In the first days of a new year in January, 2009, Sri Lankan
journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge sat down to write. The corruption-fighting
father-of-three had long been violently targeted, and held little doubt that
his life would be short.
"Is it worth the risk?" the editor of the Colombo-based
investigative newspaper The Sunday Leader wrote in an editorial. "Many
people tell me it is not."
"But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame,
lucre and security. It is the call of conscience."
Three days later, on the morning of January 8, 2009, Lasantha
Wickrematunge was shot dead.
"He was followed by four motorcycles, they had black helmets
on, black leather jackets, boots," the journalist's brother Lal
Wickrematunge told the ABC in Sydney.
"They surrounded the vehicle, stopped it, smashed the
windows. They used what is called a gun that they cull sheep with, it's a
spring-loaded pointed metal that comes out and withdraws back into the barrel.
They kept it against his temple and shot him."
For 15 years, the brothers published The Sunday
Leader despite physical threats, assaults, law suits, and the firebombing of
the presses. Though they knew the risks, nothing could have prepared Lal
Wickrematunge for his brother's assassination.
"I was numb, but at the same time I felt that
what we all feared right through had come to pass, and was the dream of
bringing Sri Lanka to the right path was going to end," he said.
Now, Lal Wickrematunge has settled in Sydney, where
he is trying to live out his brother's legacy. He's the Sri Lankan Government's
recently-appointed consul-general, and he is reaching to Sri Lankan Tamils
across the city.
It is a local attempt at ethnic reconciliation in
one of the world's largest Sri Lankan migrant populations.
"I feel very strongly that everybody is born
equal," Mr Wickrematunge says. "If everybody had a choice where they
were born, it would have been different. We don't have a choice."
On a winter's night at his home in Sydney's Canada
Bay, Mr Wickrematunge is hosting an unusual gathering.
Among the dinner party guests at the home of the
diplomat are two former attorneys-general of Sri Lanka, Shiva Pasupathy and
Sunil de Silva.
These two men were close colleagues in their
homeland but watched much of the civil war that tore Sri Lanka apart between
1983 and 2009 from afar.
"Before the war ended, the suspicions, the
mistrust between the majority Sinhala community and the Tamil community
continued even outside Sri Lanka," Mr Wickrematunge says.
"The diaspora groups, be they Sinhalese or
Tamils, viewed each other with great suspicion."
"But I'm very pleasantly surprised that in
Sydney, Sri Lankans have come a long way from the time of the strife, to accept
that reconciliation is an absolute necessity. The willing support that we've
had among the Sri Lankans to get together as one community and call themselves
Sri Lankans first, is quite wonderful."
Mr Wickrematunge's appointment as one of two Sri
Lankan consuls-general in Australia six months ago was something of an act of
reconciliation in itself from the Sri Lankan Government and President
Maithripala Sirisena.
For years, Mr Wickrematunge has led a campaign in
Sri Lanka for justice for his brother's murder. Seven years on, it's clear that
the loss of his brother is still raw.
As he sits with his guests around his Sydney dinner
table, his voice cracks as he asks the men to rise to their feet and observe a
moment of silence.
"May I request that we stand up and say a
prayer in whatever religion we follow for all those who have passed away during
the strife and the conflict which we had," Mr Wickremantunge says.
The prayer follows a briefing for the guests on what
unfolded recently at the UN Human Rights Council, where Sri Lanka gave an
update on its progress on reconciliation.
The nation this week passed legislation to establish
an Office of Missing Persons, but it's a long way off from the establishment of
a judicial mechanism to investigate and prosecute war crimes that were carried
out in the end stages of the war by operatives on both sides of the Sri Lankan
conflict.
Sri Lanka last year co-sponsored a UN Human Rights
Council resolution that committed the country to the establishment of a
credible justice process that would include Commonwealth and other foreign
judges, defence lawyers and authorised prosecutors and investigators.
In an oral update on Sri Lanka's implementation of
the UNHCR resolution in June, UN human rights commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al
Hussein praised Sri Lanka's "positive and productive engagement" with
UN human rights mechanisms.
But he raised concerns that Sri Lanka appeared to be
resisting the participation of international judges, prosecutors, investigators
and lawyers in the judicial mechanism that it eventually establishes to probe
allegations of human rights abuses and international crimes.
There were also concerns raised at Sri Lanka's slow
progress on reconciliation and redress.
As they discussed the update at the Human Rights
Council over dinner, some of Lal Wickrematunge's guests also said they believed
the reconciliation process was progressing too slowly in their homeland. But
Sunil de Silva said it was important that redress mechanisms be carefully
planned.
"They say that justice delayed is justice
denied, but it's always preferable to justice extradited," Mr de Silva
said. "So therefore you've got to make sure that what you are doing lasts
the test of time."
Fellow
former attorney-general Shiva Pasupathy, a former legal advisor to the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, is now preparing to advise the Sri Lankan
Government on its constitutional changes.
He
says that in his adopted country of Australia, the Sri Lankan High Commission
has made special effort to reach out to minorities.
"This
has not happened before," Mr Pasupathy said. "It will make a lot of
difference in the attitude of different communities."
Sri
Lankans living in fear in Australia
But
outside the leadership community, there are many Sri Lankan refugees living in
acute fear in the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.
Lawyer
Daniela Gavshon compiled testimony from war victims as part of the Sydney-based
Public Interest Advocacy Centres's International Crimes Evidence Project.
She
says there are many victims of war living in Australia who want to tell their
stories as part of an eventual judicial process, but much work will need to be
done to ensure victims have confidence in any judicial mechanism.
The
International Crimes Evidence Project found a high likelihood that war crimes
were committed by both sides in the Sri Lankan conflict.
"People
witnessed things, people were victims to heinous, heinous crimes and they can
give that information that can form part of an evidence base for future
prosecutions," Ms Gavshon said.
"There
are two reasons why people will engage in a transitional justice mechanism, one
is if they believe it's independent and impartial, both in practice and in
perception, and the other reason will be if they feel safe to do so.
"And
without a foreign presence it's very hard to see how people will feel safe to
participate and how the government is going to be able to deliver fair and just
outcomes and a just process, given the track record it has,
unfortunately."
As
the slow process towards truth and justice grinds on, though he is far from his
homeland, Lal Wickrematunge remains determined to continue to build
relationships between Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim Sri Lankans in Australia.
And
though he hails from the Sinhala majority, it's a project that would have been
dear to his lost brother's heart.
"The
original dream of bringing Sri Lanka as one nation, one people, was our
intention," Mr Wickrematunge says.
"Our
editorials constantly reminded people of that. And I think if we can do that
even now, that would be one of the greatest achievements, which is what I am
trying to do even here in Australia.
"If
we do that, as for me, it would be realising Lasantha's dream."
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