Twenty Point Analysis Of PCOI On Easter Sunday Attack

By Asanga Abeyagoonasekera –APRIL 21, 2021

Asanga Abeygoonasekera

Zahran was the actor, Naufer was the script writer, who is the producer and director? ~ Rauf Hakeem,MP, Parliament Easter Sunday debate 7th April 2021

A mother searching for her child identifies her daughter from the shoe she was wearing, her body lies covered under a white cloth. A lifeless foreigner being carried away,  a body blown out to pieces lying from the breakfast area on the  ground floor. These are all life changing scenes that I witnessed on the 21st of April 2019. By an act of fate, I survived along with my family by a delay of about three minutes while walking to have Easter Sunday breakfast . Two years have passed and still for entire month of April the general public keeps hearing different parliamentarians speaking on the PCOI (Presidential Commission of Inquiry Report on the Easter Sunday Bombings) report.

Two years after the Easter Sunday terror attack that killed 260 innocent civilians in Sri Lanka there have been three reports produced by two governments and still no prosecution nor vital information of external factors produced. The initial report immediately after the attack was prepared by three members headed by Justice Vijith Malalgoda(PC) and thereafter the Parliament Select Committee report(PSC) and the present PCOI warranted on 21st September 2019 by former President Maithripala Sirisena to enable a committee for future legal action. Interestingly, the same committee appointed by President Sirisena finds him guilty of negligence leaving the Prime Minister at that time without any charges. Two years down the line, the public has lost faith in the authorities who  promised to bring justice to the victims. Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith on the Easter day pointed out directly to implement recommendations put forward by the new report ,the Presidential Commission of Investigation(PCOI) on easter Sunday where former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Secretary Defence, Inspector General of Police, Director State Intelligence Service and several others were clearly identified for prosecution under legal  provisions on negligence of duties, while leaving out the former Prime Minister of all charges. Another six-member Ministerial Sub Committee headed by Minister Chamal Rajapaksa was appointed in February 2021 that submitted its separate report on March 15th 2021 to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa identifying 78 recommendations of the PCOI report for implementation though it reportedly had different opinions on the original PCoI recommendations.

The PCOI report according to an earlier statement on 15th March by Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith is “incomplete“. Cardinal also finds a (external) political hand, explaining “Our brethren were not attacked by religious extremism, but it was done by those who used religious extremism as a cat’s paw to strengthen their political power..”.  According to Minister Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera, it was Naufer Maulawi who was the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday attack  and who is currently in the custody of the Sri Lankan Police. However this is old news resurrected from the past and not a new finding. The report also points to another, Abu Hind. The question was who was behind them, the external forces? Post attack I was working to find answers of the external factors. While I discovered many vital information from terrorist experts and senior international diplomats and policy makers from other countries, there was an invisible hand which pushed me out diplomatically as a transfer to another country.

While studying the PCOI report here are several areas I found clear limitations and also positive trends in the report. PCOI volume one with 475 pages with annexures, document is a better assessment with much more information than the previous parliamentary select committee(PSC) report published in 2019. The esteemed panel has collected diverse views and evidence from 457 witnesses. While the collection is a herculean task in a year, the due credit of the entire exercise has to be given to all officers of the PCOI. However, what PCOI lacks is rigorous analysis. Some important points hang in isolation without substantial connection to the relevant data points and some information fails to capture the existing knowledge in the security domain. This might be because the PCOI analyzed the circumstantial evidence in a rush while allocating more time for data collection. Here are few limitations I would like to point out from the report:

1. PCOI recommends preparing a National Defence Policy(NDP) on page 447. 

According to the report ‘It is recommended that a National security and defence policy be drafted and adopted’. 

National Defence Policy was prepared by Sirisena-Wickramesinghe Government and approved by the Cabinet of Ministers on 2019 November 14th. Cabinet Paper Cabinet Paper No.19/313211031173. The NDP was prepared by tri-forces along with Chief of Defence Staff officers and INSS( Institute of national security studies) during my time serving as the Director-General 2016-2019. The NDP process commenced in 2016 and present Army Commander and many distinguished officers from all three forces were part of the process and completed the task in 2019. However there was a significant reduction of content that was eliminated. The entire National Security Policy the first half of the initial document was stricken off. The importance of NDP was understood and was fully supported and accelerated after the Easter Sunday bombing since the initial document captured possible extremist threat to the country. Although NDP was ready from 2018 multiple amendments and four defence secretaries for four years kept the document in a preparatory mode not seeing the important areas of varied security threats the nation would face such as extremism and terror threats. The  proposed structural adjustment to defence establishment including the National Security Council to be instituted as a legal body to make better decisions and face the threats, were fundamental reforms that could have strengthened Sri Lanka’s preparedness to face such an internal threat.

This author having testified in writing 13 pages and verbally in front of the PCOI for almost eight hours in two days, did speak of the NDP which was earlier prepared and this was not captured instead the PCOI recommends a new NDP without any reference to the previous document. Rather than investing time to reinvent a fresh NDP it’s worth looking at the existing NDP which was never shared with the general public. The document was declassified before visiting the Cabinet office for public view but it never came out from the cabinet office. NDP must have undergone a  rigorous process of development with inputs from multiple stakeholders including civil society, public expertise and intellectuals as since national security is a topic that affects all cross sections of society. National Security Policy, the first half of the book was taken out thereby weakening the  defence policy. NSP and NDP should be handed over to the PCOI for their assessment. The PCOI recommendation on ‘the party in power should have no control over the priority given to national security and national defence is an important recommendation and should apply to the present government, while not simply  replicating the efforts of the previous government.

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