Court filings obtained by Sunday Observer from the United States District Court for the Central District of California paint a striking picture of how former Defence Secretary was set upon by a legal ambush in the empty car park of a Los Angeles supermarket two weeks ago today (7).Ahimsa Wickrematunge has emerged in recent years as a fierce champion of justice for her...
Sunday, 10 Sep 2023
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Darkest day:10 years Lasantha Wickrematunge assassination
What is time?... We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. Saint Augustine-ConfessionsWe know what time means. But how do we explain time. Saint Augustine the Catholic theologian and 4th century philosopher explains that ‘time’ is a...
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, arguably once Sri Lanka’s most powerful man, faces legal battles in two countries after separate civil lawsuits were reportedly filed in the United States of America last week for allegedly instigating torture and extra judicial killing during his tenure as Defence Secretary.The fresh legal trouble followed Gotabaya Rajapaksa to his hometown of Los...
The controversial ‘MiG Deal’ remains in the public spotlight as evidence continues to surface of the Rajapaksa Government’s complicity in engineering the dubious 2006 arms deal, and of scandalous attempts to hide the truth of the deal from the public.Sunday Times Defence Correspondent, Iqbal Athas, who first exposed the alleged scam in December 2006, has now revealed that...
Former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa has responded to an article written by Ahimsa Wickrematunge, the daughter of murdered journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, in which she shared her suspicion that Rajapaksa had a hand in her father’s murder.“If Lasantha’s daughter wants to know who his murderers are,” Rajapaksa said, “ask her to come to Sri Lanka and meet me. I...
10 Years After Lasantha Wickrematunge | Whither Investigative Journalism in Sri Lanka forum and Panel Discussion
The unedited footage of an interview with former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa aired on a private television channel just over a year before Lasantha Wickrematunge’s assassination, was ordered into CID custody by the Mount Lavinia Magistrate’s Court last week, as friends and colleagues marked a decade since the senior journalist was assassinated in broad daylight....
I first came to know of the MiG Deal in August 2007. I was living in Canada with family when my father called me from Colombo. He told me that The Sunday Leader had reported on a shady military contract involving Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and the Air Force. My father had just watched a television interview in which Rajapaksa had denied having any involvement in this “MiG deal...
At a recent event to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the murder of veteran journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, AFP Correspondent for Sri Lanka, Amal Jayasinghe remarked that “The same lawyer who appeared for Lasantha in the MiG case was one of his pall bearers and that same lawyer is now appearing for Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in the MiG case.”While Jayasinghe declined...
The words are still chilling, a decade later. “Who is Lasantha?” retorted a once all-powerful Defence Secretary angrily, when a BBC journalist dared to question him incessantly on the brutal murder of founding editor of The Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge who was killed on his way to work 10 years ago this Tuesday.That was a vastly different time. The lights were...
In some ways, Keith Noyahr’s abduction and assault in May 2008 was the harbinger of the more brutal crime that was to follow. At the time of his abduction, Keith Noyahr was the most senior journalist to be attacked during that dark era for press freedom in Sri Lanka. That dubious honour was claimed by his friend ‘Lassie’ eight months later. Lasantha Wickrematunge and...
Remembering Lasantha Wickrematunge for his knack of ferreting out news and attention to detail, his first boss in journalism Vijitha Yapa sat across his working table from me to unravel his fondest memories of the slain editor of The Sunday Leader.“Lasantha had friends in many spheres and in all layers, but you could not call them friends in a sense as when it came to a...
Every day, on my way to work, I would pause the music I was listening to while we drove past one particular wall. I knew it well –white, with the outlines of skipping schoolchildren painted on. Even though the paint cracked and grew dull over the years, my eyes would instantly find it no matter how fast we drove past.It was only when we turned the corner on to...
No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened...
Lasantha Wickrematunge and many journalists before him were brutally silenced by their opponents, but justice has been long-elusive to their friends, families and loved ones. According to veteran journalist and former Editor of the revolutionary Sinhala weekly Ravaya, Victor Ivan, the killings of journalists such as Wickrematunge speak volumes about Sri Lanka’s political...
On January 8 this year, when family, friends and colleagues of the late Sunday Leader Editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge gather to commemorate his 10th death anniversary, Shan Wijetunge will also be among the crowd.Once contemporaries who wrote political columns for their respective publications, Senior Journalist and the current Director of the Sri Lanka College of...
In 2007, journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge published a series of exposes about a murky arms procurement that has since come to be known as the ‘MiG deal’. The articles resulted in Lasantha and his newspaper being sued for defamation over his reporting on the alleged involvement of then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the transaction involving mothballed MiG-27...
“He was devastated when he heard the news. It really upset him.” Sandya Eknaligoda recalls how her husband reacted to the death of the late editor Lasantha Wickrematunge who was gunned down exactly a year before Prageeth Eknaligoda disappeared and never returned.January 8, 2009 is one of those days Sandya remembers as clear as a whistle. Her husband, cartoonists and...
Few sagas defined Lasantha Wickrematunge’s final years as much as his complex and long-standing relationship with Mahinda Rajapaksa. As Wickrematunge was to himself confess in his self-penned obituary, the two had secretly been close friends for most of a lifetime. The editor held Rajapaksa in the highest esteem, rising to his defence frequently in the pages of the Sunday...