The President is answerable for Lasantha’s murder

"Lasantha’s assassination was pre-planned and a calculated exercise of the state. A crime committed so overtly in the broad day-light in the heart of Colombo, leaving behind traces of sufficient evidence of the crime. These evidences have been systematically sidelined by the government machinery."
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Editorial from Colombo Desk of Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Lasantha Wickramatunga - the founder and editor of the heroic newspaper Sunday Leader was assassinated by the state’s death squad on 8 January 2009. The Sunday Leader has gone through trials and testing times during its existence for the past fifteen years. During this period, it stood with the purpose as a guiding force to overtly expose the failures and excesses of the successive governments and for this it paid a heavy price in monetary terms and in human lives which no other newspaper could have experienced in any part of the world.

Lasantha’s assassination was pre-planned and a calculated exercise of the state. A crime committed so overtly in the broad day-light in the heart of Colombo, leaving behind traces of sufficient evidence of the crime. These evidences have been systematically sidelined by the government machinery. Beyond the hard evidence, there is compelling and circumstantial evidence reported in the media and these have never been considered in the murder investigations.

If the government did not tighten the screw on the investigations, there would have been many witness accounts to the murder and also further state conspiracy in the murder would have surfaced out.

Lasantha’s death is one of the foulest murders of the government. Factual and circumstantial account of the murder confirms the head of the state President Mahinda Rajapakse’s complicity in the murder. His well publicised ‘Ouluwatathe Vanthunne?’ (Hit the head?) Comment immediately upon Lasantha’s murder at an official meeting confirms the President’s involvement.

The police and intelligence mechanisms of Sri Lanka are only there to perpetrate crimes wanted by the rulers and they are not there to prevent them or undertake the due process to provide justice to the victims.

It is not the intention of this analysis to touch on all the other appalling murders and the anti-social acts committed by the state. Let this be the tribute to Lasantha for his daring effort to speak for many of those killed under similar circumstances.

Lasantha and his Sunday Leader had been always a threat to the state. Their painstaking investigative journalism has the binocular research impact that the corrupt Sri Lankan governments found them hard to stomach. Using the machinery created to fight the Tamil Tiger terrorism, the government engineered one of the foulest murders that even put the international community in a dumfounded state.

The present government of Mahinda Rajapakse has committed disproportionate volumes of state crimes against the Sri Lankan citizens and has become an expert in using the most heinous criminal methods to hold on to power.

Lasantha’s farewell article written before his murder spoke his sincere mindset. He had been harassed and hounded before he was bumped off. But his undeterred commitment to journalism and his outstanding charisma made him to stand firm and face the ultimate consequence of the sickening murderous mindset of the state.

Following the death of Lasantha, many charismatic journalists have left the country to keep their limbs together. In fact the government had succeeded in its mission to silence the independent and intricate journalism in Sri Lanka. Without Lasantha even Sunday Leader is struggling to maintain its esteemed investigative journalism.

Since the murder of Lasantha, leading journalists like Iqbal Athas of the Sunday Times, Sonali Samarasinghe of Sunday Leader and many other down to earth journalists have decided to take a back seat in order to avoid risking their lives with the governments murderous mission.

Having done collateral damage to the media, the government is now going on honeymoon with the parasitical journalists like the one operating from Helsinki and the paid media men operating from various Sri Lankan foreign missions, to promote its ruthless dictates. This cocktail of unscrupulous journalists is playing the Goebles game to justify and circumvent the terror campaign of the state.

Sri Lanka Guardian too came under unimaginable pressures from the state following the death of Lasantha for upholding the just discipline of honest journalism. We were head hunted by the Colombo underworld gangsters and the paramilitary minister and former LTTE Colonel for publishing critical news about the government. Following the threat of murder by the roaming white van gangsters and intimidating secret service grilling us for hours, we decided to hide our head under and carryon with our mission to discharge our commitment to honest journalism with the same vigour. Our personal experience with the Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse’s secret service, the paramilitary and the underworld gangster’s is the typical pressures that could have been experienced by Lasantha before his death.

If Lasantha was living, the politics of Sri Lanka would have been different. Under his able journalist leadership, he would have dissected many of the corruptions and shenanigans of the Mahendra Percy Rajapakse’s government. His journalism would have savaged the terror and corrupt cocktail of the government and the citizen’s of Sri Lanka would have come to know many of the hidden secrets of public importance to formulate their own opinion of the government.

The down turn of the President Rajapakse following the entry of the former Army General Sarath Fonseka is the necessary pressure that is mitigating the uncontrollable behaviour of the ruthless government. Sarath is reflecting all the signs that he is the man of mission that was left behind by persons like Lasantha.

The Sri Lanka Guardian too at this critical juncture of the political history of Sri Lanka asserts its stand without fear and for just reason and state:

Mahinda’s victory in the upcoming election will be a defeat for freedom and justice in Sri Lanka.

Mahinda’s defeat will be the God given grace for freedom and justice in Sri Lanka.
Let the people in Sri Lanka be guided to defeat the brutal government at the election.
Let January 26th be the day our dead hero’s like Lasantha being honoured by the people by defeating this retched government.

Let the people of Sri Lanka whether Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, Vedhas and many other communities forgetting their differences and join their hands and in unison give the much needed farewell to this terror government that has wrecked the established fundamental values that Sri Lankan society practiced for centuries on the election day.

Let the people unite to fight the government to prevent its underhand work to rig the votes in the election.

We end with our whole hearted tribute to our icon journalist Lasantha on his first death anniversary.