Editor's Killing Underscores Perils of Reporting in Sri Lanka

NEW DELHI, Jan. 14 -- Across South Asia, it has become known as the letter from the grave.

Anticipating his own slaying, Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga, 52, a fierce critic of his country's government, wrote an editorial called "And Then They Came for Me," a dramatic essay to be printed in the event of his assassination.

On Jan. 8, the father of three was shot in the head and chest on his way to work by two men on motorcycles. The editorial, published the following Sunday, has highlighted how dangerous reporting in Sri Lanka has become. Critics cite a growing pattern of intimidation by the government, especially during a recent push to wipe out the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, in a war that has persisted for more than two decades, one of the world's longest-running conflicts.

"Murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty," Wickramatunga wrote in the self-penned obituary published in the Sunday Leader, the newspaper that he and his brother founded 15 years ago. "Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower."

Sri Lanka is one of the world's most dangerous places for reporters, human rights groups say. In the past two years, at least eight journalists have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Wickramatunga was killed two days after an attack on the country's largest private television station, MBC Networks, by 15 masked gunmen with grenades. In late September, there was a grenade attack on the family home of J.C. Weliamuna, a prominent human rights advocate and executive director of Transparency International Sri Lanka, an independent watchdog group.

Journalism was a "call of conscience," Wickramatunga wrote in his essay. "No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism," the essay began. "In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honor to belong to all those categories and now especially the last."

"There's now a climate of total impunity since there hasn't been a single successful prosecution of any of these deaths or attacks," said Jehan Perera, a close friend of Wickramatunga's who works with the independent National Peace Council of Sri Lanka in Colombo, the capital. "We all wondered how long Lasantha Wickramatunga could survive. We thought that as long as he was still with us there was still some space for dissent and for democracy. With his assassination, that space closes completely."

Wickramatunga pushed for that space to be opened. In a country where the government has been accused of widespread corruption, he once obtained the credit-card details of a minister, proving that his bills were being illegally paid for by a foreign corporation hoping to invest on the lush island. Wickramatunga received numerous death threats throughout his career and was known for encouraging younger journalists to report on the war, which has killed 70,000 people and forced as many as half a million from their homes. He also worked as a freelance reporter for Time magazine and hosted a national talk show on MBC.

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has blamed Sri Lanka's government for the veteran editor's death and said officials had "incited hatred against him." The Bush administration has condemned the death, as have many media and human rights groups.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has strongly denied any government involvement and said the killers, still at large, will be brought to justice. He condemned the death and ordered an investigation, calling Wickramatunga "a close friend" and "courageous journalist." The two men had been close for nearly 25 years.

"This heinous crime points to the grave dangers faced by . . . our country and the existence of forces that will go to the furthest extremes in using terror and criminality to damage our social fabric and bring disrepute to the country," Rajapaksa said.

Wickramatunga had recently become a critic of Rajapaksa's government, which he deemed cagey, corrupt and abusive of civil rights.

"Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble," he wrote. "In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other president before you."

"Although you are now so drunk with power that you cannot see it, you will come to regret your sons having so rich an inheritance of blood. It can only bring tragedy," the editorial continued. "As for me, it is with a clear conscience that I go to meet my Maker. I wish, when your time finally comes, you could do the same. I wish."

Wickramatunga exposed the government's agreement to buy MiG fighter jets from Russia. He also encouraged objective coverage of the war, even as the government seemed intent on forcing journalists to pick sides, leaving little room for neutrality by branding any reporter critical of the government and its military a rebel sympathizer.

After a 2002 cease-fire was broken, hopes were shattered that peace could help this nation of 20 million people -- renowned for its surfing beaches, palm trees and highland tea plantations -- lift its villages out of poverty. Instead, the war has turned the country into a maze of military checkpoints, where government troops search travelers and their luggage.

The war has divided and weakened society, reigniting long-standing ethnic tensions between the majority Sinhalese, who are predominantly Buddhist, and the minority Tamils, who are mainly Hindus and Christians. The Tamil Tigers, or LTTE, say they are fighting for a separate Tamil homeland. But they have been accused of widespread human rights violations and of forcible recruitment.

There has been renewed momentum on both sides to win the war. More than 32,000 young Sinhalese men have joined the Sri Lankan army, which has been attacking rebel strongholds to crush the uprising by next year.

Aid groups in the region say hundreds of Tamil Tigers and civilians have died over the past few months. But the assertions cannot be independently verified because the government does not permit journalists near the front lines.

The Tamil Tigers, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, has responded with a campaign of suicide bombings against civilians in urban areas; one such bombing killed a top government official and a former Olympian. At the same time, the government has been accused of violations of the civil rights of Tamils, including allegedly carrying out false arrests, abductions and disappearances.

Wickramatunga, who is Sinhalese, was known for his fearless criticism of both players in the conflict: the Tamil rebels and the mostly Sinhalese government.

"The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested the planet," he wrote. "There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese."

Writing a guest column in his newspaper, his wife, Sonali Samarasinghe, said she had been particularly afraid the morning he was killed. The couple noticed they were being followed, she wrote, and he insisted that she take a separate car to the office. "Ten minutes after we parted I got the call I had always dreaded. My fingers hurriedly slid over my phone digits as I hastened to call him, more in hope than anything else. In my haste I pressed a wrong button. On the screen appeared a message I had received from Lasantha just hours before: 'Wifey,' it said, 'I love you.' "