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Whatever possessed former President Ranil Wickremesinghe to flamboyantly claim that the report of the Commission of Inquiry inquiring into the use of the Batalanda Housing Scheme as an unlawful detention and torture chamber (1998-1990) was not formally on record, one would never know.

Derisive click-bait journalism

This claim was made during an entirely ‘cringe-worthy interview’ by Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan this week where the former President was barraged with allegations from ‘safeguarding the Rajapaksas’ to enabling war crimes and allowing the 2019 Easter Sunday attack on Colombo’s hotels and churches by jihadists to take place. I say ‘cringe-worthy’ for the reason that neither the interviewer nor the interviewee particularly distinguished themselves.

Where Mr Hasan was concerned, his conduct as well as that of his excited audience spoke to a choreographed performance that was singularly unhelpful in placing a constructive discussion of state accountability on the table. In fact, it invited derision as well as profound anger at the manner in which grisly crimes, which have left countless victims without justice in Sri Lanka, are constantly being used as casual journalistic click-bait in Europe’s capitals.

To be brutally frank, this is almost as bad as the deaths of hundreds of civilians at the hands of the Government and its paramilitary agents. True, an assessment of how a nation was brought to its knees by decades of corrupt and venal leaders using majoritarian xenophobia as a cover to amass untrammelled power and gather ill-gotten gains cannot be adequately dealt with in one hour. Perchance, this is difficult to do even in two hours given Mr Wickremesinghe’s later complaint that interview segments had been unfairly cut and edited.

A long standing ‘impunity problem’

That said, a balanced and informed focus should have included mention of the phenomenon of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances of innocents by counter-State forces, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) at various historical points of time in Sri Lanka’s vicious ethnic and civil conflicts. These form the other side of a brutal coin that constitute Sri Lanka’s ‘impunity problem.’ Certainly discussion of accountability is lopsided if only the atrocities by the State alone are focused on.

That apart, Mr Wickremesinghe’s besetting sin, as his loyalists and detractors both would willingly acknowledge perchance is to think that he is too clever by half. That hubris came out strongly in the Hasan interview, raising the question that if the former President was starved of public attention, he may have opted for a wiser choice than a barely camouflaged journalistic ambush in London. Even so, we have to ask again as by what stretch of the imagination did the former President believe that the Batalanda Report (as this Commission report is commonly referred to) was not accepted as of record?

Bewilderingly, this report had been printed as a Sessional Paper as way back as in the year 2000. But perhaps it is not too wise to inquire into the convoluted workings of Presidential minds, not only Mr Wickremesinghe’s, to be perfectly clear lest one is gripped by confusion and contradictions oneself. Regardless, we now have utterly ridiculous scenarios emerging where enterprising groups have banded together in this country and overseas to call for the (unnecessary) ‘tabling of the Batalanda Report.’

The Batalanda ghost raises its head

But to address the claim by the former President during the Hasan interview that the Batalanda Report had not come to any findings against him, the truth is far more complicated. Certainly it must be conceded, as anyone with a passing knowledge of what transpired will agree, that the Batalanda Report was itself not as lily white as its defenders would like to paint it. Its main finding was against senior superintendent of police, Douglas Pieris, accused of masterminding and executing Counter Subversive Unit operations from the Batalanda Housing Scheme.

In 2009, Mr Peiris (after a long period absconding abroad), was convicted of abduction of two men and one schoolboy with intent to murder but imposed only with a light imprisonment of five years. Apart from that, the Commission had found that meetings had been held under Mr Wickremesinghe’s leadership in the Batalanda complex in close proximity to houses used to perpetuate grisly acts of torture on suspected JVP insurgents. In even closer proximity were the quarters where Mr Wickremesinghe’s security was housed.

It was asked as to ‘what was the Minister of Industries (Mr Wickremesinghe) expected by law to do with police officers?’ The explanation that this was merely to give ‘political leadership’ and ‘direction’ in regard to counter-subversive activities, was deemed as unacceptable. The Commission also recorded evidence of Mr Wickremesinghe’s caretaker who had given ‘damning evidence’ against him and then died a few days later despite being in his thirties. The exact circumstance of this death was not inquired to, due to a ‘lack of authority.’

Political use of Commissions of Inquiry

The Commission observed that Mr Wickremesinghe had interfered in the ‘proper course of police duties and law enforcement’ and was ‘indirectly responsible’ for the maintenance of unlawful places of detention and torture. This use of the term ‘indirectly responsible’ is a recurring decimal in other Commission reports (ie; into the assassinations of Vijaya Kumaratunga and Lalith Athulathmudali). That is a peculiarly (legally) imprecise term where criminal accountability is concerned, used by various Commissions to cover a multitude of convenient sins visited on their targets.

In fact, as those of us familiar with the way in which the Batalanda Commission report was used to political effect by the Kumaratunge Government at the time may recall, some police officers successfully challenged disciplinary action taken on its findings in the Supreme Court. Writing to the Sunday Times at the time, I questioned the unsettlingly political use of Commission of Inquiry reports, and ‘the enthusiasm with which these police officers allegedly implicated in committing acts of torture are being punished’ on the basis of an unpublished (at that time) report.

This was while ‘findings of the Supreme Court against individual police officers found to have committed very specific and grave rights violations, are casually dropped by the wayside’ (see ‘Batalanda Report; A Recurring Tragi-Comedy’, Sunday Times, 11th October, 1998). Decades later, we must go ‘beyond Batalanda’ and focus on systemic reforms painstakingly detailed by Commissions of Inquiry whose voluminous reports litter our libraries but whose recommendations are uniformly ignored.

Media shows on state accountability 

Certain advances in the law have been made during the intervening period between then and now, such as recognising the crime of enforced disappearances. But these advances need to be translated into actual justice on the ground. The problem remains an abysmally poor prosecutorial record. A constant common recommendation by these various Commissions is to establish an Independent Prosecutor.

Further, evidentiary rules must be reformed in cases of enforced disappearances buttressing the stand taken by some judges, bolder than others that the burden shifts to the State once detention is established. Alleged perpetrators must be interdicted once disciplinary proceedings commence, not only upon indictment. Judicial advances have upheld the interdiction of police and army officers indicted of grave human rights abuses.

Even so, many police and armed forces personnel implicated in gross crimes continue to serve in the law enforcement and military establishment. In the meantime, like Banquo’s Ghost, the “Batalanda allegation’ persists to provide Mr Wickremesinghe’s tormentors with provocative ammunition from time to time. That said, the Hasan interrogation of the former President on Al Jazeera and its ilk will only be passing entertainment for the Sinhala and Tamil diaspora.

It will not offer desperately needed justice for Sri Lankans at home.