Three years ago, on 24 January 2010, columnist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda vanished on his way to work to cover the final campaigning in Sri Lanka's bitterly contested presidential election. He has not been heard from since.
UPDATE from CPJ: Sri Lanka tries new ways to crush independent media (7 June 2013)
(CPJ/IFEX) – 23 January 2013 – The following is a CPJ Blog post:
By Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia Program Coordinator
Three years ago, on January 24, 2010, columnist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda vanished on his way to work to cover the final campaigning in Sri Lanka’s bitterly contested presidential election. He has not been heard from since. The pro-opposition website he worked for, Lanka eNews, has been repeatedly attacked, its offices hit with arson, its staff arrested and harassed, its editor driven into exile in England.
Hearings into Eknelygoda’s disappearance have been lumbering on in the Magistrates Court in Homagama, a distant suburb of Colombo. They were launched at the insistence of his wife, Sandhya, after she was unable to get an answer to her request for information about her husband from any member or agency of the government.
