outlets attacked since December 2005, the report said. That attack killed two newspaper employees, and another five media workers have been killed in the peninsula since May 2006, according to the report, based on a mission to Jaffna in June.
The northern peninsula, which is held by the Sri Lankan military, is routinely wracked by fighting between the government and Tamil rebels who run a de facto state just south of Jaffna. “Journalists are caught in the crossfire between the security forces, the paramilitaries and the (rebels) and live in fear of reprisals for any article, commentary, photo or cartoon they produce,” the report said. “Murders, kidnappings, threats and censorship have made Jaffna one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists to work.”
Jaffna is the heartland of Sri Lanka’s ethnic minority Tamils and has been a flashpoint in the more than two-decade-long war between the government – dominated by the nation’s Sinhalese majority – and the rebels, who want Tamil areas for an independent state. Citing attacks by Tamil Tiger rebels following the breakdown of a 2002 cease fire, the government last year sealed off the peninsula from the rebel-controlled areas, which also cut its only land link to the rest of the island. Jaffna now depends on irregular sea shipments for supplies.
Human rights group say Jaffna has fallen into violent chaos in recent months, with young men and women killed or abducted every day, many of them during the military-enforced nighttime curfew. The turmoil has sent many residents fleeing to the capital, Colombo, and abroad. Media workers, especially, are under constant threat of attack by gunmen and paramilitary groups that appear to be operating with the army’s assistance, the report said. Those groups violently retaliate for any coverage they see as supportive of the rebels, the report said.
The rebels also put pressure on reporters they see as critical of them. Vincent Brossel, Reporters Without Borders Asia chief, told The Associated Press there is “absolutely no possibility to write and work in a normal manner” in Jaffna. “The press freedom situation is terrible. The only information coming out of there is from a very few brave journalists. Others have resigned or are no longer in the country,” he said.
Vithyatharan, the publisher, said an editor and a writer from his paper have been forced to stay in the office with policemen guarding the premises after masked gunmen stormed in 16 months ago and killed two employees. “They can’t even attend inquiries (into the killings) and have been talking to the magistrate and human rights group by telephone,” he said.
Media Minister Anura Yapa said the report exaggerated the threats facing Jaffna’s journalists, and he denied the military was responsible for attacks on journalists. “I don’t totally agree with that report,” he said. “Even now newspapers continue to be published in Jaffna and we have given security to their offices.”
The report called on the government to investigate the killings of media workers, pay special attention to the safety of journalists in war zones, allow a U.N. mission on human rights to come to Sri Lanka and end the public disparagement of the media by government ministers. More than 70,000 people have been killed since the war began in 1983, including about 5,000 since the collapse of the cease-fire.