“Never let a good crisis go to waste” – Winston Churchill
It all started a couple of weeks ago when former President Ranil Wickremesinghe was confronted by Al Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan about his role in the infamous Batalanda saga. During the course of the heated TV interview, when questioned about the report of the Batalanda Presidential Commission of Inquiry, Wickremesinghe in customary style dismissed the existence of such a report, but when former BBC journalist Frances Harrison who was part of the studio audience reacted with surprise and began waving a copy of the report, Wickremesinghe quickly changed gear and claimed it lacked validity as it had never been tabled in Parliament.
Well now, just weeks after that comment, the report was officially tabled in Parliament last week. The Government further announced that it would be forwarded to the Attorney General for suitable action.
The notorious Batalanda torture chambers, that are said to have been maintained on the instructions and supervision of the political leadership in the late ’80s, have been a hot topic on election platforms ever since 1994 when Chandrika Kumaratunga made it a key campaign issue that ultimately helped propel her to the presidency that year.
But despite the serious allegations, ranging from gross human rights violations to torture and mass killings, nothing tangible has ever taken place once the election dust settles. In fact, Kumaratunga wasted no time in appointing a Presidential Commission of Inquiry to investigate the matter as early as in September 1995. A nine-member Commission of Inquiry headed by Court of Appeal Justice D. Jayawickrama was mandated to investigate what transpired between 1 January 1988 and 31 December 1990 – the period of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led insurrection.
The commission was initially given three months to report its findings but that mandate was subsequently extended no less than 12 times, with the final deadline given being 26 March 1998. Thereafter the ‘Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Establishment and Maintenance of Places of Unlawful Detention and Torture Chambers at the Batalanda Housing Scheme’ finally saw the light of day on 19 February 2000.
However, despite the damning findings, the report was never made public. In fact, Kumaratunga took up the position that she did not wish to repeat what the United National Party (UNP) had done to her mother, former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, by taking away the civic rights of the UNP leadership, thereby depriving the country of a parliamentary Opposition. Notably, Kumaratunga’s reference to the removal of civic rights gave an indication of the gravity of the findings.
The Opposition Leader at the time, Ranil Wickremesinghe, had previously functioned as Minister of Youth Affairs and thereafter as Minister of Industry during the mandated period of inquiry. The Batalanda Road facility and housing scheme operated under the purview of the State Fertilizer Manufacturing Corporation, which in turn came under Wickremesinghe’s Industry Ministry and in fact his ministerial office as well as official bungalow were reported to have been located in that complex. In addition, he also served as the Member of Parliament for the area, having been elected to the Biyagama electorate of the Gampaha District.
Ever since the publication of the report in 2000, Batalanda has been a staple subject on election platforms even as recent as the last one, last year. But following the controversial Al Jazeera interview, it appears that the new National People’s Power (NPP) Government has been compelled by circumstances, if not a moral obligation, to move on the matter with its parent party, the JVP, being the main victim of the entire sordid saga. However, the million-dollar question now is, who will be most victimised by the fallout of the latest episode of the 25-year-long saga, with the report that had been gathering dust in the storeroom of the Presidential Secretariat finally being tabled in Parliament?
What the NPP must understand is that the report is a double-edged sword that cuts either way. While the NPP is confident that it can finally turn the tables on those who zealously protected the men accused of grave crimes at the Batalanda Housing Scheme, it will have to do so at grave political risk to itself. What is at stake is the carefully curated image of the NPP being seriously compromised or even destroyed by the inevitable resurrection of the JVP’s inglorious past because to only focus on Batalanda and ignore what caused its existence will be like Hamlet without the Prince.
The regime could well be in for a rude shock if it is under the vain assumption that Wickremesinghe could end up with the most damage from this encounter while it is spared collateral damage. Wickremesinghe in particular and the entire parliamentary Opposition in general have been bowled a juicy full toss in cricketing parlance, which they can choose to hit for a six and create serious political damage to the ruling party if they choose to, by turning the spotlight 180 degrees.
It was Winston Churchill who once said “never let a good crisis go to waste”. Wickremesinghe, who is an ardent member of the Churchill fanclub, must necessarily be plotting his way out of the trouble he might find himself in should the regime decide to go the distance – and the only way he can do so is by dragging the JVP along with him.
The biggest question, however, is why the JVP, which is the main constituent of the NPP, waited all this time when it could have done this as early as in 2005 when it had some 39 members in Parliament and was a key coalition partner of the first Mahinda Rajapaksa-led administration, even securing powerful ministerial positions. Curiously enough, no attempt was made to expose the findings of the report over the course of the past 25 years up until Al Jazeera brought the issue to the fore three weeks ago.
For its part, the regime appears to have taken an incredible gamble in assuming that Batalanda can be discussed and dissected in isolation of what caused its existence. Should the inevitable take place depending on the Opposition’s ability to seize the opportunity, it might find itself in the dock alongside Wickremesinghe and the rest of the accused. Thus far the JVP has not officially apologised for the carnage it caused or expressed its desire to make reparations to the victims of its actions. While Anura Kumara Dissanayake had expressed ‘regret’ over the killings for which his party was responsible during 1988-’89 when addressing a meeting in 2014 in London, this cannot be considered an official apology, while no desire to make reparations has been expressed thus far either.
At the end of the day, this is not a chicken or egg story where finding which came first is a puzzle. In an era when terror ruled and the State was held hostage with a war going on in the north and east and a deadly insurrection in the rest of the country, the resultant scarcity of resources may well have pushed the State to resort to extra-legal counter-terror measures. But such action, notwithstanding the necessity for it, is wrong and punishable by law. If the country is to function within its constitutional framework, then there is no escaping from the law which is equal to all – war or no war.
However, the issue here is that action cannot be instituted against one party to the exclusion of the other. That is simply not how the system is supposed to work. Given this backdrop, both the Government as well as the Opposition have their work cut out to ensure equitable justice not only against those singled out in the Batalanda report but also to investigate, even at this late hour, all those responsible for causing so much death and destruction during that same period outside of Batalanda. The thousands of innocent civilians whose only crime was standing up to terror, including Kumaratunga’s late husband, Vijaya, must also be provided justice and not be restricted to a mere statistic as a victim of terror.