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The most prominent incident was the January 2006 killing of Sudar Oli journalist
Subramaniyam Sugirdharajan, apparently because he had reported on serious
crimes by the Sri Lankan army. On the morning of January 24, unidentified gunmen in
Trincomalee shot and killed Sugirdharajan as he waited for a bus to go to work.
Sugirdharajan was known for having published photographs and news reports
critical of the army and paramilitary groups active in the town. Most notably, Sudar
Oli had published his photographs of five students allegedly executed by security
forces in Trincomalee on January 2, 2006. The photographs directly contested claims
by the Sri Lankan army that the young men were killed by grenades (the case is
discussed further in Chapter X). 176
On May 2, 2006, five masked gunmen killed two Uthayan employees—Suresh Kumar,
the marketing manager, and Ranjith Kumar, working in the circulation department—
when they sprayed the paper’s Jaffna office with automatic weapon fire. The attack
wounded five others and damaged the office. 177
On August 16, unknown attackers shot and killed an Uthayan driver named
Sathasivam Baskaran, 44, while he was delivering the newspaper during a temporary
lifting of the curfew in Jaffna. He was shot while driving his clearly marked vehicle in
an area controlled by the Sri Lankan armed forces. 178 Three days later, unknown
assailants burned down the Jaffna warehouse containing Uthayan’s printing
equipment. 179 On September 7, six armed men entered the Jaffna offices of Uthayan
and threatened editors with “severe reprisals” if they did not publish a statement
urging employees of Jaffna University to call off a strike they had started over a salary
dispute. 180
176 Ibid.
177 Committee to Protect Journalists, “In Sri Lanka, Two Killed in Attack on Tamil Newspaper,” May 2, 2006,
http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/asia/sri02may06na.html (accessed July 16, 2007), and Reporters Without Borders, “Tamil
press group driver killed, newspaper offices raided,” August 16, 2006, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18578
(accessed July 16, 2007).
178 Free Media Movement, “Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression in Sri Lanka: The Struggle for Survival,” January 2007,
http://www.freemediasrilanka.org/index.php?action=con_all_full&id=30&section=news_reports (accessed July 16, 2007).
179 “Sri Lanka: Tamil Journalists Under Threat—Overview,” South Asia Media Monitor, 2006,
http://www.minvanradio.com/reports/SAMM_2006/Annual_Media_Report2006.pdf (accessed July 17, 2007).
180 Human Rights Watch interview with Uthayan journalists, Colombo, March 2007.
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Human Rights Watch August 2007