Final words:

Lasantha Wickramatunga, an extraordinarily courageous journalist, wrote his own obituary.

After he was murdered on Jan 8, his letter from the grave appeared in papers all over the world including his own, The Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka.

His farewell piece is not only a painful explanation of why another brave journalist would die

while trying to publish truths that most people are afraid to whisper.

“No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism,” he wrote in his last editorial, to be published on his death. Wickramatunga’s final essay catalogues the troubles journalists have suffered in his country — bombings, killings and coercion — all while trying to tell about corruption in government and civil rights abuses during an extended civil war.

“Why then do we do it?” Wickramatunga’s farewell letter asked. “I often wonder that. After all, I, too, am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not.”

He then explained why he and so many other journalists take on these jobs around the world. “There is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security,” Wickramatunga wrote before he died for his principles. “It is the call of conscience.” — The New York Times