A little window into a large chunk of time

A couple of weeks ago I was assigned a profile piece as my article for the week (for all those who didn't know, I write for my university's paper). When I took the assignment I had no idea just exactly how amazing this guy's life really was. I interviewed with him and then through lots of time and stress I wrote the article below. The paper editor changed and shortened the version that was actually published because of space reasons and liability complications, but below I have pasted my entire original article for you all to see. It really is an amazing story and it doesn't even really begin to cover all that he has been through. I hope you enjoy it!



JOURNALISTS AND DEATH IN SRI LANKA

by ME

Journalism is not typically viewed as a field of work where people have need to fear for their lives. Journalists go out and find stories, report on them, and sometimes get sued for hearsay or defamation of character, but generally report the news and move on. In Sri Lanka, journalists are not so lucky.

As one Sri Lankan journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge put it, “No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism.”

Ruan Pethiyagoda, a sophomore journalism major at Seattle University and former journalist for Sri Lanka’s most widely circulated independent weekly newspaper, The Sunday Leader has seen and experienced the dangers of being a journalist first hand, and though he has seen corruption and death through his line of work, his passion for the subject seems never to waiver.

Pethiyagoda first took an interest in politics by observing his uncle, Gamini Dissanayake, who held the position of senior cabinet minister in every government administration from 1977 until his death. But while Ruan clearly had a strong spark of interest in politics and writing, he focused instead on science and mathematics because he felt tests throughout his high school career indicated that he was better suited for such subjects.

When he left Sri Lanka in 2005 to study in the UK, he had determined to study physics and computer science.

“In England [my studies] went very badly,” Pethiyagoda mused. “When I came back [to Sri Lanka] I realized I couldn’t be one of the best in those fields (science and math). With writing I felt I was making my mark and setting myself apart.”

As Pethiyagoda began working for The Sunday Leader, writing became his life.

“It was obsessive and expensive, because the work I was doing often cost more than my salary, but I loved it. It was like an addiction,” Pethiyagoda said.

Dissanayake, along with Lasantha Wickrematunge (Ruan’s editor) started The Sunday Leader together, but when Dissanayake was assassinated by a suicide bomber from the LTTE terrorist group in 1994, his family sold the newspaper completely and handed it over to Wickrematunge who continued to print the many views which were seen as so controversial and dangerous by the government.

“He wasn’t one to back down,” Pethiyagoda said of Wickrematunge. “They couldn’t scare him because he knew what he was saying was right and he would fight them on it.”

Wickrematunge’s ideas supported hope and movement towards transforming Sri Lanka into a transparent, secular, liberal democracy according to Pethiyagoda and an editorial written by Wickrematunge.

Fighting for what he believed in was something Wickrematunge did until his dying breath; a breath which according to Pethiyagoda, his research, and even Wickrematunge himself, was stolen from him by the order of a sibling of the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Wickrematunge’s longtime friend.

In an editorial that Wickrematunge wrote to be published in event of his death he stated to his friend, the president, “We both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.”

As Pethiyagoda explained it, Wickrematunge’s death took place conveniently just a few days before a court trial where Wickrematunge was expected to prove the truth behind a series of articles which exposed details implicating the Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who is also the president’s brother, of involvement in a money laundering operation involving millions of dollars, Hong Kong bank accounts, London-based dummy corporations and second-hand Soviet military aircrafts.

“I did some research after [Wickrematunge’s] death and the most interesting thing I found was that on his medical examiner’s report, it showed he had been killed by having a nail-embellished iron pole rammed into his head, yet the final statement said he had died of natural causes,” Pethiyagoda explained. “Had I known any forensic science stuff at the time, I would have done something to help uncover the crime scene.”

This experience Pethiyagoda said is one of the reasons he is so grateful and eager for the opportunity to study at Seattle University. Learning a little bit of everything is a quality he sees as necessary in a field like journalism, and one that his editor exemplified.

“I haven’t taken a single course here that hasn’t helped my understanding of things in some way,” Pethiyagoda highlighted. “It is all essential to help develop new ways of thinking.”

For Pethiyagoda, Wickrematunge was more than a boss; he was a role model, a leader, and a friend.

“Working for him and for [The Sunday Leader] was like someone here getting to go work for The New York Times,” Pethiyagoda stated. “I fell for journalism because of him.”

Much like his boss, Pethiyagoda, in his time working for The Sunday Leader wrote many articles exposing corruption and foul play in successive governments, and while most of the evidence for such issues has been covered up, none of the issues which the newspaper exposed has successfully been proven false by the government; despite their many attempts.

“[Pethiyagoda] directly understood the purpose and danger behind working for us,” said Sonali Wickrematunge, the wife and co-editor of the late Lasantha Wickrematunge. “But things have gotten much worse since we left.”

As Sonali explained it, her husband had been the backbone of independent journalism in Sri Lanka and with him gone, journalists are finding it harder to speak out.

“More journalists are at risk now. The whole fabric of the resistance put out by journalists has begun to fall apart,” Sonali stated. “There is no need for more journalists to die.”

Even without Wickrematunge or his wife there to run things, The Sunday Leader continues to cover issues and expose the truth in controversial issues and Pethiyagoda plans to return to Sri Lanka as soon as he graduates and take part in the struggle for government change.

“I want to go back and write there again. I would think about writing a book about the connection of all these people,” Pethiyagoda said of the connections between his uncle, his boss, the president, and the president’s brother.

Pethiyagoda seems grateful for the path that he has been led down by people he admires but he made it clear—in a joking manner—that in the future he no longer plans to designate anyone as his role model again.

“I think I am going to keep my boss and my uncle as my last role models,” Pethiyagoda quipped. “My role models seem to have really bad luck.”