The terror of earlier crackdowns taught me to write between the lines as a journalist – now I see repressive tactics returning

Terror tore through me when I heard that my friend and editor of the Nation newspaper, Keith Noyahr, had been abducted. It was May 2008; the civil war was raging and Sri Lankan troops were chalking up victories against Tamil Tiger separatists in the north. In the fog of war, government critics were being terrorised all over the country. We had learned to expect the worst when a journalist went missing.

Outside Noyahr’s home that night, through his six-year-old daughter’s screams, I heard phone calls pleading with diplomats and politicians to save Keith’s life. The journalist was released by his abductors shortly before dawn and staggered home, his head matted with blood, legs unsteady from continuous beatings.