Media threats hurt Sri Lanka rights - Amnesty

By Peter Apps

LONDON (Reuters) - Attacks and threats against Sri Lanka's media are creating a culture of silence and lack of dissent just as abductions, killings and rights abuses rise in the island's civil war, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

The rights group said in a report that at least 10 media workers -- mostly from the ethnic Tamil minority -- have been killed in the last two years as a 2002 ceasefire between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels collapsed into all-out war.

Some of the dead journalists were covering abuses, including murders, abduction and torture blamed on security forces. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict since 1983.

"Threats and violence against the media is putting a lid on debate against a wider context of impunity and lack of accountability," Amnesty researcher Yolanda Foster told Reuters.

"It is even more worrying that it is happening at a time of rising violence. There needs to be more coverage and debate."

Experts say more than 5,000 people have died in the last two years as war resumed, with dozens or more killed in the last week in battles as well as attacks on civilian buses and the main train station in the capital Colombo.

Amnesty says the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have fought for two decades for an ethnic Tamil homeland using suicide bombing, conventional warfare, attack boats and last year even light aircraft, have a record of stifling debate.

But it says the government bears responsibility for much of the new clampdown, which it says has included threats against journalists and editors from senior officials close to President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It says a culture of fear restricts coverage.