{"id":29235,"date":"2021-03-04T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T06:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/mar\/04\/for-sri-lankan-reporters-the-ghosts-of-violence-and-intimidation-loom-again"},"modified":"2021-03-04T15:00:38","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T06:00:38","slug":"for-sri-lankan-reporters-the-ghosts-of-violence-and-intimidation-loom-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=29235","title":{"rendered":"For Sri Lankan reporters, the ghosts of violence and intimidation loom again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The terror of earlier crackdowns taught me to write between the lines as a journalist \u2013 now I see repressive tactics returning<\/p>\n<p>Terror tore through me when I heard that my friend and editor of the Nation newspaper, Keith Noyahr, had been abducted. It was May 2008; the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2009\/may\/18\/sri-lanka-conflict\">civil war<\/a> was raging and Sri Lankan troops were chalking up victories against Tamil Tiger separatists in the north. In the fog of war, government critics were being terrorised all over the country. We had learned to expect the worst when a journalist went missing.<\/p>\n<p>Outside Noyahr\u2019s home that night, through his six-year-old daughter\u2019s screams, I heard phone calls pleading with diplomats and politicians to save Keith\u2019s life. The journalist was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundayobserver.lk\/2018\/04\/15\/news-feature\/phone-records-lead-cid-big-arrest-keith-noyahr-abduction-case\">released by his abductors<\/a> shortly before dawn and staggered home, his head matted with blood, legs unsteady from continuous beatings.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/mar\/04\/for-sri-lankan-reporters-the-ghosts-of-violence-and-intimidation-loom-again\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The terror of earlier crackdowns taught me to write between the lines as a journalist \u2013 now I see repressive tactics returningTerror tore through me when I heard that my friend and editor of the Nation newspaper, Keith Noyahr, had been abducted. It was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1973,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[458,59,53,61,674,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-global-development","category-human-rights","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1973"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29327,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29235\/revisions\/29327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}