Committee to investigate into attack on Batticaloa journalist

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 June 2003, 02:08 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has directed a committee headed by retired Judge Oliver Weerasinghe to investigate into the grenade attack on Batticaloa district journalist S. Jeyananthamoorthy who escaped injury in January when unknown assailants hurled a grenade into the journalist’s home, sources in Batticaloa said.

The committee is to begin hearings in Jaffna Secretariat between 4 June to 6 June, legal sources said.

The committee will also conduct hearings during its Jaffna sessions on the assaults by security forces on three Jaffna journalists, K. Sivapalan, S. Thavachelvan and S. Manohararajah, sources said.

The Ministry of Defence has sent letters through the Information Department to the involved journalists requesting them to appear at the hearings and provide testimony on the assaults.

Jaffna Tamil Journalists Union has intensively lobbied the Prime Minister to conduct inquiries and to safeguard the Tamil journalists from being assaulted by the security forces. The Journalists union also alerted the Committee for Protection of Journalists (CPJ) and other international media organizations to act to protect Tamil journalists.