Sri Lanka: A journalist's editorial from the grave
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2019
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The assassination of newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickramatunga, shocked the world in 2009. Sri Lanka's civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority was nearing its climax when he was shot dead by gunmen on motorbikes. After his murder his newspaper, the Sunday Leader, printed his final article in which he predicted his own death and wrote that the government would be behind his killing. Farhana Haider has been speaking to his widow, Sonali Samarasinghe, about press freedom in Sri Lanka.
(Photo: Journalists and well wishers light candles in front of a photograph of murdered editor Lasantha Wickramatunga on the first anniversary of his death 8 Jan, 2010. Credit: Getty images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Choosing what to |
| 0:32.1 | watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:36.5 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:41.5 | telly we share what we've been watching. |
| 0:43.7 | Cladie Aide! |
| 0:45.7 | Loads of games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:48.2 | Lovely. |
| 0:49.0 | Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:51.2 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:54.7 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:58.8 | landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. |
| 1:04.0 | They hadn't even gone into warms. |
| 1:07.0 | 13 minutes to the moon, from the BBC World Service, coming soon. |
| 1:16.0 | Hello and thank you for downloading this edition of the witness history |
| 1:23.4 | podcast with me for Hana Hither and today we go back to Sri Lanka in 2009 and |
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