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Rookantha: Those in political, security and cinema fields gave the orders
When they came for Rookantha Goonatillake and his wife Chandralekha Perera the first time, the couple managed to flee in the nick of time with their two young children, leaving behind their meal laid out on the table and leaving open the cover of the piano on which Mr. Goonatillake had been playing a song for his two-year-old daughter.
That was in December 2000. The popular singing duo were drawing large crowds to the United National Party (UNP) meetings with their hit songs during the campaigning for the general elections that were held in October that year. Angered by this, their political opponents had planned to teach them a lesson but thanks to the tipoff that Mr. Goonatillake received from a friend in the inner circle of the government pf the day he managed to flee with the family.
2001: The couple gives a news conference a day after the attack
“If we had not left our home on that day, we would have been dead. The person who planned the attack on us had openly said that ‘Rookantha’s body would be found the next day’,” the singer told the Sunday Times recounting the incident.
However, the next time they came for the couple, on January 26, 2001, there was no such forewarning. Mr. Goonatillake, his wife, their children, aged seven and two, and Chandralekha’s mother were at home when a group of pistol-wielding men forced their way into their home at Mattegoda. They held pistols to their heads, cut off their hair and the couple was doused with petrol. The men also robbed cash and jewellery and got away in the jeep belonging to Mr. Goonatillake.
On August 1 this year, more than 12 years after the incident, Panadura High Court judge Kusala Sarojini Weerawardena sentenced 10 former Presidential Security Division (PSD) members who served the unit during the time of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to jail terms of four and a half years each for the attack on Mr. Goonatillake and his wife.
Soon after the court ruling, the couple held a news conference where Goonatillake said they would forgive the men. Since then he has written to President Mahinda Rajapaksa saying he had no objection to a presidential pardon for the men. Mr. Goonatillake said they were satisfied with the court ruling and respected it but felt the real culprits were still free.
“It’s true these men were carrying out orders of their superiors but those who gave the orders remain unpunished,” he said. Mr. Goonatillake refused to name these superiors but said those who were behind the attack were from the political, security and the cinema fields and were very powerful and influential persons at that time.
Injuries sustained by Rookantha
He told the Sunday Times the court ruling had helped ease some of the trauma the family experienced as a result of the attack on them. “My younger daughter was only two years so she got over the incident soon but my elder daughter was deeply traumatised by it. She refused to go to school and when we showed her to a psychiatrist, we were asked not to talk about school with her,” he recalled.
It was only three months later, after an extended tour overseas, that seven-year-old girl told her parents she wanted to go back to school. “After the incident, she wanted to be with us all the time. She wanted to make sure that we were not harmed and that if she was with us she could protect us,” he said.
It is the family’s strong faith in their religion that helped them cope, to a great extent, with the traumatic experience they were put through merely because they dared to support the political opponents of those who were in power at the time. “Even on the day of the attack, after the gang had left, I knelt with my wife and children and prayed asking Jesus to forgive them. My faith has helped me to overcome much of the trauma of the attack,” he said.
However, that does not mean the memories of that day do not return now and then. “There are days I have flashbacks to that day but I don’t have a feeling of insecurity when I return to Sri Lanka now,” he says. . “I can forgive them, but I can never forget that day.”
Since the distressing day in 2001, the family moved to the United States and the children continue their education there. “We live there and also visit here often,” he says.
Mr. Goonatillake says the court ruling is a lesson to those who wield immense political power but once out of power lose their influence. “I hear that some of those who gave the orders close the door when the families of the convicted PSD men seek their help.”
He said he also hopes that the country produce a set of enlightened politicians who respect every citizen’s right to support the political party of his or her choice without being subject to the inhuman treatment that his family was subject to. “If politicians don’t learn to laugh at themselves, we can have a repeat of such incidents in the future,” he says.
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