Fathers, sons and law

Monday 7th February, 2022

The recent arrest of State Minister Arundika Fernando’s son over an attack on a group of Kelaniya University medical students may have coincided with the drafting of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Independence Day speech. Fernando resigned from his ministerial post immediately afterwards. On 04 February, the President, in his address to the nation, declared that his government protected everyone’s human rights; every Sri Lankan citizen, irrespective of his or her ethnicity or religion, could exercise his or her right to live freely and safely anywhere in the country at present, and enjoyed the freedom of expression.

Everybody is aware that the culture of impunity has not gone away although Fernando’s son has been arrested; lawbreakers are brought to justice only selectively. Goons who carried out egg attacks on JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Colombo and Gampaha recently have not been hauled up before courts although two of them were captured and handed over to the police. They were limbering up for something big, as could be seen from their military background, but thankfully their sinister plans went pear-shaped. The JVP has lodged a complaint with the police headquarters, calling for action against the egg throwers, but to no avail, we are told.

The two goons who faced citizen’s arrest are said to be working for a pro-government security firm, which claims to have held dangerous Somali pirates at bay, thereby helping ensure the safety of vital sea routes. (Its personnel cannot even throw eggs at unarmed politicians on terra firma without getting caught, and the question is how they managed to fight heavily armed, elusive pirates on the high seas.) The government obviously does not want to open a can of worms by allowing the egg-throwing goons to be probed because they are likely to spill the beans.

Fernando and his son are in this predicament because the former fell from grace. If he had been in the kitchen Cabinet of the powers that be, his son would have been safe, and nobody responsible for the attacks on medical students would have been arrested. What his son is allegedly to have done is a serious offence, which must not go unpunished, but State Minister Lohan Ratwatte has gone scot-free, having done something far worse.

Ratwatte allegedly barged into two state prisons last year and made a group of former Tigers kneel at gunpoint in one of them before threatening to kill them, according to media reports and complaints by Tamil political parties and human rights groups. He only resigned as the State Minister for Prisons Management and Prisoners’ Rehabilitation, following the incidents, and continues to be the State Minister of Gem and Jewellery! Is it that the police are of the view that the offence of threatening to kill prisoners inside the State pens is not as serious as that of attacking university students in their hostels?

Famous ruggerite, Wasim Thajudeen, was murdered and burnt inside his car in 2012, and there was a grand cover-up. It was thought that the 2015 regime change would help bring his killers to justice. The newly-elected leaders ordered a reinvestigation and legal action was instituted against some individuals, but no political scion was arrested. The yahapalana leaders cut political deals with their predecessors. Their secret deals prompted Ranjan Ramanayake to say, in answer to a question from a journalist thereon, that all of them were friends despite their political differences—mung okkoma yaluwo, malli.

Thirteen years have elapsed since the assassination of The Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, but the crime has not been probed properly, and investigators keep dragging their feet and muddying the waters. There are many other unsolved crimes committed years ago. The mastermind behind the Easter Sunday carnage (2019) has also not been traced yet.

If the government thinks it could pull the wool over the eyes of the masses, and human rights activists by throwing Arundika Fernando and his son to the wolves ahead of the next UNHRC session in Geneva, it is mistaken.