Friday, September 20, 2013

Sri Lanka editor flees after armed attack...

An editor critical of Sri Lanka's government has fled the country following death threats and an armed attack on her home which she suspected was intended to find documents, a media rights groups said Wednesday.

The Free Media Movement (FMM) said Mandana Ismail Abeywickrema left for an undisclosed country Tuesday, joining some 80 journalists who have sought refuge abroad since President Mahinda Rajapakse came to power in 2005. Five men held the associate editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper at knifepoint and searched her Colombo home in a pre-dawn raid on August 24.

The military admitted that two of the five men involved were soldiers who had deserted the army, but denied that security forces were behind the crime.
Police, who shot one of the intruders dead, insisted it was a straight-forward robbery unrelated to her work at the newspaper.

“She had received several death threats after she raised suspicions that the gang was not looking for valuables, but for some documents,” the FMM said in a statement. Full story...

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