Often the terrible crimes associated with the State originate in local conflicts, where one party is able to mobilise state power to satisfy its thirst for revenge. Both crimes in the title took place during interludes of transition. In Embilipitiya, school principal Loku Galappathy’s son Chaminda was an army officer during the JVP insurgency, when both sides killed with no holds barred. Principal Galappathy had become friendly with Colonel Parry Liyanage, who took charge of the of the local Sevana army camp in July 1989. At one point the principal sounded two fellow principals a plan to abduct some schoolboys in order to put a stop to JVP-instigated demonstrations. They declined.

November 1989 was a period of transition where JVP terror, which peaked a few months earlier, was in precipitous retreat. The bulk of the Embilipitiya disappearances, totalling 32 innocent boys, took place just after JVP leader Wijeweera was arrested and killed on 13th November 1989 . The initial motive, it appears, was to teach a lesson to schoolboys who poked fun at love letters of army officer Chaminda Loku Galappathy to a local lass.

Justice JFA Soza of the Human Rights Task Force (created under external pressure) who reported on the disappearances in 1992, opined that the outrage was organised between the Galappathys, father and son, and Col. Liyanage. The evidence was, some of the local fathers, held at Sevana army camp and released, saw there a section of the abducted boys. Also identified were army men using vehicles from Sevana army camp in the abductions.

Not unexpectedly, the UNP government and the AG’s Dept. under Tilak Marapone, obstructed justice, even as witnesses were intimidated. The case was brought to court after a change of government. When the verdict was delivered in Ratnapura High Court in early 1999, Colonel (by then Brigadier) Liyanage and Captain Chaminda Loku Galappathy were acquitted. Principal Loku Galappathy and six soldiers were sentenced to 10 years RI over general charges concerning the crime.

The practice of not applying command responsibility protected the main protagonists. Justice was merely token and formal. The verdict against Principal Loku Galappathy was catharsis the South badly needed to hang its collective guilt on. It was not just the Army and Police that massacred Sinhalese youth, but a large section of Southern society was directly or indirectly involved. There is no will to probe this. It helped to preserve the rot with the JVP too carrying on as though it did nothing wrong.

The execution spot of the Trincomalee tragedy

The killing of the Five Students in Trincomalee on 2nd January 2006 took place during a phase of transition. It happened as the LTTE launched a fresh round of killings and provocations, after the installation of President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Once more the Government sanctioned killings, as against the JVP 19 years earlier, as a means of teaching a lesson to the Tamils, whom Sinhalese extremists identified collectively with the LTTE. The LTTE had killed several Sinhalese businessmen in Trincomalee, including Albert Hendric Weerakody at his home on Christmas Eve. As for revenge there were fewer inhibitions. The victims were five school leavers on the eve of their careers, who met at the Trincomalee sea front, among large New Year crowds.

At 7.35 PM men in a green auto rickshaw belonging to a man well-connected with the Police, threw a grenade at the students and drove into Fort Frederick passing the Pansala checkpoint. While some of the students were trying to help their injured friends, navy men who were in charge of security, sealed off the place preventing the crowd from leaving and switched off the lights. A police vehicle bringing a party of STF men led by Inspector VAS Perera, came past the same Pansala checkpoint, stopped near the students, assaulted them, shot dead five, injured two and withdrew.

The cover up of the atrocity then went into full swing denying the most obvious facts and intimidating witnesses. The Army Commander for Trincomalee Major General Tissa Jayawardena claimed the next day (3rd) that the victims were LTTE cadres killed by accidental explosion of bombs they were carrying to attack the security forces. A leading figure in the violation was SP Operations Kapila Jayasekere (KJ).

Dr. Manoharan, father of victim Ragihar, who was an eyewitness, observed the presence of KJ’s vehicle at the scene when the killings took place and saw KJ going to the hospital a little later, where masked security men were stationed to intimidate witnesses and obtain letters from parents certifying their dead sons as LTTE. On 10th January, after Dr. Mahoharan testified at the inquest, KJ’s vehicle with men wearing black masks was parked three hours in front of his house. Later, stones were thrown on his roof. He with other parents received letters threatening Trincomalee belonged to the Sinhalese and they should get out.

The STF killer team under Inspector VAS Perera had been sent to Trincomalee by former DIG HMGB Kotakadeniya, JHU official and adviser to the Defence Ministry, with, as he said, the approval of the Defence Secretary. At the inquest VAS tried to cover himself by disclosing that he was hand picked by KJ, a former STF man. Dr. Manoharan had also seen naval officer Udawatte Weerakody, the son of the man the LTTE killed a few days earlier, at the scene on a motor cycle, who appears to have taken the killer weapon from a naval guard and given it to the killers.

At the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) that went into the matter subsequently, KJ was in a corner, trying to deny his presence at the scene during the killings, rather than after. The police sergeant at the UC checkpoint had been very specific that “a long time after the OIC’s (Zawahir’s) jeep passed us, ASP-1’s vehicle passed that way. Apart from that no other officers involved on security duties passed that way.” There was no record of KJ’s vehicle coming to the scene after the incident.

KJ tried to get by claiming that he had picked ASP-1 Serasinghe in his pick up and arrived at the scene at 8.20 PM . It is then inexplicable why the sergeant identified Serasinghe rather than KJ, a superior officer. Besides, the difference between their vehicles was too prominent. Serasinghe’s we learnt was a blackish blue Land Cruiser (reg. no. 64-1064) and KJ’s is a grey pick up (250-0069). The CoI, saddled with a police investigation unit hand picked by the President’s Office, had no interest in clarifying such crucial points.

About the green auto-rickshaw from which the bomb was thrown, KJ told the CoI, “I made investigations through the OIC and obtained statements from those manning the check points. They didn’t know.” The matter appears to have ended there for the CoI. But several witnesses saw this auto-rickshaw and one victim testified to the Magistrate about this. UTHR-J too verified its passage as confirmed by an officer at Pansala checkpoint.

KJ being a senior police officer in Trincomalee who dealt in intelligence claimed he had not heard the name (Navy Lieutenant) Udawatte Weerakody, nor about the murder of his father a few days before the incident.

However three soldiers who were on duty around the area said in initial statements recorded by the Police and made available to the CoI that they had received calls from a person who identified himself as Lieutenant Weerakody, who told them of a bomb blast and asked them to be alert. The statements had been signed by none other than KJ. As the investigator at the time he had not attempted to get a statement from Lt. Weerakody who was evidently close to the scene of the incident. As far as the CoI inquiry was concerned, Lt. Weerakody did not appear to exist.

Another person given a key role was KJ’s subordinate Inspector Zawahir of the Harbour Police, officially the first to arrive at the scene of crime. He failed to find any evidence of bullets being fired at the scene, and claimed that he found an unexploded grenade at the scene that was used to implicate the victims. However ASP Serasinghe told the CoI that he observed a bullet mark on the ground the same night and had ordered investigations into firing of guns the same night. Serasinghe also confirmed to the CoI that the grenade Zawahir found at the scene was, in his experience, a kind used only by the armed forces.

The authorities tried to sell the death by accidental grenade explosion story even after the JMO Dr. Gamini Gunatunge the very next day pronounced the deaths as due to bullet injuries. It was two days later on 4th January that Zawahir went back to the scene and found bullet remains. Zawahir broke down at the CoI and was willing to come clean. Commissioner Mrs. Jezima Ismail was tasked to obtain a statement from him. She reportedly delayed, by which time it was too late.

ASP Serasinghe is one man who comes across as basically decent, but was forced to give KJ a fragile alibi and felt unhappy all the way. He gave much away saying that he heard the bomb blast 3 to 4 minutes before he was informed by phone (meaning before 7.40 PM), but then said that he was informed at 8.20 PM. KJ, his neighbour, denied hearing the bomb blast, and claimed he was told about it also at 8.20 PM. Serasinghe stayed at home 40 minutes after hearing the blast, before putting in an appearance. The report of the CoI has remained an official secret.

Scripted from the Very Top

The evidence tells us that the Army, Police, Navy and STF cooperated closely in executing this outrage, and then in the cover up and intimidation. The coordination evinced between different arms of the security services could only be explained by direct instructions from the Defence Ministry. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, President Rajapakse and former Army Chief Sarath Fonseka, are all answerable for this. The evidence also supports the public contention, and of several police officers, that the incident was planned and executed by Lt. Weerakody and Kapila Jayesekere, both of whom were at the scene; the former instructing naval personnel at the scene and the latter the Police and STF. Those at the top who instigated the crime, kept a safe distance.

These were practices begun long before Mahinda Rajapakse, principally under the presidency of J.R. Jayewardene. The UNP never repented them. All governments have been resistant to punishing senior officers from the security forces for two reasons. One is the perception that the unreformed, crisis-ridden Sri Lankan state could survive only if it wields repressive power unchecked by laws. Second, the security forces are so politicised that one cannot expose a senior officer without bringing down the whole house of cards.

Tamil terror, actual and potential, which the system conjured up, has proved a congenial ideological pretext to maintain and activate the repressive state. That the repression has no fixed object is evidenced by the last JVP insurgency. Unlike in the recent war, the State had no ideological defences when its brutality had turned on Sinhalese youth.

Justice was not done to the Embilipitiya victims. It is just as well that the Five Students did not go to the courts. Just as the State felt a need to cover up for Brigadier Liyanage, it must also cover up for SSP Kapila Jayasekere. What both cases make clear is that justice is beyond the reach of many who are left out for reasons to do with class or ethnicity. It took the Embilipitiya victims over nine years to get token justice. The Five Students case is only four years old now and will not go away.

The State’s virulent attitude to a minority evidenced in the Five Students case, precludes any complacent acceptance of the State’s claims concerning the recent war and its sunny promises for the future of the people of the North-East. This is also a challenge for the Sinhalese people, for the attitude displayed could easily turn against them.

Having closely observed our rulers, diplomats, intelligentsia and our expatriates on both sides of the ethnic divide, one cannot blame foreigners for concluding it to be the order of nature that justice for the people of this country should be strictly rationed, and that is only how things could work. Only we could change that.

(See also Official Secrets and Blind Justice, 4th Anniversary of the Trinco Five Students’ case, 2nd January 2010, http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/spreport35.htm )