On the morning of January 8 of this year four motorcyclists blocked progress of prominent journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga’s car in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The motorcyclists pulled out weapons and smashed the car windows; the journalist was shot and then bludgeoned with a metal bar; The attackers drove off and disappeared into the capital’s busy streets. Later that day Mr. Wickramatunga, the 50-year-old editor of the Sunday Leader and fierce opponent of the current Sri Lanka administration, died of his wounds.
This type of attack is not uncommon in Sri Lanka—even in the relatively peaceful Southern zones of the island. Over the last three decades, as a separatist war has raged in the North, bombs have exploded in buses, gunmen have opened fire on the streets, and secret mobs have razed homes, burned vehicles and shops, and taken people from their beds as they sleep—all in Colombo, in the South. The culprits rarely see trial.
As a child in Kandy, a picturesque town in Sri Lanka’s hill country, I witnessed such violence. I was playing tennis at the Kandy Garden Club, an old colonial sports club that sat beside a manmade lake in the center of town. It was late evening, the sun at the level of our eyes. I was playing a practice set with a top junior in the country; adjacent to us our coach, Mr. DeSilva, drilled a group of five or six students. I heard pops. They sounded like firecrackers. Birds fluttered into the sky and squawked. “Run!” Mr. DeSilva yelled. I turned to look at his court; two gunmen, youths with bandanas covering their faces, pistols held out in front of them, fired at the pot-bellied tennis coach from the far side of the net. Children ducked and screamed. Before turning to run away I saw Mr. DeSilva slouch and then fall backwards onto the dusty clay court. I made it to my mother’s car (today she’d decided to arrive early, to watch the end of practice). Ducking into the back of the car, I watched the gunmen speed off on their shared motorcycle, waving their guns in the air.
While most tragedies on this teardrop-shaped island in the Indian Ocean (the teardrop an appropriate shape for this sad, beautiful place) are mourned silently, Lasantha Wickramatunga’s murder has reverberated loudly and internationally. In the wake of his killing, the U.S. and the UK have officially expressed concern about the actions of the Sri Lankan government. Major international news organizations have blamed the government for sponsoring the murder, or at the very least for covering it up. The Grammy-Award-nominated singer, M.I.A, a Sri Lankan Tamil by birth, has since called what’s occurring in Sri Lanka “a genocide.” While her views are extreme, they are shared by many in the Tamil diaspora.
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Shortly after receiving word that his brother had been critically wounded, Lal Wickramantunga rushed to his brother’s home. Here, he found Lasantha’s final words, written out and finalized in the days before his murder. Later that day Lasantha Wickramatunga died. The state-sponsored T.V. stations made no mention of his death on the evening news, and his funeral was hushed and sparsely attended.
But on the weekend the pages retrieved by Lal Wickramatunga were printed by his fallen brother’s paper, the Sunday Leader, and readers on both sides of the conflict, and soon readers across the world, were chilled, finally moved by the clarity of his vision, the courage of his stance.
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Mahinda Rajapakse won the 2005 General Election in Sri Lanka by promising a military end to the conflict—which has claimed the lives of 70,000—between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who seek an autonomous state in the North and East of the country, and the Sinhalese-Buddhist-dominated Sri Lankan government. Rajapakse won the election by a thin margin (thanks in part to an LTTE-enforced boycott of the election in the North), but has gained in popularity as his promise has come close to fruition (the Sri Lankan army has now essentially recaptured the entire country, in a ruthless military onslaught).
Lasantha Wickramatunga, Sinhalese-Christian and personal friend of the president and his family (Wickramatunga claims in his final editorial that they had been close for a quarter century, that he respected him deeply before he was elected President), was nonetheless a vociferous, undaunted critic of the Rajapakse government. In his Sunday editorials he lashed out at the appalling methods of the government in their lust to win war, criticizing it of gross violations of human rights, abductions of civilians, and the silencing of dissent. His claims were backed by human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Reporters Without Borders recently ranked Sri Lanka 165 out of 173 nations in terms of press freedom (only slightly ahead of Iran, China, Vietnam and Cuba). Just the week before his death, a studio at an independent T.V. station was ransacked and burned.
As a result of his outspokenness, Lasantha Wickramatunga received death threats. The phone would ring and hushed voices on the other end would bully him, telling him how he would die. He received cowardly letters in the mail. His wife and children and those around him begged him to stop writing his columns, they weren’t worth his life, they pleaded. Foreign diplomats offered him and his family safe passage to their countries.
In the weeks before Wickramatunga’s murder the threats intensified; he remained sober in the face of death. He knew he would be killed, and he sat down to write about it.
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“People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: It is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted. An example that has inspired me throughout my career in journalism has been that of the German theologian, Martin Niemöller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: It was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niemöller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niemöller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: They are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.”
With these words Wickramatunga concluded his life’s final column.
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Lasantha Wickramatunga left behind a wife, two children, extended family, colleagues, and beloved friends. His sacrifice was monumental. His wife and children have since gone into hiding, fearing for their lives. Human rights organizations have staged rallies in Colombo. Journalists throughout the world have shown their solidarity. And his paper continues bravely along. Still, the murder is mysterious (it’s unclear whether he was shot) and his assassins’ identities remain unknown.
Wickramatunga was never a supporter of the LTTE—he called them one of the most brutal, savage terrorist organizations on earth. He was merely critical of the way the government went about defeating them. Regardless of who we are, or where we stand, regardless of who we think is to blame for his death, Lasantha Wickramatunga was brave, and bravery rises above the temporary divisions man creates, touching on something eternal.
I urge all JANERA.com members to read Lasantha Wickramatunga’s final Editorial from the grave in its entirety.
Chris Lenton is a freelance writer based in Chile. He grew up in Sri Lanka.
