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Twenty years of rigorous imprisonment for Tamil journalist Tissainayagam |
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2009-09-01 | 12.30 PM |
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The Colombo High Court today sentenced Chief Editor of the Outreach magazine, J.S. Tissainayagam, who was remanded for over 425 days, to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment.
Tissainayagam was arrested by the Terrorism Investigations Department (TID) on March 7, 2008 for allegedly writing and publishing an article that instituted ethnic disharmony and was remanded till today. Colombo High Court Judge Deepali Wijesundera sentenced him to 20 years rigorous imprisonment - a five year imprisonment term each for the first and second charges leveled against him and another 10 years for the third charge.
The state counsel representing the Attorney General told court that the respondent had published two articles in the Outreach magazine during the war in the north and east by the security forces claiming that the government forces were responsible for the killings that were taking place in the north and east and that the people in those areas were not provided with food, medicine and fuel and were being chased away by forces personnel. The counsel said that the respondent had tried to instigate ethnic disharmony through the articles.
The Attorney representing the respondent, Anil de Silva made a lengthy observation to court and said his client was not guilty of any of the charges made against him. |
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The Attorney appearing for the respondent told court that although his statement would not make any difference to the verdict that has already been decided by the judge, but made a kind request from the judge to consider the humane issues and pay fair consideration to the matter when passing the sentence.
Attorney Anil de Silva also said that Tissainayagam was not a nationalist as he worked together with the political leadership that stood against the killing of youth in the South during the 80s, with the association of parents of disappeared children, in the labour struggle in the 80s and for the benefit of the children who were suffering due to the actions of the LTTE, JVP and the security forces.
He noted the sad plight of the war displaced and the inability to say anything more on it due to the unfortunate situation and added that Tissainayagam lost his job in the 80s by working for the labour struggle during the time and has now lost his freedom for standing by his community.
Regardless of whether the court would pass verdict announcing Tissainayagam’s innocence or guilt, he was remanded for a period of one year and five months in an illegal manner, de Silva said.
The Attorney ended his statement by saying that the manner in which the law has acted against Tissainayagam is a good lesson for other journalists and therefore a request would have to be made from journalists to be safe by not writing anything. He said that the freedom to speak and publish as stated in the Constitution should be applicable to a Tamil like Tissainayagam as much as for a Sinhalese.
A large number of members from the media, civil society and several political leaders like Wickremabahu Karunaratne and Siritunga Jayasuriya were present at court.
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