Arson attack on Sri Lanka’s online news service office
(Jan 31, 2011) A group of men broke into the offices of a website critical of Sri
Lanka's government and set fire to it early Monday morning, a journalist from the
publication said, adding that he suspected a government role in the attack. Bennett
Rupasinghe, news editor of LankaeNews.com, said the fire destroyed everything in the
offices. He said the attackers could have been sent by the government as punishment
for the website's critical articles. Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella denied the
allegation. LankaeNews continues to be operated by its editor, who lives in exile
in Europe, but the website said computers, a library of 3,000 books and newspapers
from 20 years have been destroyed. Catholic priest, Father Sagara Hettiarachchi,
editor of Sinhalese Catholic weekly, Gnanartha Pradeepaya (Wisdom of light) strongly
condemned the act adding, “there must be the right of expression to spread the latest
information to the people.” Father Hettiarachchi told Ucanews that local people still
believe the government will find the culprits, despite the fact that there have been
a series of attacks on media workers and news offices in Sri Lanka in the past with
no arrests made. Last week priests and journalists appealed to the United Nations
to find Prageeth Ekneligoda, a Lanka-e-News journalist who disappeared on Jan. 24
last year. He had written about the country’s political situation, lawlessness, corruption
and nepotism. In Sri Lanka, 14 journalists including Christians have been murdered
within the past two decades, with 12 of them in the past five years. Some of them
have been imprisoned and many have left the country.