Midweek Review

A Bigger Picture: how the Humanities can widen our perspectives

Published

4 years ago

2021/12/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

A scene from the movie, ‘Perfume- The story of a murderer’

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

(Lecture given at the 18th annual academic sessions of the Sri Lanka College of Psychiatrists

On 16 December 2021 at Grand Kandyan Hotel, Kandy)

In order to understand life as a whole, one needs to focus on the bigger picture of human affairs- perhaps of forces larger than humans. Our lives are increasingly determined by much larger forces that we might not even perceive in our everyday lives. Within our education system, we have developed numerous subject areas that help us uncover those behind- the scene-forces. As a scholar in the humanities, I have no knowledge in many of those subjects. Even within the humanities, I only have some expertise in literary studies. Since literary studies have always been a richly interdisciplinary field, I may be able to touch on some adjacent fields such as history, philosophy, sociology, and so on. My topic should ideally be ‘how liberal arts can widen our perspectives’ because liberal arts includes humanities, social sciences and some natural sciences, but I decided to stick to the humanities primarily for two reasons: I will be making my points mostly with literary examples, and the term, ‘humanities’ is the term often used in Sri Lanka.

Professor Joseph B. Cuseo and Aaron Thompson in Humanity, Diversity and Liberal Arts Education (2015) describe seven socio-spatial perspectives typically developed in liberal arts teaching: Perspective of family, perspective of community, perspective of society, national perspective, international perspective, global perspective, and perspective of the universe (cosmos).

It is extremely difficult to elaborate on all these perspectives with different examples in short speech. Therefore, I decide to focus on one novel. Its film version might be quite familiar to the psychiatrists and psychologists in the audience. I use the novel and the film in my teaching at University of Peradeniya but not necessarily the same way that I am going to use it today. The novel is Perfume, the the film has the same name.

It is the story of Grenouille, illegitimate son of a female fish seller in the 18th century France. Even when he is born, his mother is selling fish. The new born is left on a heap of fish guts, – perhaps most disgusting and unhealth environment for a child to be born in. His mother does not want to raise him, and she could not afford to. He is left alone to die there on the heap of fish waste so that garbage collectors will put away the dead child fish guts in the evening.

The author of the novel, Patrick Suskind, explains the situation in a beautifully-crafted paragraph:

Here, then, on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born on the 17th July, 1738. It was one of the hottest days of the year. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard, squeezing its putrefying vapour, a blend of rotting melon and the fetid odor of burnt animal horn, out in to the nearby alleys. When the labour pains began, Grenouille’s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers, scaling whiting that she had just gutted. The fish, ostensibly, taken that very morning from the Seine, already stank so vilely that the smell masked the odour of corpses. Grenouille’s mother, however, perceived the odour neither of the fish nor of the corpses, for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled, besides which her belly hurt and the pain deadened all susceptibility to sensate impressions. She only wanted to put this revolting birth behind her as quickly as possible. It was her fifth (p.5)”

She expects the new born to die there in the heap of fish guts. In the evening, a carter would come and pick up the garbage and drop them on the grave yard or to the river. Then, all her responsibilities will be over. She is still in her twenties.

Dangers of limitless love

But her fifth child does not bring her good luck; Grenouille does not die there. The mother is taken into custody and is accused of killing her previous babies and of attempting to kill the new born. She is decapitated in public. Grenouille grows up in orphanages to become one of the gruesome serial killers in history. But he is not a killer. He becomes one of the most skilled perfumers; he has an acute sense of smell; in some beautiful virgins he finds magically captivating fragrance. He develops the arts and science of extracting that fragrance from those young women’s hair, pubic hair, skin, and so on. By the time he was done perfecting the most fragrant perfume in history, he had killed twenty-five young women. The perfume is so captivating that it can enable people to engaged in acts of limitless love. Limitless love is so dangerous that a group of people madly intoxicated by the smell of the magical perfume, kills Grenouille alive. He literally vanishes from the earth.

None of us has extreme lives of this kind: But the point of narrative art is to intensify human experience and get us to reflect on. Story of this young man is illustrative of many of the perspectives I want to speak of during this speech.

Family determines who we eventually become. Familial impact on us takes place at many levels. Perfume demonstrates that Grenouille’s search for this magical fragrant emanating from some beautiful women, is in a way his desire to regain the warmth of his own mother – a pleasurable warmth he never experienced. His desire for those young women is a sublimated form of hating them. As the fantastic perfume he creates is capable making people engaged in mythical acts of love turns into extreme form of violence, his love for those young women leads to the most gruesome murder of them. Unimaginably violent acts on those bodies such as peeling their skins, are performed in a clinically scientific detachment.

Perfume is a work of art not a scientific treatise on how family or the lack of it shapes one’s character. Thus, the novel does not claim that any illegitimate son, who is forced to grow up without his mother, will certainly end up being a serial killer. Works of art provide us with frameworks for further contemplation not exact mathematical formulas.

Let me move on to a ‘the perspective of the community.’ A catholic monk named Terrier arranges a wet nurse for the child. Grenouille spends a few months with this extremely religious wet nurse, who believes that the baby is possessed with the devil because he sucks her dry. Yes. The child drinks a lot of breast milk. With his insatiable thirst for breast milk, the wet nurse refuses to keep him at her house. She also believes that the child except for his excrement does not smell at all.

Within this community where Catholic and pagan beliefs shape people’s thinking, the child does not get to develop any motherly attachment to any women. The wet nurse brings the child back to father Terrier and leaves the baby with him. The priest thinks that when a mother breastfeeds a child regularly, the child develops a certain attachment to the mother’s body and gets used to the rhythm of the heartbeat of the mother. This child would never know a mother’s heartbeat. Thus, we can see Grenouille’s character is crucially shaped by his close community.

Then comes the perspective of the society, which invites us to perceive the question at hand within the framework of larger society. Let’s stick to the novel, Perfume. What was the kind of society in which Grenouille lived in? It was 18th century France, fifty years before the French revolution, and it was a country ruled by kings and their regional deputies. The dominant worldview was the religious one. Scientific thought and human reason were still to become the main source of wisdom. Thus, it is no accident that Grenouille’s last and the most precious victim was mythically beautiful Laure, the only daughter of a regional lord. In that sense, the young perfumer’s search for the perfect scent was an individualist attack on a social structure that made him a bastard and an orphan. After all, that is the very society that made his mother kill her babies because she was too poor to raise them. In addition, she was sexually exploited by men in the positions of power in the society. Still in her twenties, her beauty intact, she hoped to find a man to marry, perhaps, aged widower, and settle herself into a better life.

Thus, selling fish is a something temporary for her. But she keeps getting pregnant by men whose names are not revealed to us. Through them she picks up diseases like syphilis as well. What else a poor young woman, living in the most disgusting corner of the city, can do to her newborns other than to hope for their death? The author of the novel situates her character in a larger societal frame and invites us see the bigger picture of life. In teaching a novel like this, insights from history, political science, sociology can be brought in to enrich the discussion.

As Cuseo and Thompson (2015: 15) maintain,” human societies also consist of groups of people stratified into different social classes with unequal amounts of resources and material wealth; those groups occupying lower social strata have less economic resources and social privilege.”(Humanity, Diversity and the Liberal Arts). Grenouille’s birth and death occur in pre-revolution France where social stratification was so pronounced that, in there, many people of the lowest strata lived a subhuman life. It is not surprising that the French word “Grenouille” means ‘the frog.’

Though there are more to be said about the novel, let me leave it that by summarizing my argument so far: the extraordinary life of this young man, Grenouille, can be better understood when he is analyzed through different perspectives such as family, community, and society. In doing so, we not only understand the young man better we also get to look into larger contexts within which human life is shaped.

Other ways of seeing things

Let me now briefly touch on other perspectives the liberal arts education at its best attempts to develop in students. The national perspective is an angle of vision that helps us reflect on how the realities of nationhood, nation state, national boundaries influence our lives. We all are aware of certain realities, obligations, frustrations and so on exist for us just because of the nature of our nation state. We have to live with them by virtue of being citizens of our nation state.

This is the opening sentence of the novel, Perfume, “In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.” We can immediately see that the writer wants to see the main character’s predicament in ‘France’ in the 18th century. This brings us to the international perspective.

One cannot understand France at the time without understanding how France was connected to a host of other countries even before the French Revolution. A central metaphor of the novel is perfume. Many of the ingredients used to make perfume came through in international naval routes in colonial ships. Phenomenal development of perfume industry in France cannot be understood without referring to colonialism and international trade relations that France had developed with other countries. In addition, some of the girls killed are from Italy. During those days, poor Italian peasants came to France as seasonal workers for harvesting. Moreover, the consumers of those extremely expensive perfume were not just French people. The aristocracy in neighboring countries, perhaps, even in far away countries bought French perfume. Thus, one cannot isolate gruesome murders of one unknown French man, whose name means frog after all, from France’s connections with other countries those days.

I must recall here that I am trying to briefly explain all the perspectives by using a single novel. Still, the novel can be used to explain what we mean by ‘global perspectives.’ It is a quite broader perspective than ‘international’ perspective because it takes into account nearly everything that might have contributed to making a phenomenon. Let’s return to the novel. Grenoulle’s life is connected with so many things other than human affairs such as trade and politics which were discussed earlier. “It extends beyond nations to embrace both human and nonhuman life inhabiting our planet and how these life forms interface with the earth’s natural resources (minerals, air, and water). Human’s share the earth with approximately 10 million animal species and more than 300,000 forms of vegetative life, all of whose needs must be met and balanced to ensure the health and sustainability of our planet” (Cuseo and Thompson, p. 18).

In this novel, the central character is presented as someone much closer to nature than culture. Hence, the name ‘frog.’ He is born on a heap of fish guts, and in that sense too, he is nearly an amphibian. Later in his life, he spends seven years like an animal in a forest cave separated from human civilization. This is how the author explains the Grenouille’s life in that forest. “He also ate dry lichen and grass-berries. Such a diet, although totally unacceptable by bourgeoises standards, did not disgust him in the least. ” During those, seven years of hibernation or the forest-life, he is portrayed as a part of the larger nature of the planet earth. He is an insignificant and a seemingly innocent part of nature itself. But this very man, after being discovered again by the representatives of human civilization and taken into to the city, begins his adventure of murdering twenty odd young women and perfecting the most fragrant perfume in the world- in fact a perfume that can generate the perfect love.

Let me quickly jump into the last perspective, cosmos. This is a wonderful novel in establishing the fact that man, even the central character, Paris, France or the earth, are not entities that stand in themselves. Here, we are not alone. We are part of larger universe; solar systems, milky ways and so on. No wonder that in the middle ages, astronomy was included in liberal arts. Not only that different entities in the universe are inherently connected to one another, we humans keep looking into what is out there. Just last month, scientists claimed that the moon’s top layer of soil contained oxygen that could sustain 8 billion human lives for more than one hundred thousand years.

Here in the novel, Perfume, the unknown, the unseen, the extra-terrestrial, the cosmic, is always present; and every key incident in the novel seems mysterious connected to something else, and to long chain of ‘something-elses’, some of which might extend as far as the heavens. If it is not the heavens, it is the nature, the Nature with a big N. Let me quote a couple of sentences where a certain character’s disappearance is described: “…The last was seen of him was his silhouette: hands lifted ecstatically to heaven and voice raised in song, he disappeared into the blizzard… [They did not find any trace of him] “no clothes, no body parts, no bones…”(Pp. 187-8).

In this speech, I wanted to show that in order to get at some understanding of Grenouille’s life to one has to enter his story from multiple perspectives. Among other things, liberal arts education aspires to cultivate skills in creatively using these perspectives in students. The life of the young man in the novel is an extreme case and the lives of many of us are not nearly as dramatic, tragic or gruesome. Yet, the intellectual training that we develop by trying to understand his life from multiple perspectives can carry over into our real lives. Even the most insignificant lives or phenomenon exists in complex networks of relations. My speech today hopefully contained some insights that could motivate the psychiatrists here in the audience to reflect on the need of situating their ‘subjects’ in a bigger picture. I hope with much that you will never have to treat a serial killer, any killer for that matter. But the seven perspectives I explained above might suggest that you are more than likely to meet some versions of Grenouille- human beings trying to perfect formulas for producing perfect love in an extremely imperfect world.

(Amarakeerthi is professor of Sinhala, University of Peradeniya)

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Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

Published

44 mins ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

In September 1939, as Europe descended once more into catastrophe, E. H. Carr published The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Twenty years had separated the two great wars—twenty years to reflect, to reconstruct, to restrain. Yet reflection proved fragile. Carr wrote with unsentimental clarity: once the enemy is crushed, the “thereafter” rarely arrives. The illusion that power can come first and morality will follow is as dangerous as the belief that morality alone can command power. Between those illusions, nations lose themselves.

His warning hovers over the present war in Iran.

The “thereafter” has long haunted American interventions—after Afghanistan, after Iraq, after Libya. The enemy can be dismantled with precision; the aftermath resists precision. Iran is not a small theater. It is a civilization-state with a geography three times larger than Iraq. At its southern edge lies the Strait of Hormuz, narrow in width yet immense in consequence. Geography does not argue; it compels.

Long before Carr, in the quiet anxiety of the eighteenth century, James Madison, principal architect of the Constitution, warned that war was the “true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” War concentrates authority in the name of urgency. Madison insisted that the power to declare war must rest with Congress, not the president—so that deliberation might restrain impulse. Republics persuade themselves that emergency powers are temporary. History rarely agrees.

Then, at 2:30 a.m., the abstraction becomes decision.

Donald Trump declares war on Iran. The announcement crosses continents before markets open in Asia. Within twenty-four hours, Ali Khamenei, who ruled for thirty-seven years, is killed. The President calls him one of history’s most evil figures and presents his death as an opening for the Iranian people.

In exile, Reza Pahlavi hails the moment as liberation. In less than forty-eight hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps collapses under overwhelming air power. A regime that endured decades falls swiftly. Military efficiency appears absolute. Yet efficiency does not resolve legitimacy.

The joint strike with Israel is framed as necessary and pre-emptive. Retaliation follows across the Gulf. The architecture of energy trade becomes fragile. Shipping routes are recalculated. Markets respond before diplomacy finds its language.

It is measured in the price of petrol in Colombo. In the bus fare in Karachi. In the rising cost of cooking gas in Dhaka. It is heard in the anxious voice of a migrant worker in Doha calling home to Kandy, asking whether contracts will be renewed, whether flights will continue, whether wages will be delayed. It is calculated in foreign reserves already strained, in currencies that tremble at rumor, in budgets forced to choose between subsidy and solvency.

Zaara was the breadwinner of her house in Sri Lanka. Her husband had been unemployed for years. At last, he secured an opportunity to travel to Israel as a foreign worker—like many Sri Lankans who depend on employment in the Middle East. It was to be their turning point: a small house repaired, debts reduced, dignity restored.

Now she lowers her eyes when she speaks. For Zaara, geopolitics is not theory. It is fear measured in distance—between a construction site abroad and a village waiting at home.

The war in Iran has shattered calculations that once felt practical. Nations like Sri Lanka now require strategic foresight to navigate unfolding realities. Reactive responses—whether to natural disasters or external shocks like this conflict—can cripple economies far faster than gradual pressures. Disruptions to energy imports, migrant remittances, and foreign reserves show how distant wars ripple into daily lives.

War among great powers is debated in think tanks. Its consequences are lived in markets—and in quiet kitchens where uncertainty sits heavier than hunger.

The conflict does not unfold in isolation. It enters the strategic calculus of China and Russia, both attentive to precedent. Power projected beyond the Western hemisphere reshapes perceptions in the Eastern theater. Iran’s transformation intersects directly with broader alignments. In 2021, Beijing and Tehran signed a twenty-five-year strategic agreement. By 2025, China was purchasing the majority of Iran’s exported oil at discounted rates. Energy underwrote strategy. That continuity has been disrupted. Yet strategic relationships do not vanish; they adjust.

In Winds of Change, my new book, I reproduce Nicholas Spykman’s 1944 two-theater confrontation map—Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War. Spykman distinguished maritime power from amphibian projection. Control of the Rimland determined balance. Then, the United States fought across two vast theaters. Today, Europe remains unsettled through Ukraine, the Pacific simmers over Taiwan and the South China Sea, Latin America remains sensitive, and the Middle East has been abruptly transformed. The architecture of multi-theater tension reappears.

At this juncture, the reflections of Marwan Bishara acquire weight. America’s ultimate power, he argues, resides in deterrence, not in the habitual use of force. Power, especially when shared, stabilizes. Force, when used with disregard for international law, breeds instability and humiliation. Arrogance creates enemies and narrows judgment. It is no surprise that many Americans themselves believe the United States should not act alone.

America’s strength does not rest solely in its military reach. Its economy constitutes roughly one-third of global output and generates close to 40 percent of the world’s research and development. Structural power—economic, technological, institutional—has historically underwritten deterrence. When force becomes the primary instrument, influence risks becoming coercion.

The United States now confronts simultaneous pressures across continents. The Second World War demonstrated the capacity to sustain multi-theater engagement; the post-9/11 wars revealed the exhaustion that follows prolonged intervention. Iran, larger and geopolitically deeper, presents a scale that cannot be resolved by air power alone.

Carr’s “thereafter” waits patiently. Military victory may be swift; political reconstruction is slow. Bishara reminds us that deterrence sustains stability, while force risks unraveling it.

At the edge of a potential world war, the decisive question is not who strikes first, but who restrains longest.

History watches. And in places far from the battlefield, mothers wait for phone calls that may not come.

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Millennium Project, Washington, D.C., and the author of Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, published by World Scientific

Midweek Review

Live Coals Burst Aflame

Published

45 mins ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Live coals of decades-long hate,

Are bursting into all-consuming flames,

In lands where ‘Black Gold’ is abundant,

And it’s a matter to be thought about,

If humans anywhere would be safe now,

Unless these enmities dying hard,

With roots in imperialist exploits,

And identity-based, tribal violence,

Are set aside and laid finally to rest,

By an enthronement of the principle,

Of the Equal Dignity of Humans.

By Lynn Ockersz

Midweek Review

Saga of the arrest of retired intelligence chief

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay’s recent arrest attracted internatiattention. His long-expected arrest took place ahead of the seventh anniversary of the bombings. Multiple blasts claimed the lives of nearly 280 people, including 45 foreigners. State-owned international news television network, based in Paris, France 24, declared that arrest was made on the basis of information provided by a whistleblower. The French channel was referring to Hanzeer Azad Moulana, who earlier sought political asylum in the West and one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan aka Pilleyan. May be the fiction he wove against Pilleyan and others may have been to strengthen his asylum claim there. Moulana is on record as having told the British Channel 4 that Sallay allowed the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing the 2019 presidential election. The French news agency quoted an investigating officer as having said: “He was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks. He has been in touch with people involved in the attacks, even recently.”

****

Suresh Sallay of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) received the wrath of Yahapalana Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, in 2016, over the reportage of what the media called the Chavakachcheri explosives detection made on March 30, 2016. Premier Wickremesinghe found fault with Sallay for the coverage, particularly in The Island. Police arrested ex-LTTE child combatant Edward Julian, alias Ramesh, after the detection of one suicide jacket, four claymore mines, three parcels containing about 12 kilos of explosives, to battery packs and several rounds of 9mm ammunition, from his house, situated at Vallakulam Pillaiyar Kovil Street. Chavakachcheri police made the detection, thanks to information provided by the second wife of Ramesh. Investigations revealed that the deadly cache had been brought by Ramesh from Mannar (Detection of LTTE suicide jacket, mines jolts government: Fleeing Tiger apprehended at checkpoint, The Island, March 31, 2016).

The then Jaffna Security Forces Commander, Maj. Gen. Mahesh Senanayake, told the writer that a thorough inquiry was required to ascertain the apprehended LTTE cadre’s intention. The Chavakachcheri detection received the DMI’s attention. The country’s premier intelligence organisation meticulously dealt with the issue against the backdrop of an alleged aborted bid to revive the LTTE in April 2014. Of those who had been involved in the fresh terror project, three were killed in the Nedunkerny jungles. There hadn’t been any other incidents since the Nedunkerny skirmish, until the Chavakachcheri detection.

Piqued by the media coverage of the Chavakachcheri detection, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration tried to silence the genuine Opposition. As the SLFP had, contrary to the expectations of those who voted for the party at the August 2015 parliamentary elections, formed a treacherous coalition with the UNP, the Joint Opposition (JO) spearheaded the parliamentary opposition.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) questioned former External Affairs Minister and top JO spokesman, Prof. G.L. Peiris, over a statement made by him regarding the Chavakachcheri detection. The former law professor questioned the legality of the CID’s move against the backdrop of police declining to furnish him a certified copy of the then acting IGP S.M. Wickremesinghe’s directive that he be summoned to record a statement as regards the Chavakachcheri lethal detection.

One-time LTTE propagandist Velayutham Dayanidhi, a.k.a. Daya Master, raised with President Maithripala Sirisena the spate of arrests made by law enforcement authorities, in the wake of the Chavakachcheri detection. Daya Master took advantage of a meeting called by Sirisena, on 28 April, 2016, at the President’s House, with the proprietors of media organisations and journalists, to raise the issue. The writer having been among the journalists present on that occasion, inquired from the ex-LETTer whom he represented there. Daya Master had been there on behalf of DAN TV, Tamil language satellite TV, based in Jaffna. Among those who had been detained was Subramaniam Sivakaran, at that time Youth Wing leader of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the main constituent of the now defunct Tamil National Alliance. In addition to Sivakaran, the police apprehended several hardcore ex-LTTE cadres (LTTE revival bid confirmed: TNA youth leader arrested, The Island April 20, 2016).

Ranil hits out at media

Subsequent inquiries revealed the role played by Sivakaran in some of those wanted in connection with the Chavakachcheri detection taking refuge in India. When the writer sought an explanation from the then TNA lawmaker, M.A. Sumanthiran, regarding Sivakaran’s arrest, the lawyer disowned the Youth Wing leader. Sumanthiran emphasised that the party suspended Sivakumaran and Northern Provincial Council member Ananthi Sasitharan for publicly condemning the TNA’s decision to endorse Maithripala Sirisena’s candidature at the 2015 presidential election (Chava explosives: Key suspects flee to India, The Island, May 2, 2016).

Premier Wickremesinghe went ballistic on May 30, 2016. Addressing the 20th anniversary event of the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum, at the Sports Ministry auditorium, the UNP leader castigated the DMI. Alleging that the DMI had been pursuing an agenda meant to undermine the Yahapalana administration, Wickremesinghe, in order to make his bogus claim look genuine, repeatedly named the writer as part of that plot. Only Wickremesinghe knows the identity of the idiot who influenced him to make such unsubstantiated allegations. The top UNPer went on to allege that The Island, and its sister paper Divaina, were working overtime to bring back Dutugemunu, a reference to war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa. A few days later, sleuths from the Colombo Crime Detection Bureau (CCD) visited The Island editorial to question the writer where lengthy statements were recorded. The police were acting on the instructions of the then Premier, who earlier publicly threatened to send police to question the writer.

In response to police queries about Sallay passing information to the media regarding the Chavakachcheri detection and subsequent related articles, the writer pointed out that the reportage was based on response of the then ASP Ruwan Gunasekera, AAL and Sumanthiran, as had been reported.

Wickremesinghe alleged, at the Muslim media event, that a section of the media manipulated coverage of certain incidents, ahead of the May Day celebrations.

In early May 2016 Wickremesinghe disclosed that he received assurances from the police, and the DMI, that as the LTTE had been wiped out the group couldn’t stage a comeback. The declaration was made at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRIS) on 3 May 2016. Wickremesinghe said that he sought clarifications from the police and the DMI in the wake of the reportage of the Chavakachcheri detection and related developments (PM: LTTE threat no longer exists, The Island, May 5, 2016).

The LTTE couldn’t stage a comeback as a result of measures taken by the then government. It would be a grave mistake, on our part, to believe that the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity automatically influenced them to give up arms. The successful rehabilitation project, that had been undertaken by the Rajapaksa government and continued by successive governments, ensured that those who once took up arms weren’t interested in returning to the same deadly path.

In spite of the TNA and others shedding crocodile tears for the defeated Tigers, while making a desperate effort to mobilise public opinion against the government, the public never wanted the violence to return. Some interested parties propagated the lie that regardless of the crushing defeat suffered in the hands of the military, the LTTE could resume guerilla-type operations, paving the way for a new conflict. But by the end of 2014, and in the run-up to the presidential election in January following year, the situation seemed under control, especially with Western countries not wanting to upset things here with a pliant administration in the immediate horizon. Soon after the presidential election, the government targeted the armed forces. Remember Sumanthiran’s declaration that the ITAK Youth Wing leader Sivakaran had been opposed to the TNA backing Sirisena at the presidential poll.

The US-led accountability resolution had been co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo to appease the TNA and Tamil Diaspora. The Oct. 01, 2016, resolution delivered a knockout blow to the war-winning armed forces. The UNP pursued an agenda severely inimical to national interests. It would be pertinent to mention that those who now represent the main Opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), were part of the treacherous UNP.

Suresh moved to Malaysia

The Yahapalana leadership resented Sallay’s work. They wanted him out of the country at a time a new threat was emerging. The government attacked the then Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, who warned of the emerging threat from foreign-manipulated local Islamic fanatics on 11 Nov. 2016, in Parliament. Rajapakshe didn’t mince his words when he underscored the threat posed by some Sri Lanka Muslim families taking refuge in Syria where ISIS was running the show. The then government, of which he was part o,f ridiculed their own Justice Minister. Both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe feared action against extremism may cause erosion of Muslim support. By then Sallay, who had been investigating the deadly plot, was out of the country. The Yahapalana government believed that the best way to deal with Sallay was to grant him a diplomatic posting. Sally ended up in Malaysia, a country where the DMI played a significant role in the repatriation of Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias KP, after his arrest there.

Having served the military for over three cadres, Sallay retired in 2024 in the rank of Major General. Against the backdrop of his recent arrest, in connection with the ongoing investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage, The Island felt the need to examine the circumstances Sallay ended up in Malaysia at the time. Now, remanded in terms of the Prevention of terrorism Act (PTA), he is being accused of directing the Easter Sunday operation from Malaysia.

Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader and former Minister Udaya Gammanpila has alleged that Sallay was apprehended in a bid to divert attention away from the deepening coal scam. Having campaigned on an anti-corruption platformm in the run up to the previous presidential election, in September 2024, the Parliament election, in November of the same year, and local government polls last year, the incumbent dispensation is struggling to cope up with massive corruption issues, particularly the coal scam, which has not only implicated the Energy Minister but the entire Cabinet of Ministers as well.

The crux of the matter is whether Sallay actually met would-be suicide bombers, in February 2018, in an estate, in the Puttalam district, as alleged by the UK’s Channel 4 television, like the BBC is, quite famous for doing hatchet jobs for the West. This is the primary issue at hand. Did Sallay clandestinely leave Malaysia to meet suicide bombers in the presence of Hanzeer Azad Moulana, one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, aka Pilleyan, former LTTE member?

The British channel raised this issue with Sallay, in 2023, at the time he served as Director, State Intelligence (SIS). Sallay is on record as having told Channel 4 Television that he was not in Sri Lanka the whole of 2018 as he was in Malaysia serving in the Sri Lankan Embassy there as Minister Counsellor.

Therefore, the accusation that he met several members of the National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), including Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran, in Karadipuval, Puttalam, in Feb. 2018, was baseless, he has said.

The intelligence officer has asked the British television station to verify his claim with the Malaysian authorities.

Responding to another query, Sallay had told Channel 4 that on April 21, 2019, the day of the Easter Sunday blasts, he was in India, where he was accommodated at the National Defence College (NDC). That could be verified with the Indian authorities, Sallay has said, strongly denying Channel 4’s claim that he contacted one of Pilleyan’s cadres, over, the phone and directed him to pick a person outside Hotel Taj Samudra.

According to Sallay, during his entire assignment in Malaysia, from Dec. 2016 to Dec. 2018, he had been to Colombo only once, for one week, in Dec. 2017, to assist in an official inquiry.

Having returned to Colombo, Sallay had left for NDC, in late Dec. 2018, and returned only after the conclusion of the course, in November 2019.

Sallay has said so in response to questions posed by Ben de Pear, founder, Basement Films, tasked with producing a film for Channel 4 on the Easter Sunday bombings.

The producer has offered Sallay an opportunity to address the issues in terms of Broadcasting Code while inquiring into fresh evidence regarding the officer’s alleged involvement in the Easter Sunday conspiracy.

The producer sought Sallay’s response, in August 2023, in the wake of political upheaval following the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected at the November 2019 presidential election.

At the time, the Yahapalana government granted a diplomatic appointment to Sallay, he had been head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). After the 2019 presidential election, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa named him the Head of SIS.

The Basement Films has posed several questions to Sallay on the basis of accusations made by Hanzeer Azad Moulana.

In response to the film producer’s query regarding Sallay’s alleged secret meeting with six NTJ cadres who blasted themselves a year later, Sallay has questioned the very basis of the so called new evidence as he was not even in the country during the period the clandestine meeting is alleged to have taken place.

Contradictory stands

Following Sajith Premadasa’s anticipated defeat at the 2019 presidential election, Harin Fernando accused the Catholic Church of facilitating Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory. Fernando, who is also on record as having disclosed that his father knew of the impending Easter Sunday attacks, pointed finger at the Archbishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, for ensuring Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena, as well as JVP frontliner Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa, accused India of masterminding the Easter Sunday bombings. Then there were claims of Sara Jasmin, wife of Katuwapitiya suicide bomber Mohammed Hastun, being an Indian agent who was secretly removed after the Army assaulted extremists’ hideout at Sainthamaruthu in the East. What really had happened to Sara Jasmin who, some believe, is key to the Easter Sunday puzzle.

Then there was huge controversy over the arrest of Attorney-at-Law Hejaaz Hizbullah over his alleged links with the Easter Sunday bombers. Hizbullah, who had been arrested in April 2020, served as lawyer to the extremely wealthy spice trader Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim’s family that had been deeply involved in the Easter Sunday plot. Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim had been on the JVP’s National List at the 2015 parliamentary elections. The lawyer received bail after two years. Two of the spice trader’s sons launched suicide attacks, whereas his daughter-in-law triggered a suicide blast when police raided their Dematagoda mansion, several hours after the Easter Sunday blasts.

Investigations also revealed that the suicide vests had been assembled at a factory owned by the family and the project was funded by them. It would be pertinent to mention that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government never really bothered to conduct a comprehensive investigation to identify the Easter Sunday terror project. Perhaps, their biggest failure had been to act on the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) recommendations. Instead, President Rajapaksa appointed a six-member committee, headed by his elder brother, Chamal Rajapaksa, to examine the recommendations, probably in a foolish attempt to improve estranged relations with the influential Muslim community. That move caused irreparable damage and influenced the Church to initiate a campaign against the government. The Catholic Church played quite a significant role in the India- and US-backed 2022 Aragalaya that forced President Rajapaksa to flee the country.

Interested parties exploited the deterioration of the national economy, leading to unprecedented declaration of the bankruptcy of the country in April 2022, to mobilie public anger that was used to achieve political change.