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From the inspirational self-authored obituary of Lasantha Wickramatunge, editor-in-chief of Sri Lanka’s Sunday Leader newspaper, written shortly before he was shot and killed on his way to work:

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government’s sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

Wickramatunge was driving to his office on the morning of Jan. 8 when two men on motorcycles blocked his car and shot him in the head and chest, in the latest escalation of Sri Lanka’s war on press freedom. Two days earlier, 12 gunmen stormed and trashed a Sri Lankan television station, apparently because its coverage of the government’s war with Tamil rebels “was not ‘patriotic’ enough.” In December, the government jammed the BBC World Service television signal, and the Sunday Leader was officially banned from mentioning the president’s brother in its pages, in spite of the corruption scandal swirling around him.

Wickramatunge was one of Sri Lanka’s most respected journalists, known for asking tough questions and pushing hard for answers. It’s a pretty rare thing to write your own obituary three days before you’re assassinated, and he clearly knew what was coming for him. He also knew how to avoid it, and would be alive today if he had backed off on his probes of government corruption, slush funds and dodgy military purchases.

He may have been braver than most, but his experience is shared by reporters throughout most of the world — how many of us have heard of Uma Singh, a radio reporter in Nepal who was hacked to pieces just a few days ago because of her women’s rights campaigning? Or Fadel Shana, a clearly marked Reuters reporter who was hit dead-on by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza strip last year? Shana didn’t survive, but his damning videotape did. What about Israel’s bombing of a media building in Gaza yesterday, after giving repeated assurances to Reuters and other agencies that their offices were safe? According to Reporters Without Borders, this brand new year has already seen three journalists killed and 217 reporters, media assistants and online dissidents locked away.

In the West, our media outlets have stodgy, relatively uninteresting mottos like the New York Times’s “All the news that’s fit to print,” and the BBC’s ambiguous “Nation shall speak peace unto Nation.” It says a lot about press freedom in Sri Lanka that at the Sunday Leader, the motto is “Unbowed and unafraid.” Which brings us to the last few words of Wickramatunge’s column, published three days after his death. His message should be heard by honest journalists everywhere who struggle to report the truth, and by all the regular folks who stand on the sidelines as their truth-tellers are murdered, intimidated and barred from their work.

If you remember nothing else, let it be this: the Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled.

Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.

You can read the full text of Lasantha Wickramatunge’s self-authored obituary on the Sunday Leader website. The Guardian has reprinted it and is hosting it on its site as well, ensuring its availability in the event that the Leader’s website is forced offline. It’s well worth the read.

Story via CBC Radio One.

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