Easter is too sacred for political games

Easter Sunday terror attacks 

More than 260 people were murdered on Easter Sunday 2019.

They were not politicians.

They were fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, worshippers gathered in prayer and ordinary citizens going about their lives. Some were Sri Lankans. Some were visitors to our shores. All were innocent.

Seven years later, Sri Lanka is still searching for the truth. And rightly so.

The Easter Sunday atrocities were not merely another criminal act. They represented one of the greatest intelligence, security and governance failures in modern Sri Lankan history. The victims deserve answers. Their families deserve answers. The nation deserves answers.

What the country does not need is politicians treating Easter Sunday as a political football.

Yet that is precisely what appears to be happening.

One group seeks to weaponise every investigation against its political opponents. Another seeks to dismiss every investigation as political persecution. One side demands arrests. The other demands immunity. One side claims guilt before trial. The other claims innocence before the evidence is heard.

All are wrong.

The search for truth is not a political campaign.

It is not an election platform.

It is not an exercise in settling old scores.

The real questions remain exactly what they were on 21 April 2019.

1. Why were repeated intelligence warnings not acted upon?

2. Why were churches not warned?

3. Why were hotels not warned?

4. Why was the public not warned?

5. Who knew what?

6. When did they know it?

7. What did they do with that information?

8. And perhaps most importantly of all, what did they fail to do?

Those questions are bigger than any former President, minister, intelligence chief, police officer or political party. They go to the heart of whether the Sri Lankan State discharged its most basic responsibility - the protection of its citizens.

This investigation is not about the corruption that is alleged against the Rajapaksa family, the Wickremesinghe, the Sirisena or any one or collective individual. Let’s not miss the point: this investigation is about the one thing that MUST absolutely stand on its own: The Law. The law is the law is the law. (President Obama, OAU speech)

The tragedy of Easter Sunday should never be reduced to a contest between political camps. Every person against whom allegations are made is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence. Equally, no individual should be considered beyond investigation merely because they once held high office or enjoy political patronage. Not in the slightest.

The law must follow evidence.

Not politics.

The danger today is that the louder the politicians become, the harder it becomes for the public to hear the facts. Every statement is interpreted through a political lens. Every development is immediately claimed by one side and rejected by another. The victims and their families are left watching a spectacle that increasingly resembles a political battle rather than a search for truth.

That should concern every Sri Lankan.

The country spent decades learning the terrible cost of violence. Easter Sunday reopened wounds many believed had finally begun to heal. The least the nation owes the victims is an investigation free from political manipulation, political intimidation and political opportunism.

Politicians will come and go.

Governments will rise and fall.

Parliaments will dissolve and new ones will be elected.

But the obligation to establish the full truth about Easter Sunday will remain.

Be that as it may, Easter is too sacred, too painful and too important to become another chapter in Sri Lanka’s endless partisan warfare.

The dead deserve better.

The living deserve better.

And the truth deserves better.

(The author is an independent broadcaster and journalist and could be reached via email [email protected])