[Committee to Protect Journalists]

The Sri Lankan government should release a journalist and his two colleagues who have spent a year behind bars on terrorism charges for publishing magazine articles, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Terrorist Investigation Division forces arrested Vettivel Jasikaran, manager of the news Web site OutreachSL, and his companion, Vadivel Valamathy, both ethnic Tamils, on March 6, 2008, according to local and international news reports and press freedom groups. Their colleague, Tamil columnist and OutreachSL editor J.S. Tissainayagam, was detained when he visited them the next day.

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[HRW]

President Mahinda Rajapakse should order prosecutors to drop all charges against journalists held on politically motivated charges, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the president today. J.S. Tissainayagam, a journalist, and N. Jashiharan, a publisher, and his wife, V. Valamathy, have been in detention since March 2008. The letter identified serious violations of due process and the right to a fair trial by the authorities in Tissainayagam’s case. “Tissainayagam’s arrest was politically motivated and his detention has involved a litany of due process violations,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

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[ HRW ]

The Sri Lankan government should immediately drop charges and free J.S. Tissainayagam, a prominent Tamil journalist on trial for his writings, Human Rights Watch said today. A Tamil publisher, N. Jasiharan, and his wife, V. Valamathy, who were also arbitrarily arrested, should be freed immediately. “The Sri Lankan government is shamefully using antiterrorism laws to silence peaceful critics in the media,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This is no way for a government that claims to be a rights-respecting democracy to act.”

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