Strike Me Down...

Earlier this week Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of the Sri Lankan newspaper The Sunday Leader and an outspoken critic of the Sinhalese government, was assassinated, being shot twice by men in a motorcycle. He leaves behind a wife and three children, and a posthumous editorial which, in true Obi-Wan Kenobi style, will be far more powerful than he could ever imagine due to his death.

Mr. Wickramatunga feared for his life for weeks prior to his murder, and prepared an editorial to be printed on the occasion of his death. You can read this very good piece here. It's long and a bit shrill, but it's well written and quite moving. This killing underscores, as Mr. Wickramatunga intended, the dangers of being a critical journalist in Sri Lanka today. Sri Lanka's continuing war against the Tamil Tigers' independence movement is an oft-forgotten conflict that has nonetheless killed thousands and spawned one of the more repressive and racist regimes in recent memory. Nowhere else would you find a Buddhist monk with a seat in parliament calling for the extermination of all Tamils. 

Mr. Wickramatunga will probably not be remembered for long, in Sri Lanka or internationally. There's no denying that journalists are players in the way we see politics and world affairs, but there's a conflict in our perception of them. They are often afforded a certain amount of scorn, scum who would do anything for cheap titillation and are utterly unconcerned with issues that really matter. It's good, then, that Mr. Wickramatunga can remind us that journalists are the people from whom "you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future." There should be more like him.