{"id":25281,"date":"2011-08-04T15:36:13","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T14:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=25281"},"modified":"2017-01-11T16:31:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T16:31:42","slug":"sri-lanka-president-threatens-newspaper-chairman-by-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=25281","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka: President threatens newspaper chairman by phone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday it was reported that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/tag\/sri-lanka\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sri Lankan<\/a> President Mahinda Rajapaksa <a href=\"http:\/\/en.rsf.org\/sri-lanka-president-personally-phones-02-08-2011,40732.html\" target=\"_blank\">threatened <\/a>the chairman of\u00a0<a title=\"The Sunday Leader\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thesundayleader.lk\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Sunday Leader<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/tag\/lal-wickrematunge\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lal Wickrematunge<\/a>, by phone on 19 July. In response to an article that claimed China had given the president and his son millions of dollars to be used \u201cat their discretion\u201d, Rajapaksa\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.rsf.org\/sri-lanka-president-personally-phones-02-08-2011,40732.html\" target=\"_blank\">reportedly<\/a>\u00a0told Wickrematunge, \u201cyou can attack me politically, but if you attack me personally, I will know how to attack you personally too.\u201d The Sunday Leader is\u00a0Sri Lanka\u2019s only independent English-language newspaper, and has long been targeted by the government. The paper claims the 2009 murder of its former head, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/tag\/lal-wickrematunge\/\">Lasantha Wickematunge<\/a>\u00a0(Lal&#8217;s brother), was never investigated fully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday it was reported that\u00a0Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa threatened the chairman of\u00a0The Sunday Leader, Lal Wickrematunge, by phone on 19 July. In response to an article that claimed China had given the president and his son millions of dollars to be used \u201cat their discretion\u201d, Rajapaksa\u00a0reportedly\u00a0told Wickrematunge, \u201cyou can attack me politically, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[584,585],"tags":[513,727,7392,1567],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25281"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84680,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25281\/revisions\/84680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}