( April 18, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka is wont to appoint a commission of inquiry whenever things become increasingly embarrassing and when difficult to meet serious criticisms and or condemnations both by the international community or his Sri Lankan constituency especially when challenged on the abuses of human rights not unusual in Sri Lanka. None of these commissions appointed ever produced results except that they helped the Rajapaksa to bide for time and say, “I did appoint a commission of inquiry.” They were mere acts of deceptions to sidetrack international condemnation of abuses of human rights. The most recent was the commission on the execution style murder of the 17 aid workers who were employed by a French NGO by the Security Task force and the cold-blooded murder of five undergraduates who were shot down by the Sri Lankan army, while being in their hometown in Trincomalee during their vacation. This inquiry was associated with the façade of a fanfare of having an International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) headed by the late Indian Chief Justice who happened to take his assignment seriously as did the other members resigning at the end in disgust at the manner in which the inquiry was conducted. They were particularly disappointed with the conduct of the then Attorney General CR de Silva who was rewarded by Rajapaksa for his good work by subsequently appointing him as Chair of the LLRC, which again proves to be a farce.
In this instance a commission of inquiry with a different agenda , we learn, has been appointed to save the skin of his brother Gothabaya Rajapaksa the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence for the war crimes committed in the year 1989 and that of his faithful erstwhile assistant Shavendra Silva now representing Sri Lanka at the UN being rewarded for the “excellent work” done in the 2009 war in the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent Tamils to give him immunity for the war crimes committed.
In Sri Lanka wherever one is standing on the surface of the earth, either in the south, central, the east or the north they could be standing on a grave either shallow, watery or rocky for since the year 1972 tens of thousands of innocent Sinhala youth said to be from the Jathika Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) had been massacred periodically including members of its leadership both during the regimes of Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike and President Premadasa. We are now talking of the grave containing skeletons of at least 150 Sinhalese youth massacred and buried during the Premadasa era in 1988/9. It would be recalled that tens of thousands of Sinhala youth were massacred also by aerial bombings during the 1972 insurgency during the time of Mrs. Bandaranaike even after the end of the insurgency so that she could have unfettered sleep. Subsequently, some of the top leaders like Rohana Wijeweera were rounded up, shot in cold-blood and buried half alive. They were called insurgents because they were Sinhalese while the Tamil insurgents or the militants who responded to state terrorism heaped on the Tamil people for over 30 years are called terrorists.
In Matale, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, it is said, was the Colonel in charge during the period 1989 -1990 when these massacres are believed to have occurred. Gotabhaya and Shavendra Silva currently are deemed to be war criminals on account of the wanton killings of more than 40,000 innocent Tamils in May 2009. In the case of the deceased Tamils the number was far too many to be buried but instead their remains were aerially cleaned up apparently with Chinese assistance and destroyed either by burning, dumping in the sea or being consigned to the incinerators. In Matale, however, the number of skeletons found in this shallow grave is said to be 154.
The office of the Attorney General now falls within the purview of the Secretary for Defence and what is more we are informed that Gotabaya Rajapakse has ordered that all police registers and records which are older than 5 years at the police stations in the Central province including Matale be destroyed. It is informed that he has also instructed the police chief that all reports linked to the court action regarding the Matale mass graves be forwarded to him. This is a classic instance of the concept of the rule of law as obtaining in Sri Lanka.
It is reported that KG Kamalawathie who lost two of her teenage sons who were snatched by the army with “thirteen other boys from the village were also taken on”. She was refused admission to see her sons. She was told to go and meet the Military Coordinating Officer who was identified as Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. She had been sent from one camp to another. “She pleaded for help from the Red Cross and wrote to UN agencies for help, some of which acknowledged the receipt of her letters. But, no one could get her children released from military custody. Months later, some local boys were released from military custody. They told her that they, along with her sons, had been taken to the ‘Red Bana Camp,’ and that they also spent time in a military camp, which was operating from Vijaya Vidyalaya, where the Gajaba Regiment was alleged to have operated a torture chamber”. Kamalawathie in her absolute frustration and disgust is said to have abandoned her search for her two sons.
If the Sri Lankan army had concluded that there was absolutely not even casualties in a war where more than 40,000 non combatants are said to have been killed in the final assault, it would indeed be interesting to await the final outcome of this commission of inquiry if at all there is any or whether it is another exercise to hoodwink interested parties.
( The writer is the editor of Eelam Nation, an online journal)
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