Death by a thousand cuts
August 8, 2013
- In a shell shocked village in Gampaha, a once loved military is in disgrace. For a newly installed army commander, an officer of repute and courage, the horror of the Weliweriya tragedy happened on his first day on the job. Stony silence from the upper echelons of the Rajapaksa Administration for an entire week following the chaos, is ample proof that the country’s ruling elite knows just how damaging the violence has been on the national psyche, particularly in the UPFA stronghold of Gampaha. To date, nobody knows who deployed troops to crush a public demonstration against contaminated ground-water, or why.
“…A soldier when answering to his conscience not only has the right, but also the duty, to disobey an unlawful order. It is one of his privileges of serving a democracy, as it is one of his burdens, that he must answer for his own actions” – Assassinated Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, at the convocation of the Kotelawala Defence Academy, 3 October 2000