Journalists in Jaffna staged a protest on Friday demanding justice for murdered media personnel and calling for impartial, credible investigations into the killings of journalists, attacks on individual reporters and violence directed at media institutions.
The demonstration was held in front of the Jaffna District Secretariat.
It coincided with a two-day visit to Jaffna by Deputy Minister of Mass Media Dr. Kaushalya Ariyarathna, who was attending a series of official engagements in the district. One of those was a seminar for journalists scheduled to take place at the District Secretariat itself.
Members of the Jaffna Press Club boycotted the Deputy Minister’s seminar and joined the protest outside instead, saying the action was a response to the continuing absence of justice and to the failure to conduct proper investigations into crimes committed against journalists.
The Daily Mirror, which reported the protest, did not carry a response from the Deputy Minister or the Ministry of Mass Media.
Context
Impunity for crimes against media workers is a long-standing grievance in the Northern Province, where Tamil-language journalists were killed, abducted and driven into exile during and after the armed conflict. The Jaffna Press Club, a collective of journalists working across the North, has campaigned for years for investigations into those cases to be completed.
By staging the demonstration at the same venue and on the same day as the ministerial seminar, the club put its demands on the record at the moment a member of the government responsible for the media portfolio was in the district.
