By

Gamini Weerakoon

(Full Text of speech delivered by former Editor of “The Island” Gamini Weerakoon at the 8th Death Anniversary memorial event of Lasantha Wickrematunga – Founder Editor of “The Sunday Leader”- who ws assassinated on Jan 8th 2009)

We hav egathered here today to commemorate the life and the journalistic career of Lasantha Wickramatunga, the most outstanding journalist of our times.

You all are well aware of Lasantha’s life, his career and events after his death. B+ut on an occasion like this it is essential to refresh our minds on this remarkable man.

To begin on a personal note, I first met Lasantha in the early 1980’s when he joined the Island editorial whose editor was VijithaYapa and I the deputy editor. Lasantha was not a typical journalist of those times.

He was not a hard drinker nor smoker. He dressed well, was courteous and well spoken. He had only one addiction if I may call it one – journalism.

Gamini Weerakoon

He had a nose for news when he smelt a story he went after the source with indomitable courage, determination and commitment. Like a bloodhound after his quarry and did not give up till he got him.

That was the spirit of Lasantha.

To illustrate this character of his I recall an incident that happened on a Saturday morning while we were preparing for the Sunday Island. A powerful minister of JR’s government called me and said : ‘Your reporter Wickramatunga is in my office asking me stupid and impertinent questions. I have refused to answer him and reminded him that I consented for an interview and not a political interrogation. But he keeps going back to these questions and I have asked him to get out. I will get him thrown out.

I persuaded the minister to hand the phone over to Lasantha and told him that he was the guest of the minister and he could not compel the minister to reply. I asked him to return to office. An angry young man came to office and told me : I will still write that story without the Minister’s reply, but will write out my questions and say below that the minister refused to answer them. That was the aggressive and unbending spirit of Lasantha.

He continued with his aggressive journalism rampaging the political scene. After sometime he said he was resigning from the Island to contest the Kotahena seat, on the SLFP ticket.

It was a tough ask, Kotahena being a UNP bastion and despite his father’s influence there. Lasantha lost and later offered to write a political column for the Island. But Lasantha had become a hot political potato and the management had got cold feet.

The Island’s loss was the gain of a newspaper that had started a short time earlier. And Lasantha did contribute much to the meteoric rise of that paper. He continued with his journalistic adventures. Once while returning home with his wife, they were pulled out of their car, manhandled and their house riddled with machine gun fire. This was a new kind of journalism in this country – wild west journalism as compared with the humdrum journalism of searching for stories on ministry corridors.

Lasantha continued in this paper for sometime and then attempted the impossible: he started a newspaper company, to publish English and Sinhala language newspapers. Only one person had done it before – D.R. Wijewardene.

I on leaving the Island newspaper I requested Lasantha to give me 2 columns in his newspaper. He not only obliged me instantly but also conferred the title of Consultant Editor and when he was pressed for time requested me to write the editorial.

Despite he and I interchanging our positions vis-a- vis editor and journalist there was no confusion at all, because he treated me like anyone of the other colleagues on the paper.

Lasantha was successful in establishing the newpaper company, but not on the awesome scale of Wijewardene. Yet his creation is on the streets today, effusing his spirit.

In the newspaper world, it is said that for a paper to be successful it needs a live editor and a dead proprietor. Lasantha did fill the former role and he was also the proprietor.

That gave him the ideal freedom a journalist desires. But it was a dangerous time. Regardless Lasantha took on the most powerful and fearsome politicians , despite the warning s of many.

They finally got him on a sunny morning on the Attidiya road when he was on his way to work and killed him.

Lasantha obviously realised the risks he was taking. His unique obituary on himself a short time before his death identifying his would be killers is unprecedented in the history of journalism.

He left behind two legacies: The Sunday Leader now carrying on in his same daring independent spirit under the editorship of EaswaranRutnam . The second legacywas the spirit of independent journalism which many young journalists and new news publications have imbibed.

Eight years on, his death is lamented but his killers and those who conspired to kill him are free to roam the world. It is hoped that the investigative spirit he left behind will help to bring to justice the killers of this seeker of the truth.