Licence to Kill?

By?N Sathiya Moorthy

The police needs to be congratulated, and also thanked, for arresting the main suspect, the hand that pulled the trigger in the court-house killing of underworld don, Ganemulle Sanjeewa, in capital Colombo. Yes, the government that had withdrawn security for past Presidents still thought it fit to provide STF cover for the don when being brought to the court from jail should be proof of the security threats around the man ? starting with the possibility of his escaping from custody. His killing in an open court has made it more shocking than the other.

In a way, the Sanjeewa killing should also shake the nation?s conscience ? starting with that of the government. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has promptly vowed to finish off the underworld. It?s a welcome as well as an inevitable declaration. Yet, no harm would come his government?s way if it studied past attempts in this regard and learn lessons and applied them here.

Those that care to remember it was the discredited former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Defence Secretary under his brother and President Mahinda R, who had begun this ?clean Colombo? project as far as the underworld went. Yes, after the successful conclusion of the LTTE war, Gota also undertook urban uplift as an added responsibility and did attempt something before Mahinda lost power in Elections-2015. But he also came down heavily on the Colombo underworld.

Reports at the time claimed that the underworld dons were either getting caught by law-enforcement, or were running helter-skelter, often escaping to other countries, starting with neighbouring India. Later on, it turned out that there were Sri Lankan underworld bosses operating out of Dubai, leave aside Sri Lankan prisons. The long and short of it was that Gota?s mission in this respect remained unfinished. Truth be recalled, it had begun losing steam even when Mahinda continued as President and Gota remained Defence Secretary.

Greater focus, attention

It is equally unfair for the Opposition to blame the present rulers for failure on the law and order front, using the court killing as the prime example. It?s unfair, after all though there is no denying that it was one more area, like the economy and governance issues where the Dissanayake? dispensation should have set greater focus and attention.

According to Acting IGP Priyantha Weerasooriya, in the first two months of this year thus far, 22 persons have been killed, 17 of them shot and five hacked to death. Weerasooriya claimed that58 gangs with 1,400 associated have been identified in the country. He conceded that serving and retired personnel of the uniformed services were also involved in organised crime, and 11 of them have been arrested thus far ? two policemen, one soldier, one airman and seven army deserters.

Since the incumbent government took office, police have also seized a variety of firearms, including 13 T-56 rifles, 15 revolvers, 21 pistols, 75 12-bore firearms, seven repeaters, 805 shotguns and four other firearms. The fact that the Acting IG had to point to an LKR 1 million reward for information on the stolen T-56 rifles should show the precariousness of the situation.

However, the Acting IG did not clarify the impediments in the way the police arresting all identified gang leaders and members and bring them to book. Remember not just Gota?s unsuccessful drive as Defence Secretary, there was also this ?Operation Yukthiya? of the predecessor Ranil regime against drug-smuggling, which became less enthusiastic after human rights groups found a new subject for them to work on.

According to media reports of the time, even some western diplomats based in Colombo took exception to the operation. These two groups will not hesitate to ?intervene? if and when the government now tries out something like it.? It should also be prepared for such operations to be included in the West?s long list of ?human rights violations? that they have been rolling out at the UNHRC twice a year as religiously as they can.

Empty pockets, empty pans

Law and order problems are not necessarily a legacy issue like economic and governance issues. But it is an inheritance for this government as hired killings had become commonplace during the previous government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Not a day passed without a report of a murder here or a slaying there.

Worse still, the nation, having immersed itself in the economic crisis, much of which had passed since, did not have time for anything other than self-aggrandisement on the fiscal side. Even falling school records of their children, who had lost their own enthusiasm, direction and purpose after the Covid lock-down and followed not long after by the multiple crises on the political and economic front, did not matter to the parents or the society.

The higher levels of school dropouts, increasing drug menace and worse, especially involving girl children have all been causally attributed to empty pockets and empty pans. The government, then and since, has been making noise about addressing the issues, when brought out by UN agencies. As an educationist and Education Minister Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has even been talking about improving education standards in schools.

But a lot more needs to be done beforehand if the government and families together have to stop their children from becoming the feeder-posts for killer gangs and smuggler gangs, both of which are often rolled into one. In northern Jaffna, for instance, it was recently reported in local Tamil newspapers, how officials were discussing the need for more de-addiction centres, including one exclusively for young women. The situation elsewhere is no different, according to some studies.

Beginning at the beginning

In deciding to put down the gangs, the government has to begin at the beginning and adopt a multi-pronged policy, with sincerity and seriousness it deserves in shaping not only the present but also future generation(s). After all, Sri Lankans too have heard and read about some South and Latin American nations, where a crisis of the kind the nation is now recovering from, had ruined generations ? and the nation as a whole.

The government did talk about serving personnel of the uniformed services acting as hired killers, often using their service weapons in their care. There were also recent reports of missing automatic weapons. After that, nothing seems to be happening. If there is a continuing probe and there is progress in those investigations, it is all a hush-hush affair.

Nothing is more humiliating than the number of soldiers who deserted the armed forces during the course of the LTTE war, many of them with their issued weapons. The armed forces, after some time hesitatingly accepted the truth of it. Now again, they should display national leadership to identify the bad apples boldly, and interrogate them to find, expose and exterminate the links. There is the dual possibility of some of them working as ?lone wolves? against specific payments by specific individuals, or working for the gangs, which might have out-sourced those killings.

Inflicted ills

At the end of the day, it is about the air of permissiveness that pervades the post-Aragalaya social structure in the country. It has much more to do than those ills inflicted by generations of politicians and bureaucrats, beginning, if you want, from the pre-Independence days.

If the government leadership is serious about ending gangs in the country and ending this air of permissiveness, it should still begin by looking in the mirror. Time was when at the end of the two bloody JVP insurgencies and the LTTE war two decades later, apprehensions arose if ex-cadres might use the weapons in their hidden hands and would put them to commercial use, as ?guns for hire?. It did not happen.

Yet, when there was a ?peaceful? (?) mass protests of the Aragalaya kind, you have the unattended residue of societal permissiveness towards immorality and illegality. There was/is also the kind of permissiveness that has accepted criminality of killer-gangs and hired guns as a matter of daily life in the changed circumstances.

This government especially can send out a message loud and clear, if and only if it is willing also to bring those culprits in the organised arson against the properties of then ruling party leaders, starting from President Gota, Prime Ministers, Mahinda R and Ranil W, and a host of others. Despite evidence to the effect that the so-called suicide of a ruling party parliamentarian was a mass butchery, in which his police guard too was similarly massacred, and three governments in a row has not been able to do anything about it, is not only shameful but also disturbing.

After all, there would be social media pictures of the culprits as much as the victims when they were doing what they were doing. The same might apply to many if not most acts of political arson, but the police and the government are still silent about it. Are they still doing the kind of cover-up that they continue to accuse others in matters of corruption and governance?

Perverted thinking

If these charges could not be levelled against them earlier, that might have been because they did not get the same opportunity. Or, that is the kind of perverted thinking that would come to dominate societal discourses on the performance of the present-day leadership before they learnt to say, ?Jeeze? or ?Jeez? or whatever.

Acknowledging that there were 80 separate incidents of arson on the evening of fateful 9 May 2022, and around 10 persons were involved in plotting, identifying, planning and executing it in individual locations, you are then talking about 1,000 persons at work. This is apart from those that had joined them out of mass frenzy that had already been whipped up, or those who had the perverted thinking of deriving enjoyment and satisfaction at another man?s plight.

Then, there was a central agency with men who were taking decisions on the arsons, targets and methods. It was as much a centrally-activated attack, with coordinated and collaborative action all the way, top-down. It was as possibly as meticulous as any of the LTTE?s terror-attacks or the JVP?s insurgent acts of violence before it.

And, now you know why all good things, including the beginning to exterminate gangs across the country, and also other those ?guns for hire?, should begin where it should begin ? and not otherwise. In context, the government should be careful not to add to the rumours like wanting to link the current killings, including the one in the court house, to the ?provokers? of the Easter serial blasts in 2019, as if it were a diversionary tactic to derail reopened investigations into the other.

It does not trigger public expectations and hopes as someone up there might presume. It would only incite forgotten public disenchantment with the present-day rulers, too, as nothing said without evidence works with the people, who have a feel for the ground better than the rulers, better than the rulers are ready to concede!

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)