July 03, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 28, 1429

COLOMBO: Hundreds of Sri Lankan reporters and cameramen staged a protest outside President Mahinda Rajapakse’s home on Wednesday demanding an end to a wave of killings, abductions and assaults against journalists.

Media workers’ associations peacefully demonstrated outside the main access to Rajapakse’s Temple Trees residence while dozens of unarmed police stood behind yellow iron barricades.

“We have two simple demands: We want the killings and assaults to end. We want the government to stop the culture of impunity,” said media rights activist Sunanda Deshapriya. Journalists covering the government’s escalating war against Tamil Tiger rebels have come under increasing pressure in recent months.

The protest was sparked by the attack on Monday on a British embassy political officer, Mahendra Ratnaweera, and independent defence writer Namal Perera, while driving on a busy street in Colombo.

Newspaper publishers on Wednesday offered a reward of five million rupees ($46,000) for information leading to arrest of those responsible for the attack.

Perera was the acting director for media rights issues at the Sri Lanka Press Institute and also contributed to the local media writing on defence-related issues.

The assault came less than a month after the country’s defence ministry launched scathing attacks against journalists critical of its war against the Tamil rebels, calling them “enemies of the state.” It also came days after the government moved to deflect a barrage of criticism over its press rights record by promising to help journalists who received death threats.

Sri Lanka’s main press rights group, the Free Media Movement (FMM), said it would treat the latest incident as a “litmus test” of the effectiveness of the high-powered ministerial committee appointed by President Rajapakse to prevent such attacks.The government says it is investigating the attack.

Perera and Ratnaweera were still in hospital on Wednesday.

Perera has told reporters from his hospital bed that he locked himself in the car, but the attackers smashed windows and beat them until other motorists stopped and rushed to their help. However, the attackers escaped.

Since August 2005, 12 media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka. Eleven of them died in government-controlled areas and no one has been brought to justice in connection with the deaths.

Sri Lanka’s bitter ethnic war, which has left tens of thousands of people dead, has escalated sharply since January, when the government pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce with the Tamil Tigers.—AFP