The 17th anniversary of the assassination of The Sunday Leader founder Editor-in- Chief Lasantha Wickrematunge, fallen on 8 January,2026.
Family, friends, former colleagues and others gathered at Borella Kanatte with a service at his gravesideon ,Thursday at 9 a.m. to mark the anniversary and remember Lasantha.The Executive comittee of the FMETU also joined with this event.
Assassinated on 8 January 2009, Lasantha was one of Sri Lanka’s leading journalists and an outspoken critic of the then Rajapaksa Government. He was attacked as he drove to work and later died of his injuries.
The brazen attack was carried out by two gunmen on motorcycles in the middle of morning-rush-hour traffic. Despite assurances by successive Governments to ensure justice, the investigation into Lasantha’s murder has yielded no tangible results thus far and his killers still roam free, 17 years later.