They live in fear. A dozen have been assassinated. Such is the fate of journalists trying to cover the war in the north of Sri Lanka. link

A report from CBC about journalists working in Sri Lanka. The sub-7 minute feature takes us inside the offices of The Sunday Leader, the newspaper Lasantha Wickrematunga edited until he was assasinated on the streets of Colombo on 8 January, 2009. Sri Lankan journalists reporting from both sides of the conflict face harassment, jail and death on a daily basis.

Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, a senior Sri Lankan newspaper editor, was abducted by armed men in police uniform this morning, according to the Tamil Eelam News Services. The editor of both the Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna and the Colombo based Sudar Oli was attending the funeral of a friend on the Galle Road in Colombo when the abduction took place,

“When you kill one journalist, you silence a hundred. After the killing of Lasantha, I am told 11 journalists have left. In fact, 35 journalists left the country after December. We started feeling the heat from December,” said [Sunanda Deshapriya, a prominent journalist, living in exile in India]. “This is the toughest period if you consider the killings of journalists. In the last three years, at least 18 journalists and media workers have been killed though the government puts the number at only at nine.” link

Press freedom in Sri Lanka has been severely under attack in recent months. The assasination of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge in January, 2009 forced many journalists to flee the island nation in fear of their lives. This week the Committee to Protect Journalists released a special report on the detiriorating situation for Sri Lankan journalists. Earlier this week the Frontline Club held a discussion which touched on issues of press freedom in Sri Lanka.

We’ll be discussing the future for Sri Lanka at the club tonight, 24 February at 7 pm GMT/11 am PST. As usual, if you can’t make it to the club in person, we’ll be broadcasting the event live on the Frontline Club live channel or you can watch it on this very blog,

The Tamil Tigers are looking closer than ever to military defeat as government forces continue to overrun the last remaining rebel strongholds in the north of the country. With an end to the military stalemate and the 25 year civil war potentially in sight, what is the future for the LTTE and what are the consequences more generally for Sri Lanka? link

Taking part will be Frances Harrison, freelance journalist and former BBC Colombo correspondent, Charu Lata Hogg, from Human Rights Watch, Pearl Thevanayagam a Tamil journalist living in exile, Raj Jayadevan, from the newly launched Alliance for Peace and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka and Lal Wickrematunge will be joining us by phone from Sri Lanka. He is the managing editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper which was set up by his brother and the Leader’s former editor Lasantha who was assasinated in January, 2009. The discussion will be chaired by Priyath Liyanage is head of the BBC Sinhala Service .

“Journalism has perhaps become the most dangerous profession in this country,” the privately run [Sunday Leader] said in a front-page editorial on Saturday. “It is riskier than even soldiering in that a soldier has to be mindful of only one enemy whereas a journalist does not know from which quarter the icy cold hand of death may reach out for him or her.” link

Meanwhile the investigation into the killing of Wickrematunga is proceeding slowly according to Police Media Spokesperson SSP, Ranjith Gunasekera,

“The general public is not co-operating with the police to make a breakthrough. We would therefore have to depend on the circumstantial and scientific evidence for a breakthrough. If so it would definitely take a longer duration before we make a breakthrough,” Gunasekera said. “We have to be very careful when producing evidence to court and since there are 10 more days for the next hearing we hope to receive some sort of clue to the assassination.” link