Genocide Gary, Batalanda and Ranil Wickremesinghe: Reasonable doubt, moral choice

Unique allegations of unique aberrations

‘Genocide’ Gary Anandasangaree

War-winning leader, zero personal allegations of sadism

Defeated JVP while maintaining personal distance

Sirisena Cooray: Ended JVP anarchy, stayed aloof

Closing the parliamentary debate of the budgetary vote of the Foreign Ministry, Minister Vijitha Herath spoke warmly about the appointment of Gary Anandasangaree as Canada’s Minister of Justice and congratulated him. 

Does Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, a senior JVP leader, know who and what he is talking about? Here’s a Toronto City News report.

‘Canada’s Parliament has created a day to recognize the genocide of Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Parliament unanimously adopted the motion to make May 18 of each year Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day.

Liberal MP Gary Anandasangaree put forward the motion on Wednesday.

Anandasangaree, the MP for Scarborough-Rouge Park, says in a statement that Canada became the first national Parliament in the world to create such a day.

…Anandasangaree says he knows much work lies ahead to make sure those responsible for the “atrocities” are held to account.

He says, “I hope this will give some solace to those who are impacted and traumatized by the genocide.”‘ (Parliament creates day to remember Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka) 

No Tamil Canadian with a conscience, who watched fellow émigré Jude Ratnam’s acclaimed documentary Demons in Paradise, shown at Cannes in a special screening (2017), could take this simplistic, dishonest, historically false and politically fundamentalist stand. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5H1TsVCzk) 

Gary Anandasangaree turned up in Geneva in March 2009 and reinforced the throngs lobbying UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillai and the UNHRC for a stop-the-war-now UN resolution, which our Geneva team prevented until the war ended. He remained to lobby for the West’s attempt in May 2009 (‘led from behind’ by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, going by Wiki leaked cables), a week after the war ended, to move an ‘immediate international investigation into war crimes’ resolution against Sri Lanka, which we decisively and pre-emptively defeated in a diplomatic Nandikadal, on my watch. (https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Impossible-Geneva-Sanja-Jayatilleka/dp/9556653481) 

‘Genocide’ Gary is now a Cabinet Minister in a G-7 country. He and other upwardly mobile Tamil diaspora hawks in mainstream First World politics pose a potential diplomatic danger to Sri Lanka, which the JVP-NPP administration doesn’t seem to know or care about. 

Vijitha Herath is correct when he says a ‘domestic mechanism’ for accountability can neutralize external pressure, but it must be the correct domestic mechanism, not a counterproductive one. It never needed a harrowing, polarising, destabilising Truth and Reconciliation process, which, as Vijitha Herath proudly reminded us, the JVP had advocated back in post-war 2009. All it takes, and all it would have taken, are: 

Elections to the Provincial Councils. 

Targeted prosecution of emblematic cases listed by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (2011). 

Mahinda didn’t oppose either. Gotabaya and Basil blocked both. 

Return of the repressed 

In an indelible moment, Ranil Wickremesinghe denied to Mehdi Hasan before a global television audience that he was in Government during the Batalanda events, insisting he was in the Opposition. Mehdi Hasan reminded him that he was the Minister of Industries at the time. 

Ranil clearly ensured the victory of the JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Presidential election of 2024 by running a spoiler candidacy. He came third, meaning he never had any chance of winning. He actually said Anura would win, and didn’t mind. 

In 2019, Ranil delayed nominating Sajith Premadasa as UNP candidate until Gotabaya had not merely been nominated but had gone two rounds around the country campaigning. He then popped up like a bad penny on Sajith’s stage at the massive Galle Face kickoff rally as JR Jayewardene never did on Ranasinghe Premadasa’s in 1988. Later in the campaign he declared that if Sajith won the presidency he would be the PM, which Sajith had to contradict. 

Sajith missed the magic 50% by a modest 8%. Ranil’s cynical sabotage paid off when Gotabaya returned the favour by picking him as PM over Opposition Leader Premadasa in April 2022. Basil did the rest and tilted the SLPP parliamentary vote away from respected SLPP dissident Dullas Alahapperuma to its traditional enemy Ranil. 

Ranil Wickremesinghe failed to count on what Freud called ‘the return of the repressed’: the ghosts of Batalanda. When he ensured the JVP leader’s victory in 2024, Ranil never imagined that an interview on international TV in 2025 is where the ghosts of Batalanda would confront him. He never thought that his insensitively flippant comeback that the Batalanda Report wasn’t tabled in Parliament and therefore lacked legitimacy --didn’t exist--would ensure its tabling in Parliament. 

Ranil had suicide-bombed his former deputy Sajith and ensured the victory of precisely the candidate who would be unable, because of his own JVP lineage and base, to ignore the call for public release, open debate and accountability. 

In another delectable irony, Ranil who saved Prabhakaran’s life by calling off an LRRP hit on him (2001), and in the next decade, disgracefully co-sponsored a Western resolution at the UNHRC which endorsed UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zaid-al-Hussein’s report accusing Sri Lanka of systemwide war crimes, and pledged to institute hybrid courts with foreign judges and counsel (2015), was verbally lynched in London by an audience which never once criticized Prabhakaran or the LTTE while displaying hatred of the Sri Lankan state, its military and its victory which finally ended a 30-years war. 

Previous administrations buried or failed to act on the Batalanda Report because, beginning with Chandrika, they believed that Ranil should be propped up within the UNP and Opposition politics, since the nation would never trust or like him enough to vote him in as President. With Ranil rather than Karu Jayasuriya or Sajith Premadasa as rival, they could comfortably cruise. 

The story of Ranil Wickremesinghe will not have as its last chapter, his arrival at the presidency bypassing a popular vote, and crashing to third place in a failed gamble. In the collective memory, the instant ‘word association’ with ‘Ranil’ may be ‘Bankruptcy’ for some and ‘Bond Scam’ for others, but will be ‘Batalanda’ for most.  

Ranil’s role, reasonable doubt 

The main question that arises from the Batalanda report is “why did Ranil stay there (fairly frequently) in the first place?” 

We glean from the Report that: 

Batalanda housed a detention, torture and extermination center in a complex of buildings belonging to the Ministry of Industries of which Ranil was the Minister. 

It is located in Biyagama, which was Ranil’s electoral base, his pocket borough. 

He was present in the complex on many occasions and lodged there for periods. 

Batalanda was visited by the notorious rapist and gangster Gonawela Sunil, jailed for life for leading the gang-rape of a 14-year-old daughter of a respected medical doctor, granted a Presidential pardon by JR Jayewardene, made an All-Island Justice of the Peace (JP), and employed in the Ministry of Education under Ranil. In his (televised) testimony before the Batalanda Commission, Ranil admitted his acquaintance with Sunil. 

Ranil couldn’t have stayed over at Batalanda frequently for reasons of personal security during the deadly Southern civil war, because he would surely have been safer, easier to protect, in Colombo, where his private residence was, or in a 5-star hotel where MPs were sometimes lodged. It can’t have been for administrative or counterinsurgency directive functions either, because Biyagama is easy to commute from and directives (“transfer X to place Y”) can be phoned in. 

So, why did Ranil have lodgings there and stay there on occasion during that time, in a place of extreme cruelty and excruciatingly painful death? 

Ranil recently declared in a statement to the nation, that the Batalanda Report only faults him for the administrative misdemeanor of allowing a ministry property to be used by the Police. In a searing readout of extracts from the Report, the FSP’s Duminda Nagamuwa explodes Ranil’s assertion. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrDaMWnlCgY&t=17s) 

It must be emphasised that Ranil Wickremesinghe did NOT play a decisive role in defeating the JVP’s barbaric second insurrection. 

The state’s counterattack against the JVP’s lethally violent uprising began in 1987 under President JR Jayewardene. A two-year campaign in which Lalith Athulathmudali, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Gamini Dissanayake and Ravi Jayewardene played a significant role, dismally failed to defeat the JVP. 

In sharp contradistinction, President Premadasa took oaths on 3rd January 1989, and by November 1989 the JVP had been decapitated, the uprising decimated. Political strategy and manoeuvre, policy and discourse, i.e. populist-nationalist ‘soft power’ (Janasaviya, removal of the IPKF) played the major role -- in which Ranil played little part. 

But what of the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism --’hard power’--aspect? 

The crucial factor was the reformatting of the security apparatus through the establishment of the Ops Combine, a temporary integration under a single command, of the various operational and intelligence/counterintelligence units of the armed forces and Police. As Rohan Gunaratne registers in his book on the JVP’s second insurrection ‘The Lost Revolution’, Ops Combine reported to Ranjan Wijeratne and Ranjan Wijeratne reported to Sirisena Cooray. 

If anyone saved Sri Lankan democracy from the JVP’s Pol Pot-type barbarism it was President Premadasa, but in actual management terms, Ranjan Wijeratne and Sirisena Cooray--not even remotely Ranil Wickremesinghe. Ranil’s main contribution has been in morally discrediting the State’s achievement.    

It is vital to grasp that: 

Ranjan Wijeratne and Sirisena Cooray, who gave leadership at Ministerial level to the decimation of the JVP insurrection, have never been accused in life or posthumously, of even a regular sleepover at a torture/extermination center, let alone any up-close-and-personal role.        

There were never such allegations about leaders (Sirima Bandaranaike, NM, Pieter) or Ministers (Felix Dias Bandaranaike) who crushed the first JVP insurrection in 1971. 

There were never such allegations about JR Jayewardene or his son and security advisor Ravi Jayewardene --who raised and trained the STF—when facing civil wars waged by the LTTE and JVP, including an assassination attempt on JRJ in Parliament by the latter. 

There was never any association of personal sadism or pathological violence with hard-charging President Premadasa. 

There was never an allegation of personal cruelty still less Batalanda-type residential visits by Mahinda Rajapaksa even after his younger brother Gotabaya was nearly victim of a suicide bomber. 

Despite three civil wars (counting 1971), Ranil Wickremesinghe is unique among Sri Lankan political leaders in facing such hideous allegations. The question is ‘why?’. 

He is unique also in being partial. Lalith Athulathmudali and Ranjan Wijeratne were consistent hawks, tough on terrorism in the North and South. Not so, Ranil. 

While he took a decidedly dim view of the involuntary denizens of Batalanda, Ranil had little problem with one of the world’s worst terrorists, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and intervened as newly-elected Prime Minister to save his life—an act that prevented the termination of the war 8 years before Mahinda ended it.     

Prof Paul Moorcraft, a former senior instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College wrote:

“…On 20th December 2001 a Special Forces team was in place in the Vanni jungle. For once it knew for certain where the elusive Tiger leader was. The assassination team was due to strike on Christmas Eve. The team leaders were just ready to press the start button when they were countermanded, despite fierce intelligence arguments that Prabhakaran’s death would end the war…The Special Forces operatives were stood down temporarily in a safe house in Colombo. 

In one of the biggest intelligence own goals of the war, the house was raided by Special Branch police from Kandy. The highly secret operation was exposed. 

It was not a case of overzealous detectives…The heads of military and national intelligence were overridden when the police arrested the operatives and jailed them in Kandy. They were released after two weeks and, as a scapegoat, a middle-ranking police officer was suspended, temporarily. 

It didn’t end there: the intelligence leadership was accused of using the safe house as a base to assassinate the Prime Minister. Once again, the Tiger leader was unscathed.”

(Paul Moorcraft, ‘Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers: The Rare Victory of Sri Lanka’s Long War’, Pen & Sword Military, UK, 2012, pp. 38-39.)

Former Army commander Gen. Gerry de Silva who liberated Jaffna from Prabhakaran, confirms Ranil’s culpability: 

“…The biggest drawback for the LTTE was the Deep Penetration Patrol (DPP) Units… These guys secretly went behind enemy lines and knocked off a lot of the LTTE leaders. So much so that they were so scared to come out, they said ‘We are not going to come out.’ Then the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) signed by Wickremesinghe came in 2002. Wickremesinghe never referred the matter to the Army, didn’t let us know. Even [President] Kumaratunga did not know. We were kept in the dark about the CFA. In the CFA, one of the clauses was that we had to stop all these DPPs…”

(Interview by Ruwan Laknath Jayakody, Ceylon Today, Dec 6th, 2017)

Elite political morality 

Colombo’s elite, the UNP, and today’s SJB as members of the UNP, preferred Ranil Wickremesinghe to Mahinda Rajapaksa, despite awareness of: 

The Batalanda affair (its proceedings, including gruesome testimonies by victims’ relatives, were on TV news). 

Ranil’s appeasement of Prabhakaran and sabotage of the Special Forces deep penetration operations. 

Mahinda’s patriotic war and victory in 3½ years after successive Sri Lankan leaders and an Indian leader (later assassinated by the Tigers) had failed for 30 years.

Absence of allegations or rumours against Mahinda of sadism. 

Issues of economic ideology, nepotism, governance and corruption (the last accusation unproven by the US Homeland Security and Dept of Justice teams sent by John Kerry at Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s personal request) were more important to the chiefly center-right social and political elite than: 

The possibility/likelihood of intentional personal cruelty, sadism and wickedness, i.e., evil.

Manifest treachery to the nation in wartime. 

Postwar sellout of national sovereignty (co-sponsorship of the Western resolution, UNHRC, Geneva 2015). 

The (ideologically de-Premadasaized) UNP and its proclaimed descendant and successor the SJB, were never trusted enough by the nation and its citizens with the destiny of the State. 

Though I supported Ranil politically in 1994-1996, that was before: 

UNP affiliation with the rightwing International Democratic Union (IDU). 

The Liam Fox agreement of bipartisan appeasement of Prabhakaran. 

Ranil’s role during the framing, arrest and detention of Sirisena Cooray who had nominated him for the Prime Ministership he was himself offered by President DB Wijetunga (1993), gifted him the post of Colombo Central UNP organizer, and backed him at the 1994 parliamentary election. 

The Batalanda Commission. 

I’m glad I always opposed Ranil in any Presidential race to lead the country, endorsing Chandrika (1999), advocating Mahinda (2005), backing CBK and Maithripala Sirisena over Ranil when they held the Presidency and he was PM in cohabitation or hybrid equations. 

The main moral demarcation in contemporary Lankan political history (the past quarter-century) has been between those who preferred, on balance, Chandrika Kumaratunga (plus Lakshman Kadirgamar) and Mahinda Rajapaksa to Ranil Wickremesinghe as Sri Lanka’s leader, and those who preferred Ranil—even in wartime. It is a question of one’s hierarchy of ethics and moral values. As the Americans say, “you are only as big as what makes you mad”.   

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