brand logo

Picking and choosing

12 Apr 2021

What would you make of a person or an entity that refuses to learn from the past to safeguard the future? Are they foolish or are they careless? Or could they be a combination of both? Easter Sunday was a bitter result of a spate of well-orchestrated actions, and there is more to it than the two well-known aspects, i.e. lethargy of authorities and rulers, and religious extremism that had gone unnoticed despite many signs. However, unfortunately, the authorities and rulers seem to be under the impression that only the said two reasons should receive their attention, and that they should wait until something happens in order to enforce the law. The Morning reported recently that the six-member ministerial committee – appointed to study the reports issued by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) and the Parliamentary Sectoral Oversight Committee (SOC) on National Security – had concluded that several recommendations contained in the two reports were not implementable, and that some of these recommendations were banning Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) and amending the Assistance to and the Protection of Victims of Crime and Witnesses Act. One of the reasons cited by the ministerial committee to justify its decision to not ban BBS was that BBS had not been implicated in any criminal activities. BBS is one of the organizations the PCoI’s final report identified as promoting and/or supporting religious extremism and ultranationalism, in addition to several Islamist extremist groups.  If arriving at conclusions, especially those concerning the country’s national security, was that simple, the Easter Sunday attack could have been prevented very easily. But, unfortunately, it is not that simple, and the Ministerial Committee’s decision reiterates a tragic reality which could have been among one of the reasons that led to the Easter Sunday attack. That is, the Sri Lankan governments’ tendency to adopt corrective measures instead of preventive measures. That is, in fact, one of the many things wrong with Sri Lanka. We wait until something happens; we wait until evidence emerges miraculously; we wait until it is too late.  When the aforesaid Ministerial Committee was appointed, various parties claimed that it could be an attempt to save certain people implicated in the Easter Sunday attack and expressed doubts as to whether the recommendations of the PCoI’s final report would be implemented in full. Needless to say, decisions of this nature suggest that those claims may actually be true. Essentially, what the authorities are doing is repeating what it did before the Easter Sunday attacks. Had the authorities paid adequate attention when explosives were found, when Buddha statues were vandalised, when signs of religious extremism came to light, when extremists carried out rehearsals, and when foreign intelligence agencies forewarned, the Easter Sunday attacks could have been averted. Is deciding to ban certain organisations while leaving out certain organisations because “they have no criminal records so far” not tantamount to repeating the same mistake that created an environment for the Easter Sunday attack? And, how many more lives should Sri Lanka sacrifice for the authorities and rulers to understand that their priority is to protect the citizens from evils, not bandaging wounds? These forms of decisions make the people wonder whether the rulers and authorities remember the adverse impacts of various types of extremisms Sri Lanka has witnessed.  The real question is, where do the authorities draw the line between good extremism and bad extremism?


More News..