Soldiers from hell

Monday 13th March, 2023

The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe regime has been able to bulldoze its way through thanks to the pusillanimity and timorousness of the Opposition, which is divided and all at sea. The SJB, the JVP-led NPP, the SLFP and the SLPP dissident groups are at war with one another instead of taking on the government with might and main.

The spectre of vigilantes and mercenaries being deployed to attack anti-government protesters, the way the UNP governments did in the 1980s and early 1990s, looms over the country. A group of armed persons in what looked like military uniform were sighted on Tuesday (07), when the police cracked down on a protest held by the Colombo University students. Carrying assault rifles and wooden poles and iron rods, they operated alongside the police in full view of the public. The Army promptly denied reports that its personnel had played any role in quelling that protest. If so, those who swung into action must have been a bunch of mercenaries disguised as soldiers!

Most police bigwigs do not scruple to sell their souls to politicians. It looks as if they swore an oath of homage and fealty to political leaders in power in return for various favours including promotions, extensions in service and diplomatic postings thereafter. They have brought the Police Department into disrepute under all Presidents, especially J. R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. They are doing so under the incumbent dispensation as well.

Senior police officers acted as goons for the UNP regimes and stooped so low as to salute notorious, pro-government criminals such as Gonawala Sunil and Soththi Upali. In 1992, the OIC of the Fort police station prevented a group of journalists who were attacked by a gang of UNP thugs armed with guns, swords and bicycle chains, at an Opposition protest near the Fort Railway station, from lodging a complaint; he blocked their path and declared that his station was closed for the day! D. B. Wijetunga, who was the Defence Minister in the Premadasa government claimed that some irate commuters had carried out the attack because journalists were blocking the entrance to the busy railway station! Ranil Wickremesinghe held Cabinet posts in both Jayewardene and Premadasa regimes. Beddegana Sanjeewa, a contract killer and extortionist, was appointed a Reserve Sub Inspector and made a member of President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s security division, whose head faced prosecution for acting like a stormtrooper himself. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government had goon squads specialising in doing dirty political work under Mervyn Silva’s command. Thugs carrying iron bars openly joined the police in crushing protests, and when asked why no action had been taken against men armed with iron rods, etc., the then Police Spokesman had the chutzpah to claim that those characters may have been carrying ‘sticks’ to ward off street dogs! Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa are sharing power today.

The situation was expected to take a turn for the worse under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, but when he realised that it was curtains, he chose to head for the hills instead of unleashing the police, the military and goons on the protesting public. That was about the only right decision he made as the President! He was expected to act like Hitler, but it was after his ouster that the Sri Lankan version of the Third Reich began to take form.

We can now see military personnel similar to the SS ( the ‘Protective Echelon’ or ‘Political Soldiers’ in Nazi Germany) in action. It is being argued in some quarters that Gotabaya did not order crackdowns on protesters because the US cranked up pressure on him to act with restraint. If so, is it that the current regime is suppressing the people’s democratic rights including franchise and having protests brutally attacked because the US is turning a blind eye to its repressive actions?

The leaders of the SLPP-UNP regime seem to be living in a time warp, and thinking that the terror tactics they employed with the help of the police, the military and vigilantes, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, will be effective in keeping their political enemies at bay in this day and age as well. They are making a huge mistake. At this rate, the day may not be far off when they have to outrun people in close pursuit unless they care to mend their ways and hold the local government polls thereby making the public simmer down.

One can only hope that the Opposition will make the best use of the videos and still images of the soldiers from hell sighted near the Colombo University last week and redouble its efforts to corner the government on political and human rights fronts. The SJB, the JVP, etc., ought to sink their differences and remain maniacally focused on the issue of the government using goons in uniform to quell protests. Otherwise, such attacks are bound to intensify in time to come, sounding the death knell for democracy.