Condemning surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of journalist Kumanan Kanapathipillai

Following is a statement by a group of members of the civil society condemning the harassment of Kumanan Kanapathipillai by the authorities

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WE, the undersigned, condemn Sri Lankan authorities' continuing surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of Kumanan Kanapathipillai, a prominent Tamil photojournalist from Mullaithivu.

Kumanan has, for more than a decade, reported on and documented human rights violations committed by various actors in the Northern and Eastern Provinces (North-East); thereby playing a proactive role in the Tamil community's postwar demands for human rights protection and accountability. His work includes documenting militarisation, crackdown on protests and memorialisations, repression of civil society, families of the disappeared, land appropriation, and broader Sinhala-Buddhisation of the North and East. He has moreover highlighted the plight and struggles of the families of the disappeared for years, and the Tamil community's demands for justice for the atrocity crimes committed during the armed conflict.

The relentless harassment of Kumanan has been continuing for many years, prompting several international human rights organisations to classify him as a 'journalist-at-risk'. In 2020, a group of men attacked Kumanan and another journalist while they were covering the illegal smuggling of trees. In 2024, Counter-Terrorism Investigation Division (CTID) visited Kumanan's parents and interrogated his associates. The harassment reached a crescendo on 17 August 2025, when the CTID interrogated Kumanan for seven hours, framing his photojournalism as work 'against the government' and a 'terrorist' activity. On 26 September 2025, during the United Nations' Committee on Enforced Disappearances' review of Sri Lanka in Geneva, a government representative made a statement justifying their harassment of Kumanan by alluding to suspicions about his involvement in financial crimes and terrorism.