Headlines

As Sri Lankans go to the polls as a unified nation for the first time in more than two decades, Freedom House is deeply concerned about electoral misconduct and Sri Lankan authorities' flagrant disregard for the rule of law.

"A year has gone by without any progress in the investigation into his murder," Lal Wickrematunge said today to Reporters Without Borders, on the eve of the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of his brother, Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Colombo-based Sunday Leader's well-known managing editor. It is Lal who has replaced him at the helm of investigative weekly, some of whose journalists were recently threatened.

President Mahinda Rajapakse has been challenged to dispel the widely held perception that his government is complicit in a cover up of Lasantha Wickrematunge's assassins. In a letter dated January 4, 2010, Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge highlighted the various steps taken by the state to stonewall an investigation into her husband's murder and called for an "impartial, transparent and professional inquiry" into the killing.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard presented the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism to slain Sri Lankan newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge and the journalists of Afghanistan on Tuesday, November 17, 2009.

Slain Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickrematunge and a New York Times reporter held captive for seven months received the National Press Club's 2009 John Aubuchon Press Freedom Awards. The awards are bestowed on one international journalist and one American journalist who embody the principles of a free press. They were honored at the Awards Dinner on August 3.

Lasantha Wickrematunge was editor of The Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka until January, when a commando hit squad on motorcycles assassinated him in his car on the way to work.

Even after declaring victory in Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, the country’s leaders seem unable to distinguish between the enemy — the brutal but apparently vanquished Tamil Tiger separatists — and innocent bystanders. Despite appeals from Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and from others, the government has not given international aid organizations full access to government-run camps, where an estimated 280,000 civilians are said to be in desperate need of food, water and medical care.

Troops and leaders of the United States and United Kingdom should be accused of war crimes before Sri Lanka is made to face any kind of war crimes tribunal, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has stated in an interview with Nitin A. Gokhale, Senior Defence Editor of India's NDTV Channel.