Probe on massacre of policemen
- justice or mudslinging?

News reports last week said that the Rajapakse government has indicated its intention of probing the massacre of hundreds of policemen (estimates varying from 400 to 700), in the Eastern Province in 1990. The announcement is said to have been made by the Media Centre for National Security.

However what the many 'official' information sources of the government - Defence Ministry web site, Government Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella and other spokesmen say, often differ. Nonetheless, an official probe even after 18 years, though it may not bring forth the desired results is better than ignoring the biggest massacre in the history of Sri Lanka which has been ignored by every successive government so far.

A nation numbed

I was an editor of a privately owned newspaper at the time of this national tragedy and we immediately demanded a probe. We kept demanding for a probe in our editorials even though the political climate at that time was hostile to such demands. The Premadasa government ignored the massacre of its own policemen. The gross tragedy was that apart from a few lone voices of protest in the press, the entire nation expressedno real concern.

Perhaps the nation was too numbed - as it is even today - to realise the gravity of the gross crime perpetrated on its sons who had perished in the defence of the country.

It is time to remind the people of the sordid story since 18 years would have dimmed their memories. Ranasinghe Premadasa, the president, faced a severe crisis when the LTTE, after negotiating with him for months in Colombo, decided that the time was opportune to break off the talks.

Premadasa's invitation for negotiations had provided them an opportunity for a great escape from the Indian forces which were poised to wipe them out. Premadasa had been gullible enough to allegedly provide lorry loads of armaments to them and finally asked the Indian Peace Keeping Force to quit.

Then he made the colossal mistake of asking police personnel manning Eastern Province police stations to surrender to the LTTE cadres without offering resistance because he had the hope of saving the talks. The policemen were probably under the impression that a truce could be worked out and they would be released.

Lined up and shot

That was not to be. The policemen were loaded into trucks, taken into the jungle, made to dig their own graves, shot dead, and kicked into the ditches they had dug.

Who was responsible for this shocking crime? Obviously  nothing could have happened without orders from the terror supremo Velupillai Pirapaharan. It appears that the wily Anton Balasingham who had the remarkable ability to pull wool over the eyes of one and all had assured the ever gullible and loquacious Foreign Minister A.C.S. Hameed, the safety of the policemen. Premadasa who had wanted to save the negotiations over which he had taken tremendous risks believed it. Thus hundreds of young men disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Most lamentable of all is that the entire world and more surprisingly, almost all Sri Lankans forgot about them. Pirapaharan, Premadasa, Balasingham and Hameed are all collectively responsible for this crime. Had it happened in a Western nation there would have been ringing cries for a war tribunal to try them as war criminals.

Biggest ever massacre

This was a single massacre which would have outmatched even that of Pol Pot. It was bigger than any single recent massacre of the world listed in the Wikipedia. But Sri Lankans forgot about it.

My conscience is clear on this issue because even as a humble journalist I kept raising this issue over which the entire nation had developed amnesia. The Premadasa government forgot about it. The police who should have been most concerned about their colleagues forgot about it or raised it within the government which would have suppressed it. The top brass of other armed services did not raise a whimper of protest.

The human rights organisations, local and foreign, simply did not care - Sinhalese Buddhist constables fighting the LTTE have no human rights. Even the diehard Sinhalese protectors were only mildly concerned. They dared not take to the streets. And the opposition at that time which included Mahinda Rajapakse did not make an issue of it. The poor sons of the soil still sleep in unmarked graves - unwept, unhonoured and unsung. Only their near and dear would have wept.

Three governments inactive

Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected president for two terms - 12 years, but the dead policemen were not given a thought. Neither she nor her ministers like Mahinda Rajapakse who had established himself as a human rights activist gave a thoughtto the dead policemen. Her government had a remarkable inclination to dig up mass graves but only graves of suspected JVPers allegedly killed by the armed forces and UNP vigilantes.

There was much hullabaloo about Suriyakanda. They investigated the Batalanda camp where there was supposed to be a torture chamber in the hope of nabbing Ranil Wickremesinghe who had been a minister. But all that came to nought.

Eighteen years and the fourth government is now on, but the forgotten 600 (or so) men remain forgotten. What a callous way to treat men who have died in the defence of their motherland! The Americans even after 40 years of war in Vietnam are still trying to trace their men - those Missing in Action (MIA).

Mahinda Rajapakse was a human rights activist in full flow in 1990 when the massacre of the innocents took place. On June 8, The Sunday Leader quoted a speech of Rajapakse, the human rights activist, as an opposition member in parliament. He, on October 25, 1990 in parliament explained why he went before the Human Rights Committee in Geneva. He denied it was with the intention of asking foreign donors to stop aid to Sri Lanka but to ask donors to safeguard human rights in the country by linking aid to human rights. He would not only go to Geneva but even to hell to work against the UNP government if it was suppressing human rights, he had said.

Justice or mudslinging?

Now as the Executive President of this country he can at least do justice to the slain policemen. Nothing can be done to restore their rights but justice can be done.

However, it does seem curious that after 18 long years the memory of the forgotten policemen has been revived. There is speculation that this could be an attempt to sling mud at the UNP and Ranil Wickremesinghe who was a minister of the then government rather than an attempt to do justice to the dead. It indeed has a tantalising prospect for the ruling clique with two Provincial Council elections close at hand. Wickremesinghe right now is attracting cartloads of mud from the ruling clique.

Let the probe first establish where the policemen were killed and buried so that they can be given a decent funeral according to their religious rights. Secondly, find out those behind this mass murder.