![]() ![]() ![]() Since then, the investigation has not progressed. The police arrested three suspects in September 2014 and but released them without charge. Several witnesses said a person meeting his description was abducted and forced into a car. He was last seen at the Hulhumalé ferry terminal in the capital. Aged 28, he mainly covered religious issues, politics and the environment. The two Tamil Tigers have reportedly confessed to abducting Prageeth and handing him over to an army base in Girithale, in the centre of the country, the same day.Ĥ - Ahmed Rilwan (Maldives), missing since 2014 Ahmed Rilwan, a journalist working for the independent online newspaper Minivan News, was reported missing in Maldives on 8 August 2014, a few days after writing about death threats against himself and other reporters. Two former members of Tamil Tiger intelligence, a Sri Lankan army officer and four soldiers were arrested on 24 August. ![]() In 2011, Reporters Without Borders and Cartooning for Peace launched an international campaign to draw attention to the case.įive years after his disappearance, the case was reopened following Maithripala Sirisena’s election as president in January 2015. The Sri Lankan authorities did not try to find him and provided the family with no information. The Colombian and Spanish authorities began investigating the case on 23 January 2014 but, more than a year and half later, have made no significant progress.ģ - Prageeth Ekneligoda (Sri Lanka), missing since 2010 Prageeth Ekneligoda, a political analyst and cartoonist critical of the government (then controlled by the Rajapaksa family), disappeared after leaving the Lanka E-news website’s office in Homagama, near Colombo, on 24 January 2010. As he disappeared in a drug-trafficking region dominated by “Bacrim,” criminal gangs that have their origins in the paramilitary movement, he may well have been kidnapped. Spanish freelance photographer Borja Lázaro went missing on 8 January 2014 in Cabo de Vela, a village in Colombia’s northeastern department of La Guajira, where he had been doing a series of photo-reportages on indigenous cultures. The investigation by the special prosecutor’s office for crimes against freedom of expression made no progress.Ģ - Borja Lázaro (Colombia), missing since 2014 Five years after her disappearance, the case is shelved. The La Familia crime cartel had also harassed her in connection with her coverage of the arrests of two of its members. Shortly before disappearing, she covered a case of abuse of authority involving the local police chief. On the day of her disappearance, she left her home after getting a mysterious phone call and has not been seen since. A resident of Zamora (in the southwestern state of Michoacán), she had worked for the Zamora daily El Diario and the statewide newspaper Cambio for the past four years, covering crime and police work. “Violence and crimes against journalists constitute attacks not only against the victims but also against freedom of expression, the right to inform and its corollary, the right to receive information.”įor each case of a missing journalist or the country concerned, Reporters Without Borders has filled out an official form that has been sent with the letter.ġ - María Esther Aguilar Cansimbe (Mexico), missing since 2009 María Esther Aguilar Cansimbe has been missing in Mexico since 11 November 2009. “Enforced disappearances are the consequence of criminal acts that violate several human rights – the right to life, the right to freedom and the right to due process,” Deloire said in the letter. This is the case in Syria, Eritrea, Libya, Iran and Turkmenistan. ![]() But there are governments that hold journalists incommunicado in secret locations for months or years on end. In countries such as Mexico and Colombia, missing journalists often covered sensitive subject linked to organized crime or political violence. The perpetrators of disappearances are often unknown. The cases cited in the letter include those of nine journalists who have been missing in Iraq since last year, and 11 Eritrean journalists of whom there has been no news since 2001. In a letter sent today to the chairs of these two working groups, Ariel Dulitzky and Seong-Phil Hong, Reporters Without Borders secretary Christophe Deloire has asked them to open or re-open investigations into these cases and to initiate the relevant procedures with the countries that are breaking international law in this area. ![]()
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