Sri Lanka: media worker intimidated while covering a protest
Event- Country
- Sri Lanka
- Initial Date
- Jan 5, 2021
- Event Description
A Tamil journalist was assaulted and threatened by a group of unidentified people, when he went to film a protest in Batticaloa on Tuesday (5th January).
Kugarasu Subojan traveled to Eravur, Batticaloa to cover a local protest against the ‘Airtel Tower’ on Tuesday morning when he was approached and threatened by a group of unidentified persons. They surrounded Subojan after identifying him as a journalist and told him to immediately stop filming the demonstrations, before attempting to assault him.
They tried to intimidate Subojan and said to him, “What is a journalist to us?, Oh, so you think you’re some big person?”
They repeatedly shouted at him to “delete the video” and tried to steal Subojan’s video equipment.
Subojan, however, resisted the attempts and was able to flee the scene safely with the help of some other nearby correspondents.
Journalists have demanded that Eravur police immediately locates and arrests the assaulters and submitted a complaint at the local Karadiyanaru police station on Wednesday.
Media repression in the North-East has escalated since the appointment of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka’s president last year, with an increase in incidents of Tamil journalists facing state surveillance and intimidation.
- Impact of Event
- 1
- Gender of HRD
- Man
- Violation
- Intimidation and Threats
- Violence (physical)
- Rights Concerned
- Offline
- Right to healthy and safe environment
- HRD
- Media Worker
- Perpetrator-State
- Unknown
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Unknown
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 7.729861593186234
Longitude: 81.6923245339825
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 5 January 2021, Kugarasu Subojan, media worker, was attacked and intimidated by unknown persons while covering an ongoing protest staged by citizens in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.