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Midweek Review

Between abstraction and empathy in Sarath Chandrajeewa’s visual paraphrases

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2 years ago

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Dominic Sansoni photo of Sarath and bronze heads

by Dr. Santhushya Fernando,
Dr. Laleen Jayamanne and
Prof Sumathy Sivamohan

“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” Paul Cezanne

Dominic Sansoni’s recent black & white photograph of Sarath Chandrajeewa’s head (taken among his One Hundred Impressions in Bonze Gallery at his Atelier in Wennappuwa), appears to be cast in metal. Dominic has done the impossible by sculpting Sarath’s image into a bronze head with the lightest of energy, light itself. It’s this activity of transmutation of energy and metamorphosis (might we call this a process of abstraction?), that we want to talk about together here. We feel unable to easily discuss discursively, ‘abstract’ or ‘non-representational’ or ‘non-objective visual art’, which itself is the reason for wanting to write this so as to learn some. It’s not that we don’t sense and feel something in such an encounter, but rather that we don’t have an adequate conceptual vocabulary to transform aesthetic sensations and feelings into words and thoughts, which when it entails art is a very delicate, subtle process. We want to discuss Sarath’s recent exhibition at Barefoot Art Gallery, titled Visual Paraphrases (November 24 – December 10, 2023), with this in mind. We will approach human powers of sensuous abstraction, especially in art, by lightly touching on an evolutionary palaeo-anthropological perspective and glancing at prehistory with its archaeological finds such as microliths, tools, cave paintings, pottery and later bronze artefacts.

Pre-History: Palaeo-Anthropology

Andre Leroi-Gourhan the French Palaeontologist, in his highly specialised and yet accessible, celebrated book, Gesture and Speech, tracks the slow evolutionary drama of the interrelationship between the hand and the brain through the morphology of Homo Sapiens determined by bilateral-symmetry (of the right and left sides of the body). The hands freed from locomotion up on trees swung as humans walked upright barefoot. The freed hand led to the creation of tools (technology) and the larger more differentiated brain. According to this theory the brain didn’t lead evolution, the upright posture and the two feet in movement did, and as a result the prehensile hands freed of locomotion and the brain atop the vertical spine worked together. The Latin root for the word ‘Man’ is derive from ‘Manus’ which means ‘hand’ from which ‘Manual’ and several other species defining words are formed. The Sinhala Manushya and Tamil, Manithan, also derive from ‘Man’ belonging to the same Indo-European language group.

Leroi-Gourhan theorises that tool making and use were done in a sequence of actions which he links to speech. This process (at its most complex), created syntactical sequences of meaningful sounds; speech. The animal face with its snout and mouth were freed from the feeding function of foraging, relegated now to the hand, so that the human jaw, teeth, lips, tongue and mouth adjusted/evolved (with a supple larynx) to make articulated sounds, which in sequence became meaningful; language. Leroi-Gouhran says rather enigmatically that, ‘to speak is to speak softly’. We eat and speak from the same orifice. This truism is encoded in the saying that ‘words are food for thought’. Sometimes, when ashamed, we have to even ‘eat our words’, in English at least!

Leroi-Gourhan again on the long history of human cultural development with technology: “Whether the agrarian economy came in gradually, and whatever forms the transition may have taken in peripheral regions, the process that began in the Near East during the Mesolithic era towards 8,000, had by 5,000 BC completely transformed the structure of societies from Mesopotamia to Turkey, Greece, and Egypt. Even before the appearance of pottery between 6000 and 5000 B.C, the foundations for the new economy had been laid by the association of wheat and barley with sheep, goats, and pigs, and the first permanent villages had come into existence. Cultural variations were already considerable”.

The Artisan-Craftsmen of Lanka

FALLEN MONUMENT

Sarath Chandrajeewa’s creative praxis broadly encompasses the three most ancient expressive plastic forms, Painting, Pottery and Bronze Sculpture. These three craft skills entailing specific, precise, sequential activities or ‘Gestures’ (in Leroi-Gourhans’ terminology), emerged slowly with their respective technologies and developed slowly into different art forms from paleolithic era (Stone Age) to ancient Bronze age civilizations. Therefore, to begin to understand the rigorous technical and conceptual training required and the manual processes involved in these crafts, over centuries, one is drawn to read up a little on archaeology, pre-history of art globally (Cave Art) and paleo-anthropology (fossil records). Doing so one glimpses deep evolutionary time before the separation of ‘The Arts’ from artisanal craft activity in the very recent early Modern era of the European Renaissance and then in industrial modernity. Sarath (whatever else he might be as a scholar, teacher, university administrator), appears to be in an ancient lineage of artisans, belonging to a ‘genus’ or specialised social group, a specific category of gifted, skilled, anonymous craftsmen that Lanka had had in plenty, once upon a time, but no longer. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy famously paid tribute to these anonymous craftsmen of Lanka in his visionary, hand-crafted book, Mediaeval Sinhalese Art (Campden: Gloucestershire, 1908). Here, it’s worth remembering that it took nearly sixty years for this unique book to be translated into Sinhala.

Within the history of Sri Lankan art Sarath Chandrajeewa is an anomaly. Traditionally, a Lankan potter would not have been able to cast in bronze, not because he had a ‘pottery head’, but because of belonging to a low caste in Sinhala-Buddhist society, though he might indeed have drawn on a pot or two, if he had time after his gruelling labour. Even now, after nearly a century of free education in the Fine Arts there are only a few bronze sculptors in the country. Ironically, Sarath had to go to Britain to study bonze casting from Tisse Ranasinghe at the Royal College of Art in London. Sculpture made by welding light metal like tin, which, for instance, Laki Senanayaka did so innovatively, is another skill altogether. A recent film honours his many exuberant talents.

Liquid Metal & Cinematography

We wonder if an imaginative soul, with a taste for interdisciplinary research and an understanding of film aesthetics might make a film on Sarath’s craft processes, skills and thought processes (at his unique Atelier in Wennappuwa, which is a foundry cum Gallery and school and living space, all in one), before it’s too late. Imagine how thrilling it would be to experience the fiery foundry where molten metal buckets are carried with iron prongs by Sarath and his several able-bodied young assistants wearing protective masks. The metal flowing like lava into moulds, matter (bronze), turning into spirit!

Plasticity of Clay & the Brain

Also, there are the terra cotta objects with the tactile clay to play with. Here, Mani Kauls’ film Mati Manas (Mind of Clay, India, 1985), may be drawn on, noting the value conferred by this modernist filmmaker on the craft of the anonymous, humble potters of perennial India. Note that he uses the word manas, mind, to denote the ‘plasticity of the brain’ itself, required for the crafting of clay objects. Then, take a deep breath, and compare it with the pathetic, derogatory term, Pottery-Head Dankotuwa coined by a well know academic/artists to put down Sarath’s combination of craft skill with deep historical scholarships.

Childhood Play Impulse

How Sarath instructs children as young as 5 or 6 to paint would itself be instructive for teachers of art to observe. It was Walter Benjamin who developed the ‘Proletariat Theatre Project for Children’ (with Azka Larkis), to learn how children played! He believed that bourgeoise education crushed children’s ‘Mimetic Faculty’, their innate capacity to create imaginative worlds through playing.

Hand Crafted Books

The pedagogic value of such a film for posterity would be quite considerable we think, as teachers ourselves. Besides, Sarath is also an educator who has a well thought out philosophy of education based on teaching, research and curriculum development for the Fine Arts, worth recording, at a time when the value of the Humanities is under siege in Lanka. In addition to designing and producing hand-crafted books of art scholarship at the imprint “Sri Lankan Arts and Crafts Association’, he has also assiduously and dispassionately chronicled both the violent and visionary institutional history of the University of Visual and Performing Arts where he was at first a student in the 70s and then a teacher, Professorial Dean and a Vice Chancellor until he was sacked from the last position by a ‘yaha palana’ presidential decree, ‘without cause’. These chronicles would be primary documents, should a historian of Lankan art become interested in formulating the baleful impact of Sinhala-Buddhist ideology on fine arts education policy, teaching and research.

We three academics, coming from three different intellectual disciplines (Medicine, English Literature, Theatre and Film Studies) worked along-side each other here, so as to understand this mysterious process of a ‘will to abstraction’ or non-objective art, evident in Sarath’s work. None of us are art historians but are learning on the run its diverse histories and theories relevant to our topic. Of the three of us, Santhushya and Sumathy have seen the exhibition, while Laleen has seen it telescopically, only on her computer and in the paper Catalogue to the exhibition, from Sydney. So, she believes that the other two friends and colleagues are her microscopic eyes. All of us know Sarath’s work (artistic and scholarly) to some degree, and have worked with him but Santhushya has known him intimately since childhood as well. Sumathy contributed a poem and a photograph of and a poem by her sister Rajani to the Jaffna Doors and Windows book, a collective multi-ethnic project conceived and produced by Sarath. Laleen however, though she has written on Sarath’s work, has never met him nor spoken with him or seen his work with her own eyes. But before the angel of death calls, she hopes to visit the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canberra to see his large figurative clay mural of folk traditions, celebrating our multi-ethnic Island home. It is a contribution to Australian culture too which has nourished several distinguished Lankan artists (Dharmasena and Milinda Pathiraja), and scholars (Michael Roberts, Neville Weerarathne, Anoma Pieris), and provided some with a hospitable home in an expansive multi-cultural ethos.

Art in the Brain; A Medical Perspective

Dr. Santhushya Fernando, who directs the innovative ‘Medical Humanities’ programme at the Colombo Medical College, says that the latest research in Neuro Science demonstrates how art activates complex cognitive processes by recruiting diverse brain regions. Due to the sensory dynamism of these processes, there is a great deal of ‘redundancy’ or excess in the operations of the Sensory-Motor system when we perceive art, she says. Here, excess of sensations (rather than purely functional efficiency), stimulates cognitive and affective processes in unpredictable ways. As such, that form of immediate, non-rational (not irrational), illumination we call ‘intuition’ is activated. Santhushya adds that, “recent neuroscience and behavioural studies done in relation to abstract art stimulate us to question why abstract art holds its appeal to the human mind. The research suggests that ‘Abstract Art’ appears to free our brain from the dominance of reality”. In so doing it derails our sensory-motor perceptual habits, enabling subtle sensations, of light and colour, say, “to flow within the brain’s inner processes”. These uncensored intuitive processes in turn “create new emotional and cognitive associations”. Artists, scientists and indeed mystics, have spoken eloquently of such profound intuitive experiences over centuries. Undoubtedly, Leroi-Gouhran is one such intuitive scientist.

Sarath, while sculpting his One Hundred Impressions in Bronze (1992), appears to have been immersed in this precarious, volatile zone of intuitive awareness. Santhushya has had the privilege recently of being sculpted and cast in Bronze by Sarath and has (unusually), written insightfully about her own experience of the process, what she felt. Her bronze head was placed in an adjacent space, separate from the Visual Paraphrases exhibition itself, which caught Sumathy’s eye and she wrote to Laleen about the quality or ‘impression’ captured there of Santhushya’s gaze. For myself, [SUMATHY] I looked at the eyes very carefully, for I had already been alerted to the way Sarath works on sculpting, starting with the eyes, or observing the eyes very carefully. When I heard this I was struck by how prescient this was; how truly distinctive. Not knowing anything about sculpting, I wondered whether this is how other sculptors worked. The eyes tell us not so much about the person herself as about where our gaze is directed. I have never met Santhusya in person, but gazing upon the sculpted figure, I thought of the bond between Sarath and the author of that person; two authors here. Two writers and two creators. Puzzling out and thinking about this bond between sculptor and subject intrigued me greatly. I had also seen Ivor Jennings’s statue that Sarath had made for the University of Peradeniya. What are his eyes like? But more importantly what does he gaze at? Similarly, Sarath’s One Hundred Impressions in Bronze has had this powerful centrifugal (not centripetal) force on those who have encountered this work (without prejudice), but with an open mind. His work is not narcissistically centred on himself and his subjectivity (whether radical or soulful), but rather, it radiates outward with an effulgence, connecting strangers in faraway places too. This is so true, Laleen. I wonder, by working in pottery and metal, common material, commercial material, and material of the everyday, if one becomes first an artisan and second an artist in the best senses of the terms.

(To be continued)


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Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

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23 hours ago

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2026/03/4

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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

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Midweek Review

Live Coals Burst Aflame

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23 hours ago

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2026/03/4

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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

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Midweek Review

Saga of the arrest of retired intelligence chief

Published

3 days ago

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2026/03/2

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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.

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