Media organisations deplore murder of Tamil politician and editor

Washington/ New York, Aug 22 (UNI) Media organisations have condemned the killing of Sinnathamby Sivamaharajah, the managing director of the Tamil-language daily Namathu Eelanadu (Our Eelam Nation), who was shot and killed on Sunday in his home in tellippalai, 15 km outside the northern city of Jaffna in Sri Lanka.

''The journalists and employees of Tamil news media continue to be eliminated at a horrific pace,'' Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom organisation, said in a statement in Washington yesterday.

''All parties, especially the pro-government Tamil paramilitaries, must stop targeting civilians, journalists and humanitarian workers. The press is again the victim of Sri Lanka's dirty war, and the government is partly to blame for this hellish cycle of violence,'' the statement added.

Mr Sivamaharajah, 68, was a Tamil politician and a member of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), a party affiliated to the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance. He used to be a parliamentary representative of Tamil party TULF. His newspaper is sympathetic towards the Tamil cause.

''We are concerned that the killing of Sivamaharajah could be part of a pattern of violence against Tamil journalists and media workers covering this conflict,'' Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said in New York yesterday.

''The targeting of journalists must cease. Authorities should conduct a thorough investigation into this murder and prosecute those responsible,'' the CPJ Director said.

Tamil nationalist Web site TamilNet said Mr Sivamaharajah's home was inside a security zone controlled by the Sri Lankan military and was under curfew at the time of the alleged killing.

The Defence Ministry denied that his home was in the zone, and accused LTTE of the murder.

Three Tamil journalists -- Subramaniyam Sugitharajah, Dharmeratnam Sivaram and Relangi Selvarajah -- have been killed since the beginning of 2005.

Warehouses containing printing equipment of another Jaffna-based Tamil newspaper, Uthayan, were burnt down on Friday by unidentified people, according to the Colombo-based press advocacy group Free Media Movement (FMM). Last Tuesday, an Uthayan driver was killed in Jaffna, the fourth employee of the newspaper group to be killed in recent months, FMM said.

Launched in 2002, after the signing of a cease-fire between the government and the LTTE, Namathu Eelanadu offers national news coverage with a special focus on the Jaffna peninsula and a pro-Tamil nationalist position.

UNI XC PR VC0922