RSF award for Sri Lanka's Jailed Journalist J.S. Tissanayagam

Colombo - The senior journalist, J.S. Tissanayagam, the Sunday Times, Colombo English-language weekly has been nominated for a media freedom award for defending the freedom of information by the international media rights group, Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

RSF said in a statement that J S Tissainayagam is one of six journalists from different countries to be nominated for the award for "journalists who through their work, their principled stand or their attitude have displayed support for freedom of information."

Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi will present the prize to the winners on Thursday, December 04 in Paris.

"He was charged with terrorism on the basis of articles he wrote in 2006 in which he referred to a military offensive in the Tamil region that was accompanied, he said, by a terrible humanitarian crisis for the civilian population," the RSF statement said.

"This is the first time that a journalist has been held on terrorism charges because of what he wrote."

The RSF said Tissainayagam is now "held in appalling conditions" in a Colombo prison and there had been attempts to intimidate Tissainayagam's wife.

Tissainayagam has been detained since March 2008 and is the first journalist to be charged for his writing under Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act, a law described as draconian by human rights groups.

The charges against him include promoting violence and bringing the government into disrepute in his writing between June 2006 and June 2007 in the North Eastern Monthly magazine.

Tissanayagam is currently kept in Magazine Prison with 140 convicted criminals some of whom already threatened Tissanayagam. He has not eaten since November 18th the day he was transferred to the Magazine Prison as his meal was taken by some other prisoners.

Tissanayagam was the first journalist indicted and being accused under the Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). J.S. Tissanayagam was arrested on March 7th 2008, and jailed for writing articles that were critical of the government.

Many local and international rights groups and media watchdogs including, AI, RSF, CPI, FMM, and IFEX says J.S. Tissainayagam’s long detention and harsh charges for publishing a magazine in 2006, which should not constitute an offence.