By

Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Not only our actions, but also our inactions, become our destiny.”
Heinrich Zimmer (The King and the Corpse)

Mohamad Suhail was arrested twice in one day, first under normal law, then under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The first ‘crime’ of this 21-year-old student was walking down the road outside the Chabad House in Dehiwala. The Chabad House (a religio-political-social institution belonging to the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement, a Jewish-fundamentalist sect – think of Bodu Bala Sena with way more brains and cash), reportedly an illegal construction, continues to thrive under the benign gaze of law enforcement officers. Yet the same law enforcement officers arrested Mr. Suhail, a Lankan citizen, for being near a structure built to serve Israeli tourists.

Since Mr. Suhail’s real ‘crime’ would have earned them a magisterial reprimand, Dehiwala police accused him of not having an identity card. The magistrate refused to remand him and released him, pointing out that being in a public space without an identity card was no crime. Case closed. Or so it seemed.

Mr. Sohaila went home to Mawanella with his father that evening. In the night, a team from the Dehiwala police went to his home and arrested him again under the PTA, effectively preventing the magistrate from giving him bail. His ‘crime’ this time was having anti-Israel posts on his social media.

That was 24 October 2024. He spent the next 8 months and 3 weeks in remand prison. He would have vegetated behind bars for many more months, or even years, had not his incarceration made it to the news in June 2025, resulting in an outcry.

This week, the police informed the court that Mr. Sohaila can be released on bail since he had committed no wrongdoing under the PTA. Incomprehensibly, despite this total lack of evidence, the case against him is to continue. Even harder to comprehend is the reason for his arrest. After all, being critical of Israel (or of any other country including Sri Lanka) is not a crime even under normal law let alone the PTA.

Mr Suhail’s case could have been regarded as an isolated incident had it not been for the arrest in March 2025 of 22-year-old Mohamad Rusdi. He too was detained under the PTA for the ‘crime’ of being anti-Israel. In his case too, the police failed to find any ‘evidence’ – other than his opposition to the Gaza genocide. He too was released on bail, because the state wants to maintain the case against him.

The two cases, taken together, prove how easily, how dangerously the PTA can be abused, how it can be used to persecute innocents on the most ludicrous of pretexts. If this practice of arresting Lankans for being anti-Israel is given a pass, what will the authorities do next? Arrest Lankans for laughing at Donald Trump, ridiculing Narendra Modi or mocking Xi Jinping? How about the ‘terrorist’ crime of disrespecting the Pakistani flag, Maldivian national flower or Nepal’s national anthem?

After all, had we been told one year ago that a Lankan can be detained under the PTA for being critical of Israel, wouldn’t we have dismissed it as an April Fool’s joke?

The conclusion is terrifyingly obvious: any act, however ordinary or innocuous, can be deemed terrorism under the PTA and anyone, however innocent, a terrorist.

Initially, the victims would be non-Sinhalese since in Sri Lanka terror mostly meant and means Tamil or Muslim. But eventually, it will be the turn of any Sinhalese the government of the day has a problem with. It is not hard to envisage NPP/JVP leaders being detained under the PTA by a future Namal Rajapaksa dispensation, maybe for the crime of threatening the president’s second cousin! After all, the NPP/JVP in government has set a new record in abusing the PTA, making it easier for its successor to sink to even more abysmal depths.

The PTA has been in existence for 46 years. In that time, it failed to prevent the phenomenal growth of the LTTE, the Eelam War, the Second JVP insurgency, and the Easter Sunday massacre. Despite these monumental failures, it thrives and will continue to thrive because every government feels the need for it, feels safer, more potent for it, sees it as a protector of last resort, not of the country or the people but of its own power.

Regarding the PTA as a talisman against political opposition, public discontent, and electoral failure is a mistake every government makes and no government learns from.

PTA: an anatomy of failure

Not every promise is made equal. Some can be ignored without major consequences. Breaking others herald disaster.
Like the promise the UNP made in its 1977 election manifesto to politically resolve the Tamil ethnic problem.

Armed separatism came into being under the UF government of Sirima Bandaranaike (the LTTE was formed in 1976). But there was still a chance to prevent large scale bloodshed by finding political solutions to the political problems of the Tamil people. This was what the UNP promised do in its election manifesto: “The United National Party accepts the position that there are numerous problems confronting the Tamil-speaking people. The lack of a solution to their problems has made the Tamil-speaking people support even a movement for the creation of a separate state. In the interests of national integration and unity so essential for the economic development of the whole country, the party feels that such problems should be resolved without the loss of time. The party, when it comes to power, will take all possible steps to remedy their grievances in such fields as,

(1) Education;
(2) Colonisation;
(3) Use of Tamil language;
(4) Employment in the public and semi-public corporations.

We will summon an All-Party Conference as stated earlier and implement its decisions” (emphasis mine).

But once in power with a four-fifth majority, the UNP forgot its promise. Instead of prioritising national integration, JR Jayewardene focused on creating an executive presidency thereby concentrating almost all power in his own hands. In the meantime, the virulent outpourings of the likes of Cyril Mathew began to given the government a racist image the UNP didn’t have in opposition.

Less than a month after the election, all hell broke loose.

On 15 August, three policemen on patrol in Jaffna stopped three cyclists. One of the cyclists pulled out a revolver and shot at a policeman. Over the next couple of days, the police went berserk attacking civilians, destroying property and burning the iconic Jaffna market.

On 17 August at 11am, a radio message was sent from the Jaffna police station to the IGP in Colombo: “Today, 4 CTB buses have been set on fire. Naga Vihara is under attack. A crowd has gathered at the railway station Jaffna with intention to assault incoming passengers. The situation is deemed serious.” Every word in that message was a lie, but was received as nothing but the truth by many Sinhalese. Soon, anti-Tamil violence exploded in Colombo, regional towns, and in the Plantations. In some parts of the North, Tamils retaliated by attacking Sinhala traders. Violence raged over two weeks. Hundreds of people were killed and tens of thousands displaced, most of them Tamil.

The riots were a warning of the fragility of the situation and the urgent need for a measured political response by the government. Had the Jayewardene administration returned to its election promise, and worked at resolving key Tamil grievances, the war could have been avoided and hundreds of thousands of life, Tamil, Sinhala, and Muslim, saved. Unfortunately, the government did the opposite; forgetting the political grievances which led to the Eelam demand, it resorted to generalised repression in North while and trying to surpass the SLFP on the racism scale in the South.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act was born of this mindset. Formulated in 1978 and becoming law in 1979, the PTA made it possible for the authorities to arrest and detain any Tamil on terrorism charges without a shred of evidence.
When the PTA came into being in 1979, the LTTE was capable only of isolated acts of violence. Just four years later, by 1983, despite a severe internal schism, it was able to wipe out an entire army patrol.

A vignette from the deadly Four-Four Bravo operation indicates what the Lankan state and government lost by focusing on repression instead of on winning over ordinary Tamils. The operation was carried out by the crème de la crème of the LTTE, including Vellupillai Prabhakaran. As the group made their way to the selected spot in the Tinnaveli junction, their footfalls attracted the attention of some residents. “The more inquisitive ones peeped out of their windows or balconies. The LTTE had anticipated this. To pass for Sri Lankan troops, Chellakili and Victor barked out orders in Sinhalese. The perennial fear of men in uniform did the trick. The curious onlookers quickly retreated out of sight” (Inside an Elusive Mind – MR Narayan Swami). Had the government adopted an approach of isolating the militants by reaching out to ordinary Tamils, some alarm might have been given and the attack averted, saving countless lives, starting with the 13 soldiers who were to die that night.

Not taking that path would lead to Black July and quarter of a century of war.

Who lied to the President, and why?

Like the UNP in 1977, the NPP/JVP came into office promising to achieve national reconciliation. And, like the UNP, it is failing. The needless and unjust detention of Mohamad Rusdi and Mohamad Sohaila under the PTA signal that the current government is headed to an abyss – this time totally of its own making.

In April 2025, President Dissanayake publicly defended the arrest of Mr Rusdi insisting there was ample evidence to justify his detention under the PTA. Later the police were forced to admit the opposite – there was not an iota of evidence against Mr. Rusdi.

Did the President lie knowingly or was he duped? If he was duped (which seems the more likely possibility since he is yet to show any signs of racism) it would have been by someone he trusts. We do not know who lied to him, but he does. Knowing the identity of the liar, it should be possible for him to figure out the reason for the lie. Was it money (Israel is notorious for bribery) or innate anti-Muslim sentiments? Or are these arrests false flag operations aimed at whipping up another round of anti-Muslim hysteria?

In August 1977, a generalised pogrom could have been avoided if some police official in Jaffna did not send that false radio message to the IGP. Who authored it remains a mystery. The why is obvious. That radio message was a false flag operation aimed at setting the country on fire. It was done with malicious intent and it was done by a supposed guardian of law.

Warned by history, President Dissanayake has a chance to uncover the official/officials responsible for the equation of anti-Israel with terrorism and the consequent abuse of the PTA and bring him/them to justice.

The PTA was born as an anti-Tamil law. Its concept of terror invoked the image of every Tamil, from the politician advocating a separate state to the old woman sweeping the street who knew nothing of a separate state. So when the LTTE carried out the Four-Four Bravo operation, Sinhala mobs wreaked bloody vengeance on every Tamil they could get hold of.

In 2012, the Rajapaksas, in search of a threat to keep Sinhala-Buddhists cleaved to them, created the Muslim enemy. That image led to the anti-Muslims riots of Aluthgama and Digana, and from thence to the Easter Sunday massacre. The one thing it didn’t do was to make Nilantha Jayawardena, the then head of the SIS, the first top official to receive concrete information about the coming attack do anything to prevent it. By April 21st, he was in possession of the names of several potential attackers: Mohamed Zaharan, Mohamed Milhan, and Mohamedu Rilwan. If he moved to arrest even one of these men, the attack might have been prevented. And he could have done so easily, under the normal law or the PTA. Yet he didn’t. As the Supreme Court pointed out, “All this shows that there was so much information that was available before Nilantha Jayawardena…but it cannot be said that Nilantha Jayawardena acted with alacrity and promptitude.”

Had Mr. Jayawardena been a Muslim he would have been accused of helping the terrorists, perhaps even arrested under the PTA. But he is Sinhala and Buddhist, and therefore remains as free as a bird. No wonder the PTA failed miserably in doing what it was created to do – prevent terrorism. But it will survive the NPP/JVP government to be used in an even more surreal and deadly manner under a President Namal Rajapaksa.

The PTA is like the executive presidency, another Ring of Power its current wearer never wants to take off. Today it is Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s Precious. Someday it will be used against him. By the time he realises that, it will be too late, for him, and for ordinary Lankans who can become its victims for any reason or none.

Courtesy: The Island