Lasantha’s Death
The first time I met Lasantha Wickremetunge he was already dead. Like many important people in my life – Kurt Cobain, for example – I discovered him after he was dead. I first saw Lasantha in a coffin, turning the corner from Kirimandala Mawatha onto a crowded Baseline Road. I saw future MP Harsha de Silva walking near the railing and we walked together for a while, exchanging the spoken version of a dejected shrug. I remember the crowd at Kanatte Cemetary. It stretched round the block. Last Saturday, I went to his gravesite again, unfashionably late, this time as a Sunday Leader employee. I saw MP Eran Wickramaratne walking out, and the young editorial staff still around the grave. It wasn’t a massive turnout like before. I know that Lasantha is lost. Sometimes I wonder if he lost.
After Lasantha died, the paper suffered. First, it lost staff. Then it lost money, then, worst of all for a paper, it lost face. During the last Presidential election the paper was forced to choose between the military man who might have killed Lasantha and the political family that backed him. That was the choice between two evils, and the Leader’s choice, while it may have saved the paper, cost dearly in terms of the reputation Lasantha worked for.
It was a twisted story, with more twists I probably don’t know about. 17 soldiers were arrested in the Lasantha case and let go. Some of the evidence seemed to point back to then Army Commander Sarath Fonseka. When he defected from the government to run against Mahinda, the Leader was faced with a choice. Back Lasantha’s putative killer or Mahinda, the man behind the whole messed up scene. They chose Fonseka and mass drama ensued.
First, in the course of supporting Fonseka, they almost immediately damaged his campaign. By publishing the convoluted White Flag story (Fonseka alleging that Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered surrendering LTTErs shot) the Leader instead made Fonseka look like a traitor. He never really recovered. Then, when he lost, The Leader both testified to put Fonseka in jail for that very story, they also got publicly demolished on the stand. In that trial, the Leader’s own former lawyer was cross examining them (for Fonseka), and he tore them apart. It emerged that there were no conclusive notes of the interview, that the Leader took money from the UNP, etc. Then the rest of the press also made stuff up to pile onto the damaging truth, effectively pillorying the paper along with Fonseka.
Then, when Fonseka was convicted, the Leader got a silent thank you from the government, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s billion rupee defamation case was effectively withheld. The government had used The Leader as a rag to wipe Fonseka off the map. Lasantha was still dead, justice was still not served, and people didn’t seem to care. Indeed, the election showed that the only choice people wanted to make was between different degrees of killers. The people who marched at his funeral weren’t there two years later. Everyone had essentially bought into the system, and the Leader had as well.
So, did he lose? Not exactly. Lasantha is still a historical footnote in most western accounts of Sri Lanka. Small comfort. But he at least went out trying to do the right thing. Trying to say the right thing. After being with the Leader since his death, I can say that the ground reality seems pointless and hard, but I have seen many times in history that the right thing is a slow fuse. A very slow fuse. Lasantha was a Christian, and Jesus is just one example. He looked thoroughly crushed by the establishment, but he’s now remembered more than any Herod or Caesar. Not that Lasantha is a prophetic figure, he remains highly controversial. Still, I believe he was on the right side, for democracy and peace, and I do believe that right will prevail. Or at least, that right is right. Despite the fact that his staff has left, his paper has suffered, his wife has fled, and his children are being raised abroad, I think Lasantha would still do what he did.
The idea that right can fail, the idea that it can be humiliated, the idea that it can be crushed and yet rise again. These are Christian ideas, but I find them in my Buddhist faith as well. And I think that’s why we return to faith when we’re buried. Because the world doesn’t make sense. Because the good guys don’t always win. Because we still believe in good. Whatever the Leader goes through, whatever it is or isn’t, I still believe, and I still remember Lasantha. I know I was late, but I was there. May he rest in peace.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
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Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
SF did not kill Lasantha.
Nice piece.
“Lasantha was a Christian” ….Actually, I think he was a Christian extremist. He used his paper to bash the Buddhists and the Muslims, as well as the Hindus but never ever published any articles critical of Christianity, the Church, its priests or its followers. Frederica Jansz, another Christian, is continuing the same (blatantly obvious) policy. Taboo Subjects has a good article on this in his blog that makes for interesting reading. Basically, the Sunday Leader is a paper of the rich, Sinhala Christian elite (and to a lesser extent of rich Tamil Christians and Burghers). And lets face it, Lasantha used the Sunday Leader to go on witch hunts against people he deemed to be his enemy or the enemy of the political party he backed, which was mainly the UNP.
To quote:
“[The] Sunday Leader serves exclusively the Colombo elite rich and upper middle class that finds a great difficulty in aligning themselves with the mainstream Sinhalese Buddhists. (In W3Lanka’s words this is ???????????? ????? ?????? – the Compradore capitalists.) Either they are too-rich; too-westernized; non-Buddhists or non-Sinhalese or all of them. This class by default loathes both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka – or any Sinhalese Buddhist for that matter. It has little to do with their policies. It is more because they are outsiders – the ???? ????? (‘godey bayiyaas’ or village rustics) who never read Shakespeare. (or Sunday Leader)”
I completely agree with Ethul. It’s not only during the last presidential election that the leader publications got financial support from UNP. It wasn’t the first time and UNP is not the only third party helped them. It’s not after Lasantha’s death that the leader lost it’s face. I worked with Leader publications for years. I never worked with Lasntha or Sonali directly but I was getting enough inside information so I knew what they were doing. I didn’t see any difference between him and the corrupted people he wrote against. I know enough to safely conclude that he is real hypocrite.
It’s an embarassment to call Lasantha Wickramatunga a “journalist” – he was a purveyor of the worst kind of yellow journalism. And he accepted money from political parties to write in favour of them. What kind of a journalist worth his salt would do something like that? He was also a hate monger, using his paper to unfairly attack individuals for weeks on end — until they joined the political party he was rooting for. Then he could see no wrong in them. Lasantha has been lionised when he shouldn’t have been. If all Sri Lankan journalists aspired to be like him I fear for our country.
Lasantha was a political animal by all accounts and his newspaper was always biased. But he didn’t deserve to die the way he did for that. It’s shameful that there has been no breakthrough so far in the investigation in to such a heinous crime committed in broad daylight at a time when there was tight security throughout the city.
I even met him on two occasions in connection with some office work. The newspaper office was at that dilapidated old building near Gangaramaya, which has been demolished now. He was very kind and helpful. So it was really disturbing to see those images of him seriously injured. What is more disturbing is that people these days just accept the fact that investigations go nowhere, when such crimes are committed.
a politically motivated journalist (with vague hues of idealism, but hardly a model figure) gets butchered in broad daylight for possibly overestimating his sphere of influence during the risky game he played. all this at the height of a civil war in the country, when thousands of normal people got killed, possibly for far far worse (better) reasons. colombo gets its panties in a twist for the special one.
well guess what, a lot of people didn’t deserve to die the way they did. and you expect ‘people’ to empathize? why is it so hard to understand that people don’t really respect (most of the) journalists, and why.
Lol, i guess lasantha is the ideal poster child for the liberazzi fantasy.
What’s your fantasy, absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings?
it’s probably the ideal ideal form of communism i fantasize. no capital, all production automated. watch wall-e you’ll see what i mean.
: ) Why am I not surprised that Dodo’s fantasies are woven around an animated film?
We have Wall-E somewhere at home. I gave up on it after watching the boring initial garbage collecting bit. The kids say it gets better. Perhaps I’ll give it another try.
shammi, just watch wall-e it’s nice little movie. I’ve never met a person who didn’t find it charming. but my point was about ideal society
Watched it. The little guy’s cute, but your ideal society sucks. :D
Innocent people got killed in the civil war, true. Innocent people inevitably get killed in wars and we must try to solve our problems without resorting to war. But innocent people weren’t targeted during the civil war. Those child soldiers were innocent, true, but the situation was so out of control that no sane person could expect the government not to prosecute the war and put a stop to that endless war/peacetalk/war farce which would cause far more suffering and death.
Lasantha’s killing was premeditated. The impunity with which a prominent figure could be targeted and killed in cold blood is what causes concern. Similarly one wonders whether Makandu Sivalingam’s murder too, will ever be solved. That’s my concern. It’s not that the lives of those innocent civilians in the war zone or a busload of innocent civilians who got bombed out of the face of the earth in Anuradhapura are less valuable.
Lasantha Wickrematunga’s life is not any more important than the lives of thousands upon thousands of other Sri Lankans who died in the conflict. The fact that they weren’t English speaking and living in Colombo does not make them subhumans. Lasantha was trying to justify the suicide attack on Chandrika and the attack on the Dalada Maligawa which left 22 people dead through his Sunday Leader newspaper. So why should anyone mourn such a character when he himself meets a violent end?
Hey Pora, I mourn violent murder and the absence of the rule of law and the apathy of the masses, and that includes myself. Why? Maybe out of a sense of self preservation. I could be the next. Fortunately, I’m not important enough or much of a threat to anyone for them to want to waste lead on me, so I should be safe unless I get caught in the cross-fire. For your information, I don’t live in Colombo either. But I wouldn’t want anyone to harbour the idea that they could kill me or anyone else and get away with it easily.
There should not be an argument about condemning the assassination. The questions is whether he deserves all the credit and heroism attributed to him. One doesn’t need to be total clean to be considered as an hero. But in Lasantha’s case, I don’t think he can meet the bare minimum of standards even.
Actually the first half (garbage collecting half) of Wall-E is the better half. He’s as lonely as David Bowman at the end of 2001 Space Odyssey.
You’ve never met lasantha in person? I assumed you, him and the rest of the crazy liberals met every weekend at Colombo 7 to plot the demise of our glorious motherland! You disappoint me Indi.
The guy had balls.
Who killed cock Robin?……… You know the answer, I knew it, and the others likewise but don’t want to talk about it. Every one of us has sewn our lips, so that we won’t even talk about it because we know the repercussions. Aren’t we courage enough to like our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Libya, and Syria? We need to be put to starve to get that kind of courage to fight our common enemy. We lost Lasantha physically, but not from our heart. He is our living courage. His life has taught us courage and will give us the push sooner than others expectations.