SL ranked sixth place in Global Impunity Index

9 October 2015 10:49 am Views - 7221

Sri Lanka has moved to sixth place from fourth in the 2015 Global Impunity Index issued by the Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ).
 
The CPJ said in its report that the improvement due not to prosecutions-the island nation still maintains a perfect record of impunity in journalist slayings-but to the fact that no journalists have been murdered for their work since the end of civil war in 2009.

 So far, President Maithripala Sirisena, inaugurated in January this year, has demonstrated greater political will for justice than his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, under whose leadership nine media murders, including the five from this index period, took place.

In May, Sirisena pledged to reopen the investigations into journalists killed or disappeared during the last 30 years, naming the assassination of prominent editor Lasantha Wickramatunga and the disappearance of cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda as priority cases. Since then, at least seven army officers have been arrested in connection with Eknelygoda's case.

Wickramatunga's and all other killings remain unsolved.

Impunity Index Rating: 0.242 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants Last year: Ranked 4th with a rating of 0.443.