SRI LANKA: Political group detains journalist

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A group attached to the Sri Lanka Peoples Party had “detained” Daily Mirror Jaffna correspondent N. Parameshwaran yesterday as he attempted to expose attempts by the political party to deceive displaced people in the peninsula.

Speaking to Daily Mirror online, N. Parameshwaran said that he had lodged a complaint with the Jaffna police saying the group grabbed his camera and attempted to assault him after forcing him inside their Jaffna office yesterday.

The journalist had been distributing leaflets containing a copy of a letter written by him which appeared in the Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna yesterday, to displaced people who had queued outside the political party office yesterday when the incident took place.

The leaflet claimed that although the political party was seeking the registration of the displaced people to offer them assistance, there was a hidden political agenda behind the move.

A group of men who had seen the journalist distributing the leaflets grabbed his camera and forced him to follow them inside the party office. Once inside the office they had attempted to assault him but were prevented from doing so by a representative of the party identified as Thilakumara Udugama.

According to Parameshwaran, the political party representative had telephoned the police in Jaffna and later released the journalist after holding him at the office for nearly half an hour. Parameshwaran later went and lodged a complaint with the Jaffna police

© Daily Mirror Online