A fatal job. How many journalists have to die?

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack.

Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds.

Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood.

Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

UNESCO has recognised Lasantha Wickrematunge with its world press freedom prize, acknowledging his work in criticising government conduct and highlighting the dangers of the ongoing war to civilians.

An increase in such murders appears to have shifted to South Asia and South East Asia, where media people are losing their lives at the will of rogue governments, at the hand of so-called religious movements or because a drug lord has sent thugs to beat up a reporter. Of 33 journalists killed in the region in 2008, 23 were victims of premeditated murder, an IFJ report shows.

In addition to the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge, several assassinations since the beginning of the 21st century have marked the dreadful danger in which some journalists work. This is also true for people who associate with them and for people who advocate human rights.

Anna Politkovskaya’s murder in Moscow in 2006 did penetrate world consciousness for a while, perhaps because she had predicted her own assassination on television. A journalist, author and human activist, she became well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and for her books, including Putin’s Russia.

In an unrelenting description in The Guardian in January 2009, Luke Harding reported how a close friend of Anna’s, lawyer Stanislav Markelov, one of Russia’s most noted human rights defenders, was walking near the Kremlin with Anastasia Baburova, 25, a freelance journalist for the courageous Novaya Gazeta newspaper. A killer came up from behind them, shot Mr Markelov twice in the back of the head, using a pistol with a silencer. Ms Baburova tried to grab him, so he stopped and calmly shot her in the head. He then jogged off along the street towards the metro, 100m away, vanishing into the crowd.

Luke Harding reported the incident as “similar in its brazenness to the murder of Politkovskaya … It also echoes the death of Alexander Litvinenko, who died from polonium poisoning in London the following month.” He added that the murders of Kremlin foes - journalists, lawyers and critics of Russia's security services - have a common theme: “Nobody is ever caught and punished.”

Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002 while investigating an alleged link between shoe bomber Richard Reid and al-Qaida and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Based at Mumbai (Bombay), he was the South Asia Bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. A shudder of revulsion went through the general public when it was learned he had been beheaded by his captors. Mr Pearl was born in 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey. His mother was of Iraqi Jewish descent; his father was Judea Pearl, an UCLA professor. Daniel Pearl’s wife, a Buddhist; gave birth to their son shortly after his death.

Afghani university student and journalist, 24, for the daily newspaper Janan-e-Naw, Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh found himself facing death by hanging in January 2008 on charges of “blasphemy” for allegedly downloading articles from the internet related to women’s rights. After a great deal of international protest, led in great part by media organisations, his sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison.

In April 2009 the United Nations agency with the task of upholding press freedom condemned the killing of Raja Assad Hammeed, a senior reporter for Pakistan’s daily newspaper, Nation, and the Waqt TV channel, who was shot dead by unidentified assailants as he arrived home in Rawalpindi, in northern Pakistan, on March 26.

“I trust that the authorities will press ahead with a thorough investigation of this crime which undermines journalists' inalienable human right to freedom of expression and society's right to enjoy press freedom,” said Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) commented.

Earlier, the Intergovernmental Council of the International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC) requested UN member states to assume responsibility for monitoring investigations into all killings condemned by UNESCO. In March 2008, the IPDC also asked all states to inform UNESCO of actions taken in each case as well as the status of judicial inquires. UNESCO Director-General had publicly condemned the killings of 121 journalists - 68 in 2006 and 53 in 2007.