The Sri Lankan deputy minister Sundaralingam Pradeep at the Jaffna Press Club on Monday, beneath portraits of murdered Tamil journalists
A Sri Lankan deputy minister has promised to arrange a meeting between Tamil journalists and the Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake on investigating the killings of journalists in the North-East, telling them to "give us time", as murders of Tamil media workers spanning more than two decades remain unpunished.
Sundaralingam Pradeep, the deputy minister of plantation and community infrastructure and a National People’s Power (NPP) MP for Ratnapura, made the pledge during a meeting at the Jaffna Press Club on Monday.
Representatives of the press club called for immediate investigations into the killings of journalists, the abduction and enforced disappearance of media workers, and attacks on media institutions across the North-East.
Pradeep speaks to journalists at the Jaffna Press Club
Pradeep said the government did not distinguish between journalists from the South and the North and would not follow the practices of previous administrations. He said court verdicts once considered unimaginable were now being delivered, and assured the journalists that justice would be pursued for those who had been murdered.
He asked the journalists to submit a memorandum setting out their demands and pledged to arrange direct talks with Dissanayake and the relevant authorities. Kapilan Sundaramoorthy, a Jaffna Municipal Council member and coordinator to the chairperson of the Jaffna District Coordinating Committee, also attended.
Journalists meet the deputy minister at the Jaffna Press Club
The meeting came a week after Tamil journalists marked 26 years since the murder of Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, who was shot dead at his home in Jaffna in October 2000. No one has been convicted for his killing, or for those of Dharmeratnam Sivaram in 2005 and Aiyathurai Nadesan in Batticaloa in 2004, or for the 2006 raid on the Uthayan newspaper in which two employees were killed.
In July, Jaffna journalists confronted the deputy media minister , asking why the cases of the Sinhala journalists Lasantha Wickrematunge and Prageeth Ekneligoda were progressing while those of Tamil journalists were not. They said 58 journalists had been killed or disappeared in the North alone.
A flame is lit at the commemoration of Mylvaganam Nimalarajan at the Jaffna Press Club this month. File photograph
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