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October 24, 2025 – Sri Lanka/India –
The press-freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has issued a public call urging Sri Lanka’s authorities to halt the systematic harassment of veteran Tamil photo-journalist Kanapathipillai Kumanan, who has long documented human-rights violations in the country’s northeast. Kumanan, based in the Mullaitivu district, has covered issues such as military land seizures, mass grave exhumations, and enforced disappearances affecting Tamil-speaking communities since the end of the civil war in 2009.
According to RSF, the journalist has been subjected to a renewed campaign of intimidation that appears to be directly linked to his reporting. Among the incidents cited, Kumanan was interrogated for seven hours in August 2025 by the Counter‑Terrorism and Investigation Division (CTID) in Alampil, Northern Province, where his work was characterized by investigators as “against the government” and labeled “terrorist”. A government representative later alleged at a United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances session in Geneva that Kumanan was involved in “terrorist activities” and “financial crime”, claims observers say are unfounded and designed to discredit him.
RSF noted that before this latest episode, Kumanan’s family at his home in Mullaitivu was visited in his absence by CTID officers, and his associates were similarly summoned for questioning—a pattern of pressure the organization says is aimed at deterring other members of the Tamil community from carrying out investigative journalism. The group described the actions as “a deeply serious attack on a reporter who has already been targeted on many occasions for his work” and called for an “immediate end to these acts of intimidation”.
Given Sri Lanka’s ongoing accountability challenges in its war-affected Tamil regions, RSF emphasized that Kumanan’s treatment raises broader concerns about the country’s willingness to protect press freedom and allow open reporting on post-war abuses. The organization urged Sri Lanka’s government to guarantee his safety and to ensure that journalists—even those in Tamil communities—can operate without threat of reprisals.
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