By Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO, July 7 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan media organisations along with rights and civil groups, in an island-wide protest campaign on Monday, urged the country's president to protect journalists and ensure free expression.

The campaign comes amid increased assaults on journalists by unidentified groups and what critics say is government failure to bring perpetrators to justice.

"This campaign is to ask the President to immediately stop violence and suppression against media and to ensure security of the families of journalists," Poddala Jayantha, general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, told Reuters.

"From threats to murder of journalists, none of the incidents has been investigated and perpetrators have not been brought to justice." Ten journalists, mostly from the north and east, have been killed, while a significant number have been threatened in the last two years, Jayantha added.

Media organisations also said five abductions of journalists, closure of radio stations and newspapers, blocking of websites, and suppression of media reporting have been reported since President Mahinda Rajapaksa took office in November 2005.

As part of the campaign, journalists, rights activists, and members of civil organisations joined queues in the main Colombo post office wearing black face masks covering their mouths, as they waited to send telegrams to the president.

The masks had a "Stop media suppression" label. Similar actions protests took place in other parts of the country.

Last week Sri Lankan media owners offered cash rewards to catch assailants in attacks on journalists.

A defence analyst attached to the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI), along with a British High Commission official, were brutally assaulted on June 30, prompting media groups to highlight the escalation in violence.

THIRD DEADLIEST PLACE

Sri Lanka was ranked the world's third deadliest place for journalists last year, after Iraq and Somalia, by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), a Paris-based organisation promoting media freedom worldwide.

Media groups said the government has failed to apprehend any of the attackers to date. This year alone, 12 journalists have been attacked, with one hacked to death.

Local media groups said last week they had no confidence in government investigations into the attacks as the state has done little to curb violations of media freedom or the violence.

"Investigations are going on. Nobody has been arrested so far," police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekear told Reuters when asked about efforts to find those attacking or intimidating journalists.

The U.S. Embassy said on July 1 it was deeply concerned over the spate of incidents.

On June 23, over 30 media organisations from around the world appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to speak out in support of Sri Lankan journalists they said faced grave dangers after being labeled traitors by government officials.

The government has been accused of taking an increasingly heavy-handed approach towards critics of its military policy after Sri Lanka's 25-year-old civil war reignited two years ago.

Sri Lanka has intermittently censored media reports of the civil war since it began in 1983, and has restricted access to Tamil Tiger-held areas.

Fighting between government forces and the Tamil Tigers has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January. (Editing by Jerry Norton)

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