15 April, 2013 - Armed men stormed a Tamil-language newspaper press in Sri Lanka's
former war zone early Saturday and set fire to printing machines and newspapers ready
for distribution in the second attack on the paper this month, the publisher said.
E. Saravanapavan said three men with guns entered the press room of his Uthayan newspaper
in northern Jaffna town and threatened and chased away workers and delivery men. They
then shot at a control panel and set fire to the machines, newspapers and newsprint.
Attacks on media offices and workers have become increasingly common in Sri Lanka
since the country's civil war ended nearly four years ago, with reporters from minority
groups and the majority Sinhala targeted. Saravanapavan said he thought either the
military or a paramilitary group supporting the government could be behind Saturday's
attack because the paper had recently reported extensively on the military taking
over private land in northern Sri Lanka, a center of the war and an area populated
mostly by minority ethnic Tamils. The government, however, said the attack was orchestrated
by the newspaper itself to embarrass the government. The government has in the past
claimed that several journalists and critics who were abducted by suspected pro-government
militia had actually hid themselves to embarrass the government and claim asylum overseas.
Earlier this month, a group attacked a regional office of the same newspaper in the
town of Kilinochchi, a former headquarters of the Tamil Tiger rebels, who fought the
quarter-century civil war to try to create an independent state for ethnic minority
Tamils. The Sri Lankan military defeated the rebel group in 2009, killing all its
commanders. The newspaper has supported self-rule for Tamils, and its staff has repeatedly
faced threats and violence, the most serious in 2006 when gunmen stormed its offices
and killed two staffers. In January, a man delivering Uthayan newspapers in Jaffna
was attacked and his motorbike was set on fire. Reporters in the capital, Colombo,
have also been targets. A journalist for the independent Sunday Leader newspaper,
which was critical of the government, was shot and seriously wounded in February.
The editor of the newspaper was killed four years ago, one of at least 14 journalists
who Amnesty International says have been killed on the Indian Ocean island since the
beginning of 2006. (Source: AP)