One Month After Lasantha

Exactly one month has elapsed since the cold blooded killing of the Editor of The Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge, in broad daylight on the Attidiya highway by four masked gunmen on motorcycles. The public has been told by the police since the ghastly murder took place 'that investigations are proceeding.' The highest in the land has assured that justice will be done. But after one month it is apparent that there are no visible signs of progress in the investigations. The fear among journalists is that investigations into the killing will go the usual way and slip into the limbo of forgotten things. That is what has happened to investigations conducted into the killings and other physical abuse of Sri Lankan media personnel before.

We Sri Lankan journalists and certainly those of The Leader will not and cannot let that happen again. Lasantha's death must be avenged and the killers brought to justice. It means much more than justice for Lasantha's killing. It also involves the security of all genuine journalists. Independent journalists now fear that they are sitting ducks to those who don't want any form of dissent and be exposed for their criminal acts. There are of course very many journalists enjoying the good life, writing sunshine stories about the 'great' doings of modern day 'warriors,' about glorious 'victory marches' and the 'rosy future ahead.' They are entitled to the good life that they are enjoying but there are also journalists with a social conscience who want to tell the people that that they are living in a fools paradise and time will run out fast for the good life with the enormous wastage going on, bribery and corruption and just plain robbery by their heroes. In the process the genuine journalists will tread upon the toes of the high and mighty and even displace the fig leaves covering the hideous nudity of some at terrible cost. Lasantha Wickrematunge did just that and paid the penalty. Lasantha will be remembered today by a candlelight vigil at his graveside.

Lasantha Wickrematunge forged a new kind of journalism in Sri Lanka challenging a corrupt body politick peculiar to us and also to a society which after an election was lulled into a state of complacency by a barrage of propaganda even though bombs and gunfire were in close proximity.  Week after week his exposures awoke at least a section of the people from their peaceful slumber. It was certainly disconcerting to the masterminds behind the political skulduggery and crimes against society but who posed off as the pious in saintly robes. That was the new journalism he introduced which was markedly different to that of most Western countries where a single such exposure could result in the crooks being forced out of office. Here the political corrupt and criminals remain firmly entrenched.

He was also not afraid of defending genuine but unpopular causes. The tendency has been to fling much at international NGOs despite the invaluable services rendered by some of them. There are black sheep but Lasantha refused to paint them all with the same brush. The work done by some of them in the northeast and the south after the tsunami, is illustrated by the thousands who have benefited from the facilities provided for the poor victims. The need for such sturdy, independent journalism is evident in this one example. The other was his defence of minority interests.

The challenge posed by Lasantha in his death to journalists is to continue with this vibrant and militant journalism -certainly no easy task that would incur heavy risks.

Lasantha Wickrematunge was killed by four killers who followed his car on motorcycles for a considerable distance. It had to be a deep seated conspiracy by criminals with abundant resources to carry out such a killing.

During a month of investigations, the investigators have produced a motorcycle found in a canal at Attidiya which it was reported to have been used for the killing. Informed sources say that investigators now have doubts as to whether there is a nexus between the motorcycle found and Lasantha's killing. The other discovery was the mobile telephone of Lasantha which witnesses said was in his hand even when taken to hospital. Sources now say that the telephone had been stolen in hospital and sold to the person who was found to be in possession of it. If these are the only clues that the police have been able to unearth, it could be asked whether there had been any progress in this investigation at all.

It could well be that investigators are barking up the wrong tree. They should base their investigations on the motive behind the killing. He was a political animal throughout his journalistic career and in the process unearthed much embarrassing facts and damning evidence against the country's most powerful persons. A perusal of The Leader pages going back years will reveal all that. Colossal wastage that tantamount to massive corruption, bribery, undeclared acquisition of wealth, foreign business deals, political skulduggery, sexual romping  of seemingly pious political leaders, nepotism and much more were all fair game to him. Thus the motivation for his killing has to be political. Investigators would be able to make real progress if they look in this obvious direction. We have quoted a Chinese proverb before to illustrate this point: When the finger points at the moon, the idiot looks at the finger!

To attribute any other motive for Lasantha's killing would be as absurd as saying that Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was made to drink the poisoned hemlock for picking pockets of fellow Athenians.

The 70-year-old philosopher was found guilty of 'corrupting Athenian youth' by making them believe in gods other than gods which the state believed in and also the challenges made to accepted values and beliefs. Lasantha was by no means a philosopher. He was a simple newspaperman who had the guts to expose to the public that our contemporary 'gods' had feet of clay. Lasantha in his hard hitting exposures was puncturing the mighty egos of these 'gods.'

Sri Lankan politicians have a tendency of posing off as 'philosopher kings' with their new fangled philosophies. Dudley Senanayake had his 'Tank and the Dagoba,' Sirimavo Bandaranaike kept mouthing ever so often: 'Bandaranaike policies,' for Chandrika Kumaratunga it was: 'Peace, Peace and Peace' although she did not have the foggiest idea for achieving it, President Ranasinghe Premadasa started the Chinthanaya concept with his 'Premadasa Chinthanaya.' Everything good he did or others did was attributed to this chinthanaya. Lalith Athulathmudali was one who called the bluff by pronouncing it a 'one man show.' But there are no Athulathmudalis left today. Even potty little parties like the JHU and the JVP too proclaim their own chinthanaya. Lasantha punctured them all including the Mahinda Chinthanaya rather severely.

It would be of much interest to see the fate of another powerful 'god' - Suriya Theivam - of the north and east. He too had a vision (chinthanaya) for building a Tamil state extending from Guyana and other West Indian isles which have descendents of South Indian expatriate labour to South Africa, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Tamil Nadu stretching down South East Asia to Fiji. The danger of such visions need hardly be stressed. This deity, Suriya Theivam accounted for 70,000 lives in 25 years. It would be in the interest of the country if elected leaders have as their objective a limited plan of work for the elected period and bow out without aiming at immortality and creation of dynasties.

Forensic evidence and other research at the scene of the murder may lead to the identity of the killers. But to get to the conspirators of this ghastly killing investigators should investigate the political motives, if they could. So far when the finger is pointing at the moon they have been looking at the finger!