August 7, 2013, 12:00 pm
Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva has reportedly made an attempt to justify last Thursday’s brutal military crackdown on a villagers’ protest at Weliweriya. The army and the police, he has claimed, acted in self defence. The government seems to have taken the public for suckers.
While the government is doing its damnedest to mislead the public, the UNP wants an international probe into the Weliweriya killings. Yes, there has to be a thorough investigation, but why on earth should it be international? There is no dearth of responsible Sri Lankans capable of conducting an impartial probe. What is needed is to bring adequate pressure to bear on the government to order a special probe and to ensure that the judicial process isn’t interfered with. The JVP, too, has condemned the crackdown, and rightly so.
However, the UNP and the JVP seem to think the discerning masses have imbibed great quantities of water of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in Hades. Memories of a brutal crackdown on thousands of hapless civilians the JVP forced to take part in a procession at gunpoint in Tissamaharama in 1989 against the then UNP government are still fresh in the minds of the people. The police and the army unleashed hell on the protest march while helicopter gunships strafed the fleeing men, women and children. The savage attack left the area including the sacred precincts of Tissamaharama temple strewn with corpses.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, an Opposition MP championing human rights at that time condemned the attack. He went so far as to move the UNHRC against the Premadasa government over extrajudicial killings obviously in a bid to seek an international intervention, albeit in vain. Today, the military is carrying out similar attacks, mutatis mutandis, on unarmed protesters on his watch! Those who massacred civilians in the late 1980s are today shedding crocodile tears and calling for international probes! That’s why we argued in these columns the other day that regime changes facilitated the circulation of hypocrites as well.
However, by no stretch of the imagination could last Thursday’s protest be described as part of a subversive campaign by the JVP. Protesters, when driven up the wall, fight back like badgers surrounded by heavy mastiffs. The Weliweriya Parish priest has revealed, in a brief interview with this newspaper, what really happened on that day.
The government cannot be unaware that the Weliweriya protest spun out of control as resentful villagers at their tether’s end gave vent to their pent up anger for want of a better alternative. All 52 elected UPFA representatives, in the Gampaha District, including three Cabinet ministers, five deputy ministers, Western Province Chief Minister and one provincial council minister had let them down badly and they were desperate for potable water.
Mao Zedong has famously said politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed. But, the incumbent pro-Chinese UPFA government seems to think politics is war with bloodshed if one is to go by its brutal crackdowns on civilian protests. Mao also said the party must command the gun and the gun must not be allowed to command the party. But, sadly, the ruling dispensation here does not seem to follow his advice. We find ourselves in a situation where swordsmen are elbowing out gownsmen. Unless this dangerous trend is reversed urgently the greatest threat to this country will emerge not from without but from within. No country could do without a strong army, but the military had better be kept in barracks in peacetime without being tasked with constabulary duties which are best left to the police.
The government has offered compensation to the families of the Weliweriya victims. Those poor people, no doubt, need money, but the sooner it abandons its kill-and-pay policy the better. It ought to eliminate causes of protests and not protesters. The people of Weliweriya, whose wells are contaminated, must be provided with pipe-borne water urgently while an impartial investigation is conducted into the savage military crackdown and the culprits are brought to book. That is the least the government could do by way of atonement for its undemocratic actions.
