Lasantha’s day in court 

It has been 12 years since the murder of senior journalist and The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was beaten to death on the streets of Colombo in the cold light of day. The killing shocked the nation, because Wickrematunge was a well-known critic of the ruling regime, but to date not a single person has been held accountable for the heinous crime.

Sri Lanka has failed and failed abysmally to render justice for this most emblematic case and may more like it. Lasantha was not the first journalist to be killed in the line of duty in Sri Lanka; nor was he, nor will he be, the last. At least 20 journalists, predominantly Tamils reporting in the formerly embattled north and east, have been killed in Sri Lanka since the 1990s. None of these murders have been resolved and their killers have never been brought to justice.

While the previous Yahapalana Government promised swift investigations and a transparent judicial process to address these murders, including that of Lasantha, the probes never reached a conclusion. Some progress was made when the Wickrematunge murder probe was transferred to the CID in 2015, but continuous political interference and legal manoeuvres ensured that the case never progressed in court. Former members of the Yahapalana regime are now publicly claiming that the investigations into Wickrematunge’s murder were obstructed by “political deal making” between the leaders of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime and the Rajapaksa family who were in opposition.

Whatever the history and circumstances of this tragic incident, the bottom line is that Lasantha Wickrematunge and many others like him have been denied justice by the Sri Lankan judicial system. The wheels of justice, stalled domestically for so long, have now started to roll internationally. In an unprecedented move by three of the world’s leading press freedom organisations, a ‘People’s Tribunal’ to investigate the murders of three journalists including that of Wickrematunge has now been established in The Hague. Free Press Unlimited (FPU), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) announced this week that they have requested the Permanent People’s Tribunal in Rome to convene a People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists. The Governments of Sri Lanka, Mexico and Syria are to be indicted for the killings of journalists – including Wickrematunge – and failing to administer justice. The People’s Tribunal is not an international criminal court. It does not have the power of a criminal court to indict and extradite individuals or to try them and hand down sentences. However, as a nongovernmental entity, it will carry great moral weight through its proceedings and highlight the lack of domestic action by governments that hold primary responsibility towards administering justice to its citizens. The tribunal could also provide a credible body of evidence to be used by any international or domestic court that may take these cases up in the future. For the first time, evidence gathered in the investigation into Wickrematunge’s murder will be laid bare for the world to see. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet in February this year called on countries of the United Nations to apply the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes committed in Sri Lanka. Through their actions, the Sri Lankan Government and the Judiciary – and in the case of impunity for heinous crimes like Wickrematunge’s murder, their inaction – have continued to prove that they are either unwilling or unable to administer justice within a domestic judicial process. These are then the grounds for any country or foreign court to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction. A crime of this magnitude demands that justice be served, and if the country concerned will not provide that remedy, then a foreign court could do so and prosecute the accused on behalf of all of humanity. The People’s Tribunal is not quite at that stage of meting out international justice under the universal jurisdiction principle. But by applying high standards in investigations and high-quality legal analysis, it will showcase evidence about those who were probably behind Wickrematunge’s murder. The tribunal will expose the perpetrators and the governments that protected them, bringing them one step closer to the day that they will be forced to pay for their crimes. For Lasantha’s family, which has been seeking justice for his murder for over a decade, this will be the very first time they will get something like a day in court.