A grenade attack was carried out on the headquarters of the Tamil daily newspaper Uthayan in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna at about 11 p.m. Monday night. The grenade exploded in the patio of the building, causing considerable damage and injuring a police guard.
“This was yet another attempt to stop distribution of Uthayan and comes less than a month after the arrest of N Vithyatharan, the editor of the Tamil daily Sudar Oli, an Uthayan press group publication,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said.
“The use of violence and intimidation against the staff of Sudar Oli and Uthayan is absolutely unacceptable,” RSF added. “We urge the Sri Lankan authorities to carry out a thorough investigation with the aim of arresting those responsible and bringing them to trial.”
Tamil media voiced the suspicion that the orders for the attack on Uthayan came from within the government. Senior officials had reportedly just told news organisations not publish reports about civilian victims of the fighting in the northern district of Vanni or to reproduce interviews which the Tamil Tiger rebels have given to foreign news media. Uthayan and the other newspaper, Valampuri, had nonetheless printed photos of children killed in Vanni.
A member of the Uthayan staff said the grenade attack was an attempt to sabotage the newspaper’s operations. The newspaper was nonetheless able to bring out the next morning's issue.
