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Uthayan (Tamil: Utaya, English: Morning) is a Tamil language Sri Lankan daily newspaper published by New Uthayan Publication (Private) Limited, part of the Uthayan Group of Newspapers. It was founded in 1985 and is published from Jaffna. Its sister newspapers is the Colombo based Sudar Oli. Uthayan was the only newspaper published from Jaffna which did not cease publication due to the civil war.[1] The newspaper has been attacked several times, a number of its staff have been murdered by paramilitary groups and other forces, and it regularly receives threats.[2]

Uthayan was founded in 1985 by E. Saravanapavan with the first edition being published on 27 November 1985.[3][4] At that time there were two other newspapers published from Jaffna: the Tamil language Eelamurasu and Eelanadu.[4] Murasoli began publishing from Jaffna in 1986.[4]

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As the civil war escalated newspapers published from Jaffna came under pressure from both government forces and the rebel militant groups. Eelamurasu and Eelanadu were taken over by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1987 and 1994 respectively.[4]

In October 1995, as the Sri Lankan military launched a military offensive to recapture the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE, virtually the entire population of the Valikamam region fled to other parts of the peninsula and the Vanni. Uthayan staff fled from their Jaffna offices, taking printing machine, a generator and newsprint on a truck.[4] They set up a temporary office in Sarasalai, Thenmarachchi from where they published the paper until April 1996.[4] Then the paper returned to Jaffna after the military had recaptured most of the peninsula including Jaffna city.[4] By 1996 the Uthayan was the only newspaper published from Jaffna.[4]

A Journalist named Velupillai Thavachelvam was attacked on 29 August 1998 at his home in Sembianpattu, Vadamarachchi.[19] Thavachelvam had written a report critical of the local authority.[19] The following year, two grenades were thrown into the newspaper's offices, exploding near the printing machines and injuring security guard S. Selvarajah.[20][21][22] The Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a government backed paramilitary group, was blamed for the attack.[23][24] The Uthayan had recently criticised government-backed paramilitary groups.[24]

Suresh Kumar (B. G. Sahayathasan) and Ranjith Kumar, two employees of the newspaper, were killed on 2 May 2006 when armed men burst into the newspaper's offices and opened fire indiscriminately.[2][27][28] The attack followed the newspaper publishing a cartoon mocking Douglas Devananda, the leader of the EPDP.[29]

A grenade was thrown into the newspaper's office in Jaffna on 24 March 2009 causing extensive damage and injuring a security guard.[43][44][45] Same year, on 25 June, thousands of copies of the Uthayan, Thinakkural and Valampuri were burnt in the street by armed men, after the papers had refused to print a statement against the LTTE.[46][47]

A Staff Correspondent of the newspaper, S. Kavitharan was attacked by a group of men on 28 May 2011 as he cycled to work.[48][49] Kavitharan had written articles critical of the security in Jaffna and the actions of government backed paramilitary groups whose members had previously threatened Kavitharan.[48] On 29 July, the same year, Uthayan's chief news editor Gnanasundaram Kuganathan was brutally attacked as he walked home from the office in Jaffna.[50][51][52] The EPDP was blamed for the attack.[53] Between 2006 and 2010 Kuganathan lived in the Uthayan offices out of fear for his life but had recently moved back to his family home after assurances were given by the government.[50]

Nagesh Pratheepan and two other Uthayan distributors were attacked and newspapers torched by four men on two motorbikes on 10 January 2013 as they were distributing them in the Valvettithurai area.[54][55]

The paper's office in Kilinochchi were attacked by a group of six masked Sinhala speaking men on 3 April 2013.[56][57] Five employees were injured, two seriously, and equipment and vehicles damaged.[58][59][60] The newspaper blamed the security forces for the attack.[61] The attack came after the paper published a series of articles highlighting seizure of Tamil owned land by the army.[62] Ten days later, on 13 April 2013, three men came to the paper's office in Jaffna and threatened security guards before damaging equipment and setting the printing press ablaze.[63][64][65]

"At least five of its employees have been killed this year, two of them in an attack on the newspaper on the eve of World Press Freedom Day. The press that prints the Colombo edition was the target of an arson attack in September. In Jaffna, the newspaper has twice been forced to publish communiqus at gunpoint", RSF said.[67]

"As we continue our free the press campaign we will highlight the case of Uthayan, a Tamil language newspaper in Sri Lanka. Uthayan has seen its personnel beaten, its newspaper shipments burned, its equipment destroyed and its offices set ablaze in the past month alone. The assault on a free press in Sri Lanka extends beyond Uthayan" Speaking at the US State Department's daily press briefing in Washington, the Department's Acting Deputy Spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, expressed.[68][69]

E. Saravanapavan said three men with guns entered the press room of his Tamil-language Uthayan newspaper in northern Jaffna town and threatened and chased away workers and delivery men. They then shot at a control panel and set fire to the machines, newspapers and newsprint.

Saravanapavan said he thought either the military or a paramilitary group supporting the government could be behind Saturday's attack because the paper had recently reported extensively on the military taking over private land in northern Sri Lanka, a center of the war and an area populated mostly by minority ethnic Tamils.

Earlier this month, a group attacked a regional office of the same newspaper in the town of Kilinochchi, a former headquarters of the Tamil Tiger rebels, who fought the quarter-century civil war to try to create an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils. The Sri Lankan military defeated the rebel group in 2009, killing all its commanders.

Reporters in the capital, Colombo, have also been targets. A journalist for the independent Sunday Leader newspaper, which was critical of the government, was shot and seriously wounded in February. The editor of the newspaper was killed four years ago, one of at least 14 journalists who Amnesty International says have been killed on the Indian Ocean island since the beginning of 2006.

Sri Lankan police have filed a case under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) against the Jaffna-based Uthayan newspaper, for publishing images and quotes of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), on his birthday, November 26.

The paper's publisher and former parliamentarian E Saravanapavan said that the case was filed as an act of retribution by Sri Lankan police, as the newspaper had published the derogatory comments of Jaffna police Headquarters Inspector, which had caused outrage among Tamils across the North-East, and were shared widely on social media.

The former MP outlined the newspaper's history as a key target for repressive forces, starting with the shelling of the office by the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) in 1985 which resulted in the killing of 7 bystanders. Uthayan's journalists and offices also frequently came under attack by Sri Lanka's security forces and paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

An outspoken Tamil newspaper in northern Sri Lanka whose premises have been repeatedly targeted, and its employees killed, was attacked by armed men who stormed into the building and set the printing presses ablaze. It is the second attack on the newspaper in two weeks.

Reports said a gang of three men armed with guns entered the premises of Uthayan in Jaffna before dawn on Saturday and scared away the staff. The men then fired their weapons and set fire to a stack of newspapers awaiting delivery and the printing presses.

Instead, he and his wife lived in a small room set up alongside the newsroom. In the room where the news meetings were held by editors, staff had retained the bullet-scarred conference table as a reminder of the 2006 attack

Although the newspaper is considered Tamil nationalist, over the years it has faced threats from the Sri Lankan military, Tamil militants and unidentified thugs allegedly linked to pro-government paramilitaries. Between 1990 and 1995, the city of Jaffna, located at the tip of Sri Lanka, was controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, whose decades-long insurgency for a Tamil homeland was crushed in 2009.

The 54-year-old investigative reporter works for the Sunday Leaders newspaper, which also has a reputation for being critical of the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. He required surgery to remove a bullet. Amnesty International has estimated that at least 14 journalist have been killed in Sri Lanka since 2006. Many more have fled and fear a climate of impunity.

I first covered the remarkable story of the Uthayan newspaper in 2010. I made a short film about the resilience of Jaffna residents and how they overcame the embargoes during the height of the war. For Uthayan , they had to overcome the scarcity of newsprint. Their ingenuity in the face of hardship and scarcity was awe-inspiring.

Today Uthayan has just six news journalists and all of them are in their 20s, like Thadsa and Tharsan, the main characters in my film. They are supervised by the editor, Premananth, who navigates a fine line between encouraging his young reporters to find important political stories to write about, and at the same time making sure the parents do not worry too much about their safety to stop them from working there. e24fc04721