Condemning the disruption of the Tamil journalists’ media seminar last week by a Sinhala mob that included military personnel, Transparency International’s Sri Lanka branch said that the “journalists were labelled as LTTE agents because they are Tamils and since they work in the Tamil language”.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the rights group said it was “not an isolated event”.

“Such acts are an obstacle to the reconciliation process and at a time when we speak of national unity, the violation of rights of the Tamil journalists cannot be approved. We firmly believe that Tamil journalists should also have the right to receive training like the Sinhala journalists did,” the rights groups said in a statement on Wednesday.

Stating that prevailing intimidation had led them to organise the event at a hotel in Colombo, the group said that on arrival, within an hour, the hotel management asked them to vacate the building.

“When we inquired further the hotel management said that a powerful organization had forced them to remove the journalists from the hotel threatening that if not complied with they would personally come and remove the journalists from the premises,” the group said.

“This is the kind of power that some organizations have to influence the civil administration. These journalists went back home after sleepless nights due to the hardships they faced. It has since come to light that people from the Military were among protesters,” it added.