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.

Death threats to Sri Lankan newspaper

An unknown group calling itself the Tamil United Force to Safeguard the Country has threatened to kill all the employees of the Tamil-language newspaper Uthayan, the leading newspaper in the Jaffna peninsula, if they have not resigned by the end of today. Read more here