The midnight attack on a reporter working for an English newspaper in Colombo underscores the dangerous working climate for journalists in Sri Lanka.
Faraz Shauketaly, 54, is said to be out of danger, according to reports. Sri Lankan authorities must investigate this shooting and bring the attackers to justice as early as possible. Human rights activists allege that President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government has created conditions to expose media personnel to this type of attack because the perpetrators know they will never be brought to justice.
The president has however taken the right step by ordering a full-scale police investigation.
The injured reporter worked for the privately owned Sunday Leader, whose editor was shot dead in 2009.
Shakuntala Perera, the new editor of the newspaper, says Shauketaly had written a series of articles on alleged corruption in the energy sector in recent months. It is unfortunate that attacks against journalists and news outlets are continuing despite the end of the decades-long war between the military and Tamil separatist insurgents in 2009.
Media watchdogs say not a single person had been prosecuted for the killing of 17 journalists and media workers in Sri Lanka in the past decade and abductions and disappearances remained unsolved.
Media rights groups accuse the government of trying to silence dissenting voices.
There has also been a string of attacks against the main Tamil newspaper in the island’s north with employees beaten up. Some thugs went amok on parliamentarians and journalists at the site of a nonviolent protest in the northern district of Jaffna.
As long as a culture of impunity persists, there will be no press freedom in Sri Lanka.
The government should take effective steps to protect vulnerable minority groups from being targets of violent attacks. — Suchitra K., Jubail
Midnight attack on media spreads fear
