toronto newspaper

Tamil Newspaper in Toronto Vandalized After Reporting on Sri Lanka President Visit

The offices of a Tamil newspaper in Toronto were vandalized over the weekend after the paper received a phone call threatening it for its reporting on the visit of Sri Lanka's president.

The newspaper, Uthayan, said it was threatened after reporting on a meeting between Kula Sellathurai, the president of the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council and the United Tamil Council of Canada, had with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, The Toronto Star reported in an article by John Rieti.

The Star quoted Sellathurai as saying the threatening call made to Uthayan Editor Logan Logendralingam said, "Your friends went and met the president, now you go and see what happened to your store." The entire front of the office was described as smashed, but there were no immediate estimates of the cost of the damage.

Uthayan has a reputation as a moderate paper carrying news about the Tamil community, an ethnic minority in Sri Lanka which includes a rebel army recently defeated by the government, which is mostly ethnic Sinhalese.