[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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[CPJ]

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s brazen public call yesterday to censor the media and reintroduce criminal defamation laws. The comments were published in a Sinhala-language interview by Sri Lanka’s largest weekly, Sunday Lankadeepa, according to Free Media Movement spokesman Sunanda Deshapriya and veteran Sri Lankan journalist Iqbal Athas. “If I have the power I will not allow any of these things to be written,” the minister said in reference to reporting on the military, according to the Free Media Movement translation.

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