THEY CONTINUE TO COME FOR US
The Editor and the journalists of this newspaper, The Sunday Leader, continue working under death threats.
Having already murdered its former editor Lasantha Wickrematunge there are factions in this country which continue to threaten journalists working on this newspaper – unable to understand the very principles of the freedom of expression or that there are journalists in this country who continue to function independent of the State and the Executive, devoid of any political and personal bias.
Lasantha Wickrematunge, the paper’s previous editor, was killed in January 2009 following a number of death threats and assaults, by four men riding military-style motorbikes in a high security zone. Nothing has been done to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Sri Lanka was once prosperous and enjoyed freedom of the press in the 1950s and 1960s, but then the government began to discriminate against the Tamil minority in relation to access to tertiary level education, land ownership and employment in the public service. A large group of young Tamil men wanted independence for the north-eastern area of the country, home to about two million Tamils, while about 500,000 lived in the capital, Colombo.
The Tamil Tigers militant organization killed a number of soldiers, members of the majority Sinhalese community, and when their bodies were brought home this unleashed a wave of attacks against Tamil civilians in Colombo, who were forced out of their homes or killed. Tamils left in droves. There was no remorse, no investigations.
While The Sunday Leader, founded in 1994, did not support the Tamil Tigers, it did describe what the majority had done, or failed to do.
The newspaper also fought to expose corruption and promote good governance and Lasantha Wickrematunge had such good contacts among both the government and opposition parties that he could carry detailed reports in the Sunday paper of discussions at the Cabinet meeting which had taken place the previous Wednesday.
Our readers may recall how Lasantha Wickrematunge wrote to then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga asking her to verify the accuracy of the academic qualifications she claimed. A letter came back from her office stating that “a letter to Her Excellency the President is only forwarded to her when it is sent from a human being and not an insect like you.”
The following week the paper published this correspondence, and the week after it carried a letter from the French university she claimed to have attended stating it knew nothing of her.
Two weeks later armed persons walked into our printers, held staff at gunpoint and set fire to the premises. The presses were burned a second time and the home of Lasantha sprayed with machine gun fire. He continued to receive death threats, until he was finally murdered. This came in January 2009.
Those responsible have never been brought to justice, and the newspaper is now facing a defamation action from the Secretary for Defence who is suing it for 2 billion rupees.
In October 2009 Editors at The Sunday Leader again came under threat. The Editor and News Editor were both sent two hand written death threats by post.
The two letters were identical — written in red ink and appeared to have been posted on October 21, 2009. Coincidentally, the late Lasantha Wickrematunge, founder Editor-in-Chief of The Sunday Leader was sent a similar missive — also written in red ink — in December 2008, three weeks before he was murdered.
This newspaper has consistently in the entire 15 years of its existence, come under attack. We have been burnt, bombed, sealed, harassed and threatened, culminating in January 2009 with the brutal killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge. Not satisfied with that assassination, The Sunday Leader has continued to come under attack.
In 2010, five lawyers who appeared for The Sunday Leader were branded ‘traitors’ by the government’s very own Defence Ministry website. This was followed by another article also posted on the Defence Ministry website by none other that the Defence Secretary himself Gotabhaya Rajapaksa where he reiterated the position of the previous article on the Defence Ministry website going a step further and accusing the five lawyers appearing for The Sunday Leader as running “to their Nanny” the Bar Association of Sri Lanka.
Rajapaksa’s defensive and angry rebuttal followed the BASL and the International Bar Association having issued statements on the incident condemning the actions of the Defence Ministry.
Thereafter, continuing this war against The Sunday Leader, in September, the web page of the Media Centre for National Security carried a slanderous article refuting certain statements made to Al Jazeera by the Editor of this newspaper in relation to the infamous Channel 4 video. The article went so far as to even carry terminology such as “prostituting and prostitute”. Similar to the threatening letter received last Thursday and published elsewhere on our pages this week.
The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it is a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by its name. We do not hide behind euphemisms. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 18 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.
From us, you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. The journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling and we do not shirk it.
Ha ha ha ha that is true!!!!
hahahahahaha that is not true!! We had better times with Premadasa when he killed many journalists but we dont want to mention as he was LTTE friend.
premadasa wasnt LTTE friend. he isnt smart like ranil. ranil disintegrated the LTTE. premadasa left LTTE alone n carried on with his business.
MR n bros r the moda guys from hambantota, attacked the weakened LTTE(by ranil) n killed tens of thousands of civilians in the process. if CBK didnt topple ranil’s gov, ranil should have won the war without a war
Western-style freedom of the press is ill-suited for non-Western countries because of cultural differences. The Leader editor must take this fact into account rather than adhering to the forthrightness of the late Lasantha Wickrematunge.
Although I don’t approve of the deplorable action of the authorities to suppress the press, I think the press also has the responsibility to desist from one-sided reporting that provoke unsavory retaliation against confrontational journalists.
Eastern culture demands the ritual of respecting the rulers elected by people and those in authority. Thus, it is not wise tactics for the press to vilify leaders through frontal attacks. True, the press has the duty to investigate corruption in the ruling elite. But the press could achieve better results by practicing constructive criticism rather than than vilification.
I condemn the cowards who threatened Jansz. Leader journalists should re-think of using a non-confrontational approach to adversarial reporting.
It is the duty of the media in any country which professes to be a democracy, to state the truth.
Truth is eternal and there no versions of it – western or eastern.
This is why democracy flourishes in the ‘west’ but not in the third world nations under dictaterships – sri lanka being a good example.
Respect is earned and not anyone’s God given right! Our leaders have not earned such respect…… What eastern cultures are you talking about?
Eastern cultures demand we pay respect and cringe. worship and pay obescience to leaders?.What kind of crap is this?. We dont live in the days gone by when this feudal system of governance was tolerated. We and our children are more educated now, we live in a world that is so closely interconected thru modern means of communication via the Internet and of course with fast and efficient Air travel.. Freedom of speech is a fundamental right that people should enjoy in a true democracy.. Our country that enjoyed these freedoms have bee emasculated by power hungry regimes, the worst of this lot is the present one. This is a Familial dictatorship. whose crimes are never questioned. Go pay your respects to this dictatorship and you fools will reap the benefits.of opression and hardship, while the family of a bunch of ill educated fools prosper
Yes you are correct, not like western type, ours back borne is flexible to poerfull men.
Has this Gov not learned that this paper will remain Unbowed and Unafraid.
The above may be true for some of your articles but you cannot deny that most of your regular contributors are driven by petty and personal vendetta against the name ‘Rajapakse’, rather than any noble motivations of country
We are with you. Be brave like what you have been.
The only weapon the Rjapaksa,s use is to terrorise free speech. They will murder, use violance .and use their thugs in the army now run by one of the brothers, an ignorent swollen headed idiot with no proper education, a crude violent man who supoorts drug dealers and crooks like Duminda Silva.to silence free speech and free expression.. These vulgar crooks are now worse than the dirty Tigers we got rid of. This country is heading for doom , unless the people rise and chase them out like what is happened in the Arab states that got rid of dictators.
Sunday Leader is a great news paper. I wish this paper is published on a daily basis to expose all the crimes, corruption and lies by this government. Otherwise we all will not know what is happening in our country. Continue your good work.
Reporting the daily factuals in sri lanka, is hurting, while the unresolved
lasantha wickramasinghe assassination case, will forever continue
to be swept under the carpet.The culprits remain free and are well known
while commiting more similar contracts and not meant to face the LAW, due to Strong Connections??????
An elected govt should be respected. But if they use thuggery and repress free speech that exposes corruption then they need to be voted out. It is shocking that govt is attempting to protect drug dealers.It appears that ‘power’ has gone to the heads of those who govern. People need to rise up. As Dr Martin Luther King stated” We shall have to repent in this generation not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appaling silence of the good people”