North Eastern Monthly editor JS Tissainayagam has been freed on bail by a Colombo court pending appeal. Tissainayagam was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment last year after he was accused of supporting terrorism.
Read more here.
Lal Wickrematunge’s brother, Lasantha, was murdered one year ago. Here he assesses the ongoing cost of the war in Sri Lanka
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This week sees the first anniversary of the killing of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.
On Friday 8 January, Friends of Lasantha and Tamil Legal Advocacy Project (TLAP) hosts a discussion at the YMCA, Fitzroy Square, featuring Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Human Rights lawyer, Frances Harrison (Former BBC correspondent for Sri lanka), Ed Davey MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary, Liberal Democrats, Uvindu Kurukulasuriya, Journalist and former Convenor Free Media Movement (FMM), Sri lanka, Alex Wilks, Programme Lawyer, Human Rights Institute-International Bar Association Human Rights Institute, plus a speaker from Reporters without Borders (RSF) and messages from Journalists for Democracy in Sri lanka (JDS).
Details here
The editor of Sri Lankan newspaper Udayan based in Jaffna has said he will lodge a complaint with authorities after receiving another threatening letter. The letter said “You may have to face danger. Completely stop publishing anything in the nature of boosting the terrorists or that gives the impression that the terrorists are still active.” Udayan has been threatened in the past. In 2006 one of their printing warehouses was burnt down and editorial offices fired at. The editor E Saravanabavan told the Sunday Leader that Udayan would continue to publish, albeit cautiously and doubted that an investigation would yield positive results. Read more here