Assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge

I write to record my sense of outrage at the murder of this outstandingly brave man who has done so much to expose that which a succession of governments have been trying to conceal. It is clear that the politico-military junta that has the temerity to call itself a Government will stop at nothing.

It is time for the Sinhalese in the south to hit the streets and bring Colombo to a halt and make it ungovernable. That is the only way to bring an end to this tyrannical regime which is even worse than the regime of my cousin, Chandrika Kumaratunga. I thought her regime was terrible. When one of her senior ministers said that it was time to take out an Editor or two, and she took no action against him, she was setting a very dangerous precedent.  I did not realise that the regime to follow was worse, much worse.

In the (dozen) DVDs I have recorded and distributed internationally, I said that "Today it is the Tamils, tomorrow it will be the Sinhalese." The murder of Lasantha, shows that tomorrow has arrived. It is not a coincidence that with the Media Minister taking over on January 1, 2009, a week later an independent TV station is extensively damaged, and three days later the Editor of one of the few credible newspapers is murdered.

In the numerous addresses on Sri Lanka I have given across the world in the past 25 years, I have repeatedly quoted Pastor Niemollers famous poem describing the dangers of political inactivity: "First they came for the Communists, I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist, Then they came for the Jews, I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me."

I am calling on my fellow Sinhalese to get out on the streets in their thousands until this barbaric regime running (or rather, ruining) Sri Lanka, comes to an end, and the country is saved from a fascist dictatorship and a Failed State. If this is done, Lasantha would not have died in vain