Word: tamil
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...race between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his challenger, the former army commander Sarath Fonseka, is unexpectedly close. Rajapaksa won the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a brutal ethnic separatist group that once controlled much of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. But Fonseka, a hero in his own right in the same war, is a formidable opponent. He represents a patchwork coalition of opposition parties united in their antipathy to Rajapaksa, whom they say has disregarded the rights of the Tamil minority and indulged in blatant crony capitalism.(Watch a video about the final days...
...politician killed one Rajapaksa supporter; another was shot when two rival groups clashed. Five days before the election, the house of Tiran Alles, a key Fonseka aide and former ally of Rajapaksa, was fire-bombed, although no one was injured. (Read "Sri Lanka Closes In on Leader of the Tamil Tigers...
...better his chance of ousting Rajapaksa. "They want to keep us away from the booths," Fonseka told the crowd at his final election rally on Jan. 23. "We should not get scared, we should go and vote." (See pictures of life in the territories previously controlled by the Tamil Tigers...
...that had gone missing after he was taken to the hospital. Since then there has been no real breakthrough, though the investigation has been taken over by the Criminal Investigation Department. There have been no arrests so far, nor are there any suspects. Journalists from Sri Lanka's minority Tamil ethnic community have long felt under threat, but Wickrematunge's death sent a clear signal that even journalists from the majority Sinhala community, like Wickrematunge, were not safe...
...August 2009, eight months after Wickrematunge's murder, Tamil journalist Jayaprakash Tissainayagam was sentenced to 20 years in prison when he was found guilty of aiding terrorism. Later that year, Poddala Jayantha, a prominent media-rights activist, left the country due to ongoing threats. "It is not only where the Lasantha Wickrematunge investigation has progressed, but also where all the investigation into the assassinations, assaults and intimidation of journalists have progressed," says Lakshman Gunasekera, president of the national chapter of the media-rights group South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA). "The manner the investigation has moved does not give...