Reporters Without Borders and its partner organization, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), firmly condemn a pre-dawn armed attack on the Tamil-language daily Uthayan’s headquarters in the northern city of Jaffna on 13 April, just 10 days after a similar attack on Uthayan’s distribution office in the town of Kilinochchi.

In present day Sri Lanka it has become customary for whispers and speculation of impending elections to be followed up by brutal onslaughts on what remains of the country’s free press. It is a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate the media into silence ahead of crucial polls about the crimes and lapses of a completely corrupt incumbency.

Officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US investigating into the Boston bomb blast are to visit Sri Lanka to meet Divaina journalist Keerthi Warnakulasuriya, who is known as the Defence Secretary of the Divaina newspaper, sources from the newspaper said.

British Marathon Runner Mr David Stacey has volunteered to run the 32nd London Marathon on 21st April 2013 on behalf of young and disabled children in Sri Lanka.

The provincial council system was set up in response to Tamil demands for separation in the face of brazen discrimination by the Sri Lankan state from the very time of independence. It was a compromise mediated by India in 1987 under the Indo-Lanka Accord to give Tamils a say in their own affairs while preserving the state without any breakup.

Sri Lanka’s 43rd Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake has been barred from leaving the country. The Bribery Commissioner asked the Controller of Immigration and Emigration yesterday (17th) not to allow Dr. Bandaranayake to leave the country until the investigations into the alleged corruption charges against her were completed.

Melbourne, Thursday – Two world-renowned authors, American Noam Chomsky and Australian Thomas Keneally, have called on the Australian Government to end indefinite detention of refugees after a 10-day hunger strike ended at the Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne.

The Gampaha Mayor was arrested for obstructing the official duties of police personnel, Police Spokesperson SP BUddhika Siriwardena said.

The Bangladeshi Grey Hat Hackers (BGHH) has hacked three websites of the Sri Lankan government for insulting the Islam religion in the country.

TNA Jaffna District parliamentarian E. Saravanapavan says that government spokesperson Minister Keheliya Rambukwella was giving wrong information to the media and that the people in the North were not that foolish to believe such statements.

The United States has reminded the Rajapaksa government that media freedom was one of the many recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and a component of the recent UNHCR resolution in Geneva.

Lawyers of the Commonwealth today passed a resolution on Sri Lanka at a special plenary session during the Commonwealth Law Conference in South Africa.

People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) has write a letter to the Chief Minister of Government of Tamil Nadu. See the letter below.

Despite the heavy presence of security forces, a group of armed men have fired and then torched the printing machinery of the “Uthayan” newspaper.

The Law Society of England and Wales today added its voice to those calling for the suspension of Sri Lanka from the Councils of the Commonwealth, following reports of serious breaches of the rule of law and judicial independence.

Tamil groups from around the world, coordinated by the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), are in the process of drafting Tamil Eelam Freedom Charter. This Charter will be declared on May 18th 2013. May 18th marks the 4th anniversary of the killing of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians and sexually assaulting Tamil women by the Sri Lankan Security forces.

Crooked in the beginning would be crooked forever. Drawing parallel with the Tamil language daily from Jaffna, Minister Douglas Devananda said ‘Uthayan’ had a crooked beginning with the tears and curses of hundreds of Jaffna pensioners, who lost their hard earned savings in the Sabra Unico Finance.

Faith can be a comfort and faith can be a cudgel. Faith has been and remains for many to be a wellspring of inspiration that can be used to check one's moral compass and to recharge one's internal resources the struggle for all people's human rights. It is also important to recognize that there is a long tradition of religion being misused to justify the systematic denial of people's human rights, or indeed their very humanness. We must always be vigilant in watching religion.

Democracy is being slowly and surely strangled in Sri Lanka and that many a critic of the Government, particularly in the media has met with a tragic fate is indisputable.

Divaina staff journalist Janaka Liyanarachchi in the Sunday Divaina newspaper of March 31st wrote an article on the Matale mass grave, the disappearances in the North and the issue being taken before Geneva. The story was written under the title “The story told 25 years later by persons tortured to death.”

Chairman of the Nawaloka Group, Jayantha Dharmadasa was elected as the head of Sri Lanka Cricket for the next two years and Nishantha Ranatunge was appointed as the secretary of the board at the elections held on the 16th.

In a candid interview for the documentary We Feed the World, Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck makes the astonishing claim that water isn’t a human right. He attacks the idea that nature is good, and says it is a great achievement that humans are now able to resist nature’s dominance. He attacks organic agriculture and says genetic modification is better.

The actions of rugger player and parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has had a negative impact on the country’s image at the recently concluded Asian five nations rugby tournament held in Colombo.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa government despite all its bravado in Sri Lanka has been forced to eat humble pie and work spending billions of public monies towards building the country’s image in the US.

We Bodu Bala Sena - a leading civil society movement fighting for rights of Buddhists in Sri Lanka would like to make the public aware that the UK Government Report and its specific note on Bodu Bala Sena is baseless.

Melbourne, Tuesday – After a fourth hunger-striker was taken to hospital last night, the Australian Human  Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, has called for an end to the indefinite detention of refugees given adverse ASIO assessments.

Mr. Rohana Seneviratne, lecturer in Sanskrit at the Department of Classical Languages of the University of Peradeniya and currently a doctoral student in Sanskrit at the University of Oxford, UK won the prestigious Saraswati Sanskrit Prize 2012.

Several men and women who were sleeping in the struggle pandal around the Lourdes’ Church, Idinthakarai, reported with great concern and panic that they noticed four masked men with sharp weapons loitering around at 11:45 pm on April 14, 2013.

Uthayan’s website was inaccessible at the time that this press release issued (see cached version).