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Help stop killings of journalists, activists

April 10, 2008

I am writing today to call your attention to recent attacks on journalists and human rights activists in Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan government has shown a disturbing pattern of actively engaging in, or being complicit in, the killings of numerous Tamil journalists and human rights activists. The murdered journalists and human rights defenders were known for their work in exposing military abuses.

The U.S. State Department has described a "deteriorating climate for media freedom in Sri Lanka," characterized by "state intimidation of, and violence on journalists." It reports that the situation is worst in the North and East, where in 2007 "many journalists were killed, abducted, and intimidated, while others reportedly practiced self-censorship." Recently, Amnesty International (AI) organized over 1,000 protesters in front of the Sri Lankan consulate in New York City to condemn state violence against the media. AI criticized the detention without trial of journalist J.S. Tissanayagam, who is barred from much-needed medical treatment, as well as the killing of Tamil correspondent Subramaniyam Sugirdharajan.

Tamil human rights activists are similarly under attack by state security forces and their allies. On April 20, the Sri Lankan army assassinated Reverend Father M. X. Karunaratnam, the internationally-respected chairman of the only local, independent human rights monitoring body in the Northeast of Sri Lanka: the Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR). Not only was Reverend Karunaratnam a tireless leader in direct efforts to counsel tsunami and war victims, but he was also a vocal human rights advocate, and had traveled to the U.S., Canada, and Geneva to speak out about the Sri Lankan government violations. Unfortunately, his slaying is not an anomaly; it is the latest in a series of attacks that killed other co-founders of NESOHR and Tamil members of parliament.

I call on the U.S. government to pressure the Sri Lankan government to accept international human rights monitors, who could establish desperately-needed protections for media freedom and defenders of human rights.