The most sickening TV news item seen by Sri Lankans in recent times was the cold-blooded murder of the mentally ill Balavarnam Sivakumar..!!!

The killing of bala varnam sivakumar

By Dr A.C.Visvalingam

Perhaps the most sickening TV news item seen by Sri Lankans in recent times was the cold-blooded murder of the mentally ill Balavarnam Sivakumar of Ratmalana. It is understood that a police constable named Dimuthu Somnas has been remanded in connection wth this attack. A few of his fellow constables are also said to be likely to be taken into custody. These arrests will predictably divert attention away from those criminals who started the whole thing by beating and chasing Sivakumar into the sea initially, and the other policemen who helped Somnas and his accomplices finish off the job by looking on, doing nothing. It has also been reported that the Bambapilitiya Police had been informed but had taken no action to stop the unrelenting assault. Most of the citizens who were witness to this monstrous exhibition of brutality would undoubtedly have been fearful of the consequences of interfering with its vicious’ participants. In these circumstances, the action taken by a few concerned citizens to alert the Bambalapitiya Police and the TNL TV Station tells us that there were at least a few decent persons there who had the conscience to try to do something to stop this inhuman killing. Considering the sad fate of many media institutions and personnel during the past few years, TNL TV and its personnel deserve our thanks and praise for their courageous exposure of this terrible episode.

The Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance (CIMOGG) has little doubt that the videoed evidence will establish to the satisfaction of the courts that Somnas, his accomplices and the inactive Police spectators were the direct and immediate perpetrators of this crime. On the other hand, CIMOGG’s view is that those in power who have steadily and unrelentingly destroyed the independence and professionalism of the Police force are the real wrongdoers behind this and a myriad other examples of the gross dehumanisation of Sri Lanka’s law enforcement apparatus. The moral responsibility for this pitiful state of affairs rests fairly and squarely on those persons who first foisted the omnipotent Executive Presidency on this hapless country and those who have subsequently exploited it for their own personal ends, barefacedly breaching their promises to abolish it. Under cover of the immunity given to /the President, which frees the incumbent from being sued in person in the courts, successive holders of this office have gone about violating the Constitution with chilling purposefulness.

In the early days of the 1978 Constitution, policemen who were found guilty by the courts of various misdemeanours were given promotions and their fines paid by the State. After the Police had successfully got a rapist convicted and sentenced to jail, he was pardoned and made a JP, in order to please a key Minister of the government of the time. Large numbers of SLFP supporters were punished or killed on the fabricated grounds that they were JVPers, at a time when the public was paralyzed with fear by the savagery practiced by the latter in dealing with those whom they wanted to eliminate. Later, a notorious criminal believed to have been responsible for more than one murder was employed as a high profile bodyguard by a President. Well-known artistes who appeared on political platforms had their houses set on fire. At least one woman supporter of a rival political party was paraded naked through the streets whilst the Police remained unmoved. Still later, media businesses and members of the media themselves have been subjected to increased threats, assault, arson and murder by those supporting powerful interests. The villains who carried out these acts were not worried about being caught and charged by the Police, who they knew feared political victimization, if they did their duty. No one seriously expected the Police to bring to justice those who were responsible for these offences. There are scores more well-known examples of impunity and the lack of accountability of the administration.

Encouraged by the knowledge that they will not be called to account for supporting or failing to investigate crimes which help the government for the time being in power, a frighteningly large number of the Police have conveniently expanded their activities into areas outside the political arena. It appears that they think nothing of arresting and torturing suspects or even persons who they know are innocent, not only with a view to solving crimes but even to help the odd friends’ or benefactors’ private agendas. From there, it was but a small step, when torture had probably resulted in irreversible physical damage to a victim, to get rid of the evidence by creating a false scenario of Police weapons being snatched, or grenades being flung at the Police by a heavily manacled suspect, to justify shooting him in cold blood. We do not deny the significant probability that a good number of those who were shot were well-known drug-dealers, murderers or rapists, regarding whose guilt the Police would have been certain in their own minds. As for the unidentified, tortured bodies in swamps and other even less accessible places, we cannot but speculate half-blindly.

The point is not whether the Police were right in eliminating criminals but that they failed to do so within the ambit of the Rule of Law. Under pressure, governments have appointed several Commissions of Inquiry to pacify the public until interest, as expected, wanes in respect of the current burning issue and is transferred to a fresher social or political drama. These Commissions were invariably given limited terms of reference and investigational resources. The final reports, unless innocuous, have almost never been published in full, although extracts unfavourable to the government’s opponents were freely leaked to the press.

When it was realized that the decline of governance and the Rule of Law had gone too far, the 17th Amendment was passed unanimously by Parliament in 2001 because all MPs, on a miraculously serendipitous day, thought of the country first and agreed to depoliticize the Elections Commission, the Public Service, the Police Commission, the Judiciary, the Human Rights Commission, and so on. As is generally the case with laws that are passed hurriedly, there were a few critical shortcomings in the Amendment but it was a huge step forward to control the unprincipled and arbitrary exercise of executive power. From the experience gained in the first three years, the Amendment could very easily have been improved to remove all identified defects. However, President Kumaratunge went against the intent and spirit of this Amendment by relying on a minor technicality to avoid appointing the Elections Commission, accusing one of the nominees of being politically partisan. Her Ministers, too, had come to find it irksome that they could not get their hangers-on appointed to good positions or stations over more deserving candidates in the face of the Public Service Commission and the National Police Commission.

Upon coming into power, President Rajapaksa, instead of getting the cooperation of the other parties to set right the deficiencies in the 17th Amendment, found any number of excuses for not making use of

his enormous authority to get the Constitutional Council reactivated, and thereby prevented the key Commissions mentioned above from being appointed. By this means, he has wrongfully arrogated to himself vast autocratic and monopolistic powers over the entire machinery of government. The disastrous effect this has had in exacerbating the conditions which restrain the Police from acting independently and, instead, acting with unlimited licence in the interests of the government has blunted the sensibilities of many policemen to the extreme extent witnessed during the assassination of Sivakumar.

Mr Malinda Seneviratne reminded us a few days ago of the following observation of the late Mr Ran Banda Seneviratne: “There was a time when, if a dog died, there would be fifty people wondering whose dog it was, how it died, and what needed to be done; now, even if fifty people died, not a dog would be bothered”. It is a matter for the most extreme regret that our successive Presidents have contributed in no small measure to this change of values. We, therefore, call upon President Rajapaksa to supplement his reputation as a successful “war” leader by getting all parties together to resurrect the 17th Amendment, with the revisions needed.

We also urge him to exploit the cooperation promised by the UNP and the JVP to get rid of the accursed Executive Presidency and reform the structure of government to ensure a much greater separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary than the present hybrid model, the unsuitability of which become more and more apparent by the day.

If he succeeds in getting this done, he will set Sri Lanka on a lawful and productive trajectory that would earn him an enduring reputation as a great peacetime leader and statesman. Among the many great outcomes of that step would be that the Police force would be able to regain the superb reputation that it had at the time of independence and not continue to display to the world how unprofessional and sadistic too many of its members have become.

Dr A.C.Visvalingam is President Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance

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