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A tentative list of prisoners has already been created, he said.
“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. And if there is any secret camp, you can close it down and get these people.”
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. “There are people who are missing whose names are not found anywhere,” which means they either “are not among the living or they left the country. That’s all.”
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 earlier this month seeking an international investigation into the alleged genocide of Tamils during the country’s civil war.
The use of the term “genocide” angered many in the new Government, and it came just before the United Nations Human Rights Council agreed to delay the release of a report into human rights violations during the war.
In an interview in his Colombo home here Sunday, C.V. Wigneswaran, Chief Minister of the Tamil-dominated Northern Province, said that he fears the Prime Minister has refused to release prisoners because he does not want to anger the Sinhalese majority ahead of Parliamentary elections scheduled for this summer.
“I’m talking of a history of not living up to promises in the past,” Wigneswaran said. “The Prime Minister wants to play for time because the elections are coming.”
Even without a verified list of prisoners, Wigneswaran said that dozens who are widely-known to be held for political reasons could be released immediately.
In a separate interview, 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.”
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over an increasingly authoritarian administration that many here refer to as a regime, 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 for Western nations with whom the Rajapaksa administration had become combative.
Wickremesinghe 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 fought with the West. They fell out with India. And 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 massive loans. In moves that enraged Indian defence officials, a Chinese submarine twice paid visits to 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 in an interview at his stately home here that his initial review suggests some were “highly corrupt”. Roads that should have cost less than $1 million per kilometre cost more than six times that much, he said.
"More than a month after taking over this iconic home after a shocking electoral triumph, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in an interview that while he has managed to reset relations with the United States, India and China, he has only just started to grapple with the profound issues of releasing hundreds of political prisoners and handing back thousands of acres of land seized mostly from minority Tamils during this country’s long civil war"
Much of that money was stolen by members of the previous administration and secreted abroad, Samaraweera said in an interview in his office in a fading colonial building here.
“We have already located over $2 billion dollars” stashed in foreign accounts, Samaraweera said. “We are speaking to the World Bank and financial intelligence agencies of several countries about it.”
The excesses of the previous administration included a multimillion-dollar expansion of Temple Trees involving the construction of a 7,000-seat auditorium, three separate high-tech Cabinet meeting rooms and a small kidney-shaped swimming pool.
Wickremesinghe happily offered tours of the rarely-seen home to visiting journalists in hopes of further tarnishing Rajapaksa, whose supporters held a vast rally last week. Rajapaksa has been unclear in public statements about whether he will fight in upcoming Parliamentary elections or attempt a political comeback of any sort. Wickremesinghe was less uncertain about Rajapaksa’s future. “I don’t think he’ll contest,” Wickremesinghe said. “I know him.”
