Features

A life in the law: some hurtful experiences of a Lankan lawyer in Australia

Published

4 years ago

2022/08/28

Foreword By the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG

The first part of this book is an extended snapshot of the privileged life that the author led within a notable legal family in post-colonial Ceylon. It tells the story of his decision to pursue his higher education at Cambridge University in England; and his return to Colombo with a good degree but modest prospects. How he slowly but surely built up a busy and varied practice as a barrister, becoming “one of the leading junior counsel in the country.” How he suffered various slights because he had formed a happy and enduring marriage, not only out of his caste but out of his race (his wife being of Italian descent). And how “in a fit of insanity” he decided to quit Sri Lanka, as his birthplace had by then been renamed, to migrate to Australia, and to embark on the risky project of re-establishing his legal practice in Melbourne.

In part, his unusual step of moving to Australia was a response to a change of government in his homeland and the commitment of the new government to switch the language of the courts from English to Sinhalese, in which he felt less competent. In part, it seems to have been a response to the hostility shown on racial grounds to his wife, an irony because of what was to follow. These early chapters of the book are like a black and white, or maybe sepia, film of days of inherited privilege that flowed because of his father, who had become one of the leading Queen’s Counsel of the country. Right up to the time of his departure, the young Nimal would rely on a servant to squeeze toothpaste on his morning toothbrush, a luxury I had formerly thought was reserved for the Prince of Wales.

The second, and major, part of the book recounts the story of a struggle, as the newly arrived advocate found that the tales of the success of those who had gone before were greatly exaggerated, if not downright false. For a short time, he worked in a large Melbourne solicitors’ office where it was his misfortune to be bullied and disrespected, often apparently on the grounds of his race and skin colour. He took the advice of the bullies who encouraged him with the news that an earlier employee, “similarly without brains”, had gained admission to the Victorian Bar. He had taken up personal injury work and was doing surprisingly well, enjoying unmerited success which might also come his way at the independent Bar.

Fortunately, at this point, the author struck gold in the advice he was given by Peter Heerey; the examples he observed in Brian Shaw QC, Neil McPhee QC and Jeffrey Sher QC; and particular friendships that were extended to him by leaders of the Bar, like Robert Brooking QC and Louis Voumard QC. The latter was the author of the classic Australian text on land law, recognized as one of the great legal textbooks written in Australia.

After a short interval, the author was to become a research assistant for new editions, updating the text and later assuming responsibility for its continuance in new editions. When he suffered bleak moments of self-doubt and hostility, he reminded himself of the distinctions of his father-hero; of his fine education in England; and of the engagement and respect he had won from Voumard and a few other doyens of the Bar in Melbourne.

Sadly, there were many grim moments throughout his long career as junior counsel in Victoria. The centerpiece of this part of the book is the story of his struggle to establish his professional credentials in the face of what he felt, and describes, as a consistent pattern of hostility, frequently served cold with clearly racist language against which he reacted with protest, complaints and resentment that remains to this day.

The magistrate who had asked him to spell his name (which he had shortened against the notorious difficulties that Anglophones often suffer with foreign words) but who repeatedly called him “Mr Nkrumah”, seemingly because he was dark-skinned like the then president of newly independent Ghana, Dr Nkrumah; the leading counsel who refused to add him to his clerk’s list because he was sure it would not bring work to its members; the foul-mouthed barrister who would greet him with the words “Hello Blackie!; the young upstart barrister, who (thinking it amusing) greeted him in company, blurting out, “Hello Sambo. Down from your tree?” Or the County Court judge who called him “My jungle friend”; the youthful unfamiliar barrister who found him inspecting new chambers dressed in jeans and demanded to know what he was doing there, as if he had no place in the hallowed halls of his betters; the senior judge who, in answer to a protest, told him: “If you can’t take what I did to you, you should leave the Bar”; and even a Melbourne tram driver, who was delayed momentarily by the author’s driving in traffic, shouted at him: “You fucking black bastard. Move your fucking black arse!”

These are but a few of the many events that have obviously left deep scars on the author. Yet, at an early stage, he was counselled by Dick McGarvie QC, already a leader of the Victorian Bar and later to be Governor of Victoria, who advised him: “Nimal, when you are in the right, always make waves” Others taught him by their example, like Jeffrey Sher QC, who gathered fame by answering judicial bullies with firm insistence: “I will not tolerate your rudeness.” So when the author suffered intolerable overbearing conduct by public officials, he would, as his life progressed, take it up, complain, record the wrongdoing and insist on a response.

As he acknowledges, in many cases where he had been bullied in argument the judge in question faithfully applied the law and he won the case. Particular judges are singled out for their invariable courtesy. Some even progressed to personal friendship. Occasionally, this was only because the author earned a way by performance into the judge’s esteem. Sometimes, he acknowledges, those who once bullied him later became quite fond of him. Still, we are left in doubt as to whether that feeling was reciprocated. Sometimes, one suspects, he found the earlier “dreadful times” that he experienced at the hands of judges – commonly attributed to racial hostility – just too hard to bear. And that explains why he has written this book with his selected memories, many of which are hurtful and painful, years after the exchanges that he recounts.

Because my own early judicial appointments were long ago and initially federal in nature, I came to know many Victorian judges and barristers, mostly senior people. Some of them became my friends. For me, there were none of the egregious instances of verbal violence and denigration recorded in the book, so I have no way of judging the accuracy and completeness of the events recorded. Nor is that my function in writing this Foreword. The manuscript that I have been given is, in parts, brutal and harsh. It names names. In at least three instances, the barristers singled out for racial hostility and inappropriate conduct were known to, and respected by, me. Even where some of those named may now be dead, their families live on. Those concerned have no opportunity to put their side of the evidentiary recollections.

The author confronts this issue by acknowledging the problem. He admits the good times he sometimes experienced in the “unity of the Bar” He acknowledges the general integrity of the legal institutions. As an outsider, whose practice at the Bar was originally almost wholly in New South Wales, I find it difficult to believe that things would have been more confrontational and racist in Victoria than they were in the New South Wales of my youth. North of the Murray River, the Victorian Bar was considered more genteel and English (despite the much coveted Irish rosette worn by its silks).

The author accepts that, in writing this book, he was advised to avoid the naming of names. He was warned that identifying claimed offenders would be seen by many as, in effect, “letting down the team”: washing the dirty linen of the legal profession in public. Essentially, this point of view recognizes the foibles of the human actors who invariably make up all branches of the legal profession, wherever it exists. It points to the inescapable stress and tension that most days in court involve for participants, including judges, barristers, instructing solicitors, clerks and, let us not forget, the clients.

The author acknowledges that there may be reasons for removing at least some names (particularly of the living). He may yet do this. However, he insists, in effect, that only by identifying bullies and racists will their misconduct be effectively extirpated from the law. By joining in the conspiracy of silence, those who know the offenders and stay silent contribute to the persistence and survival of conduct that is wrong – sometimes evil.

In my own case, my recollections of racist actions and slurs at the Bar in New South Wales are few. But I was not walking in the author’s shoes. My recollections of hurt and humiliation relate mainly to sexuality. They extended throughout my career, right to the close of my service in the High Court of Australia. A sprinkling of these I have written up and publicly discussed, including the homophobic attack on me in the Senate of the Australian Parliament. Others have related to early experiences received at the hands of particular judges. But for the most part, the daily slings and arrows have been forgotten. They have been drowned out by larger struggles, designed to confront the continuing wrongs to sexual and other minorities in global and usually in reformative terms.

Towards the end of the book, the author questions whether he ought, decades earlier, to have started a movement similar to that initiated to advance the rights of women at the Bar in Australia: in his case, to advance the rights of racial minorities at the Bar. I had a similar thought five years ago when confronted by the under-representation in the higher echelons of the judiciary and legal profession of racial minorities, particularly those whose ethnicity derives from Asia. This was measured in terms of the shortfall (compared with more than 10 per cent of the Australian population who acknowledge derivation from Asia in the national census) who are making it to the judiciary, to appointments as Queen’s Counsel, to partnerships in top-tier and middle-ranking law firms, and even to summer clerkships. My public questioning of these systemic failures helped to lead to the creation of the Asian/Australian Lawyers’ Association. This is now a body active throughout the nation. There is some evidence that this initiative is at last having the kind of impact that the author yearns for. Perhaps we both should have done more, earlier.

This brings me to the third, and final, part of the book. It includes the closing period in the author’s legal career, the death of his father, his belated appointment as Senior Counsel in Victoria and then as Queen’s Counsel. A final dream then came true: a short appointment to serve on the Court of Appeal of Fiji at the age of seventy-nine. Clearly, he feels that judicial preferment and access to the silken robe were earlier denied or delayed to him unfairly. He suggests that the size and variety of his legal practice by the end merited more opportunities than came his way. His long service in editing Voumard’s distinguished book haunts him with disappointments over opportunities lost.

Many other lawyers probably feel such disappointments. Few express their feelings because this is seen as an unseemly challenge to the majesty of the system. Once again, the author has made his own call on this. He was proud to receive his rosette as Queen’s Counsel. It made him, with his father, the only (certainly a very rare) instance of Senior Counsel of our tradition, father and son appointed in different jurisdictions of the world. He is honest enough to admit that the heavy workload involved in writing his judicial opinions in the month in Fiji left him “completely exhausted” If earlier that had been his lot in life, it would have had its down sides.

Some readers, in and outside the legal profession, will, for differing reasons, consider that the author should have kept his memoirs to the familiar self-congratulatory level that is usual in such biographies. Some will see a long catalogue of personal animosities as unbecoming to a senior member of a “learned profession” Some will feel embarrassed to read the stories of inner hurt that are usually kept to oneself.

On the other hand, this book presents the author’s perspective of his life in the Australian legal profession over the last 50 years. Even if many of the suggested instances of racism and bullying can be put down to hypersensitivity or paranoia on the part of the author, the residue that remains is still shocking. Shockingly, his story usually has the ring of truth.

When the author left Sri Lanka to come to Australia, he was warned by many confreres that Australia was, and to some extent still is, a land with a deep stain of racism. This is what has led him on occasion to call his transfer to his adopted home “an extremely hard time to endure” If he had but lightly researched the long history of anti-Asian attitudes in Australia, not to say prejudice against brilliant migrants of dark skin colour, and chilling prejudice against the Indigenous people, it would have alerted him to the risks he was running in moving to Melbourne.

On the other hand, this “godforsaken country” as he finally calls Australia eventually afforded the author notable opportunities. Perhaps he feels an obligation, before it is too late, to record “the hard time” he suffered too long and too silently so that his fellow citizens in Australia can learn from his experiences. The huge demonstrations that have broken out in 2020 in the United States of America, insisting “Black Lives Matter”, have had their counterparts in Australia. They are a sign that racial discrimination exists, is intolerable, and that the victims are now standing up and gathering many friends and supporters. Enough is, at last, enough.

A few of the author’s later expressed viewpoints, about women’s advancement in the law, and ideas like a return of flogging to deal with road rage, do not add lustre to his thoughts. But his book is certainly readable. At times it is entertaining. Often it is a tale of hurt. But it is when people in minorities stand against the tide that they may help to change the world. To that extent, uncomfortable reading as it sometimes is, it is good that Nimal Wikramanayake has written his story. We can learn from it. We can extrapolate the lesson about racism to a larger focus. It also applies to discrimination against women, gays, disabled people and others. In a noble profession like law, such lessons need to be learned and remembered. That is why it is sometimes useful for the pain to be written down, so that it will not be repeated and not be forgotten.

Michael Kirby, 22 June 2020

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Features

Lunatics of genius

Published

1 hour ago

2026/05/15

Thilina Walpola

Brahms and Simon

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 2

A very different sort of murder mystery today, one of the few intended to provide laughter too. Written in the thirties, it deals with a murder during a ballet, its title being A Bullet at the Ballet. It was a collaborative effort by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon, to whom I was introduced nearly half a century ago by Robert Scoble, the friend with whom I have discussed and shared books more than with anyone else.

Brahms was a ballet critic whose parents were Jews who had emigrated to Britain from Turkey while Simon was born in Manchuria in 1904 to a White Russian Jewish family, and then ended up in England, where he was renowned as an expert on bridge.

Having been fellow lodgers in London, they wrote together for newspapers and then tried out a novel. A Bullet in the Ballet, published in 1937, was an instant success, and over the next few years they published a couple of sequels, involving the Ballet Stroganoff, and the detective Adam Quill, who was tasked with investigating the first murder.

Brahms and Simon

In Robert’s Books and other reading around the world, published by Godage & Bros a few years back, I mentioned the first of these and also what then entertained me most, when I read these books in his luxurious flat in Chidlom Place in Bangkok, No Bed for Bacon, a romp through the days of Queen Elizabeth. Historical absurdities were their other forte, but in this series, I will confine myself to the three books that feature Quill, and the gloriously dotty Ballet Stroganoff.

It is owned by the impresario Vladimir Stroganoff, whose motley crew includes the once renowned ballerina Arenskaya, who is now his trainer, and the avant garde composer Nicolas Nevajno, who wants anyone, as he meets them, ‘to schange me small scheque’. The dancers are less memorable, except that two of them are the murder victims, both when dancing the title role in ‘Petroushka’. Neither Anton Palook nor Pavel Bunia was especially popular, and Quill was on the point of arresting the latter for the murder of the former when, having put it off at Stroganoff’s request so that he could dance the title role, the suspect was killed in the course of the ballet.

Both before and after the second murder, Quill is confronted with multiple motives, multiple means and multiple opportunities, to cite the formula in the Detective’s Handbook he has studied. Palook for instance had affairs with lots of girls but had recently taken up with the homosexual Pavel, whose lover, his dresser Serge Appelsinne, was profoundly jealous. The young dancers who performed brilliantly in the final performance of Petroushka, with which the novel ends, were also involved, in that Palook had been friendly towards Kasha Ranevsky, making Pavel jealous; and the ballerina Rubinska, involved with Palook, had tried to wean him away from Pavel, an appeal Pavel may have heard, after which she met Palook again just before he died, and he had said he was sick of being chased since his affairs were never lasting.

Preposterous intricacies one might have thought, had I not come across similar exchanges when we hosted the London City Ballet in Sri Lanka in 1985 on a British Council tour. Brahms and Simon simply push everything well over the top, with the characters pursuing their own obsessions without reference to the predilections, let alone the obsessions, of the others, all of which makes for high drama at a cracking pace.

But in dwelling at length on the plot of this first Brahms and Simon novel, I have omitted what perhaps provides the most zest to the plot, the constant bickering between Stroganoff and his orchestra, his efforts to avoid his relentlessly talkative Secretary, the endless stream of catch phrases, such as the Wiskyansoda Stroganoff offers his visitors, only to find there is none, just Russian tea, or the vigilant mothers determined to bag the best roles for their daughters.

Then there is Arenskaya, who flirts with the incredibly handsome Quill, and turns out to have had an affair years back with his boss, the usually grumpy Snarl, who softens surprisingly when he comes to a performance. And her husband, Puthyk, who was not at all jealous it seemed of her having had an affair with Palook, reminisces endlessly of his own wonderful performances in the past, though now at most he can only be used in crowd scenes.

Quill – and the ubiquitous press – meanwhile discover that a third Petroushka had died while playing the role, in Paris, before the two deaths in London. He had been found dead in his dressing room, and suicide had been the verdict, but now it was assumed that he too had been murdered, and there was thought to be a jinx on anyone dancing the title role. But Stroganoff was determined to go ahead with the gala performance he had planned, for which he hoped Benois, who had been involved in the original production with Njinsky, would come.

Though it was increasingly clear Benois would not appear, with tickets selling like hot cakes, in anticipation of a death, there was no way Stroganoff would cancel the performance. And his great rival Lord Buttonhooke, the newspaper proprietor, who it was rumoured wanted to start a ballet and had persuaded Palook to come over to him, had headlines about another murder all ready as the curtain rose.

Rubinskaya had earlier begged Quill to arrest Ranevsky, who was to dance the roll, as the only way of saving him, but there is no reason to do this, and so the performance does happen, with inspired performances by both of them. And, so, the murderer, who could not bear to have the role traduced, refrains from killing Ranevsky, and confesses to the earlier crimes. ‘Lord Buttonhooke strode from the theatre, a disappointed man’.

But that is not the end, for there is an epilogue in which Stroganoff writes to Quill to plead for kindness to ‘not an assassin, but an artist, that you have put in that pretty home in Sussex’. The letter has other elements that take up themes from the book, such as a new ballet by Nevajno, with ‘a scene where the corps de ballet is shot with a machine-gun. London will be shaken.’ And he will not tell Kasha and Rubinska that they dance better every day ‘lest their mother ask for bigger contracts’.

It was no wonder that the book was a triumph. The ballet scenes, if brilliantly exaggerated, did create a sense of how such spectacles were created, the murder mystery was full of suspense with the two deaths – and the discovery of another, treated earlier as suicide – well paced, and the climax when the ballet ends without another murder was gripping.

Features

Mysterious Death of United Nations Secretary General Hammarskjöld

Published

1 hour ago

2026/05/15

Thilina Walpola

Wrekage

LEST WE FORGET – IV

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld

(‘DH’ for short) was appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations in April 1953, when he was 47 years old. He was a member of an aristocratic Swedish family, a diplomat and reformer, in whom the Western world and United States of America had faith to do the ‘right’ thing. His mission was to prevent minor skirmishes among countries from escalating into a third World War. In short, his role was to implement the UN Charter (Peace, Security, Development and Human Rights).

The Korean War was just ending, and the Cuban situation (1956 to 1958) occurred during his watch. The Vietnam North/South conflict had also commenced in 1955. So did the Suez crisis in 1956. By 1960 another crisis had occurred in the Congo. He applied himself with religious zeal, sometimes trusting his conscience, judgement and personal commitment to maintain the UN’s integrity during the Cold War. As a result, he was not too popular with the US, the UK and Russia, which at one point wanted him to resign. By now DH was serving a second term as Secretary-General.

In the Congo, mineral-rich Katanga province wanted self-rule with Moïse Tshombe as its head, while highly paid white mercenaries (dogs of war?) ran his military. Thus, with this situation creating a civil war, things were going from bad to worse. By now UN troops were fully involved in ‘peace keeping’ in the Congo. DH had made three trips to Congo before, and his fourth trip, on September 13, 1961, was to include a visit to Katanga for a meeting with Tshombe in the hope of negotiating for peace. His first destination was Leopoldville, now known as Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). There, he spent about four days before flying to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, the country now known as Zambia. Ndola was situated at the Katanga border.

The flight took off from Leopoldville shortly after 3 pm on September 17. For security reasons, the flight was initially planned for another destination, then diverted to Ndola. The aircraft was a four-engine Douglas DC-6B, with ‘Aramco’ markings, Swedish registration SE-BDY, and named Albertina. With DH there were 15 other passengers and crew on board.

It was midnight when the aircraft overflew the Ndola airport, tracking towards a ground-based Non-Directional radio beacon (NDB) in the vicinity. To observers on the ground, everything about the aircraft looked ‘normal’. This was 1961, and it was still not mandatory to have a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) – collectively known as the ‘Black Box’ – installed onboard. The air traffic control tower had neither radar nor voice-recording facilities.

The navigational equipment on the DC-6 was primitive by today’s standards. A needle over a compass dial in the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) pointed to the beacon which was located close to the final approach. The ‘modus operandi’ was to fly past the beacon (which is at a known position relative to the airport). Pilots know they have flown past the beacon when the ADF needle swings around from pointing toward the nose of the aircraft to the tail. From overhead that Ndola NDB the aircraft is expected to fly on a heading of 280 degrees for 30 seconds, then carry out a course reversal, known as a ‘procedure turn’, offset to the right at 45 degrees (heading of 325 degrees) and flown for precisely 60 seconds, after which another turn is made to the reciprocal direction, in this case 145 degrees, back to intercept the extended centreline of the runway, with a bearing of 100 degrees to the NDB and the runway beyond. All this while descending to a minimum altitude of 5,000ft, as dictated by a landing chart for the airfield approved by the operating airline and local civil aviation authority. (See Chart 1 and 2)

In Chart 1, the significant high ground is only indicated to the north and south of the runway. There is no significant high ground to the west. Because pilots don’t know the exact distance from the airport, an acceptable technique used was ‘dive and drive’. Consequently, Albertina flew over Ndola at 6,000 ft or lower, and when turning ‘beacon inbound’ the pilots asked for a lower altitude of 5,000 ft to descend and maintain. While on descent, the DC-6 impacted unmarked high ground at 13 minutes past midnight, when only 9 miles from the airport.

Meanwhile in Ndola, a welcoming party awaited, consisting of Lord Alport, British High Commissioner to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Moïse Tshombe, the Katangese separatist leader, who had been brought in from Congo for talks with DH, and many others. They waited at the airport until shortly after 3 am, when the runway was closed and landing lights were turned off. Strangely, the air traffic control staff in the tower did not observe fire or noise of the crash and assumed that the aircraft had diverted to another airport. (See Image Wreckage)

The impact with trees occurred at a height of 4,357 ft above sea level, slightly left of the extended centreline of the runway. The aircraft should have been at least at 5,000 ft above sea level, as required by the approved landing chart. Significant high ground west of the airfield was not indicated in that chart.

The wreckage was found later in the afternoon of September 18, in the jungle, with over 80% of the airplane destroyed by fire. Although 14 passengers and crew were burnt beyond recognition, one bodyguard, Sergeant Harold Julien, survived for six days before dying in hospital. DH’s unburnt dead body was discovered with grass on his hands, propped up by an anthill and a playing card, the Ace of Spades, under his collar! The first UN officer to arrive at the crash site, Major General Bjørn Egge, a Norwegian, observed that there was a clean bullet hole in DH’s head that was covered up during the postmortem. So, did DH survive the crash to be killed afterward?

In the 24 hours preceding the crash, two of the three crew members had been on duty continuously for 17 hours, while the handling pilot’s duty time was within limits. The Rhodesian accident investigation team that conducted the inquiry declared it was ‘pilot error’. The following day, former US President Harry Truman, who was a confidant of incumbent President John F. Kennedy said that “Hammarskjöld had been killed”. Of course, pilot error was the most convenient explanation, because dead men cannot defend themselves. Therefore, those findings were disputed as there can be reasons why the pilots were forced to fly low. In other words, the cause behind the cause needed to be found.

In one of two UN-authorised inquiries, the UN’s Deputy Spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said that “significant new information” had been submitted to the inquiry for this latest update. This included probable intercepts by the UN member states, of communications related to the crash; the capacity of Katanga’s armed forces, or others, to mount an attack on the DC-6, SE-BDY; and the involvement of foreign paramilitary or intelligence personnel in the area at the time. It also included additional new information relevant to the context and surrounding events of 1961.

Additionally, in 1998 Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), stated that with regards to DH’s death in 1961, Britain’s MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5), the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and South African Intelligence were implicated in letters where information was withheld before by member nations of the UN.

One possibility was the planting of plastic explosives in the wheel bay of the DC-6 when it was on the ground in Leopoldville. Pieces of wreckage were not spread out over the jungle. The aircraft crashed in one piece, creating a swathe in the treeline. So, it could not have been an explosion.

Many Congolese natives, including ‘charcoal burners’ in the jungle, said that there was more than one aircraft in the sky that night. These reports were dismissed as unreliable by the original accident inquiry. It was possibly because in 1961 the Rhodesian authorities only accepted ‘white’ witnesses’ evidence. So, was the DC-6 shot down, and if so by whom?

A High Frequency (HF) radio listening station in Cyprus monitored a transmission of a highly decorated, ex-Royal Air Force World War II pilot, operating in the Congo as a mercenary with the nickname ‘Lone Ranger’, giving a running commentary while shooting a large passenger aircraft from his modified Fouga CM.170 Magister two-seat jet trainer airplane. The pilot, Jan Van Risseghem (from a Belgian father and English mother), may not have known whose aircraft he was shooting at. He was only told of the mission he needed to accomplish. Besides, he had a strong alibi set up by the Belgian State Security Service (VSSE), saying that he was nowhere in the vicinity. Documents released later confirmed that the alibi was pure fabrication. It is also said that the American Ambassador to the Congo sent a secret cable saying that Van Risseghem was the possible ‘attacker’! (See Images Jan Van and KAT 93)

Harold Julien, the sole survivor of the crash, stated from his hospital bed that the aircraft caught fire before it crashed. But his evidence was disregarded on the grounds that he was seriously ill and delirious before he succumbed to his injuries.

Then, Land Rovers being driven to and fro were observed by natives in the early morning of September 18. This led to speculation that the occupants were suspected French mercenaries attempting to reach the crash site and destroy any evidence of foul play before the official party arrived. Questions were also asked as to how the Ace of Spades (or Six of Spades) playing card ended up under DH’s collar?

Further reports mentioned a de Havilland Dove aircraft flying in the vicinity of the crash. Was it part of an attempt to bomb the DC-6 from a high altitude?

On the other hand, the DC-6 was making a very difficult approach and landing at night, with the possibility for pilots to be distracted by optical illusions. These have been identified and labeled as potential killers by scientists and aviation accident investigators in subsequent crashes. With no lights in the foreground, they would have lost sight of the natural horizon in the dark. Years later, this phenomenon was called a ‘Black Hole’. Did the captain attempt to do a visual approach into uncharted territory, while disregarding the radio navigational beacon landing aid, and collide into high ground, a type of accident described as a Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT)?

The verdict is still open

Today’s airliners, equipped with Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) and satellite-aided Global Positioning Systems (GPS), can be set up by the pilots to fly an Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated approach angle, independent of ground navigational facilities, to prevent this type of CFIT accident. Besides that, all turbine-powered aircraft carrying more than nine passengers must be equipped with a Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) as mandated by law.

Going even one better, there are enhanced radar displays to show the presence of high ground. Unfortunately, the DC-6 that the Secretary-General of the UN travelled in was powered by four piston engines.

It was said of Dag Hammarskjöld that he served as Secretary-General of the UN with the utmost courage and integrity from 1953 until his death in 1961, setting standards against which his successors continue to be measured.

He is the only Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to have been awarded the distinction posthumously.

God bless all secret service agencies of the world and no one else!

by GUWAN SEEYA

Features

Putting people back into ‘development’ – a challenge for South

Published

1 day ago

2026/05/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

In need of swift empowerment; working people of Sri Lanka.

Should Sri Lanka consider an 18th IMF programme? Some academicians exploring Sri Lanka’s development prospects in depth are raising this issue. It is yet to emerge as a hot topic among policy and decision-making circles in this country but common sense would sooner rather than later dictate that it be taken up for discussion by the wider public and a decision arrived at.

The issue of an 18th IMF programme was raised with some urgency locally by none other than Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja,Visiting Senior Fellow, ODI Global London, one of whose presentations, made at the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, was highlighted in this column last week, May 7th. An IMF programme is far from the ideal way out for a bankrupt country such as Sri Lanka but a policy of economic pragmatism would indicate that there is no other way out for Sri Lanka. Such a programme is the proverbial ‘Bird in the hand’ for Sri Lanka and it may be compelled to avail of it to get itself out of the morass of economic failures it is bogged down in currently.

While local economic growth possibilities are far from encouraging at present, such prospects globally are far from bright as well. Some of the more thought-provoking data in the latter regard were disclosed by Dr. Wignaraja. For example, ‘The IMF’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook projects global growth slowing to 3.1 percent in 2026; with downside risks dominating: prolonged conflict, geopolitical fragmentation, renewed trade tensions, bearing down hardest on emergent and developing economies.’

However, as is known, an ‘IMF bailout’ is fraught with huge risks for the people of a developing country. ‘The Silver Bullet’ brings hardships for the people usually and they would be required by their governments to increasingly ‘tighten their belts’ and brace for perhaps indefinite material hardships and discontent. For Sri Lanka, the cost of living is unsettlingly high and 20 percent of the population is languishing below the poverty line of $ 3.65 per day.

These statistics should help put the spotlight on the people of a country, who are theoretically the subjects and beneficiaries of development, and one of the main reasons, in so far as democracies are concerned, for the existence of governments. Placing people at the centre of the development process is urgently needed in the global South and shifting the focus to other considerations would be tantamount to governments dabbling in misplaced priorities.

Technocrats are needed for the propelling of economic growth but a Southern country’s main approach to development cannot be entirely technocratic in nature. The well being of the people and how it is affected by such growth strategies need to be prime focuses in discussions on development. Accordingly, discourses on how poverty alleviation could be facilitated need urgent initiation and perpetuation. There is no getting away from people’s empowerment.

In the South over the decades, the above themes have been, more or less, allowed to lapse in discussions on development. With economic liberalization and ‘market economics’ being allowed to eclipse development, correctly understood, people’s well being could be said to have been downplayed by Southern governments.

The development issues of Southern publics could be also said to have been compounded over the years as a result of the hemisphere lacking a single and effective ‘voice’ that could consistently and forcefully take up its questions with the global powers and institutions that matter. That is, the South lacks an all-embracing, umbrella organization that could bring together and muster the collective will of the South and work towards the realization of its best interests.

This columnist has time and again brought up the need for concerned Southern sections to explore the potential within the now virtually moribund Non-Aligned Movement to reactivate itself and fill the above lacuna in the South’s organizational and mobilization capability. In its heyday NAM not only possessed this institutional capability but had ample ‘voice power’ in the form of its founding fathers, with Jawaharlal Nehru of India, for example, proving a power to reckon with in this regard. The lack of such leaders at present needs to be factored in as well as accounting for the South’s lack of power and presence in the deliberative forums of the world that have a bearing on the hemisphere’s well being.

The Executive Director of the RCSS, Ambassador (Retd) Ravinatha Aryasinha, articulated some interesting thoughts on the above and related questions at a forum a couple of months back. Speaking at the launching of the book authored by Prof. Gamini Keerewella titled, ‘Reimagining International Relations from a Global South Perspective’, at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, Colombo, Amb. Aryasinha said, among other things: ‘Historically, there is a precedent that has been realized by the Non-Aligned group of countries – unfortunately, rather than being reformed and modified at the end of the Cold War, it has been tossed away.’

The inability of the nominally existent NAM to come out of its state of veritable paralysis and voice and act in the name of the South in the current international crises lends credence to the view that the organization has allowed itself to be ‘tossed away.’ The challenge before NAM is to prove that it is by no means a spent force.

As indicted, NAM needs vibrant voices that could advocate value-based advancement for the global South. Moral principles need to triumph over Realpolitik. Such transformative changes could come to pass if there is a fresh meeting of enlightened minds within the South. Pakistan by offering to mediate in the ongoing conflict between the US and Iran, for instance, proved that there are still states within the South that could look beyond narrow self-interest and work towards some collective goals. Hopefully, Pakistan’s example will be emulated.

Along with Pakistan some Gulf states have shown willingness to work towards a de-escalation of the present hostilities in West Asia. This could be a beginning for the undertaking of more ambitious, collective projects by the South that have as their goals political solutions to current international crises. These developments prove that the South is not bereft of visionary thinking that could lay the basis for a measure of world peace. That is, there are grounds to be hopeful.

NAM needs to see it as its responsibility to make good use of these hopeful signs to bring the South together once again and work towards the realization of its founding principles, such as initiating value-based international politics and laying the basis for the collective economic betterment of Southern people.