By

Upul Joseph Fernando

Former British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka David Gladstone, speaking to BBC Sandeshaya related a wonderful story on 2 July 2008.

“During the government of President Premadasa, present President Mahinda was a very good friend of mine. He came often to meet me. On occasions he met me, he told me to influence the government to search for youth who had gone missing in the North and the South. He told me that he would establish an association comprising parents and children of the missing persons in order to enable them to tell the world of their suffering. He requested me to speak of this to the UN and the Amnesty International”

David Gladstone related this incident. However, when the Maithri-Ranil government is attempting to open an office to search for missing persons, Mahinda said last week, it is a betrayal of the country and betrayal of the war heroes, issuing a statement.

So then, when Mahinda talks about missing persons, is it not a betrayal of the country and the war heroes?

Actually, Mahinda established an association of the parents and children of missing persons and gathered together the parents of missing persons through Richard De Soyza’s mother Manorani Saravanamuttu. Mahinda thought that if he made the people from the North also join, the organization would become more powerful. Saravanamuttu also helped him with that.

A meeting of the parents and children of missing persons in the North and South was held at the Galle Face Green, Colombo and Leader of the Opposition Madame Bandaranaike also participated in it. The convener of that meeting was Mahinda and a representative who arrived from the North delivered a speech at this gathering. At that time, the Lakehouse Newspapers under the Premadasa Government, drew a cartoon of this meeting showing a Tiger’s tail appearing from under Madame Bandaranaike’s Kandyan saree!
It is a tragedy that today, Mahinda who spoke thus about missing persons then, is saying that inquiring into missing persons is a betrayal of the country and the war heroes. The story that Mahinda told the world in 1988 and 89 regarding the missing persons is mentioned in his biography named ‘Kurahan Satakaya.’

Commonwealth meeting

Subsequent to the war ending in 2009, Mahinda did not say there was no one who had gone missing during the war. On 14 November 2013, accepting the Chairmanship of the Commonwealth meeting, he told the Guardian newspaper in London that there was nothing for Sri Lanka to hide. “We have nothing to hide. If someone is missing or someone’s human rights have been violated or a woman has been subject to rape, they can go to any Court in Sri Lanka and file a complaint. If the case is proved after being taken up for hearing whoever it is will be punished…” This is what Mahinda said.

Presenting his Manifesto during the 2015 Presidential Election to foreign journalists, Mahinda said that he will take action to establish a mechanism to inquire into war crimes. At that time, no one said that Mahinda was looking into war crimes via the Sri Lankan Court. It was said that a separate local mechanism was being established.

When Mahinda made these comments then, patriots did not say that Mahinda was betraying the country and the war heroes. There is no way that it is correct when Mahinda does it and wrong when the Maithri-Ranil government does it.

Then, the main slogan during Mahinda’s Pada Yathra was the appeal to the deities made to find the sons who had disappeared. The mothers who participated in the Pada Yathra held in 1992 from Colombo to Kataragama dashed coconuts at the Kataragama Dewale and appealed to the deities to find their sons for them. Mahinda who went back to Parliament after completing the Pada Yathra said, the day the deities will lend an ear to the appeal of the mothers was not too far away. Not many days passed and Premadasa was assassinated. Then, during a debate on emergency law in Parliament, Mahinda said that the appeal made to the deities in the Pada Yathra had been heard.

Mahinda, who said that then, is engaging in Pada Yathra today, saying that war heroes should be protected. There is a saying that when politicians age they become more mature. Bandaranaike who made the Sinhala Language the State Language later brought the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact. Mahinda is the other side of that. Mahinda who spoke without any differentiation between the Sinhalese and the Tamils during his younger days on behalf of missing persons is today standing up on behalf of those who are responsible for disappearances. We do not know whether Mahinda who said then that Premadasa was punished by the gods for having made youth disappear, is today worshipping the gods or the devils?

Courtesy:Ceylon Today