Lasantha Wickramatunga: And Then They Came for Me. 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 last few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print institutions have been burned, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories, and now especially the last.
Wickramatunga was the editor of the Sri Lankan Sunday Leader, newspaper that crusaded for honor and against corruption. Please read his final column to remember why journalism remains a vital, and sometimes noble, craft.