By Anura Gunasekera

Commencing with Premakeerthi de Alwis in 1986 and concluding with Lasantha Wickrematunge in 2009, 40 accredited Sri Lankan journalists and media personnel, 31 of them of Tamil, have been murdered or died violently. Of these, 31 occurred between April 2004 and March 2009, during the Mahinda Rajapaksa tenure, initially as Prime Minister and then as President. His younger brother Gotabaya, later president himself, was the Defence Secretary of the country from 2005 to 2015.

During the above period, apart from those killed, many were abducted, assaulted and /or tortured, and intimidated in various other ways. A few left the country in fear of their lives. Most, if not all of those journalists, unsurprisingly, had been vocal critics of the government. With the defeat of the Rajapakse government in 2015, all harassment of journalists ceased, abruptly.

Of the above killings, those of Lasantha Wickrematunge (LW) and that of Richard de Zoysa in 1990, as well as the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda in 2010 are, for a variety of reasons, not least the international outrage and condemnation, considered the most prominent. The most disturbing commonality across all these crimes is that none have been comprehensively investigated and the perpetrators punished.

In fact, despite pointers regarding the identity of the masterminds- circumstantial but compelling – and the very public nature of most of the actual incidents themselves, investigations have been either obstructed or stifled, through intimidation of potential witnesses, misleading autopsies, the enthusiastic pursuit of patently false lines of investigation, deliberately disingenuous official statements and, not infrequently, the suppression or disappearance of physical evidence.

The murder of Richard de Zoysa is again in the limelight on account of the recent film, “Rani”, although any hope of the crime being solved is almost zero. The murder of LW has been publicly profiled in the last few weeks, due to the order for the discharge, by the Attorney General (AG), of three suspects linked to events consequent to the murder, on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

Since the murder of LW, four successive governments have assured the country and the international community, that the case would be comprehensively investigated and those responsible punished. The slain Lasantha Wickrematunge had become an international metaphor for delayed justice. The present NPP government, led by president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, made the investigation of previously unsolved crimes, including that of Lasantha’s murder, and the cleansing of corrupt government systems, a cornerstone of its election manifesto. The sweeping victory of the NPP at the recent general elections was largely due to the faith that the electors placed in those promises.

Why is the case of Lasantha Wickrematunge so important?

Investigative Journalists play a vital role in maintaining a free and open society, by providing the public with critical information, holding power to account and exposing corruption and injustice. In that context, LW played a major role through his paper, “The Sunday Leader” which, week after week, exposed the massive corruption within the Rajapaksa regime, citing specific transactions and quite often linking acts of malfeasance to then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his brother and Defence Secretary Gotabaya, or to close associates of the Rajapaksa family and the regime.

LW’s silence was worth more to the Rajapaksa family in particular, than to anybody else in the country. In fact, LW’s murder was apparently preceded by an unsuccessful attempt, in 2007, by Mahinda Rajapaksa himself, to broker the sale of the paper to an investor of his choice, the offer being made to Lal, LW’s brother (Page 234- Unbowed and Unafraid- Raine Wickrematunge). The only possible reason for a president of a country to personally seek the divestment of ownership of an outspoken newspaper, is control of its narrative content and direction.

Two years later Lasantha’s assassination paved the way for the exercise of this option.

In Sept 2012, businessman and alleged Rajapakse associate, Asanga Seneviratne, many of whose property development and investment deals had been criticized at various times by the “Leader”, bought a 72% stake in the “Leader” and its sister newspaper, “Iruresa”. In the same month Frederica Jansz, then editor of the “Leader” and long-time colleague of LW, was summarily dismissed from her position. In May 2015 the “Leader”, now under a decidedly Rajapaksa-friendly dispensation, tendered an unconditional apology to Gotabaya Rajapksa for a series of articles it had run, during LW’s tenure as editor, on the indisputably questionable method of purchase of MiG-27 aircraft from Ukraine, for the Sri Lanka Air Force. Udayanga Weeratunga, relative of the Rajapaksa family, as then Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Ukraine, allegedly played a major role in facilitating the said transaction. According to Ahimsa, LW’s daughter, LW was on the verge of exposing the highly complex and sordid details of the deal in entirety, when he was murdered (The MiG deal; Why My Father Had To Die- Groundviews-01/08/21).

The above is just one of the hundreds of expose’s featured by LW and he very rarely got it wrong. Very few other journalists in recent decades – the late Victor Ivan was one other- so courageously and in such minute detail, addressed the sins of those in power as LW did. They were issues that many journalists avoided, a self-regulation on truthful journalism brought about as a conditioned survival mechanism, in response to the brutal repression of those who dared to write the truth about power.

LW’s last writing- “Then They Came For Me”– published posthumously and now a classic of Asian journalism, was a chillingly prophetic prediction of his own death, pointing an accusatory finger at his erstwhile friend, then president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The death of any human being diminishes society but the death of a fearless journalist, who holds a mirror to the foibles of society and power, diminishes our world in a special way; especially a world such as ours where leaders, irrespective of political colour, have proved to be treacherous, unreliable, corrupt, mercenary and nepotistic.

On the 27^th of January, Parinda Ranasinghe Jr, Attorney General (AG) of Sri Lanka, ordered the release – citing lack of evidence to proceed with indictments – of Ananda Udalagama, implicated in the abduction in August 2009 of Karunaratne Dias, LW’s driver, and DIG Prasanna Nanayakkara and Sub-inspector Sugathapala, both implicated in the disappearance of a notebook recovered from LW’s vehicle after his murder. Consequent to immediate and widespread criticism and physical demonstrations against this order, it has since been rescinded.

In this episode the primary, indisputable principle, is that it is entirely at the AG’s discretion, to decide whether or not to charge a suspect, taking in to account the validity of admissible evidence available, and the prospect of securing a conviction. The political body has no right suggest a review of such a decision, or to compel the AG to consider such a review, irrespective of the importance of the case. At the same time it is also assumed that the AG and his department will carry out their duties impartially, irrespective of past loyalties – if any – and current personal prejudices, especially in relation to sensational cases involving those previously and currently in power.

Assuming that the release order was issued after a comprehensive analysis of the available evidence, the subsequent reversal is baffling, to say the least. Is it that the AG, or the legal officers responsible, consequent to a re-assessment of available material, suddenly realized that they had a made a serious error of judgment? Or did the AG’s department cave in to political and public pressure and decide to change its decision?

If the AG had braved both public and political displeasure and held fast to the original decision, it would have been perfectly acceptable and even commendable. However, it is now being reported in responsible mainstream newspapers, that the rescinding of the original decision is a response to a request by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), to give it more time to act on the AG’s order, on account of the controversy surrounding the issue. The official version now appears to be that what is now in place is a suspension of the original decision, and not a reversal.

In the meantime, Ahimsa, through her publicized letter of February 14 to Anura Meddegoda, President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, has censured him for his hypocritical support of the AG and his position in this episode. She has supported her position by reference to Meddegoda’s protest against a similar order by the AG, under very similar circumstances, when it involved the murder of one Indika Prasad, allegedly by members of the Special Task Force. The interests of the victim’s wife were represented by Meddegoda.

Ahimsa has condemned the AG’s position in this matter, in the said letter citing seemingly convincing evidence available against the three suspects named earlier. She has even called for the impeachment of the AG, on the grounds that in ordering the discharge of the suspects, he has deliberately chosen to ignore vital evidence.

For an ordinary citizen such as the writer, with only a minimal understanding of criminal law, an analysis of the legal validity of the AG’s management of the case in question is not possible. But, still, to the writer and to several million other citizens who helped to bring the NPP in to power, the delivery of justice in matters of public corruption, politically motivated murders and similar crimes, are issues of supreme importance.

Fearless journalists such as Lasantha Wickrematunge paid with their lives for their reportage and public exposure of the crimes of the politically powerful. The justice for such crimes is owed, not only to the family members of the slain, but to the nation itself. It ceased to be a private, Wickrematunge family project a long time ago.

President AKD has steadfastly maintained that his regime will not interfere with ongoing legal processes, unlike previous regimes which seemed to often guide the hand of the law, in cases which featured those in power, unfavourably. However, what may be prudent and necessary, if justice is to be finally done, is intervention and course correction at critical stages, to ensure that public officers entrusted with relevant responsibilities do not lose sight of both the principle and the objective.