(MENAFN- Colombo Gazette)
By N Sathiya Moorthy
Independent of the main Opposition SJB's boycott of the government's official Independence Day celebrations on 4 February, a similar declaration by the Catholic Church has caused eyebrows to raise, though only in fewer circles. The fact that His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, stayed away from the official functions and also cancelled the customary special service that day should be viewed with concern, not just for the reasons mentioned.
“We are disturbed as to why the caretaker of the church is being continuously detained despite the proof that he has nothing to do with the All-Saints' Church grenade issue. CCTV Camera footage has made it clear that this person has nothing to do with the grenade episode,” Archdiocese spokesperson Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando said. Of course, the Church's greater objection was the perceived delay in bringing all accused in the 'Easter serial-attacks' of 2019 to book, implying that the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was shielding them from justice.
It is one thing that the Church observes the 1000th day of the Easter blasts with a special service and the Cardinal's sermon, as His Eminence did. It is another for the Church to pressure the government of the day, whichever it is, to fast-track the investigation and prosecution of the Easter attack perpetrators, whoever they be. It is another for them to boycott the Independence Day celebrations. It is worse for Cardinal Ranjith to cancel the Independence Day service. The Church needs to remember that it is this kind of boycott that also contributed to the precipitation of the ethnic issue involving the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) community. Today, ethnic harmony is in shatters, possibly never to be put back to the forgotten post-Independence phase.
Internationalising the issue
It is one thing for Cardinal Ranjith to take it up with Vatican and update the Holy See purely within the administrative ambit of the Catholic Church the world over. It is another for His Eminence to do so with the intention of internationalising the issue. Already, Rev Fernando is also on record that they were in discussions with foreign governments to obtain justice for Easter blast victims.
“We will be taking more actions in the near future” because all possible efforts to bring justice to the Easter attacks within the country has proved futile, leaving them with no option but to go international, like the Tamils, if not the Muslims, before them. According to him, the discovery of the truth would expose the murderous and corrupt nature of Sri Lankan politics – as if the Church and the Catholic laity were no more part of the nation's system.
Doing it for the nation
There is a catch. For the record, Rev Fernando said that they were“doing these things for the country, because only by discovering the truth behind these attacks could they expose the murderous and corrupt nature and dishonesty of the country's politics. Only then will the nakedness of many politicians come out. That way, the country can be liberated from its current corrupt status”. Either, the Church is naïve, or biased, as both.
As if making a point, Rev Fernando sought to distance the nation's judiciary from their charge. Here, UN officials and the UNHRC seem to be having a different view. Hence, their repeated reiteration through observations and resolutions, calling for an 'independent, international investigations' into the war-crimes. Thankfully, the Church seems to have a different take, at least for now.
“The problem we have is not with the Judiciary, but with the Police, the CID, and the Attorney-General,” Rev Fernando said.“It is the AG who files cases in the courts. Prior to that, the police and the CID should carry out investigations thoroughly,” he pointed out. Also, the reports of the Parliamentary Select Committee and the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) are now with the AG. But we do not see the AG trying to initiate judicial action against those who have been implicated in those reports,” he added.
If news reports in this regard are accurate, Rev Fernando has his own answers. The legal counsel of the Church should have explained that the AG can proceed with the prosecution if and only when the police investigations are completed. The parliamentary panel report and the PCoI findings, under the law, can only be a basis for criminal investigation, not for prosecution. Maybe, the Church could still stop with approaching the courts for seeking and obtaining a periodic report, say every month, on the progress made in the investigations, to satisfy itself that things were going in the right direction. Yet, it would only be at the end of the investigations that even the police to know if they had taken the right direction. Later, it would be for the courts to evaluate that investigation, to find out the truth, one way or the other.
It is not that Rev Fernando's charges against the nation's polity are untrue. But his expectations that the Church, by complaining to the West they could bring out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, smacks of ignorance of the highest order. As socio-politically active as the Catholic Church has been all along, it could not have been blind to the way the UN, the UNHRC and the global community have been going about the war-crimes probe, whatever the claims, allegations and justifications.
Today, under UNHRC Resolution 46/1, which is in currency, what was once war-crimes probe and attendant accountability issues have been expanded in scope, to include everything human rights. Slowly but surely, war-crimes probe is getting pushed to the background, where they always had been, and more current issues, including the treatment of the nation's Muslim community are being spoken about more frequently and more vehemently.
Taking the first wrong step?
A few inevitable questions then arise: Is this what the Church wants? Is this what the Church would be satisfied with? Or, what are the alternatives that the Church has in mind for the international community to mete out justice to the Easter victims? Of course, there were 45 foreign nationals among the 267 dead. Among them, the US for instance goes after the perpetrators with the kind of determination that only Israel has exhibited in the case of Nazi killers at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Osama bin-Laden, post-9/11 stands out in this regard.
Does it all mean that either the Catholic Church in the country has not looked at the possibilities for them to decide that they want it that way if it came to that. Or, is it that they have either misread, or have been misled? Either way, they should clarify such positions before they are being rightly understood or misunderstood by domestic stake-holders.
The Cardinal's decisions and the Church's declarations, including that of its laity organisations that people are working on it all, both within the country and outside, comes at a momentous time, so to say. Neither is it for the nation, nor for the international organisations involved. But it is for the Church and the laity in the country. For, the decisions and declarations come as much ahead of the UNHRC session later this month as on the eve of the Independence Day.
Already, TNA leader R Sampanthan has written to the UNHRC, to evaluate the Government's performance on its commitments relating to resolution No 46/1 at the bi-annual session commencing later this month. High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, in her report to the 47-nation Council, is expected to add to the long list of Government's human rights failures over the past decade and more, beginning with the forgotten war-crimes and accountability issues, of course.
The question is if the Easter blasts probe and its alleged failures become a new chapter or clause in the upcoming report and the Council discussions and resolution that follow the same? Is it what the Church is implying and also want? If so, it would be a new beginning, not only for the government when it comes to Christian complaints but even more for the Church, which has not handled anything close to it. Is it and whatever follows in the coming year in the name of international probe is what the Church actually wants? If so, what? If not, why?
Already, the ever-toughening position of the Church on the Easter blasts probe and justice for the victims has shown up the laity as one more victimised community in the country, troubled by its ethnic past, continuing into the present. Given that Christians form the lowest of religious minorities in the country, standing at around six per cent, and are divided among denominations with Cardinal Ranjith's Catholics forming the majority, questions will then be asked if they want to be identified and accepted as another 'minority' grouping in political and constitutional terms as well?
It is another matter that within the Catholic population are both Sinhala and Tamil-speaking laity, the latter being wedded more to their Tamil ethnic identity than Christian identity in socio-economic and politico-electoral terms. Contemporary history is replete with instances where Cardinal Ranjith's writ did not run among the Tamil Catholics, for instance, and their Bishops communicated directly with the Holy See, which also appointed and transferred them without possible reference to the Colombo Archdiocese.
For all this, for now, no politician of any hue seems to have identified with the Church and the Cardinal on their current pursuit for justice for the Easter victims. Maybe, some of them, cutting across party loyalties, should educate the Church on the nuances of the nation's legal and judicial system. After all, some of the so-called perpetrators, including then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando and Inspector-General of Police Pujith Jayasundara, on murder charges in terms of the Easter blasts though in the normal course, their culpability could amount only to dereliction of duty in administrative terms or 'criminal negligence' in legal and judicial terms.
It is now for the judiciary, in which the Church has confidence, to decide on the matter. Whatever be the motives, political or otherwise, for allegedly protecting such other persona in the case, it would be foolhardy on the part of the investigators and prosecutors to act according to the whim or perception of the Church, if it won't stand the test of judicial scrutiny. The Church needs to be educated on all these, unless of course, it has already taken its future decisions – and is acting towards that end!
(The writer is Distinguished Fellow and Head-Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: )
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