NEWS

Campaigners decry Sri Lanka’s new media minister
The newly elected President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, appointed Mervyn Silva as the deputy minister for media and information on Friday. Silva is a politician with a notorious reputation for physically and verbally attacking journalists and other members of the press, including one incident in December 2008 where he and a large group of […]
28 Apr 10

The newly elected President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, appointed Mervyn Silva as the deputy minister for media and information on Friday. Silva is a politician with a notorious reputation for physically and verbally attacking journalists and other members of the press, including one incident in December 2008 where he and a large group of men stormed a television station and assaulted its news director. The appointment angered Reporters sans frontières, it asked “In what country do you appoint an arsonist to put out fires?”