Jaffna came to a standstill on Thursday May 4 to protest an attack two days earlier by Army-backed paramilitaries on the offices of the Tamil-language newspaper Uthayan in Jaffna, that left two people dead and another two seriously injured.



Though the Sri Lankan government blamed the Liberation Tiers for the attack, the paper protested that the LTTE had nothing to do with it and blamed the paramilitary Eelam Peoples’ Democratic Party (EPDP), an ally of the governing party.



Information Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa publicly blamed the LTTE for the attack, saying “the LTTE wants to tarnish Sri Lanka’s image and wants to show the outside world that the government is not for media freedom,” he told the press.



But the editor of the Uthayan, N. Vithyatharan told the media: “I have no doubt that this is the work of armed groups working with the government security forces.”



The EPDP is the largest of the Army-backed paramilitary group in Jaffna.



The Sri Lanka Defense Ministry later said that they had arrested six suspects, including two traders and four students from the eastern province temporarily residing in Jaffna. All six were granted bail because eyewitnesses were unable to pick them out in an identification parade.



But civil society members registered complaints with the Jaffna Human Rights Commission (JHRC) offices that four were innocent students.



They had been living in a privately rented apartment in Kannathiddy junction in Jaffna and were preparing for their GCE(A/L) examinations, attending tuition classes at the popular New Science School, a privately run educational institution in Jaffna.



A gang of five men armed with automatic rifles entered the Uthayan office on the evening of May 2 and began firing. Marketing manager Bastian George Sagayathas, 36, also known as Suresh, was the first killed.



The gunmen then moved to the circulation section and, while firing, ordered workers to lie down and not to raise their heads. S. Uthayakumar, 48, was injured during the shooting.



Circulation supervisor S. Ranjith, 25, was killed when he raised his head to see what was happening to Uthayakumar. He was held down and shot dead.



Another staff member was forced at gunpoint to lead the gang to the editorial area to find the sub-editor, but the rest of the staff had fled. After raking the computers with gunfire, the attackers fled on motorbikes. The two injured – Uthayakumar and another employee N. Thayakaran, 24 – were rushed to Jaffna Hospital with wounds.



The killers had demanded to see a number of journalists who were not on the premises. "Gunmen went inside looking for some senior reporters," an Uthayan journalist said. "They were not there, but the gunmen opened fire," he added.



"The gunmen were shooting at will, everybody they found inside the office were shot. Finally, they smashed all the computers in the office," an employee who managed to escape from the attackers told TamilNet.



Eyewitnesses identified one of the attackers, dressed in black civil clothes, as an EPDP paramilitary cadre.



“The reason for the attack may have been a cartoon that the newspaper published on Monday [May 1] of the leader of a rival group showing him prostrating himself before the president,” Vithyatharan told colleagues.



The cartoon was of the leader of the EPDP, Douglas Devananda, who is minister for social services and social welfare in President Rajapakse’s government.



President Rajapakse condemned the attack, ordered an investigation and reportedly rang V. Saravanabavan, the owner of the Sudaroli newspaper group that publishes Uthayan.



According to Vithyatharan, Rajapakse, in his telephone conversation with Saravanabavan, denied any government involvement in the attack. Vithyatharan said: “His [Rajapakse’s] thinking was that the Tigers had done it ahead of his speech [on world press freedom day] to embarrass him. But we clearly told him that the government should bear the responsibility.”