The Rule Of Law, Or Lack Thereof, In Rural Sri Lanka
Emil van der Poorten
Today, let me relate a case history illustrative of the seeming hopelessness of the lives of some of our neighbours.
The predicament of Thadi Menika (obviously not her real name!) is not, unfortunately, as exceptional as it might seem to some urban-dwellers. She is in her middle years, widowed for a considerable time and has two of her grown sons living with her in the little house she has on land that she, together with dozens of others, has squatted on subsequent to the collapse of the state enterprise that took over productive plantation land at the time of Hector Kobbekaduwa’s Land Reform. Incidentally, Mr. K was probably the first major political figure to demonstrate what has since become the rule rather than the exception in this country: a very powerful politician motivated by vengeance and sans the intelligence and knowledge to make effective and productive change. Additionally, totally lacking anything even vaguely resembling a moral compass, the economic destruction he wreaked was further multiplied by the environmental degradation that has resulted in this part of the country.
Returning to the subject of this story, while what little land Thadi Menike and her fellow squatters had available to them could certainly not sustain them independent of the poverty-level wages they earned on the adjacent agricultural enterprises, she did, as they used to say, have three meals – thun-vela – of indeterminate quality. Of the two sons resident in her house, one travelled by bus to some urban site or other, to work as a mason’s helper, returning home at night. His sibling was a stereotypical “no-goodnik.” No one ever remembers him doing anything productive. Simply put, he stole because stealing was the only thing he chose to do. His nickname, “Ahinsakaya,” had simply been the product of some neighbour’s very warped sense of humour.
Among his many activities during the time I have been aware of his existence, was terrorizing school girls on their way up a deserted estate road late in the day by leaping out from under a bridge across small stream, stark naked, and, on one occasion, holding a knife to the throat of a little boy who, very understandably, screamed blue murder at the predicament of his female companions. This outrage went un-investigated because the children belonged to a particular ethnicity and chose not to report it to the police because they thought, very understandably (and realistically), that their complaint would be dismissed out of hand by the local constabulary. Subsequently, he slashed a grandmother who, with a stick she’d picked up, was trying to defend her little grand-daughter from this monster’s unsavoury attentions. End result? Case settled out of court because the injured party and her husband didn’t think it was worth risking further harm from a lunatic criminal in their pursuit of justice. Read More
