Justice For Bloody Monday

By Ruwan Laknath Jayakody –MAY 23, 2022

Ruwan Jayakody

“It’s time to cut down the tall trees.” These words and others from a local radio station provided the blood stained soundtrack to the danse macabre conducted with machetes during the second and third quarter of 1994, in Rwanda, by the majority ethnic group – Hutu led Government, paramilitaries and militias, against the Tutsis who were a minority ethnic group, moderate Hutus, and the Twa pygmies.

Fast forward to 9 May, 2022. Sri Lanka.

“We are going to end it. Get ready. We will start the fight.” These words are from agent provocateur and eminent rabble rouser, former Minister and incumbent Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Parliamentarian Johnston Fernando’s address to the gathered, or more aptly bused, crowds (including according to some accounts, prisoners, which has however been denied by the Prisons authority) that had descended upon the official residence of the Prime Minister – the Temple Trees on the day, in support of the then Premier and current SLPP MP Mahinda Rajapaksa, demanding that the latter not step down from his post.

Following hot on the heels of his most loyal lickspittle, Rajapaksa whose self professed hierarchy of priorities concern “firstly, the country, secondly, the country, thirdly, the country”, told the assembled masses, whilst reminding them that “no one had the right to betray the Constitution (so much for being a more than willing participant in the Constitutional coup in October, 2018, to name his most recent egregious Constitutional infraction)”, that his credo was to “face challenges and emerge victorious over such, and not run away from the same.”

Motivational speeches both or fighting words (a doctrine concerning incitement tending towards an immediate breach of peace, that is both upheld and increasingly narrowly interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States)? Au lecteur, you decide.

“and let slip the (reportedly sodden) dogs of war.”

Although the damage done to democracy following the assault of peaceful protestors at MynaGoGama in front of the Temple Trees in Kollupitiya and GotaGoGama at Galle Face and the Galle Face Green, and the attack on the said protest sites, cannot be quantified in psychological terms, such savagery and vandalism only begot as Rajapaksa had presciently noted earlier, “violence”. If his was a mere premeditated attempt to shore up public support towards him as proof for his younger brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to witness, and thereby make a case for the need for him to continue to remain in office, the events that ensued in the melee proved that this was not just a grave miscalculation of the pulse of the people, but a fatal error of judgment that literally sent several (in the double digit range) including, among others, a cop and a SLPP Government MP to an early grave, injuries to persons in the triple digit range, and precipitated exceptional destruction with both movable and immovable properties of Government MPs, pro-Government Local Government Chairmen, Councilors and Members, and supporters including SLPP Party Members and non-Members, being torched and razed to the ground, along with similar collateral damage, and looting. For his part, the former Premier resigned in haste on the day itself, and true to his ethos of facing challenges and not running away, emerged, if not victorious, physically unscathed, by adopting one of the signature defenses of the meerkats, scampering amidst military cover to the Mynabunker (a la Führerbunker) in the East, after kicking up a veritable shitstorm. Too bad that he did not receive the lecturing his elder brother Chamal Rajapaksa gave last week – that it would have been better for him (Mahinda Rajapaksa) to have retired after his second Presidential term and that pain and suffering would not have been his present lot had he given up the lust for power and practiced the Buddhist notion of letting go at the correct and suitable time – in time, pre-2015 Parliamentary Elections.

But there is another side to the catastrophic events of 9 May.

“Plots” had been “laid”, with “inductions dangerous.” It was reported on 10 May that it was the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Chandana D. Wickramaratne, acting on the instructions of the Public Security Ministry Secretary, Retired Major General Jagath Alwis, who had instructed senior cops including the Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (SDIG) in charge of the Western Province, Deshabandu Tennakoon and Senior Superintendent of Police in charge of Colombo Central, Nishantha Chandrasekara, to refrain from using water cannons and tear gas to disperse the mob that emanated from the frangipani bungalow. SDIG Tennakoon had, according to Minister Dr. Ramesh Pathirana, who quoted President Rajapaksa, been instructed by the latter on 9 May morning to take necessary steps to prevent any violence. According to Dr. Pathirana, who cited SDIG Tennakoon’s response to the President when queried as to why SDIG Tennakoon had not carried out the President’s instructions given in the morn, SDIG Tennakoon had received a call from the IGP in the afternoon of 9 May, where he had been instructed to not use water cannons and tear gas on the pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa supporters. SLPP ‘independent’ MP Wimal Weerawansa claimed in Parliament, citing SDIG Tennakoon’s statement to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), that both the IGP and the Public Security Ministry Secretary – when he (SDIG Tennakoon) had received a call from the former (IGP Wickramaratne), and when he had called the latter (Rtd. Maj. Gen. Alwis) – had told him to not get involved, despite his (SDIG Tennakoon’s) plan to employ water cannons and tear gas following repeated warnings given to the pro-Government supporters (not to mention also informing certain Ministers and MPs who organized the group of supporters to prevent any incident, employing roadblocks and deploying riot control trucks and Police personnel at Galle Face), as the matter involved two brothers (the President and the Prime Minister) and one of the brothers – Mahinda Rajapaksa’s henchmen, and to therefore not get his hands burnt, so to speak, as he stood the chance of being at the receiving end once the sibling duo reconciled. Rtd. Maj. Gen. Alwis has since denied the claim.

Regardless of the veracity of the claims, the die was cast, and afterwards, it was mayhem, “que sera, sera” style. The President’s belated intervention with SDIG Tennakoon was too little, too late, as by the time the law enforcement authorities kicked into high gear, “the fighting had begun, they were falling one by one, prisoners were taken, and death”, for some, was “just a heartbeat away” as Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott sang in ‘Out in the Fields’.

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