Sri Lankan Court Jails Tamil Journalist Who Criticised War

A Tamil journalist who wrote articles criticizing the Sri Lankan government's war against the Tamil Tigers was today sentenced to 20 years' hard labor under the country's anti-terrorism laws.

Judge Deepali Wijesundera, at the high court in Colombo, convicted JS Tissanayagam on three charges of conspiracy, breaking the Prevention of Terrorism Act and violating wide-ranging emergency regulations.

The court found Tissainayagam guilty of causing racial hatred and receiving money from the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to fund his website.

The journalist, who had been a respected columnist for Colombo papers, was arrested in 2008 and charged five months later with inciting violence in articles in his magazine, the North Eastern Monthly, which is now closed.

Tissainayagam's defence lawyers said their client would appeal, maintaining he had always fought for human rights. The journalist's case has attracted international attention, with President Obama saying earlier this year it was "emblematic of the hundreds of journalists who face intimidation, censorship, and arbitrary arrest".

"He was never a racist, and he at no time tried to arouse hatred," Tissainayagam's defence lawyer, Anil Silva, said in his filing. "Now he has been punished for what he wrote as a journalist. This will be a lesson to other journalists, too."

However, the prosecution argued that the constitutional right to free speech did not extend to spreading "false information to spur ethnic violence".

Until its defeat in May, the LTTE fought a guerrilla war for almost three decades to create a separate nation for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, whom it said the Sinhalese majority discriminated against. The war ended with the death of the Tamil Tiger's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The verdict is the first under Sri Lanka's draconian anti-terror laws. Human rights groups have criticised the government for suspending press freedoms and cracking down on reporters considered to be insubordinate. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says 11 Sri Lankan reporters have been forced into exile over the past year.

In some cases, the government has been accused of assassinating journalists. Amnesty International says at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists and media workers have been killed since the beginning of 2006.

"The courts in Sri Lanka cannot be considered independent … even the chief justice has been silenced for speaking out on the issue of Tamil refugees in the country," said Suhas Chakma of the Asian centre for human rights.

"The message is that nobody can speak out against the government, and is especially pointed given that exiled journalists last week had sent out a video showing Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamils".

Chakma said there were still questions to be asked about how many people had been killed in the final stages of the war, and that the verdict was "about silencing dissent".