The assassination of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge was not intended merely to remove one man but to intimidate an entire profession, the Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption said on Friday.
Ranga Dissanayake was speaking at the launch of the Sinhala translation of a book about Wickrematunge, Hiru News reported.
“Do you think Lasantha was killed only to remove Lasantha?” Dissanayake asked. “It was a message to everyone like Lasantha,” Newswire reported.
The message to journalists, he argued, was to stay within accepted boundaries, report without challenging powerful interests, and “don’t try to be different.”
A pattern, not an isolated killing
Dissanayake said similar warnings had been delivered repeatedly when individuals confronted corruption or entrenched interests, citing the cases of Professor Senaka Bibile and Customs officer Sujith Prasanna.
The damage, he said, extends well past the victim: colleagues and families begin weighing whether exposing wrongdoing is worth risking their lives. After the Customs officer’s killing, he said, several people connected to that institution left the country or became reluctant to pursue investigations.
“If Lasantha is killed and many more Lasanthas emerge, then their message fails,” he said. “But what happened was that after Lasantha was killed, many people were suppressed. Then their objective succeeds.”
Hiru’s account carries a further line Newswire does not: “Those who know who killed Lasantha know.”
Who carries the burden
Dissanayake questioned whether the families of those killed or disappeared for their work should go on carrying that burden alone, pointing to Wickrematunge’s former wife Raine Wickrematunge and to the wife of disappeared journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda — whose case remains before the courts more than sixteen years on.
The wider public, he said, must decide whether to stay silent or to ensure that attempts to intimidate those who expose wrongdoing ultimately fail.
Not reported
Neither outlet names the book, its author or its translator, gives the venue or date of the launch, or reports who else spoke. Dissanayake heads the anti-corruption commission rather than the criminal investigation into the 2009 killing, and neither account says whether his remarks reflect any CIABOC finding or carry any implication for the long-stalled murder inquiry.
