Sri Lanka’s economic situation is becoming worse by the day, and things are getting dirtier on the political front. The government is desperate with its approval rating dropping steadily, and will go to any extent to safeguard its interests. Irrefutable evidence has emerged that certain elements in the ruling SLPP are reverting to their old ways in a desperate bid to suppress political dissent and thereby retain their hold on power.
Two prominent dissenters, JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake and popular television anchor Chamuditha Samarawickrama, have become victims of goon attacks. The former has come under egg attacks at two JVP events, and the latter’s house was attacked with rocks and faces, recently.
In an interesting turn of events, the housing scheme where Samarawickrama lives, in Piliyandala, has been provided with police protection, according to media reports. Whom are the police trying to fool? Samarawickrama told the media on 22 Jan. that such security measures served no purpose, and what he hadasked the police is personal protection.
The goons who attacked Samarawickrama’s house cannot be so stupid as to stage a repeat performance, and therefore it does not make sense why the police should be protecting the housing scheme. Their target is Samarawickrama himself and not his house as such, and they can set upon him elsewhere if they so wish. This is what the police have to factor in when they decide on measures to protect him.
Samarawickrama has to move about a lot as a journalist and therefore is a sitting duck. One way of ensuring his safety is for the police to assign a security escort, but no journalist wants to travel around with guards. On the other hand, there have been instances where even heavily guarded persons perished at the hands of gunmen and bombers. There are trained killers in the underworld, and ordinary police personnel are no match for them.
Diversionary tactics
The knee-jerk reaction of the police, following an attack on any influential person is to provide security to his or her residence so that they could claim they have taken some tangible action to protect him or her. This measure helps them as well as the government in power deflect public criticism to some extent. They invariably withdraw security so provided when the focus of the public and the media shifts to some other incidents that grab the headlines. So, chances are that the policemen guarding the housing scheme in question will not be there in a fortnight or so.
The task before the police is to neutralize the threats to Samarawickrama at source by arresting the goons responsible for the attack on his house and eliciting information from them about the person or the persons who ordered them to do so. This is the most effective way of solving the problem. But the police seem convinced otherwise for obvious reasons. If they could act without political interference and bring the attackers concerned to justice, goons will be wary of taking on journalists.
One of the main reasons why journalists come under attack in this country is that attackers can get away with their crimes. Not even the abductions and assassinations of journalists have been properly probed. In 2009, The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrametunga was killed in the most barbaric manner in broad daylight in a suburb of Colombo while many people were looking on. The then Rajapaksa government was blamed for the crime, but it denied the charge. The police muddied the water instead of conducting a thorough probe. The UNP-led government, which came to power in 2015 by promising to bring the killers of Wickrametunga to justice, among other things, also did not honour its promise. Wickrametunga’s daughter has been fighting a lonely battle, seeking justice.
Deputy Editor of the now defunct Nation newspaper, Keith Noyahr, was abducted in May 2008 under the Mahinda Rajapaksa government. He would have been killed but for prompt action taken by his friends and Opposition politicians, especially Karu Jayasuriya. He was released and the manner in which he had been tortured and interrogated suggested that his captors had no intention of setting him free, but had been compelled to do so.
It would not have been difficult to identify the abductors of Noyahr, but they have got away with their crime for all practical purposes. The Yahapalana government was expected to have the abduction investigated and the perpetrators prosecuted, but it lost interest in the case.
‘Guilty until proven innocent’
Samarawickrama will not be safe so long as those who attacked his house are at large, and the police stand accused of doing precious little to apprehend them. It is therefore only natural that the government has become the main suspect.
Whenever the police drag their feet on an investigation into an incident, the people, rightly or wrongly, tend to suspect that someone from the ruling party has a hand in it. In fact, the police get cracking and arrest suspects in next to no time, when the victims happen to have links to the government or the culprits are not politically connected. Thus, as for the attack on Samarawickrama’s residence, the government will be considered guilty until proven innocent.
It is only natural that the public, especially the critics of the government, tend to put two and two together where attacks on the Opposition and the media are concerned. JVP activists caught two of the gangsters who threw eggs at their leader Dissanayake at Gampaha on January 30, elicited information from them about those who had ordered the attack before handing them over to the police. The JVP says the police have not taken any legal action against the duo although irrefutable evidence is available that they were involved in the attack, and they work for a security firm, whose head is close to the ruling party leaders. A relentless campaign by the JVP to have charges preferred against the egg throwers has yielded some results; the police have been ordered to produce the suspects in court on March 07. But the chances of the mastermind behind the attack being found out much less brought to justice are bleak.
The attack on Samarawickrama’s house came only two weeks after the Gampaha incident, and people tend to see a government involvement in it as well. The tardy police probe has only lent credence to this conclusion.
The two attacks could have hardly come at a worse time for the government, which is preparing its defense to be presented at the UNHRC in a few days. They are bound to strengthen the position of those who are leveling human rights abuse allegations against the government and Sri Lanka in Geneva. The European Union has been watching the human rights situation here, and unless the government gets its act together it might lose the GSP (Generalized Scheme of Preferences) Plus trade concession, which allows Sri Lanka privileged access to the EU market, at a time when it is struggling to increase the foreign exchange inflow.
Ironically, the government, which came to power, vowing to bring the masterminds behind the Easter Sunday explosions to justice, has failed even to trace a bunch of feces throwers!
