Sri Lanka: opposition newspaper editor badly beaten

Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan, editor of the Tamil-language daily Uthayan, was on Friday evening beaten by unidentified men with iron bars in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna. Having been rushed to hospital with critical head injuries, he remains unconscious. Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) says that while physical attacks against journalists have largely fallen since 2010, threats and acts of intimidation continue to be common in Sri Lanka. In May, Kuhanathan’s colleague, reporter S. Kavitharan, was attacked by armed men as he made his way to work.