Colombo, September 01: A Sri Lankan reporter, recently named by US President Barack Obama as an example of the way journalists are persecuted around the world, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for writing articles critical of the government’s military operations.
In a case that campaigners say highlights a campaign of intimidation against the country’s independent media, JS Tissainayagam was jailed after a court decided he had breached harsh anti-terror laws. He is the first journalist to be convicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Mr Tissainayagam, an experienced columnist who wrote for several publications including the now defunct Northeastern Monthly magazine, had written several articles in 2006 and 2007 in which he accused the government of withholding food and other essentials from Tamil-majority areas as a weapon of war.
The court decided that his articles broke the law because they were designed to create agitation between the Tamil minority and the Sinhala majority. “The constitution guarantees media freedom, but no one has a right to deliberately publish false reports that would lead to communal violence,” said the government prosecutor Sudarshana de Silva.
–Agencies