Tamil photojournalist Kanapathipillai Kumanan was called to Sri Lanka‘s counter-terror police. The formal rationale was to do with his reporting and social media of mass grave excavations in the North. Beyond the procedural rhetoric, the action reflects a dramatic increase in the heat on Tamil reporters by police and other law enforcement bodies that are empowered by broad counter-terrorism legislation to launch sweeping criminal investigations and searches.
Human rights watchdogs have cautioned that such a move is dangerous to press freedom and that it undermines the quest towards reconciliation in a country that is still recovering the fringes of the civil war. The findings regarding the attacks on journalists who covered atrocities in history beg questions as to whether the state is after eliminating narratives that question what the state would have you believe.
National security laws and press freedom
The legal operative system of Sri Lanka against terror, especially the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has been repeatedly criticized as having given extreme state authority. These laws which are meant to deal with real threats to the security have been used severally to criminalize peaceful opposition and investigative reporting.
The call of Kumanan by the Counter Terrorism Investigation Department (CTID) portrays a previously documented trend of allowing the use of counter-terrorism authority in surveilling, threatening, or punishing the journalists. This application blurs the fine line between protecting national security and a muzzle on independent review.
Tamil-majority regions have been especially vulnerable to such interventions. Since the end of the armed conflict in 2009, reporters covering sensitive issues—war-time atrocities, enforced disappearances, military land seizures—have been subject to questioning, surveillance, and threats. Beh Lih Yi, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, has stated that
“Using counter-terrorism powers to target journalists over their legitimate reporting is an abuse of authority and a violation of press freedom.”
The case of Kanapathipillai Kumanan
Kumanan is the president of Mullaitivu Press Club and thus emerged as one of the key figures in the recording of post-war realities. His writings cover land confiscations by the army, environmental misuse and unaccounted disappearances of Tamils.
His long-term coverage of the Chemmani and Kokkuthodvai mass graves, in which more than 140 sets of remains were recovered, resulted in national and international reporting in 2025. Over a 41-day period, he scripted the exhumations providing uncommon visual and factual accounts of a process so often cloaked in secrecy. This state document put official accounts into question and even allowed new appeals to justice.
The CTID summons was soon after his coverage attained wide traction. Threats to his family had already been issued to Kumanan in 2024 and he took the act as an intentional threat. For this reason, advocacy groups believe these actions are strategically aimed at discouraging transparency and further exploration of past crimes.
Harassment as part of a broader pattern
The pressures on Kumanan resemble the pressures on other Tamil journalists in the north and east. During the last two years, at least a dozen reporters have noted being summoned without any particular accusation, questioned for hours regarding their activity, and being denounced online through defamation campaigns.
According to analysts, this is not by coincidence but a strategic position of the institution to reduce the gap of independent journalism. Legal summons, surveillance and smear campaigns substantively provide an uncertain situation that affects journalists and the societies they serve.
Impact on journalism, truth, and reconciliation
In case of habitual harassment of journalists, self-censorship is a logical means of survival. The risk in northern Sri Lanka where already insufficient reporting resources are available, has rendered coverage of some subjects even rarer.
This issue of chilling effects leaves the population without any vital information on land disputes, environmental destruction and the whereabouts of disappeared persons which are key issues in the post-war reality of the region.
Undermining legal and historical accountability
Journalistic documentation is a constituent of the evidentiary foundation behind truth commissions, lawsuits and struggle to human rights. Hampering such an undertaking undermines the transparency of justice procedures and in instances such as during the 2025 exhumations removes the possibility of knowing possible evidence of war crimes.
The dependency of the state to counter-terror provisions in preventing or limiting reporting dangers can lead to further impunity. It reduces the perception of citizens in the Government’s commitment to justice.
The stakes for minority rights and social cohesion
The attacks upon Tamil journalists cannot be discussed separately with the aspect of minority rights in Sri Lanka. Traditionally, Tamil groups have been complaining of systematic marginalization to which UN reports have recently expressed concern. Their underrepresentation in the media increases their marginalization in national distinctions and decision-making.
This kind of repression is another stark reminder that fighting official narratives can also lead to legal and personal risk, and strengthen lines in a society that has not yet managed to reach lasting reconciliation.
International attention and domestic ramifications
The Kumanan case has attracted swift responses from international rights organizations. Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Commission of Jurists have asked the harassment to stop immediately and have the summons be withdrawn. Eight of the advocacy groups of the world have presented a collective appeal to keep monitoring the status of the human rights climate of Sri Lanka by the UN.
There are also diplomatic actors. The U.S State Department and missions of the European Union in Colombo have also shown the issue of press freedom as till date, the freedom has supported the democratic rule. One of the risks that Sri Lanka will encounter is reputational loss and the risk of withholding aid and weak bilateral relations in case such trends continue.
At home, rights horizons are threatened by the lawyers and civil activists fearing a backstep into the atmosphere of fear which ruled the warring years. According to them, this is necessary to have a serious counter-terror legislature in order to establish amicable relations and allow true reconciliation. Nonetheless, the continuity of the existing practices indicates the unwillingness of the institutions to forego the blanket security authorities.
Uncertainty and the search for justice
The Kanapathipillai Kumanan case has emerged as the center-point of disputes regarding the extent of state powers and the obligation carried by the independent journalism in post-conflict societies, as he is about to accept and respond to a summons issued by the CTID. Indeed, in the case of Tamil journalists, raising the camera to record the discovery of a mass burial site or working the land rights controversies, every reporting project comes with both professional intrusion and personal danger.
The biggest question that the country of Sri Lanka will face in the year 2025 is whether the country can achieve both security and the goal of upholding press freedom to the point that the goal of seeking truth does not turn witnesses into targets. The verdict will have impacts both on the future of media in the nation and also on the viability of its grand reconciliation project to its citizens and world audience.
