The killing of the Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunga is a sad and deplorable act, not because Wickrematunga was a worthy journalist, for his brand of journalism has been condemned by the leaders of the English press in Sri Lanka such as Rajpal Abeynayake (Nation, 12 Janury). It is simply because murder is nasty business that needs to be eliminated from civilised societies.
[ad#200×200]All right minded people also need to condemn the attempts by the opponents of the Sri Lankan defence (the NGOs, foreign embassies and the Christian establishment – the usual sconspirators) to accuse the government and president Rajapakse of the murder. They are enemies of the nation.
Most Sri Lankans, including many senior journalists (like Gamini Weerakoon at Wickrematunga’s Sunday Leader itself) have observed that he chose to provoke the government in the most outrageous way, under the guise of exposing corruption. He was irresponsible in fighting for the ‘right’ to publish the minutiae relating to the Presidents security detail and other security related news. (Was he really ignorant of the type of censorship exercised daily on such matters by the western governments and media whom he seemed to idolise so slavishly?). It looked like his real motive was to try and topple the government. Poor Lasantha!
The question is as to what motivated him and his newspaper to behave so maniacally? The answer lies in his fanatical fight on behalf of the international Pentecostal movement, probably financed by them.
The fact that Wickrematunga belonged to the Christian fundametalist cult ‘The Assembly of God’ was kept secret from the public until the day before his burial. People in the US will be well aware that the ‘Assembly’ is a cult often attracting attention due to questionable ‘heretical’ belief systems and allegations of child sexual abuse and forcible fund collection. Disgraced tele-evangelists like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart were the fronts of this cult in the 80s.
The American Pentecostal movement, the Assembly in particular, is well known to be using their brand of religion to destabilise poor developing countries by converting poor people through financial and other material inducements.They are dividing these nations under the guise of helping ‘salvage their souls’. They also believe in the Bible literally and are behind the Israeli atrocities in the middle east.
The world Pentecostal movement has a particular grudge against Sri Lanka and Buddhism: they were outraged by the Sri Lankan government’s effort to introduce legislation in 2005 to prohibit their unethical conversions. In response, they intensified their anti-Sinhala Buddhist campaign. (This has been renewed after Wickrematunga’s killing which coincided with the recent renewal of the effort to reintroduce the Bill following the rectification of issues identified by the Supreme Court). It is telling that his funeral service was led by Duleep de Chickera who serves foreign interests and always attempts to pin Tiger suicide attacks on the Sri Lankan government.
Numerous people have complained about Wickrematunga’s use of an image of a ‘militant’ looking Buddhist monk on the masthead of the Sunday Leader, apparently reproduced from the infamous book of H.W.Thambiah. His ridiculously solitary and ineffective campaign against the government’s war effort against the Tiger terrorists based on this factor was a serious misjudgement of the mood in the country, not just amongst the Sinhalese, but amongst all communities. He was blinded by his zealotry. His support of Ranil Wickremesinghe is based on the same grounds (Descending from a lineage closely linked to the Protestant Christian movement in Sri Lanka, with the late bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe being his uncle, Ranil only pretends to be Buddhist for political reasons).
Then about Wickrematunga’s much acclaimed ‘exposes’ of corruption amongst politicians. There are two issues; the manner in which he published these allegations and secondly, hypocritically engaging in similar corruption himself. The vitriol that accompanies the Leader exposes (including those of past and current journalists of the Leader, such as Frederica Jansz, Amantha Perera and Handunnetti) is clearly suggestive of a deeper motive than the honest journalistic duty of exposing the waste and stealing of public money by the politicians. The tone appeared to have been borrowed from ‘Kele Pattara’. Wickrematunga was clearly hoping for a revolt that will topple the government! He has trained his junior staff to follow the same method, instead of training reporters to ‘report’ rather than to be advocates of particular issues or positions.
Wickrematunga’s hypocrisy was of unbelievable proportions: the dispute between Wickrematunga’s then lover Sonali Samarasinghe (whom he later married) and the publishers of the ‘Asian Tribune’ website revealed some saucy details about how Ms Samarasinghe was given a diplomatic post by Ranil and how she used Sri Lankan governments benefits to buy a BMW motor vehicle and duty free liquor etc. No need to go in to the gory details of his relationship or her waste of public money, but there is enough evidence to show that he was throwing ‘boulders’ at Sri Lankan politicians while living in a very thin glass house.
Despite all this, his killing needs to be condemned and more importantly, the Sri Lankan media needs to critically evaluate his brand of journalism and refrain from using journalism to achieve personal aims in the areas of politics, religion and salacious personal needs . That gives journalism a bad name.
By Ajit Randeniya
source: Lankaweb
This is pure rubbish. This article about the Assemblies of God is from the pit of hell. The writer has got all his facts from the pit of hell