Black January of impunity needs to end

January marks many dark stains in Sri Lanka’s abysmal history of human rights violations. Lasantha Wickrematunge – Editor of The Sunday Leader – was brutally murdered in Colombo on 8 January 2009. His killing continues to be a symbol of impunity and the systemic failure of the Sri Lankan State to find and prosecute his killers and hold to account those who seek to silence the free press through violence and bloodshed.

Five Tamil students were brutally killed on 2 January 2006 allegedly by the Special Task Force of the Police. In 2019, a magistrate acquitted 12 members of the STF and a police officer due to a “lack of evidence.” To this date no one had been held accountable for this crime.

The toll on journalists has been significantly high in Sri Lanka’s sordid State violence. Prageeth Eknaligoda, a political satirist attached to a critical news website disappeared in January 2010 and was never heard of again. Former Rivira Editor Upali Tennakoon was brutally assaulted in January 2009, just two weeks after Wickrematunge was murdered on the street. Preceding Wickrematunge’s death a claymore mine attack was carried out targeting the Sirasa Network’s Pannipitiya studio. The Committee to Protect Journalists, records 19 journalists, mostly working in the Tamil language news media, who have been killed in Sri Lanka since 1992. Some other rights groups estimate this number to be as high as 40. While all these deaths are heinous crimes against free expression, the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge and the enforced disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda in January 2010 stand out as emblematic of the absolute rot that has set within the criminal justice system.

Many of these attacks took place when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence in his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa’s administration. With the CID taking over these grave criminal investigations in 2015 and 2016, facts came to light about how shadowy sections of the security establishment were involved in the murders, assaults, and abductions, led by a team of special forces trained intelligence officers stationed at an army camp in Maradana named ‘Tripoli base.’ . The CID investigation into Wickrematunge’s murder affords a case study of the corruption that borders on State-sponsored immunity. At least two other persons, innocent Tamils from Vavuniya, were murdered in what can only be explained as a cover-up to muddy the waters and cast blame elsewhere for the journalist’s murder. There were numerous other attempts to misdirect investigations.

The current administration led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was propelled to the highest offices in the land with a mandate to break from the past. Each of its predecessors have attempted to either cover up or provide immunity to the perpetrators of some of the most heinous crimes committed by the State. The President and his administration have an opportunity to prove that they are not hostages to the security establishment, and they can deliver justice for the many victims of State atrocities.

While there are tens of thousands of victims of State terror, the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge, enforced disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda and the killing of five young men on a Trincomalee beech remain as some of the most emblematic symbols of impunity and failure of Sri Lanka’s judicial system. If the current administration is not to follow on the same path as its predecessors and be part of the problem, it needs to expeditiously deliver justice to the victims of these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.