‘Political Soldiers’

Tuesday 15th November, 2022

All suspects allegedly involved in storming the Presidential Secretariat and forcibly occupying a section of it during Aragalaya, a few moons ago, are reported to have been arrested. Other protesters who forced themselves into the President’s House, the Prime Minister’s Office and Temple Trees are also being arrested. Besides, the police have gone into overdrive to crush anti-government protests. On Saturday, they swooped on two women who were walking from Kalutara to Colombo in protest against the detention of two student leaders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. A police officer grabbed a woman constable by the scruff of her neck, shoved her forth, ordering her to arrest the two protesters. The government and the police have caused international opprobrium to be heaped on the country.

While the police and the Attorney General’s Department are all out to ensure that anti-government protesters face the full force of the law, those who masterminded the Easter Sunday bombings are still at large. Catholic priests led by Archbishop of Colombo, His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, have been demanding justice for the victims of terror and their families for more than three years, but in vain. The recommendations of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) which probed the Easter Sunday carnage are being implemented selectively. It is only natural that the government stands accused of a grand cover-up, and some of its members have become suspects in the eyes of the discerning public. The least they can do to prove their critics wrong is to ensure that all PCoI recommendations are implemented without further delay; they should be able to do so if they have nothing to hide, as the Catholic priests have rightly said.

The police are apparently doing political work full-time as the shock troops of the powers that be. They have no time to prevent or investigate crimes. Complaints of criminal activities go uninvestigated, and the police trot out lame excuses for their inaction, the main being that they are without enough vehicles and fuel. But they have no such problems and swing into action when they are ordered to attack anti-government protests or launch witch-hunts against Opposition activists. Their gung-ho zeal in defending their political masters’ interests is such that they remind us of Hitler’s SS (‘Political Soldiers’) or Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichniki.

The Opposition has warned that the police personnel who commit excesses in handling protesters do so at the risk of being hauled up before courts. But there is reason to believe that the police would not have violated people’s fundamental rights so blatantly unless they had received an assurance from the government that their interests would be taken care of in case of legal action being instituted against them for their transgressions.

Police brutality against women during the past several months has brought back our memories of a savage attack legendary leftist, Vivienne Goonewardene came under in March 1983 in Colombo 03, and how the then UNP government defended the bootlickers in uniform. Viviene successfully moved the Supreme Court against the police, who assaulted her, but the government of President J. R. Jayewardene (incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s uncle) paid the fine imposed on the errant police officer and, worse, promoted him. The apex court judgement was delivered on 08 June 1983, and three days later, the Jayewardene government had a notorious underworld figure, called Kalu Lucky, hold a demonstration against the ruling and hurl stones at the Supreme Court judges’ houses. The Rajapaksa family has also used the police as a goon squad to crush protests. Today, the UNP and the Rajapaksas have closed ranks to safeguard their interests!

The government has failed to improve the people’s lot, at all. In fact, it has aggravated their woes by jacking up taxes and tariffs while doing precious little to curtail waste, and boost the foreign currency inflow. It is said to be planning to postpone the local government elections again as it is scared of facing the public. It cannot be unaware that the let-up in protests is only ‘an interval in hell’, and the next wave of public anger is only a matter of time. The police are apparently limbering up for a mega crackdown. Let them be warned that there is absolutely no defence against a real People Power revolution and they are courting danger by carrying out illegal orders to humour their political masters.