CIFL depositors fear ‘anti-government’ labels
View(s):By Quintus Perera
The Geneva resolution on Sri Lanka over human rights violations and the government’s firm resolve to defeat is haunting a new group – desperate depositors of the failed Central Investment and Finance Ltd (CIFL).
Depositors at the CIFL office Pic by Indika Handuwala
These depositors, who have moved court for relief and also seeking other avenues to get their money back, have postponed plans to visit the Munneswaram Kovil in Chilaw to ‘implore the intervention of deities’ fearing this would be construed as a Geneva-related issue and would be subject to attack by pro-government goons.
Members of the CIFL Depositors Association (CIFLDA) told the Business Times that they are now “scared to visit the Kovil as the trend today is to curtail any type of protest by the government ahead of the US Resolution on Sri Lanka in Geneva”. Some of them said they feared that if they resort to an anti-establishment protest there is a possibility of their getting seriously
attacked or even killed, going by the earlier incidents where Chilaw fishermen, Katunayake BOI employees and Rathupaswala residents were brutally attacked.
One of them said that there is an attempt by the government to accuse all protests, even unrelated to human rights, as an attempt to draw attention to the Geneva issues.
One member drew the attention of a picture which appeared in newspapers where the policemen outnumbered protesters over the recent Hanwella dispute over a rubber factory allegedly contaminating ground water resources.
Another depositor, all who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed out that while they were desperate to get back their life’s savings, the bigger danger was to their lives if they participate in protests during this particular period