About Lasantha Wickrematunge
Lasantha Manilal Wickrematunge (Sinhala: ලසන්ත වික්රමතුංග, Tamil: லசந்த விக்கிரமதுங்க; 5 April 1958 - 8 January 2009) was a high-profile Sri Lankan journalist, politician, broadcaster, and human rights activist who was assassinated in January 2009. Wickrematunge was the founder of The Sunday Leader newspaper and Leader Publications and was a virulent critic of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, and had been locked in a legal battle with Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was defense secretary at the time and was spearheading the battle against the LTTE rebels. His assassination sent shockwaves across the country, as he was one of the nation's most influential journalists and most-well-known political figures and raised questions about freedom of expression in the country. Wickrematunge's murder was widely condemned across the world. The Daily Mirror called it the "biggest blow" to media freedom in Sri Lanka, and the Editors Guild held the government responsible for the killing for its failure to stop attacks against media personnel. The government also expressed shock at the killing, pledging to do everything in its power to catch his killers. Wickrematunge had been on Amnesty International's endangered list since 1998, when anti-tank shells were fired on his house by unidentified assailants in a van. Wickrematunge contested the 1989 Parliamentary election from a Colombo seat with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and then became the private secretary to the world's first female prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Wickrematunge was known for his trademark phrase "unbowed and unafraid" inspired from the Invictus poem by William Ernest Henley which he used as his motto and philosophy.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.