Sri Lanka’s leader grapples with political prisoners’ list
THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO WENT MISSING DURING THE CIVIL WAR IS UNDER DEBATE
Paintings at Temple Trees, this country’s White House, are still leaning against walls waiting to be hung, and the gated grounds are no longer teeming with guards and stewards who served the home’s previous occupant.
But more than a month after taking over this iconic home, after a shocking electoral triumph by President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe says he has been kept very busy.
Wickremesinghe said he had managed to help reset relations with the US, India and China and has only just started to grapple with the issues of releasing hundreds of political prisoners and handing back land seized mostly from minority Tamils during this country’s long civil war.
Wickremesinghe, who was appointed by Sirisena and took over Temple Trees from the departing President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said his first two weeks in office were taken up by a visit from the pope and the urgent need to produce a budget. “So it’s only been three weeks,” he said. “We just started.”
That is why he still has only the vaguest idea of how many political prisoners are still in Sri Lanka’s jails and how many acres of land can easily be returned to those from whom they were seized, he said. A tentative list of prisoners has been created, he said.
Double check
“I just want it to be verified twice over from my end before we say here’s the final list,” Wickremesinghe said. “We should have it by March.” Tens of thousands went missing during the civil war ending in 2009, including people who were killed in battles as well as those said to have been shot in custody. But there have long been rumours of secret camps holding thousands of detainees, a notion Wickremesinghe sought to dispel.
“There are a few hundreds, I think, not thousands,” he said. Some Tamil activists have become increasingly unhappy in recent weeks as a result of what they see as delays in releasing prisoners and returning seized lands. The Tamil-dominated Northern Provincial Council unanimously passed a resolution this month seeking an international investigation into accusations of genocide against Tamils during the country’s civil war.
CV Wigneswaran, chief minister of the Tamil-dominated Northern province, said that he feared the prime minister had refused to release prisoners because he did not want to anger the Sinhalese majority before parliamentary elections scheduled for this summer.
❝ Nobody seems to know who they [political prisoners] are, even those who ought to know.”
Mangala Samaraweera
|
Foreign Minister
“The prime minister wants to play for time because the elections are coming.”
Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera said that frustrations over the delays were understandable. “Nobody seems to know who they are, even those who ought to know,” Samaraweera said of the prisoners. “The officials themselves may have been too intimidated to ask questions about things they ought to know.”
Rajapaksa presided over an increasingly authoritarian administration, and its passing has led to a palpable sense of relief among much of Colombo’s elite, including top business leaders. Among the happiest are diplomats and representatives of Western nations with whom the Rajapaksa administration had become combative.
Wickremesinghe, who has served as prime minister twice before — in the 1990s and early 2000s — pledged to return relations with the West to a far happier state. “When I was prime minister last, we had good relations with the United States, India and China. The Rajapaksa regime destroyed that ... they thought that China would be their saviour,” he said.
Chinese contractors built roads and expanded ports during the Rajapaksa administration that were funded by huge loans. In moves that enraged Indian defence officials, a Chinese submarine twice paid visits to Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. The new government has promised to scrutinise these projects, and Eran Wickramaratne, the deputy minister of highways and investment promotion, said that his initial review suggested that some were “highly corrupt.”
Rajapaksa has been unclear about whether he will fight in upcoming parliamentary elections so far.