2ND LEAD (CORRECTION)

A.J. Kanagarathna, a pioneer journalist, passes away

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 October 2006, 02:01 GMT]
A long term journalist, previously attached to Saturday Review in Jaffa, A.J. Kanagarathna, 74, passed away in Colombo Wednesday morning.

He was a pioneer journalist in the Peninsula and a writer of English who had also served at the University of Jaffna as an English lecturer for more than 18 years from the beginning of the university until his retirement at 60 years.

He was born in Kayts, grew up in Jaffna town and went to Colombo recently for medical treatment.

His body is being kept at the Raymond's Florists at Boralla in Colombo and will be buried on Thursday in Kanatte Cemetery in Colombo, family sources said.

He represented nearly every literary group in Jaffna, and wrote on many topics including literature and cinema, and translated many Tamil novels in English.

People of Jaffna remembered him as a noble intellectual and his colleagues as a creative man.

Saturday Review, an English language weekly newspaper that was published in Jaffna, was edited by S. Sivanayagam and Gamini Navaratne in turn.

Senior Journalist S. Sivanayagam, Saturday Review's Chief Editor, was forced to seek asylumn in India after the weekly was sealed by the Government of Sri Lanka on July 02, 1983. Later, the weekly was edited by Gamini Navaratne.

Chronology: