Media organizations condemn SL military intimidation of 5 journalists in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 October 2013, 23:12 GMT]
The Jaffna Press Club (JPC) and Colombo-based Sri Lanka Tamil Media Association (SLTMA) have condemned SL military for intimidation, censorship and death threat on five Tamil journalists on Monday at Valikaamam North in Jaffna, where the journalists working for different media organisations, went to cover the visit by a delegation comprising of Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian and Northern Provincial Council members.

The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were deployed in demolishing the houses inside the occupied zone to construct a Sinhala military colony at Kadduvan.

The occupying soldiers rounded up the journalists outside the fenced area and forcefully removed the cameras and recorders from them and deleted the recorded content from their devices. The SL military also issued death threat to the journalists.

The five journalists subjected to the death threat are Gajeepan Wigneswaran, a regional correspondent of Sakthi TV and the secretary of the JPC, Rajeskaran Suntharampillai, a reporter with Valampuri paper and the treasurer of the JPC, S. Tharsanan, a news photographer from Uthayan paper, Nitharsan Singaravelu, a staff reporter at the Jaffna edition of Thinakkural (Yaazh Thinakkural) paper and Gajendraprasath Sivanandan, a reporter of Tamil Mirror (Daily Mirror).

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