Midweek Review

The Gift of Music: Sons and Fathers a film by Sumathy

Published

3 years ago

2023/05/3

“Ecstasy and hypnosis. Colours do not move a people. Flags can do nothing without trumpets… The potential fascism of music” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (A Thousand Plateaux)

“Schuman’s theatre [Bread & Puppet] bypasses individual characterization & motivation. This might be a way for theatre to retrieve its liberty of fabulation, freeing story from the restrictions of plot constructions (as ridiculous nowadays as wilful rhyme).”

Stefan Brecht (son of Weigel and Bertolt)

by Laleen Jayamanne

Sumathy Sivamohan in her three feature films (Ingirunthu, 2013, Sons and Fathers, 2017 and A Single Tumbler, 2021), seeks freedom to tell stories (several in the one film), without tightly plotting a sequence of actions. She appears to have a cinematic project to explore the hidden aspects of Lankan history from the perspectives of its minority communities. But she is indifferent to ‘the arch of a three-act structure’ mandated by script writing manuals, a commonplace now. Not only are her films structured in a manner unusual for Lankan cinema, the stories themselves are as unusual in that they focus on inter-ethnic relationships among Lankans in very specific social environments, marked by the history of racialised violence. In Sons and Fathers, she creates a flexible loose narrative structure, drawing on a hybrid historical ‘archive,’ as well as living memory gathered from oral histories by interviewing relatives of musicians still alive who remember those early days of the film industry, and also from the next generation of musicians, their sons. She is interested in intergenerational transmission of musical skills, traditions and values as much as in the emergence of something new, even unforeseen. Sumathy’s 2021 documentary Amid the Villus; Palaikuli deals with the repatriation of the Muslim population to their homelands in Puttalam and the consequent difficulties, after their near overnight mass expulsion, in 1990, by the LTTE seeking a pure Tamil homeland. Just as the traumatic partition of Bengal at Indian independence became the burning heart of Ritwik Ghatak’s cinema, an exploration of interethnic relations and the violence of Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms, from the point of view of the ethnic minorities and the dispossessed, are part of what drives Sumathy’s film praxis. I use the old-fashioned Marxist term ‘praxis’ to signal the self-reflexive aspect of her political understanding of film history and film theory, especially within India, and this aspect rather unusually combines with a wild (uncensored) imagination. These are some of the reasons why I think of her work as belonging to a tradition of ‘experimental cinema,’ known for its fearless exploration of new ideas and techniques.

Here I wish to explore Sons and Fathers (Puththu saha Piyavaru), which is perhaps the only Lankan film to base itself within a certain ethos of the Sinhala film industry itself in its production of music by a multi-ethnic group of musicians. While from its very inception in 1947, many highly popular Sinhala genre films were produced and directed by Tamils, Sumathy is the first Tamil female director to do so. But her films are not generic, nor are they ‘Art-House films.’ They have modest budgets with access to independent distribution in alternative international circuits, but drawing on a team of professional technicians who work for her at reduced pay and, often, non-actors.

Sons and Fathers

is the story of an ethnically mixed family (consisting of Rex Periyasami, his Sinhala wife Kanthilatha, step-son Luckshman and their biological daughter, Mala) and their relationship to music production in the film industry and elsewhere. It is set within the central events of the July ’83 race riots, both the lead up to it and also its aftermath. We also see how this lower-middle-class family becomes comfortably middle class in the ’70s, through Rex’s talent as a successful music director for profitable films, while the children were still young. He is loosely based on the very highly regarded composer Rocksamy who suffered grave property loss in repeated race riots, including the one in July ‘83. Rocksamy’s real wife, Indrani, is seen reminiscing about her husband with Sivamohan, at the very end of the film, seated below a large framed photograph of the garlanded, bespectacled musician. Rex’s wife Kanthi is a Sinhala widow with a young son (Lucky), from a previous marriage to a Sinhala man and has a natural talent for singing. This love story (within one of the most tender marriages I have seen in the Sinhala cinema), spans the ’70s and the’80s, capturing the direct, devastating impact of the race riots of 1983 on the film industry and ends in the period of the JVP and State terror of the late ’80s. The latter is casually indicated in passing, when we overhear in an eatery that K. Gunaratnam, the owner of Vijay Studio, had just been shot dead by a gunman. His name reverberates to those who know Lankan film history, which I researched for my doctorate. Certainly, the man serving at the eatery and his female customer knew who he was. Lucky, who is also having breakfast there, overhears this exchange. Gunaratnam was a pioneer film producer, (astutely making Lester James Peries’s popular film Sandeshaya, after Gamperaliya flopped at the box office), and the nearest we had to a movie mogul (along with Sir Chittampalam Gardiner of Ceylon Theatres Ltd and Jabir Cader), owning the exhibition circuit Cinemas Ltd and Vijaya Studio which we saw being burned down in the July ’83 riots, shown at the beginning of the film and also repeated later. He controlled all three tiers of the film industry and was also an industrialist who astutely diversified his assets into tourism and plastics (employing hundreds of people), and had escaped the anti-Tamil mobs who hounded him in the July ’83 riots, but was gunned down by Sinhala nationalist JVP terrorists in 1989.

Songs and Sinhala film fans

Sumathy

Songs are central to Sons and Fathers, just as they were to the South Indian-derived Sinhala genre films’ appeal, where 10 songs were not uncommon. The difference here is that just four songs, (two written by Sivamohan herself and one written and sung by the director of music, Anthony Surendra, and one popular Sinhala song, ‘Pita Deepa Desa’ from the 40s), are repeated as leitmotifs. This principle of orchestrated repetition of the few songs, in counterpoint to films mounting political violence, deepens their expressive powers. Though simple and lyrical in melody, one in particular (sung by Kanthi, referred to by Lucky as his ’mother’s song’), through its complex repetition by different voices, feels like Indian ragas created for particular moods, sensitive to time of day and the seasons and the exact present moment. All the songs carry a historical memory of Sinhala cinema’s link to Indian cinema and the contributions of Muslim, Malay and Tamil musicians and singers to the success and immense popularity of Sinhala genre cinema in the first two or three decades of the industry. Also, the popular songs became ways of expressing feelings, pathos, which are not easy to express more directly through plotted, enacted narrative scenes of the melodramatic genre films, without often falling into bathos (trivial, ridiculous). However sentimental or simple, the genre cinema’s popular movie music had the power to engage audiences and became very popular in those early days through Radio Ceylon broadcasts across the island, availability on gramophone records and the attractively produced song sheets, with images, sometimes in colour, sold cheaply at the cinemas. This large fan base sustained a film industry in the first two or three decades of Sinhala cinema (no mean feat), in a country where Indian films and Hollywood had controlling interests in distribution and exhibition.

It’s this period of the popular cinema, with its connections to South Indian films, which is the musical milieu of Sons and Fathers, where Rex Periyasami is a successful composer, addressed as Master. At the same time, the film presents a not entirely smooth intergenerational transmission of musical knowledge from a Tamil stepfather to Lucky his talented Sinhala stepson who at first resists it, refusing to practice the keyboard saying, ‘why should I learn music, you are not my father!’ His unexpected, quietly delivered, measured response is exemplary of this musician; ‘Whatever you think, you have to live with us son. Life is a beautiful song, but there will be discords, too.’ The second part of the film is more focused on the direct effects of the ’83 anti-Tamil pogrom on the family and on both Rex and Lucky in relation to their music itself. Kanthi, who sings Rex’s love song (Tharuka Hanga), tries to mediate and calm them while Mala is mostly folded into a book, perhaps in defence, as Rex’s employment is threatened and he says the music has dried up in his soul, directly changing his personality, becoming more inward and brooding. When Mala comes over to show him that she can now play a chord on his guitar, he snatches the instrument and yells at her never to play it, violently pushing aside Kanthi who tries to intervene. Lucky has become a musician playing the guitar and singing in a band in both English and Sinhala but is repeatedly taunted as a ‘Tiger cub,’ excluded from it by his musical friends, despite his protestations; ‘I am not Tamil, I am Sinhala, my father has a coconut estate.’ ‘Then why do you play that guitar!’ is his friend’s retort. Though Sinhala, at home both he and his mother do speak Tamil with Rex at tense moments and we learn that Lucky has a Malay and a Burgher friend, both living in their rather seedy lower-middle-class, multi-ethnic neighbourhood.

Experiments in story-telling

The song, in the dance sequence which opens Sons and Fathers, is a pastiche of a song from the hugely popular Indian Tamil film, Chinthamani (but with original satirical lyrics in Sinhala on the national addiction to all things foreign). A short clip from the original film is shown sung in a classical style, with a very chastely dressed star walking through landscapes. The Sinhala version was a hit song sung by Laskshmi Bai (of Malay ethnicity), at the Tower Hall Theatre of the’40s, with a large fan base. It was also popular on radio and is still heard, I gather. Not being the usual love song, it sets an unusual tone to the opening dance sequence of Sons and Fathers, modelled on routines familiar from the ’50s and ’60s Tamil cinema which the Sinhala films copied. The dance by Sumathy’s niece Maitreyei (a trained dancer from Britain) takes the cue from the satirical lyrics and adds a parodic edge to its seductive gestures when she smoothly adds an original clawed ‘lion mudra’ (with a mischievous smile) at the mention of the ‘Sinhala people.’ This song and dance sequence, chiding Sinhala folk for their lack of jathi ale (love of race), is repeated at the very end of the film in a most startling and baffling sequence, to which I will return later.

Filmic overture

Rex, Lucky, Kanthi

The opening 10 or so minutes of the film works really as an overture (realised only on a second viewing), introducing fragments of scenes as motifs, which are later elaborated on in the body of the film. It is thereby creating a remembrance of things past. I list the segments to clearly understand how Sivamohan structures her several stories focusing on the racism and violence of July ’83, through Rex’s family. Rex and Kanthi’s family story connected to the film industry can’t be told without the intersecting history of political violence based on ethnicity bleeding into each other.

1. The opening song and dance sequence (in b and w), discussed above.

2. A recording studio (in b and w). A singer (in a sari with her head covered like Lakshmi Bai), sings, in accented Sinhala, the opening song, Pita Deepa Desa with an orchestra, establishing an audio-visual montage between the dubbed song and the dance.

3. A mob of men in sarongs, carrying fire torches, run around shouting.

4. Rex Periyasami and family (who we have not yet been introduced to), are hiding submerged in water, in a lake, in the dark, while shouting anti-Tamil mobs run wild.

5. Repeat of opening song and dance sequence.

6.Vijaya film studio sign and building are set on fire by a Sinhala mob.

7. K.Venkat, a Tamil film director of genre films (including a film about the Buddha’s Sacred Footprint called Sri Pathula), is dragged out of a building by a mob.

8. A white car is set on fire

9. Repetition of the mob with firebrands.

10. Repetition of Rex and family submerged in water, hiding from the mob.

11. Repetition of burning car, with someone inside it screaming, who is later identified as Venkat.

12. A room seen through a broken glass pane, darkly, as Rex and family return to their trashed home.

13. Inside the room the four family members stand around traumatised by the violence, but find strength to speak. The following exchange marks the end of the overture and the beginning of the main story Rex was determined to tell, which desire sivamohan actualises in her film, Sons and Fathers.

Kanthi (wife/mother): We must begin again (amidst the debris of their possessions).

Rex (husband/father/step-father): Are we not human? Are we refugees?

There is no more music, it’s all a dirge. Yes, I must tell my story to the world.

(The stepson Lucky then speaks to his stepfather in Tamil).

Lucky: Appa, what will you say? To whom? In what language?

Where is your music now? Did it save you? Or did it save us?

Kanthi: No, the music saved us!

‘Appa … in what language?’

Sivamohan takes up the challenge of Lucky’s anguished question, spoken softly but felt like a wounding rebuke to his Tamil stepfather, because the only language he knows is the now proscribed music. Focusing on an ethnically mixed family, Sivamohan creates her own language, a cinematic language replete with songs, honouring the memory of our much-maligned popular cinema, woefully derivative though it was of Indian genres, but what the people did embrace as our own. In attempting to do this, the film opens up our ethnically polarised minds to new possibilities through the power of music and song, integral to the popular Lankan cinema and the livelihood of its multi-ethnic technicians, entrepreneurs, actors and musicians and the lowly working-class men who ran and cleaned the cinemas. This is a very ambitious film in that Sivmohan has dared to go out of her linguistic comfort zone (she says her mother tongues are Tamil and English between which she translates), and worked with a multi-ethnic cast and crew to create a film in Sinhala (encoding a historical memory), about the virtual potential for a rich multi-ethnic hybridised Lankan culture (‘Thuppahi’ Baila like Bombay meri hai also included). The multi-sensory powers of film ‘language’ (freed from constraints of plot) is Sivamohan’s answer to Lucky’s question, ‘Appa, in what language?’

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Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

Published

4 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

4 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

6 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.