Sunday, June 24, 2012
By Tisaranee Gunasekara
Ten men on five motorbikes, armed with T56 rifles, descend on a legal political gathering. They shoot into the crowd, killing two and injuring several. For the next 15-20 minutes, they engage in a slash-and-trash operation, undisturbed. Finally, their job done, they leave as they came, with their weapons and on their bikes, into the night.This happens in the home-district and the political-bastion of the country’s President, and just a few miles away from his family home.
Had we read this story in the foreign news pages, we would have concluded that such an incident can happen only in a god-forsaken land, in the throes of violent anarchy; or that the attack had the blessing of the said President: either a lawless land or a lawless President.
Is Sri Lanka a failed state or was the Katuwana attack done at the behest of the rulers?
