Radio journalist/manager arrested – FMM

 
17th  October 2008

Mr. A.R.Vaama Loshan (32) General Manager of Vettri FM Radio (Tamil Radio station) was arrested by the Terrorism Investigations Division on 14th Nov 2008. He worked as radio journalists for nearly 10 years before joining Vettri FM in early 2008.

His family members told 5 media organizations that soon after midnight group of 13 persons indentifying themselves police officials visited their house and took away Mr. Vaama Loshan. The police officials have given a receipt which says Mr. Vaama Loshan was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. 

He is being detained at infamous TID detention centre in Colombo. Five media organizations call on the government to ensure that Mr.Vaama are brought before Courts or released without delay.

We also call on the government to guarantee the safety and security of journalists, media professionals and their families and desist from using a ‘national security’ framework and argument to crush media freedom and silence legitimate voices of dissent in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka detained journalist says threatened daily; quizzed in court over writing

Writer’s Trial: 
  
Nov 16, 2008 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan journalist who had been detained for over eight months had been questioned about what he wrote, and had also revealed to court that he had been repeatedly threatened, a media report said.
 
Senior journalist J S Tissainayagam’s case had been taken up Friday in Colombo High Court but the judicial medical officer summoned to give evidence was not present, The Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Earlier in the week Tissainayagam had testified that he had a serious eye condition, where an accident when he was 18 had caused a detached retina in both eyes and he had 50 percent vision.

Doctors had advised him that a blow to the head could make the condition recur.

He said officers of Sri Lanka’s terrorist investigation division who was holding him had threatened him saying he would be “beaten up like other detainees” and that he would go blind if the officers beat him, the report said.

He said he was threatened on a daily basis.

In cross-examination, a government lawyer had produced several documents and statements that. Tissainayagam was said to have signed on March 7, the day he was detained.

Tissainayagam had denied that it was his signature on the documents, saying he signed in the English language and therefore the signature on the documents could not be his.
 
Tissainayagam had told court on May 9 after he had seen another arrested colleague being tortured, and had been told the same would happen to him. The prosecution’s position was that he was lying, the report said.

The defence had asked for a medical officer who had reported on it to be called to court.

A government lawyer had questioned whether he had visited a Tamil Tiger controlled area with the permission of the Government and questioned him on an article he had written in November 2007 and asked him to read out portions of it.

Tissainayagam had read out the article and said he stood by it and added that as a journalist he had expressed his views, The Sunday Times said.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) had launched a campaign to free Tissainayagam saying it was a trial on the freedom of expression.

EPDP ADVISORY TO FREE MEDIA MOVEMENT

Date: 1st November, 2008

RIGHT TO REPLY

 (an edited version of a letter sent by EPDP on FMM press release on 29th Oct 2008 titiled

Independent media in Jaffna threatened by armed cadre of EPDP)

The EPDP states in all faith and with full consideration for the dignity of its statesman-leader Hon. Douglas Devananda, that the attempts made by the said Saravanabhavan to mislead the FMM, distort the media, damage democracy, and pervert the truth are the strivings of a terrorist accessory, and the EPDP is constrained to repudiate the allegations in the FMM statement as irresponsible and breaching the borders of accuracy.

Let it be known that Hon. Douglas Devananda, statesman-leader of the EPDP, has nothing to do with the said Saravanapavan, and has not had any contact with him since longer than anybody can remember. How then could he have possibly told S.Saravanapavan that the army was “very angry” with him? However, Subra’s brother-in-law and editor of his newspaper, is not queasy about calling the statesman-leader for certain favours and clarifications.

The reference to a threat last January, is a piece of low-tariff theatre stage-managed by Saravanabhavan who has also accused the EPDP of embargoing newsprint supplies to the peninsula to prevent news from being published there. This is wastebasket nonsense. Newsprint is readily available and newspapers are freely published in Jaffna.

The EPDP disaffirms any connection with an incident the FMM cites quoting Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF).

The EPDP records with regret that while its statesman-leader Hon. Douglas Devananda has personally invited, and repeatedly renewed his invitation to the FMM to speak with him for information and clarification on issues bearing on the EPDP, the FMM has chosen to ignore these invitations and assumed an attitude of intransigent bias in its references to the EPDP.

In the cause of free and fair media, and for the sake of FMM credibility, the EPDP invites contact from all those interested on +94 – 11-2503467, its 24 hour hotline.

 

 

Media Secretary