Word: murderers
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...motorcycles, which blocked his path as the gunmen shot him through the driver-side window, when he was just five minutes away from his office. He was rushed to the hospital but died after surgery. Wickrematunge was a staunch critic of the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, and his murder came in the middle of the government's final offensive to crush the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The government did not brook any criticism of its conduct of the war, but even since declaring victory last May things are little improved for journalists. (Watch a video about the final...
...exodus of journalists and media activists from Sri Lanka has been partly due to the failure of the murder investigation to make any progress. Soon after the shooting, police recovered the mobile phone used by Wickrematunge that had gone missing after he was taken to the hospital. Since then there has been no real breakthrough, though the investigation has been taken over by the Criminal Investigation Department. There have been no arrests so far, nor are there any suspects. Journalists from Sri Lanka's minority Tamil ethnic community have long felt under threat, but Wickrematunge's death sent a clear...
...August 2009, eight months after Wickrematunge's murder, Tamil journalist Jayaprakash Tissainayagam was sentenced to 20 years in prison when he was found guilty of aiding terrorism. Later that year, Poddala Jayantha, a prominent media-rights activist, left the country due to ongoing threats. "It is not only where the Lasantha Wickrematunge investigation has progressed, but also where all the investigation into the assassinations, assaults and intimidation of journalists have progressed," says Lakshman Gunasekera, president of the national chapter of the media-rights group South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA). "The manner the investigation has moved does not give...
...administration of Rajapaksa. Although he considered Rajapaksa an old friend, he criticized him over the conduct of the war and lack of safety for the civilians trapped by the fighting. A posthumous editorial that appeared in the Sunday Leader, the paper that Wickrematunge founded, immediately after his murder addressed Rajapaksa directly: "In the wake of my death, I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too." The widely circulated...
...widespread condemnation of Wickrematunge's murder did little to change the restrictions on the media. For months after the civil war was declared over, journalists were not permitted to travel to or report in the former conflict zone in the island's north, and they still need permission to visit camps where those displaced by the war remain, or to speak with those who have returned to their former villages. Similar authorization is required to visit and write on the accelerated development and resettlement process now under way in the Vanni, the former conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka...