The Reality Beneath The Sansoni Report
By Rajan Hoole –June 18, 2016
Dr. Rajan Hoole
The UNP’s New Culture of State Violence
The time was just after the General Elections of 21st July 1977, when Jayewardene’s UNP was returned with a five-sixths majority. The climate then created by unleashing violence on supporters of the defeated opposition is described in an article by Neil Dias titled 1977 Victims in The Island of 29th August 1994, just after elections where the UNP was defeated:“While the post-election violence was preceded by a pledge given by the victor [i.e. Jayewardene] at the poll that he will give a period of leave after the election results to the law enforcement agencies, the plunder of August 1977 was heralded by the call of the same leader to the Sinhalese mob to the effect that they had lost their patience… [i.e. speech in Parliament below]“[During July 1977 in the Kegalle District], houses of hapless victims living a few yards from police stations, court houses and bungalows of judicial officers were burnt and plundered with gay abandon. Those going to complain at police stations were turned away. Later, complaints were rejected by the courts as belated….”
Former Chief Justice Milliani Claude Sansoni
Once the Police Force had reached a point where its direction from the highest to the lowest levels was to lend complicity to such perfidy, it was bound to create a break in the character and morale of the Force. The more unscrupulous among them would have lost no time in becoming political commissars.
We give below an extract from Prime Minister Jayewardene’s speech in Parliament on 18th August 1977, two days after the first incidents in Jaffna:
“…we are still one nation [and] this Government is elected to govern the whole Island… The vast majority of the people in this country have not got the restraint and the reserve that Members of Parliament, particularly those in the front ranks, have been used to. They become restive when they hear such remarks as that a separate state is to be formed; that Trincomalee is to be the capital of that state; that Napoleon had said that Trincomalee is the key to the Indian Ocean; and therefore Trincomalee is going to be the capital of the state…“Whatever it is, when statements of that type are said and the newspapers carry them throughout the island, and when you say you are not violent but that violence may be used in time to come, what do you think the other people in Sri Lanka would do? How will they react? “If you want to fight let there be a fight; if it is peace, let there be peace!”
After a prolonged applause by members of his party, Jayewardene added:
