[AFP]

A New York-based media rights organisation Tuesday called for an international inquiry into the death of a Sri Lankan television presenter who was allegedly executed by government forces.

A documentary by Britain’s Channel 4, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”, contained footage of what it said were prisoner executions in the final days of fighting between government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

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[CPJ]

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.

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