Tamil newspaper office in Canada vandalized
February 22, 2010 07:44 am
The office of the Tamil newspaper Uthayan in
The front window of Uthayan newspaper’s office looked like a “vehicle drove right through it” when Kula Sellathurai arrived at the scene.
Overnight, Sellathurai said, the newspaper’s editor received a threatening
call and hours later its office on
Police are on scene, but said their investigation is still in the early stages.
The threats stemmed from a recent meeting Sellathurai, President of the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council and the United Tamil Council of Canada, had with the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The meeting was covered in Uthayan, a paper widely read by
Sellathurai said the call made to newspaper editor Logan Logendralingam said, “your friends went and met the president, now you go and see what happened to your store.”
When Logendralingam arrived he saw the damage. The whole front of the store was smashed, Sellathurai said.
Neither he nor police could estimate the cost of the damage done.
The presidential meeting came about after Sellathurai delivered funds raised
by Tamil businesses in
The vandals were “trying to send a message” to Logendralingam to “not carry that message,” said Sellathurai.
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Sellathurai describes Uthayan as a “neutral” paper that carries news about both the Tamil community and the mainly-Sinhalese Sri Lankan government. “We are not against the Tamil people and their struggle,” he said.
Sellathurai said this is the first harm done to the newspaper. However, when
the Tamil community held a symbolic vote to create an independent Tamil
homeland in
Editor Logendralingam said at the time the paper was maliciously pulled
because of its limited coverage of the vote.