Midweek Review

Breaking the Cocoon: The Duality and Unity of a Dancer’s Body

Published

5 years ago

2020/12/23

By Dr Saumya Liyanage

Dance is an elusive art form. It is elusive in the sense that any type of dance form uses the human body as its expressive tool, and the art and the artist are one and the same. Dance is in a way similar to the actor’s art because the dancer uses her body as the means of expression. The actor and the dancer share this common ground where their art and the artistic tool are nonetheless inseparable and tightly intertwined. In order to understand the meaning of dance, one may need to separate the dancer’s body from dance but as stated the inseparability of the dancer from dance poses ontological questions as to who the dancer is and what dance is. Therefore, marking a boundary between the body and the work of dance is always blurred.

It is difficult to explain why people dance and how dance is differentiated from non-dance. Celeste Snowber writes that whether we dance and move our bodies, or whether our bodies are static and still, we always dance. She further argues that ‘we are all dancing and as we are all living, whether it is walking or running, swimming or hopping, jumping or being still. There is a dance of blood and fluid circulating in our bodies, and the expressivity of gestures is a daily activity’ (Snowber cited in Leavy, 2018, p. 247). In this analysis, Snowber broadly defines and blurs the distinction between dance and non-dance challenging us to rethink the way we define dance in the contemporary context.

Yet, Sri Lankan dance scholarship is still practised and confined within a particular school of thought that favours dance as a refined, codified body of movement. The learning of dance needs assiduous practice and dedication under a specific training regimen. Moreover, the dancer’s body should be physically trained and aesthetically beautiful to be able to perform and bring meanings to spectators. Hence traditional dance training and performance is purely cultivated through guru-shishya parampara (Teacher-disciple model) where the repetition and execution of learnt scores are supremely important. Very little space is allowed for the novice to explore physical possibilities beyond the regimented body. However, I am not skeptical about the skills and capacities that a traditional dancer possesses. Yet, this long assiduous practice and the regimentation of bodies along with cosmic teaching pertaining to demons and deities would undoubtedly affect and discipline not only the learner’s physicality but their thought process as well. Therefore, these pedagogical systems do not allow the learner to explore various expressions or movement culture.

In this article, I am going to discuss about an emerging dancer and choreographer Kanchana Malshani and her recent work titled, Talking Silambu performed, at the Royal Taprobanian cultural hub in Navinna, Maharagama. In this piece of dance work, Kanchana raises several questions worthy of discussion through the current practice of dance pedagogy in Sri Lanka and ontological questions of what dance is, and who a dancer is. Further her work explores how dance can be a self-exploratory journey for those who seek alternative avenues through breaking their links to traditional forms and regimented bodies.

Kanchana

Kanchana Malshani has studied traditional Sri Lankan dance forms from various teachers since her childhood until she graduated from university. Kanchana is a graduate from Sripalee campus, University of Colombo and received a First Class honours degree. Being a student of traditional Sri Lankan dance forms such as Kandyan, Sabaragamuwa and Low country dance, Kanchana has developed her own style through her engagement with contemporary and experimental Sri Lankan dancers such as Venuri Perera and Umeshi Rajeendra. Learning and working with Venuri Perera and her influence on Kanchana’s reincarnation as a contemporary dancer is immense; in her ‘second life’ as a choreographer and dancer, she is being mentored by Venuri Perera. Her recent incarnation as a contemporary dancer signifies that she as a dancer needs a different life and expression within dance scholarship. Her recent work, Talking Silambu, shows a clear rebellious individuality that seeks to break the traditional codification and rebirth as a free bodied woman.

In 2017, Goethe Institute organised a Choreography Lab with dancer Venuri Perera, in Kalpitiya Sri Lanka. At this particular dance lab, Kanchana learnt contemporary dance from Yuko Kaseki, a Japanese Bhuto dancer, and Mahesh Umagiliya. Further, she learnt from Prof. Sandra Mathern-Smith, Professor of dance at Denison University, the USA, who has travelled several times to Sri Lanka as a Fulbright scholar. Her intervention in popularising and mentoring Sri Lankan dancers included a group of students at the University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sripalee campus, was also a turning point in her dance career. Dance teachers like Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy, Preethi Athreya, Maria Colusi have also helped Kanchana develop her skills. After receiving a half scholarship to visit a two-week-long dance camp at Sanskar Dance Festival India, she has been able to work with teachers such as Vittoria de Ferrari Sapetto and Roberto Olivan. Apart from her dance training, Kanchana has been working with one of the English Theatre companies, Stages Theatre, led by writer and director Ruwanthie De Chickera in Colombo. Kanchana may have undoubtedly learnt the value of being an artiste and professionalism in theatre through working in an actors’ ensemble at Stages Theatre.

Dance and Contemporaneity

The term ‘contemporary dance’ signifies specific meanings to dance specialists than non-specialists of dance. There are certain qualities that set contemporary dance apart from other genres. Contemporary dance can be distinguished from modern and other forms of dance because of its shift from the traditional narratology, dancer’s perspective, and breaking away from some of the dance prejudices to integrate text, words, digital and intermedial elements to it. One such difference is that contemporary dance work departs from traditional third person singular narrative to first person singular self-expression. This first person perspective allows the dancer to reflect her own auto-biographical material.

Yet, these auto-ethnographic or auto-biographical narratives finally gets transformed into a political idiom.

Further contemporary dance deconstructs the aesthetic body celebrated in traditional dance and questions and dissects the skin of the dancer by opening up the inner flesh of the body. André Lepecki further identifies the uniqueness of contemporary dance from other genres because of its ‘ephemerality, corporeality, precariousness, scoring, and performativity’ (Kwan, 2017, p. 39). Thus, contemporary dance does not stick to a particular form, style or a structure. Instead it integrates various techniques, styles, and influences even from traditional dance forms to use the body as a political tool and the self as the centre of expression.

Talking Silambu

In this dance work titled, Talking Silambu, a twenty minute long piece of choreography, Kanchana appears in a non-traditional lose attire while wearing two Silambu (Silambu is a type of anklet made out of brass which Kandyan dancers wear when they perform) In the first instance, we hear the sound of Silambu as Kanchana’s legs begin to move. Yet, her dance body starts movement towards the audience while mixing traditional Kandyan dance codification with free body movement. It is clear that she performs half Kandyan and half improvised body movements in the score. In other words, her body movements are choreographed through semi-Kandyan codification mixed with free style movements. When the dance intensifies, she removes her Silambu, holding them in her hands and begins to shake them with vigorous body movements while throwing her body in various directions. At this point, Kanchana uses a trans-like act depicting trans-performance inherited particularly in low country devil dance. In this work, it is clearly demonstrated that her body is struggling with Silambu and trying to remove its connection to the body. This struggle culminates in the final phase of the dance work by indicating she runs away from the codified body and becomes a free woman. In this work, Kanchana demonstrates her discontent with the previous life as a traditional dancer and her struggle to break her affinity to the codified structure and beautification of the body in Kandyan dance. In a short conversation I had with Kanchana, she mentioned as particular rebirth that occurred at a dance camp organised by the Goethe Institute Colombo:

“I have been trained as a traditional dancer since my childhood but for the first time, working with this Japanese Butoh dancer, Yuko Kaseki, I learnt how to speak from my body. For many years I was living in a cage-tradition where I was entrapped. Living in this cage, I have performed what others wanted me to do. But in this dance lab, I found myself speaking to my own body and speaking through the body. I don’t want my body to be beautiful and aesthetically refined. I don’t want to display precision and codification of my body. I want to show how ugly I am and how vulnerable my body is.” (Kanchana, M., Pers. Comm. Dec. 2020).

Against the grain

In the traditional dance pedagogy, the dancer’s body is understood as a vehicle via which the dancer’s symbolic meanings are conveyed. There is a clear division between the inner and outer faculties in the dance body, and the dancer’s role is to bring forth those inner feelings to the onlooker via her body movements. This conceptualisation of the dancer’s body as a split between inner and outer is a complex issue pertaining to dance. Knowingly or unknowingly the dancer divides her body into body and mind and this Cartesian division has influenced the dancer to theorise the body and her craft.

Living in an ocular centric world, the dancer’s outer body is a place where womanhood is exploited for commercial purposes. From state-sponsored national festivals to television advertisements selling instant noodles or carbonated drinks, the dancer’s outer skin is commodified. Writing about Sri Lankan neo-dance traditions, propagated and performed at high profile delegations, product launches and in TV commercials in the country, I have written elsewhere that ‘women’s bodies succumb to the surgical knife of the choreographer whose male sexual desires are displayed on those bodies. Hence, no difference can be made between a choreographer and a cosmetic surgeon, whose expertise on women’s bodies, especially breasts and buttocks, are surgically transplanted and enhanced by incisions, stitches and staples’ (Liyanage, 2016). Amidst this commodification of female bodies in Sri Lankan dance arena, Kanchana’s attempt is to break away from this commodified, sexualised, and mechanised body to establish a non-codified and unified body of self-expression.

Here it is important for contemporary dancers to understand the value of the ‘living body’ or the ‘lived’ body that is celebrated in the vast literature of phenomenology and dance theory in the contemporary dance literature. In the dominant dance cultures from stage performances to digital and visual representations, the dancer’s skin is the most valued and emphasised. Now, with the contemporary dance turn, the dancer’s living or lived experience has come forth. Kanchana as a dancer now understands that her body is not a place for others to communicate vague meanings but a living entity where her own selfhood is reflected and displayed. It is a challenge for a dancer like her because the dominant female body has already been already established by key dance authors of the country. These dance authors have created a symbolic and sexualised female body for live and digitised performances. This symbolic and sexualised female body consists of the idealised female body for the male viewer. Kanchana is challenging this idealised body that is dominant in the real and digital world.

Dancer and Danced

The key juncture where the lived body differs from the symbolic body is that the symbolic body that is propagated in the media and elsewhere is the body that is not presented as a place for knowledge. Let me explain this further. In the traditional dance pedagogy, the dancer’s body is a place where meanings are generated and shared. In other worlds, the codified body is a canvas or a display where the onlooker extricates meanings. This codified, symbolic body is not presented to us as a place for knowing or sensing. Kanchana’s work and the work of other contemporary dancers suggest that we should understand the body as a place of sensing and knowing. This marks an epistemological turn in dance making and its reception. Dance, or the dancer’s body, has not been considered a place for ‘knowing’ in Sri Lankan dance pedagogy. Most often, a dancer narrates someone’s story or represents a third person singular perspective of the dance.

What Kanchana and the contemporary dance body suggest is to make a shift from the third person singular narrative to a first person singular perspective. This ‘I’ or the first person perspective allows the dancer to narrate her own stories and engagement with the social, cultural and political terrains. Further, a dancer as the author of her own work marks the departure of the dancer as an employer for a particular author. What Kanchana does in Talking Silambu is that as a dancer she tries to incarnate herself and narrate a story of searching a breakthrough and liberation. In this performance, her body works as a site of struggle and seeks the unity of her body and soul.

Conclusion

Understanding the body as a sensing and perceiving entity is still an alien concept to dance pedagogies in universities and private schools. Furthermore, dance can be a self-expressive and auto-ethnographic inquiry and is also a far-reaching idea for our students. Hence, the mainstream dance pedagogy produces dancers who dance without self-motivation to satisfy the audience who come to see symbolic representation of the body. Yet a handful of dancers who are eagerly exploring other avenues for dance expressions are also facing complex issues that their artistic interventions are not fully accepted in the mainstream dance scholarship in the country. Moreover, dancers like Kanchana have chosen a non-popular pathway to pursue their future dance careers and already faced deadlocks, as their artistic practices are not being accepted or sustained by institutions or organisations. Yet Kanchana is determined to break her cocoon to be incarnated as a hybrid moth.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Himansi Dehigama and Sachini Senevirathe for their assistance in preparing this paper. Further the author’s gratitude goes to dancer Kanchana Malshani.

References

Kwan, S. (2017). When Is Contemporary Dance? Dance Research Journal, [online] 49(3), pp.38–52. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/dance-research-journal/article/when-is-contemporary-dance/8D44743A01A1ECC8100C5E65C1142DC2 [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019].

Leavy, P. (2019). Handbook of arts-based research. New York: The Guilford Press.

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Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

Published

3 days 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

3 days 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

5 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.