Lasantha Wikramatunge, the editor of the Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka, was gunned down on 8 January this year. Even if the civil war that has plagued Sri Lanka comes to an end in the next few months (and we’ve heard those promises from various governments before), the damage done to Sri Lankan society by years of conflict has been immense. In his long career as a journalist, Wikramatunge saw this perhaps better than anybody else, to the extent that he’d written a column for publication after his death.
I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader’s 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty.
The column is worth reading in full, not just in the specifics of Sri Lanka but in the context of a world where journalism becomes an ever more dangerous occupation; and as a statement of the role that a free press should play.