Chronicle of a death foretold
[Economist]
THE good that men do is not always interred with their bones. This week saw the publication of a remarkable posthumous column by Lasantha Wickrematunge, a Sri Lankan newspaper editor. He had written it in anticipation of his own murder. That duly came on January 8th, when gunmen on motorcycles shot him on his way to work in the capital, Colombo. He was a brave campaigning journalist. And like too many brave campaigning journalists in Sri Lanka, he is now dead. But at least from the grave he has left an eloquent warning to the government, led by a man he called ‘friend’, President Mahinda Rajapaksa…