The battle of sinners

Tuesday 18th March, 2025

Sri Lanka has been described as a country like no other. This description is not far-fetched. The government of Sri Lanka has tabled in Parliament an old presidential commission report that serves as a self-indictment, and the Police Department is still looking for its ‘head’. The Court of Appeal has rejected IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon’s petition seeking an interim injunction against an arrest order. The Batalanda Commission report, tabled by the JVP-led NPP government in Parliament contains some damning observations about the JVP’s reign of terror in the 1980s!

Allegations of torture and judicial executions could not have resurfaced at a worse time for the UNP and its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. The much-delayed local government elections are on the horizon. The UNP has sought to pooh-pooh the Batalanda Commission report. Its supporters and other detractors of the JVP would have the public believe that the report is not worth the paper it is written on. They are busy trying to remind the public of the JVP’s terror campaign in the late 1980s. The Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), which is demanding justice for the Batalanda victims and legal action against the perpetrators of torture, is doing its darndest to conceal the fact that its leaders were actively involved in the JVP’s terror campaign during the 1987-89 period.

The JVP finds itself in the same predicament as the proverbial tippler, who dived headfirst into a poorly-lit swimming pool at night only to realise halfway through the plunge that it had been emptied. Let it be repeated that the Batalanda Commission report refers to the JVP’s crimes as well, and therefore it can be argued that the JVP has admitted to its past crimes, albeit unwittingly, by tabling that document in Parliament. Some of the current JVP and FSP stalwarts were in the JVP’s military wing, which committed heinous crimes during the 1987-89 period, in the name of their macabre cause, which the JVP has now forsaken as evident from the incumbent government’s policy programme. These characters will have to be prosecuted if a proper probe based on the findings of the Batalanda Commission gets underway.

The Batalanda Commission report says, inter alia: “As a result of terrorist activities of the JVP, hundreds of politicians, political activists, police officers and civilians were murdered. Terrorist activities affected the normal functioning of state organisations and in certain instances essential services were crippled thus causing immense hardships to the public. Hence, the situation was in fact extraordinary. It nearly led to a state of anarchy.” The Commission goes on to say, “It is noted with regret that the then government in fact resorted to extrajudicial methods to curb the spate of terrorism perpetuated by the JVP. The terrorism of the JVP was met with state terrorism.” One cannot but agree with the Batalanda Commission on this point. Both the UNP and the JVP must be held accountable for the savage crimes that shook the country in the late 1980s.

The Batalanda commission report has also shed light on the JVP’s political promiscuity and its readiness to sacrifice its socialist ideology at the altar of expediency. It says: “By the time the 1977 General Elections were declared, the peripheral organizers of the JVP were active, and in fact went to the extent of directly supporting the United National Party, which had been during that period classified as a right-wing capitalist force.” Thus, the JVP was instrumental in creating the monster that preyed on its leaders and cadres several years later. In 2015, it honeymooned with the UNP again, and in 2018, it saved the UNP-led government of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, whom it is now demonising.

In the early 1990s, complaints abounded about the Batalanda torture chamber, and they should have been probed and the culprits brought to justice immediately after the 1994 regime change. But the SLFP-led People’s Alliance government and President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga did not go all out to do so. Instead, Kumaratunga appointed the Batalanda Commission, whose report is full of flaws and lacks clarity. This may have been the main reason why the Kumaratunga government stopped short of initiating an investigation based on it.

Past crimes, however, have their own way of catching up with their perpetrators. The unfolding political drama, based on a 25-year-old presidential commission report, is a case in point. One can only hope that all those responsible for terror and excesses committed in the name of counterterror operations in the late 1980s will be made to pay for their crimes.