With the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge by "unidentified" gunmen on Thursday morning, media freedom in Sri Lanka finally reached an all time low. In a week that had already seen an unprovoked and devastating attack on a leading independent broadcaster, MTV, the death of such a well-known editor was the final straw.
Lasantha was someone I knew peripherally for many years. He was a journalist who divided opinion - polarised it even. Although in latter years we rarely spoke, we shared a number of friends and I was kept abreast of his frequent problems and tried to bring these to international attention when they occurred. He was flamboyant, provocative and outspoken but had good journalistic instincts - even if they did tend towards sensationalism at times. In the UK, he would have made a great tabloid editor!
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In the days when we were still speaking, he was good fun and could be inordinately charming. But he did not like being contradicted and in the polarised society that is the Colombo media world, I was considered one of the enemy. If you weren't with him, then you were automatically against him. Lasantha did not see shades of grey. Nonetheless, we maintained an occasional contact and the last time I heard from him was immediately after the fire-bombing of the Leader presses in 2007 when he wrote to thank me for the support my organisation had offered. At that time, he reiterated that this episode would make no difference to the line the paper took and as the months passed, he became increasingly critical of the government in power.
Although we rarely saw eye to eye over any issues and had infrequent contact I never ceased to be amazed by his determination - or perhaps his foolhardiness - to go out on a limb and call politicians to account. His sources were extraordinary. Lasantha practised the journalism of opposition - opposition to everything including but not exclusively, corruption and corrupt politicians who have dragged Sri Lanka's reputation through the dirt.
In many ways, he was a maverick but one who became an icon to other journalists both in Sri Lanka and in other countries where the media fight for freedom. Watching him once talking of his experiences to a group of south Asian journalists, at a workshop I had organised in Karachi, I realised that he was an able self-publicist but also eminently charismatic and persuasive when he chose. He also, of course, was a practising lawyer who personally defended his paper against many charges of defamation and to be honest, I always said that I would want Lasantha defending me if I was ever in court!
His death marks a true low point in the history of a country that has such a long established and notable media. I have watched the situation deteriorate so badly over the last few years that we are now at the point where many respected journalists go in fear of their lives, many have left the country and some of the most distinguished have remained but under constant threats and intimidation. The international community does little to highlight the very real problems they face, and the current Government has turned out to be one of the most hard-line in respect of media freedom. In their single-minded determination to end the war through military might, regardless of the consequences apparently, and their refusal to accept any criticism, are they behaving like a third world dictatorship, not a country which has a long history of democracy? Their failure to allow any media into the war zone is disturbing in the extreme as no-one now has any real information on what is happening only propaganda promulgated by either the defence forces or the LTTE - neither organisation regarded as beacons of reliability or integrity. The brave souls who try and keep the independent Jaffna papers running, thus ensuring that the deprived and traumatised population gets independent information, suffer constant intimidation, threats and deaths.
Each of these deaths is greeted with "shock and sadness" by the Government who then immediately call for an enquiry. So far, to the best of my knowledge, not one of these crimes has been solved or anyone called to account. In Colombo, a city that is locked down with military checkpoints and virtually under siege, it seems extraordinary that unknown assailants can kill with impunity and escape justice, unless there is some degree of complicity.
This I fear will be the legacy of Lasantha's death. Much noise will be made and there will be much made of instituting immediate enquiries but in the end, like Macbeth, it will be full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Investigative editor, TV personality and public figure, Lasantha Wickrematunge has been gunned down and the country mourns for a voice silenced and a pen stilled. His face was familiar and his writings popular. But who was the person behind the pen……..the husband, father, son, brother, friend and colleague.
Through these pictures, we try to capture the many facets of Lasantha. |
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| Wife Sonali at Lasantha’s side |
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| Lasantha with his parents and brother Lal |
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| Lasantha, ex -wife Raine, son Avinash, daughter Ahimsa and youngest son Aadesh |
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