ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Tamil journalist was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor by a Sri Lankan court on Monday after being convicted of using racially divisive language under the country’s tough anti-terrorism laws.
J. S. Tissainayagam, editor of the North Eastern Monthly magazine, wrote articles highly critical of a government military offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels who had controlled a large chunk of Sri Lanka’s north. The government decisively defeated the Tigers in a bloody final battle on a strip of beach in northern Sri Lanka in May.
Mr. Tissainayagam was arrested in 2008 and charged under Sri Lanka’s powerful emergency laws, which were enacted in response to the Tamil Tiger insurgency. The insurgents, members of the Hindu Tamil minority, sought a separate state from Sri Lanka’s Buddhist, Sinhalese majority.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Tissainayagam had received money and other support from the Tamil Tigers in exchange for writing articles critical of the government. Mr. Tissainayagam has repeatedly denied this.
As is often the case with local journalists in conflict zones, Mr. Tissainayagam’s reporting reflected the prevailing point of view of the minority to which he belonged, but the government argued his work went further.
“The constitution itself gives freedom of press, but that doesn’t allow anybody to spread false information to spur ethnic violence,” the prosecutor, Sudarshana DeSilva, told the court, Reuters reported.
But human rights advocates and press freedom activists say that Mr. Tissainayagam’s harsh sentence is emblematic of the plight of Sri Lanka’s embattled press corps. At least seven journalists have been killed since 2007, and many more have fled the country.
The sentence is sure to increase pressure from Western countries on Sri Lanka’s government, which has been harshly criticized for its handling of the final offensive against the Tamil Tigers and the treatment of Tamils displaced by the war.
More than 250,000 people are being held in vast, closed camps in the north. The government has pledged to let the majority go home by the end of the year, but worsening conditions in the camps as the rains start has increased pressure to free the war displaced.
Mr. Tissainayagam’s lawyer told reporters that he plans to appeal the sentence. “This is a good lesson for all journalists to be cautious when writing in future,” the lawyer, Anil Silva said, according to Reuters. “He lost his job in the ‘80s when talking about labor union rights. Now, he lost his freedom when talking about Tamil rights.”
