By IANS
Colombo : It wasn’t a merry Christmas for French TV journalists Capucine Henri and C. Siomon doing a documentary on the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka.
The duo, representing France 24 news channel, had to spend Christmas in a police station in Rathgama in south Sri Lanka, having been detained for filming an army checkpoint and trying to take shots of a Tamil family visiting a relative in a detention camp for terror suspects on Christmas eve.
A Free Media Movement (FMM) press release Friday quoted a police officer as saying that the arrested journalists were being questioned by the Terrorist Investigation Department.
The police also detained the Tamil family of eleven members and the driver and conductor of the mini bus in which the French journalists had arrived, the FMM said.
Till the morning of Dec 25, the police had not decided whether to extend their detention or produce them in a court of law.
“Videoing a road block is not a crime. There are many instances of roadblocks being filmed for various purposes including news reporting. Making a film on a family is not a crime either,” the FMM said, calling for speedy investigation and an early release of the foreign journalists.