The Committee to Protect Journalists today welcomed the new steps taken to investigate the murder of Lasantha Wickramatunga and urged the Sri Lankan government to facilitate investigations into all cases of journalists who have disappeared or been killed.

“We are encouraged that new steps are finally being taken in the case of Lasantha Wickramatunga and urge the Sri Lankan government to follow through with a transparent and thorough investigation into his murder,” said Robert Mahoney, CPJ’s deputy executive director. 

“We call on President Sirisena to facilitate investigations into all cases of journalists who have disappeared or been killed, bring their perpetrators to justice, and end the cycle of impunity.”

Wickramatunga, editor-in-chief of the Sri Lankan weekly The Sunday Leader, was murdered on his way to work in January 2009.

Sri Lankan police yesterday exhumed the body of the slain journalist as part of a new investigation into his death. A court this month granted permission for the police to exhume the editor’s body due to contradictory post-mortem reports--two months after a military intelligence officer was arrested in connection with the killing.

Sri Lanka ranked sixth on CPJ’s 2015 Impunity Index, which highlights countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free.

-Agencies