The lawyer of a Sri Lankan journalist sentenced at the end of August to 20 years in prison under anti-terror legislation for criticizing the Sri Lankan government’s attacks against the Tamil Tiger rebels filed an appeal on Tuesday. Tissainayagam has been imprisoned since March 2008.

J. S. Tissainayagam, who ran the North Eastern Monthly magazine, and was a columnist for the Sunday Times in Colombo, was accused of inciting communal disharmony under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allows the authorities to muzzle reporting on sensitive topics.

IPI strongly criticized the sentence.

“The appeal process could last a couple of years,” Ruki Fernando, Head of the Human Rights in Conflict Program of the Law & Society Trust, a not-for-profit human rights organisation based in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, told IPI by phone. “My first hope is that the President exercises his power to pardon the journalist.”

“This is a golden opportunity for [President Mahinda Rajapaksa] to show that he wants to move forward in the process of national reconciliation and act in the name of freedom of expression.”

IPI Director David Dadge said: “The persecution of Tissainayagam appears to be part of a government campaign of repression against the independent media. We urge the Sri Lankan authorities to release him immediately and to reaffirm their commitment to genuine press freedom.”

In May this year, the Sri Lankan government declared the Tamil Tigers defeated, bringing to an end a conflict that lasted over 25 years. Sri Lanka, however, has yet to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, introduced by the government as a weapon in the fight against the Tamil Tigers decades ago. It gives the police sweeping powers to arrest and detain people.