The Comment Factory

The funeral procession in Colombo (By Maura O'Connor)

An estimated 10,000 Sri Lankans marched in a funeral procession on Monday for the controversial newspaper editor Lasanthe Wickrematunga, who was brutally assassinated while driving to his offices at the Sunday Leader newspaper in the capital, Colombo, last week.

As the coffin made its way through the streets of southern Colombo, participants burned tires, chanted, and waved black flags. Others held gruesome posters showing Wickrematunga in the hospital after doctors had spent three hours trying to save him from gunshot wounds fired at close range to his head and chest.

Wickrematunga was a notorious critic of the Sri Lankan government and President Mahinda Rajapakse, often publishing articles with accusations of gross corruption and perpetuating a savage war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eealam (LTTE) that has resulted in bloodshed and human rights violations of ethnic Tamils around the country.

Women United for Democracy march (By Maura O'Connor)

In recent years, Wickrematunga’s home has come under machine gun fire, and he was physically assaulted on two occasions. For many who attended his funeral, it came as little surprise that an outspoken and provocative editor met with a horrific end in a country where the censorship of its citizens and particularly its journalists through violence and intimidation is routine. At least 15 journalists and media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka since 2006, many for reporting stories deemed unpatriotic by the Rajapakse government.

Just days before Wickrematunga’s murder, 20 men armed with grenades and assault rifles destroyed the offices of the popular Maharaja Television, which had been accused of insufficiently lauding the recent military victories declared by the government against the LTTE. Sri Lanka rank 165th out of 173 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index, the lowest ranking of any democratic country in the world.

For all these reasons, the blood of Wickrematunga would appear to be on the hands of President Rajapakse, the man who has been the focus the Sunday Leader’s criticism for the last three years and who just last Ocotober accused Wickrematunga of being a “terrorist journalist.” But in a strange turn of events, Wickrematunga appears to have claimed differently in a posthumous editorial published in the Sunday Leader the day before his own funeral.

Writing directly to President Rajapakse, he said, “In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.”

The funeral procession (By Maura O'Connor)

In the impassioned editorial he went on to speak of journalism as a “calling” for which Sri Lankan journalists are often required to lay down their lives, Wickrematunga predicted his own assassination and wrote that, “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.” But he called the President by his first name and pointed out that, ironically, the two had been friends for over a quarter century. “Although I do not attend the meetings he periodically holds for newspaper editors,” Wickrematunga wrote, “hardly a month passes when we do not meet, privately or with a few close friends present, late at night at President’s House. There we swap yarns, discuss politics and joke about the good old days.”

One Sri Lankan politican, Sri Lanka Freedom Party leader (SLFP) Mangala Samaraweera said at a press conference that he believed the murder was the responsibility of a “mysterious group within the government.” Despite the public protest, some within the journalism community expressed concern that the murder would not lead to significant changes in the current media climate of fear and censorship. Indeed, some well-known Sri Lankan journalists left the country within days of the murder. “The media people have to get together to stop this,” said one Sri Lankan journalist. “But the thing is that there are all sorts of editorials and outrage by us and then next week no one will be talking about it anymore. Until the next person is killed.”