What then, of Lasantha's murder?

Statement by Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge, widow of eminent Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, 2009, Unesco World Press Freedom Laureate

"Your Highness, Mr Director-General, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

On behalf of my late husband and fellow journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge, I wish to thank you most sincerely for this great honour you have done him. Lasantha would have been so proud, so humbled, to have known that an august, independent, international jury of his peers had seen in him, a fit candidate to receive this prize.

On his behalf, and on behalf of fellow journalists worldwide who continue to risk life and liberty, to provide for us, all the freedoms we so cherish, from the bottom of my heart I thank you. His parents and his children will be so proud, to know of the recognition you have given their son, their father... as indeed am I, now his widow.

The fact that Lasantha is the second journalist to be honoured posthumously since this prize was created 12 years ago is testimony to the risk many journalists run in the pursuit of their calling. Two years ago you honoured Anna Politkovskaya, an unapologetic critic of military and political excess, who was brutally murdered in Moscow in October 2006.

The life trajectories of Anna and Lasantha bear bizarre similarities. They were both born in 1958. They were both courageous critics of state-sponsored violence and spoke fearlessly for human rights. They were both threatened with death over a period of years. They both suffered repeated attempts on their lives. And they both chose not to flee, but to stay on and fight to the end. They both knew full well that they would pay with their lives. And they both knew who their murderers would be.

But the fate that befell Anna and Lasantha is not an isolated one. In Sri Lanka, it has become the norm for journalists to be killed in the pursuit of their profession. No less than 16 dissident media professionals have been assassinated -- all of them in commando-style attacks-since President Mahinda Rajapakse took office in November 2005. That is about one in every two months. Presses and television stations have been destroyed in these raids, as indeed have the newspapers Lasantha and I edited.

 Apart from those who have lost their lives, we need to remember also those journalists who languish in Sri Lankan prisons with no charge or with only the flimsiest and most childish of contrived charges pressed against them. In other cases, false charges are levelled so as to harass dissenting journalists.

Dozens of journalists -- including myself-have been forced to flee Sri Lanka. I have no doubt that should I return to Sri Lanka, my remaining days would be few indeed.

Other journalists have been threatened personally by the president or his brothers, three of whom he has elevated to high public office. Indeed, on 11 January 2006, Lasantha too, was personally threatened by President Rajapaksa.

The free Sri Lanka in which I was born no longer exists. Our country has entered a Dark Age characterised by tyranny and state-sponsored terror, where the government publicly, cynically and unapologetically equates democratic dissent to treason. The sinister white van in which the State abducts its perceived enemies including journalists, many of them never to be seen again, has become a symbol of untold dread.