In a preview of a report analysing media violence in Sri Lanka, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) has determined that the Sri Lankan “state repression of the media mirrors the state’s wider ethno-chauvinist policies”, placing Tamil journalists at a greater risk of violence than their Sinhalese counterparts.
 
Examining data from, Journalists for Democracy (JDS), TAG found that of all the reported murdered or disappeared journalists listed by JDS since 2004, 37 are media workers of ethnic Tamil origin while 4 are ethnic Sinhalese and 2 Sri Lankan Muslims.

The advocacy group went on to observe that approximately 75 per cent have taken place in the majority Tamil-speaking regions of the island.

Extracts of their piece have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

"Sri Lanka has gained a reputation as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists alongside Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea and North Korea."
 
"Yet considering that much of Sri Lanka’s post-independence period has been entrenched in ethnic violence, the central question of race has been absent in the analysis of media attacks."

"Indeed, often ethnicities of attacked media workers remain unspecified in the reporting of human rights and news organisations. With the erosion of ethnic labels in the reporting of violence against media personnel, some core reasons for the Sri Lankan states repression of media personnel elude us."
 
"Of all murdered or disappeared journalists listed by JDS since 2004, 37 are media workers of ethnic Tamil origin while 4 are ethnic Sinhalese and 2 Sri Lankan Muslims. Given that approximately 87 per cent of the victims of state repression against the media have been Tamil, one can speak of the appliance of ethnically discriminate violence by the state."

"Thus State repression of the media mirrors the state’s wider ethno-chauvinist policies."

"The rate of assassinations and/or abductions of Tamil media workers to that of non-Tamils is almost nine-to-one, yet the island’s Tamil population only makes up approximately 12 percent of the country’s inhabitants, according to Sri Lanka’s last census (2012)."

"Sri Lanka may be one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, but it is far from spatially evenly dangerous: of the lethal attacks and/or abductions of media personnel that happened since 2004, approximately 75 per cent have taken place in the majority Tamil-speaking regions of the island."
 
"In brief, we find the threats to life amplify vastly if one is a media employee of Tamil origin working in a majority Tamil-speaking region of the country. Being critical of the government of Sri Lanka is less pertinent as a risk factor than being critical of the government’s conduct pre, during and post the conflict, with regards to the Tamil population. We contend that violence against the media contributes to the denial of justice for crimes committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka."
 
As a Tamil journalist reflected, for members of Tamil media organisations the stakes were always higher.

This ethnic dynamic has contributed as a significant block to the accountability that Prime Minister Harper speaks of in reference to the last phase of the 2009 war in the Tamil dominated North: indeed the war has been often described in the media with a cliché as a war without witness.