Cardinal’s quest for justice

Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith this week met with Pope Francis, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Rome and Geneva respectively. According to news reports that quoted the Catholic church, the subject of these discussions was the lack of progress in domestic judicial processes to deliver justice for the Easter Sunday attacks that affected the Christian community in Sri Lanka the most, when three churches became the targets of the suicide bomb attacks. 

With his moves this week, the Cardinal has crossed the proverbial Rubicon on international justice, finally accepting that the local criminal justice system has failed to hold perpetrators to account. His entreaties to the international community echo the calls for justice from thousands of Sri Lankan victims of atrocities and human rights abuses since the end of the civil war as time and again, judicial processes in the island simply fail to deliver.

Having been elected on a national security and law and order ticket on the back of the 2019 bombings, after two years in office President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has delivered neither. Despite numerous commissions of inquiry, investigations by law enforcement authorities and a few indictments, no one, directly responsible for the crime or those who were criminally negligent have yet been held accountable in a court of law over the Easter terror attacks. The whole process has also been undermined by political deal-making and interference. For example, former President Maithripala Sirisena who was at the time also Minister of Defence and Minister in charge of the Police and all State intelligence services has been given a free pass after he pole-vaulted back into the Rajapaksa regime fold.

The fact that the Cardinal has now resorted to international legal and advocacy options is an indictment in the local judicial system which has for long years failed victims, be it the 100,000 or more enforced disappeared or extrajudicially killed or those routinely murdered in State custody. The Easter terror attacks are just another reminder of this broken justice system. The failings are even more concerning after the latest assertions by SSP (Rtd.) Shani Abeysekera that intelligence agencies of the State had repeatedly interfered in CID investigations into the terrorist cell and their networks both before and after the bombings. 

Abeysekera’s petition to the Supreme Court which details these links are yet to be challenged or in the very least denied by the Government. The former chief of the CID has made these allegations at the risk of perjury and contempt of court and could be jailed if he has lied in his petition to the Supreme Court. The fact that not even a token denial has been issued by the Government over these serious allegations is astonishing.

Instead of seeking the truth and offering a semblance of justice to the victims, the administration of Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been involved in a systematic effort to silence those who are demanding a reckoning. Shehan Malaka Gamage, an activist demanding justice for the victims of the Easter Sunday attacks, was arrested by the CID on 14 February in a Mafia-style abduction. Previously the CID questioned at length Rev. Cyril Gamini Fernando, a Catholic priest over a statement he is alleged to have made at a webinar. Such intimidation and harassment of individuals who are demanding the truth and seeking justice for victims will only cement the notion that the current Government and its military and security apparatus are involved in a grand conspiracy to cover up the true motives behind the incident.

The Cardinal has not always been a champion of human rights or efforts to seek justice for victims of crimes committed by the State internationally. Not so long before the Easter Sunday attacks, he famously proclaimed that human rights were ‘the religion of the West’. But there is no joy in this reversal of opinion by the head of the Catholic church in Sri Lanka, because it is the pain and denial of closure for his flock that the Cardinal carries with him to Rome and Geneva. 

In his quest for justice for victims of the heinous Easter bombings, one hopes Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith will also carry the prayers and appeals of thousands of Sri Lankans spanning the length and breadth of the island who are still crying out for justice 10, 20 and 40 years down the road. God speed, Your Eminence.