Brutal attack on Jaffna newspaper circulation manager

It was some three hours before dawn when the circulation manager of a Jaffna-based Tamil newspaper began to panic.
The delivery boy for the town area had not arrived. A further delay would mean readers would not receive their copies of Kaalai Kathir, he feared.Hence, Selvarajah Rajendran (55), a father of three children, decided he would load the newspapers in the pillion of his motorcycle and drop them personally at sales outlets.

He had travelled barely a kilometre in the road alongside Hindu College, when five armed men in motorcycles, with their faces covered, accosted him. They assaulted him mercilessly and fled the area. Mr. Rajendran lay wounded until he was found at the break of dawn by passers -by and rushed to hospital.

A coincidence was the presence in Jaffna that day of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. He had arrived there the previous evening from Kilinochchi. He telephoned Editor Nadesapillai Vithyatharan. “I know you have been a superman in the past encountering similar problems. Don’t worry. I will tell the Inspector General of Police, when I get back to Colombo, to conduct a thorough inquiry,” he said. Editor Vithyatharan told the Sunday Times, “My newspaper has been pursuing a Tamil nationalist line. We have therefore become targets.”

Whether he is right or wrong is only one issue. With the military defeat of Tiger guerrillas in May 2009, no one expected armed gangs to operate brazenly in the peninsula. A remark by an intelligence source in the area, no doubt, would raise eyebrows. There are such gangs for hire now. So much for law and order in the north!

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