Sri Lanka’s dark currents of ancient fears and hate will destroy this land

Where has Sri Lanka’s collective conscience disappeared to, even as a menacingly brooding tide of hate and anger envelops this land? This week, a small child died of malnutrition at the same time that the Parliament debated the passing of millions of public funds to purchase luxury vehicles for politicians, including Ministers as well as former President and current Opposition Leader, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Laid out in her white coffin, dark and pitifully small, her mother and father could only weep that they tried to provide for their family as best they could while another of their children, when asked what he had for food that day, said ‘boiled rice,’ smiling all the while in contrast to the pathetic agony of the spoken words.

The skeletal remains of our nation

Sri Lanka resembles this wretched child, cut down scarcely before the country was able to grow to full strength from its immediate post- independence promise. The skeletal remains of our so-called two thousand five hundred year old civilization are already being laid out in the coffin as politicians quarrel as to who will next steal from the public purse. And there is a palpable irony at play. Those who were killed in the Easter attacks by jihadists in April this year were predominantly Catholic and Christian. To their credit and despite other misjudgements, (political or otherwise as the case may be), the head of the Catholic Church and his priests moved swiftly to console their flock, urging calmness and restraint.

But what have we now? After a period of calmness where sane and moderate voices from the Buddhist clergy were reassuringly to be heard, priests clad in the sunset- yellow robes are shouting racism to the heavens in supreme defiance of the compassionate teachings of the Gautama Buddha. Painfully they include senior priests, causing doubt on the assumption that racist preachings are looked upon with disfavour in the mainstream. It was bad enough that a ranking high member of the clergy once called upon a Hitler to rule the land. But what we hear now is infinitely worse with senior priests making shockingly communal statements as a matter of course. In fact, every which way we turn, we are met with the crude blast of these attacks.

If the Easter bomb blasts killed people and destroyed families, racists attacks against Sri Lanka’s Muslim community, irrespective of the fact that all cannot be blamed for the actions of a few, are killing the nation itself. All right thinking Buddhist clergy and lay men/ women in Sri Lanka should aschew these racist sentiments in full force. In part, much of this is to do with the fact that there is a vacuum in Government. The ‘ yahapalanaya’ coalition has not only spectacularly failed in its 2015 promise but paved the way for instability that is worse than what we had previously encountered. The two ‘yahapalanaya’ leaders have proved beyond doubt that they are miserably petty men, absorbed only in bickering for power with nary a care for the nation.

Who are the next guardians of this land?

While the Sri Lanka Freedom Party seems non-salvageable, at least the United National Party has a good second tier of capable men and women if democratic inner-party governance is allowed. Its party leader and his inner circle of favourites who have disastrously repeated much of their same mistakes as in 2001-2003 must yield at least now and relinquish their tight grip on power. Their civil society backers who enabled much of the mistakes to be repeated due to their uncritical acceptance of the Government’s follies must turn the searchlight inwards. It is not enough to apologise, as one civil society pundit did recently for bringing the ‘yahapalanaya’ regime into power.

Let it be said clearly that civil society groups who were apologists for this Government are as responsible for the horrors that are now being visited on this country as politicians. While some worked (very patently as is now evidenced) for personal favours and benefits, others did so genuinely and with good intentions. It is said however that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Naivete and stupidy are costly mistakes to make when a nation’s fate is at stake. Meanwhile the Rajapaksa camp has not shown any signs of redemption. On the contrary, the cacophonous racial cries of its instigators whip up even more tensions. Are these the next rapacious and communalistic guardians of this land?

This Tuesday, the former OIC, Kattankudy Police Station testified before the Parliamentary Select Committee looking into the April terrorist attacks that the bomb blasts were like ‘a tsunami’ where mistakes were clear only after the event. Both he and his successor confessed that the terrorist character of the man who carried that attack out was not clearly seen before. This is all of a piece with the earlier statement by his boss, the former Inspector General of Police ( IGP) that gross negligence of the police and political command was a ‘system failure.’ Far from it. This tragedy occurred because senior policemen were too preoccupied feeding off the riches that the Easter Sunday terrorists used to tempt officials into allowing them to grow into a sinister cell without being checked.

Selective enforcement of the law

This is the only explanation as to why the two police officers could only stammer and stutter when questioned by the Select Committee in regard to jihadists being allowed to roam freely in Kattankudy and other parts of the country with no checks. Incredulously we were told that Kattankudy was, to all accounts, a most peaceful place though the evident Arabization of the town and environs were admitted, albeit with some reluctance. But as former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka’s questions (often the most sensible in the Committee) revealed, there was no point in asking identified jihadists who were out on bail, to report weekly to the police station if the police did not monitor them beyond that nominal reporting.

Manwhile the peculiar pattern of selective enforcement of the law continues. Existing law on hate speech is used by the police to harass and arrest writers of Buddhist practices that are violative of the Buddhist doctrine itself and journalists who critically assess the political and social environment. However, Buddhist priests who engage in hate speech are left unscathed. This is the precise reason why the Government’s contemplated new hate speech law must be resisted at all costs. It is true that social media and online websites allow free rein for idiots, zenophobes and communalists to run riot and that mainstream media is guilty of worse sins as seen by the rampaging hate speech in some Sinhala newspapers and television channels.

Yet as long as the implementation of law is discriminatory, violating the Constitution in fundamental respects, there will be no public confidence in the system of law. This is a fundamental norm of the Rule of Law. In truth, we are abandoning even the slim pretence maintained earlier that this is a country respectful of the law. Very soon, all will be swept along in this dark tide that threatens to engulf us, carrying with it the sad detritus of our communities rent asunder. Reason and sense has been lost to the four winds as educated professionals rant and rave on communal lines, allowing their inner demons to take over. Will this foul current stop flowing only when Sri Lanka is reduced to a pariah state, when our economy, our systems and our institutions are reduced to nothingness after the best leave the island’s shores and when we have just our dark hate left to us?

That is the question that should concern every Sri Lankan.