| by Nalaka Rupasinghe
( December 5, 2012, London, Sri
Lanka Guardian) There is a famous saying that goes: “When the smoke clears and
the dust begins to settle, we can finally begin to see the truth through all
the rumours and the lies that have attempted to cloud the reality of what we
have already become.”
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| Sri Lanka’s STF prepare to storm Welikada prison where many prisoners were massacred. |
On the day, nearly 600 STF armed
men were sent to invade Colombo Welikada high security prison, on the pretext
of searching for drugs and mobile phones.
The move was extremely unusual:
Neither the STF nor any other regular outside law enforcement agency has
a legal right to enter the prison with arms and engage in such searches. The
law stipulates that only the prison authorities have the right to deploy its
security guards for any such purpose. According to reliable sources, after
entering the prison, one of the commanding officers of the STF had asked from
prison officers about some specific prisoners who were on their hit list and
they had found and arrested them with the prison officers.
The riots started when the STF
started handcuffing prisoners in the L-Ward. When other prisoners protested
against this humiliating act, the STF locked them back in the cells tear-gassed
the whole ward. That was the time the
other prisoners stated screaming and rioting.
It was alleged using the opportunity the STF killed the prisoners in
handcuffs who were on their hit list. This triggered violent reactions from
inmates. It was reported that the killer team was led by Assistant
Superintendent of police (ASP) Sylvester (his criminal history has been
published in the Lanka e-news website.)
The brutal killing provoked other
prisoners and within minutes the news had spread among the prisoners. (There are about 4500 inmates in the prison
who live in appalling conditions.) They
naturally reacted by hurling stones.
When the STF started shooting indiscriminately at the prisoners, some
prisoners had wrested some automatic rifles from the STF for their
self-defence. This would have been the
atmosphere the government expected to create to justify the killings. Many imamates climbed to the rooftops for
their defence and public sympathy (the prison situated in the heart of Colombo
in a densely populated area in Borrella, surrounded by Lady Ridgway children
hospital, Wesley College-Boys school and the local town). So the people can see the prisoners on roof
tops from the roads and buildings etc. vice versa. But the heavy-handed STF
killed 16 prisoners killed and injured more than 40. Many were in critical condition.
WARNING: GRUESOME IMAGE
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| Some of the prisoners who were massacred at the Welikada Prison in Colombo. |
During the night (early hours of the November
10th) the army commandos entered the prison for the second round of killing:
They arrested and killed another selected 11 unarmed prisoners after ordering
them to kneel. This raised the death toll to 27. Almost all the
prisoners had been killed and injured in the shooting were Sinhalese, there
were two Muslims and one Tamil was among the killed. Prisoners are human
beings this has been well crafted in the front wall of Welikada prison.
What does the law say about prisoners?
This is an extract from the press release of
Lawyers for Democracy (LfD) in Sri Lanka:The LfD wishes to remind the
authorities that the essence of imprisonment is only deprivation of liberty and
that the right forfeited by prisoners are those that are taken away expressly
or by necessary implication by the fact of this deprivation of liberty and they
are entitled to all other rights including right of life, dignity, freedom from
torture and inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment at all times in their
period of imprisonment or detention….
In conclusion the LfD states that those
authorities who called in STF personnel into the prison are directly answerable
to the massacre of these prisoners… -Lawyers for Democracy-
For the operation, in addition to nearly
600 STF men, the government also deployed hundreds of policemen and army
commandos with armoured vehicles to support the STF. Why the government
had to use such a massive force to search and kill unarmed prisoners in cold
blood, in broad day light, in the heart of Colombo? What the government
wanted to achieve and tell the people: ‘Shut up or get killed’
After the massacre, the government was trying to
make prisoners’ riots a scapegoat to justify the killings. This was the
government’s version:
A shootout broke out between the prisoners and
the STF, Prisoners went on the rampage defying orders by the STF to declare
hidden mobile telephones and drugs. A tense situation prevailed at the Welikada
Prison in Borella, Colombo North as the Police Elite Forces carried out a
search operation within the prison premises for drugs and illegal goods. The
situation took a turn for the worse as Prison inmates broke into the armoury
and seized 82 weapons and then began an unceasing attack on the STF personnel.
Inmates started firing at the STF personnel who came in for the search.
(Sunday Observer – Government newspaper – 11 November 2012). Had the
prisoners managed to get such a large number of automatic rifles, they would
have killed dozens of STF men and army soldiers. But none of them from STF and
the army was killed.
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| DIG Anura Senanayake: ‘…those were killed and injured in the shooting had been dangerous criminals and drug dealers…’ |
Since President JR Jayewardene (JR) (1978-1989),
no president in Sri Lanka had signed to implement death sentences. Since
then every government came to power did chose the evil practice, extrajudicial
killing, to eliminate government opponents and the people who were/are in their
hit list. For political gains, the government says in public death
sentence by courts are against our Buddhist ethic. The vast majority in
Sri Lanka are Buddhists. According to Buddhist moral principles killing even an
animal is a sin.
The STF is the most ruthless armed force in Sri
Lanka, perhaps one of the most ruthless forces in the world. During the
JR regime Special Task Force (STF) was formed to kill and terrify people.
It operates as a paramilitary group. During the JVP uprising
(1987-1989) they killed thousands of Sinhalese people including Buddhists
monks, hundreds of school children and suspects in police cells. Many of
them had been arrested for minor offences such as smoking cannabis.
In Anuradhapura-Talava STF men killed a teacher and his brother and a
friend when they asked from Tambuthegama police why had they killed his
brother, who surrendered to the police? I have another story from
Vavuniya about the ‘professional army.’ An unarmed Sinhalese young man, a
JVP suspect, was killed in front of his young wife and two year old son when
they came to have a bath in the lake. Smaneras (young trainee monks) from
a temple in Veyangoda begged for mercy for their chief incumbent, as he was
being pushed into the vehicle. They were shot dead on the spot; the
incumbent never came back.
In recent times there are widespread media
allegations about the government’s top politician’s links with underworld
gangs, paramilitary groups, criminals and drug dealers. Extrajudicial
killing have been the best evil practice and tactic for the governments to hide
the truth and frame the victims as criminals. Even after the war
ended (2009), in Sri Lanka, hundreds of people have been extrajudicially killed
and framed as underworld leaders and dangerous criminals. Had they been
brought to courts the truth would have come out.
Pro-Tamil media and organisations in the West,
such as Chanel 4 and Freedom from Torture, assumes Tamils as the only
persecuted group in Sri Lanka because the government is dominated by Sinhalese.
But in fact, both Sinhalese and Tamils had/have been victims of the governments
of dictatorship. But could any law enforcement authority punish dictators
who are above the law?
( The writer regular contributor of the London
Evening Post, where this piece was originally appeared)
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