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Sri Lankan journalist Poddala Jayantha beaten up

The Australian - June 3, 2009

Colombo – A prominent Sri Lankan press freedom campaigner has been abducted and beaten in Colombo in the latest in a string of assaults on government critics.

Poddala Jayantha, secretary of the Sri Lankan Working Journalists, said he was pushed into a van yesterday by a gang of men, who beat him and shaved his beard and hair before dumping him by the roadside. He suffered head and leg injuries.

Mr Jayantha returned to Sri Lanka only a few weeks ago after repeated threats and intimidation – including an attempt by an armed gang to abduct him from his home – forced him to flee.

At least 20 Sri Lankan journalists have fled after receiving death threats and 14 have been killed since the beginning of the military campaign to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2006. Others have been arbitrarily arrested and tortured or disappeared while in custody.

Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of The Sunday Leader newspaper, was posthumously awarded the Unesco World Press Freedom Award for 2009.

After he was shot his brother retrieved a laptop computer on which Wickrematunge had written an editorial predicting his murder and blaming it on the Government.

Police have yet to arrest anyone for the killing of any of the 14 journalists.

Press freedom in Sri Lanka has shrunk since 2006. Reporters Without Borders expressed alarm at the statement by army chief Sarath Fonseka last week in which he cautioned that journalists who visited areas formerly controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels would be prosecuted.

Journalists still have no free access to the camps where 270,000 Tamil civilians have been interned.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rejected allegations the world body deliberately underestimated the death toll in Sri Lanka.

"I categorically reject – repeat, categorically – any suggestion that the United Nations has deliberately underestimated any figures," he said.

He was reacting to claims that confidential UN reports had found more than 20,000 civilians were killed by Sri Lankan army shelling.

Mr Ban made it clear that "whatever the total, the casualties in the conflict were unacceptably high – as I have also said repeatedly". (The Times, AFP)

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