IFJ Urges Attention on Free Speech
As the Universal Periodic Review on Sri Lanka begins at the U.N. Human Rights Council in
Geneva, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its partners and affiliates in Sri Lanka, urge closer attention to issues of free speech and the right to information, which have been casualties of the quarter […]

Lasantha Wickrematunge is probably not a name most people in the Western World would recognize. His martyrdom as the editor-in-chief of Sri Lanka’s critical newspaper, The Sunday Leader was, unlike the parts that Hollywood trouble-seeking trailblazers like George Clooney or Matt Damon play, not a role he wanted. But Lasantha loved to tell the truth.
Seekers […]

Websites propagating false news sealed-MOD .
The Defence Ministry said in its website that acting on a court order the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) officials,
yesterday (29th June) sealed an office in Rajagiriya where two websites involved in propagating false and unethical news on Sri Lanka were being operated from.
It also said that “these two websites were […]

The government continued to arbitrarily detain, torture or ill-treat people and subject people to enforced disappearance. It failed to address most instances of impunity for violations of human rights and humanitarian law. The government rejected repeated allegations of war crimes committed by both sides of the conflict that ended in 2009, prompting Amnesty International to […]

In May, 2003, I travelled around Iraq reporting on its oil industry. Before reaching Baghdad, I got in touch with Marie Colvin, who was there covering the war and its aftermath for the Sunday Times, where I worked from 1986 to
1993. She wrote back to say that she was staying at a hunt club in […]

Marie Colvin was always getting into jams as a foreign correspondent, covering war zones and acquiring an eye patch after an ambush in Sri Lanka, recalls her brother William Colvin. The retired NYPD detective says his big sister always had stories when she would come home to visit about how she managed to find her […]

“I believe a journalist can change the world,” says exiled Sri Lankan journalist Sonali Samarasinghe, “if not why are we here then”. Sonali is one of three exiled
journalists, from the minority Tamil and majority Sinhalese communities, whose stories are told in a new Norwegian film, Silenced Voices, by Beate Arnestadpreviewed last night at the Fritt […]

An Open Letter to Minister Keheliya Rambukwella
Mr. Minister, I don’t know whether you have seen the film called ‘my name is Khan. In it, the main character played by popular actor Shah Rukh Khan repeats the
lines ‘My name is Khan. I am not a terrorist’ at different points in the film, in order to affirm […]

The extrajudicial killing of civilians, surrendering soldiers and dissident journalists under the direction of the Sri Lankan government has been alleged by a former general in the Army who was extremely well-placed to comment on military activity during the island nation’s bloody civil war.
The source, whose name is withheld for reasons of safety, had high-level […]

The case of two Swedish journalists imprisoned in Ethiopia sheds light on a harsh campaign of repression.
IN a filthy Ethiopian prison that is overridden with lice, fleas and huge rats, two Swedes are serving an 11-year prison sentence for committing journalism.
Martin Schibbye, 31, and Johan Persson, 29, share a narrow bed, one man’s head beside […]