J.S. Tissainayagam was arrested in March 2008, indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and then sentenced to a 20‐year prison term. Released on bail for health reasons in January 2010, he was granted a pardon announced by the Sri Lankan government on World Press Freedom Day 2010 and arrived in the United States in June 2010. He worked for the Sunday Leader before founding the North Eastern Monthly, where the articles on human rights abuses and Sri Lankans displaced by the country’s civil war that were the basis of his arrest had appeared nearly three years earlier. He also was editor of the news website OutreachSL and a columnist for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times.