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In his brave quest to ferret out the truth with his bold, persistent line of questioning and expose shocking scandals and cover-ups in high places and in public lives, making dangerous enemies with a bent for violence, may rank as an occupational hazard in Lanka.

LATE NIGHT TERROR: CCTV picture of attackers outside Chamuditha’s home last Sunday

The repugnant terror attack occurred around 2.10am, said Chamuditha. The assailants had come in a white car to Cambridge Court, Piliyandala and held the security guard on duty at the housing complex at gun point. One of the assailants had remained with the security guard, another in the vehicle, while the other three had proceeded on foot to Chamuditha’s house. They had forced their way in and had begun pelting stones at his home. With the glass windows shattered they had thrown excreta into the house.

Chamuditha says, he and his wife, along with their 14-year-old daughter, had awoken to the sound of rocks hitting the roof. “Only then did I realise we were under attack.” He had heard several gun shots too but says he has no clue as to who may have been behind the attack.

ROHINI MARASINGHE: Chairperson, SLHRC

But whosoever took part in the revolting excreta attack on his Piliyandala home last Sunday night, and the depraved masterminds behind it, are nothing but wretched scum of the earth, fit only — as the Media Minister Dulles Alahapperuma observed — to be condemned to the loo they are hiding in, covered in their own crap.

On Monday, Minister Alahapperuma, who is also the cabinet spokesman, condemned the attack and said the perpetrators must be brought to justice with the assistance of the Police, the Government and the media.

In a bid to contain the stink from fouling the Geneva air, External Minister G. L. Peiris said, in a statement that evening, an impartial inquiry will be held into the incident. The government, he said, will never intervene politically in incidents such as the attack on the house of journalist Chamuditha Samarawickrama.

But the problem with immediate inquiries into high profile attacks is that, though launched with immense zest, it seems to slip into marked sluggishness no sooner the heat wears off.

One striking instance of apathy slowly inveigling itself into the process to hamper progress, is the inquiry into the then Prison Minister Lohan Ratwatte’s prison rumpus, brandishing a gun and threatening prisoners held under PTA, in September last year.

After the incident, Police Minister Sarath Weerasekera told reporters: “The gun he has used, I think, is a licensed firearm. However, if somebody makes a complaint related to these incidents, we might be able to take action against it according to the law.”

On September 15, Ratwatte ‘resigned, acknowledging his responsibility for the incidents that took place at the Welikada and Anuradhapura Prison premises’, and the President accepted his resignation. The Police inquiry into the incident and the alleged criminal conduct of the Minister was launched on September 16 only after a complaint lodged by the Committee for Protecting the Rights of Prisoners as per the Police Minister’s request.

To anyone, most of all experienced investigating officers, it would have seemed like a pretty open and shut case. Lohan Ratwatte, who still remains a member of the Government as Minister of Gems and Jewellery, has, for these past five months, been available for questioning. The victims, PTA prisoners held at a government prison, are easily available for questioning, as are the witnesses, the jail guards on duty, at the same convenient location, to give their eye witness accounts. If all had been questioned already, all that remained was for the police to handover the dossier of their findings to the Attorney General for action.

And yet, five months of easy toil but still no fruit?

CHAMUDITHA: TV journalist under enemy fire

In fact, on Tuesday the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court had to be invoked by the victims, the eight prisoners at Anuradhapura jail, through their lawyer, President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, to jolt the police into action. This was despite an earlier order the Supreme Court had made on October 21 last year, directing the IGP to investigate the issue with the advice of the Attorney General.

Receiving the renewed request this Tuesday, the Supreme Court directed the IGP to file a status report in the Fundamental Rights petition filed against the alleged criminal conduct on the part of former State Minister Lohan Ratwatte at Anuradhapura prison. The IGP was ordered to submit a report on the investigations carried out on the previous order, on August 9 this year.

For all the public proclamations issued by ministers promising prompt investigation into the excreta attack, would Chamuditha, too, once the stink has dissipated and the ritualistic Geneva rendezvous has been kept, have to seek the refuge of the Supreme Court for justice?

No doubt, the attack is a warning but, like the symbolic fish the Sicilian Mafia delivers to their foes as a sinister omen, it stinks to high heavens. And, until the Government makes good its pledge to hold an impartial probe and deliver the scum to the bar of justice, public opprobrium will continue to be heaped upon this Government for its failure to solve the ‘who flung dung’ mystery.

But there was more bad news for the Government that very Monday. Civil rights activist Shehan Malaka Gamage, a prominent campaigner seeking justice for the Easter Sunday victims, was arrested on the Panadura streets by men in civvies who bundled him into a van and headed off to an unknown location. Later it turned out to be plainclothes officers from the CID.  The arrest was streamed live on his Facebook page.

The Police spokesman said he had been taken in on the advice of the Attorney General over a statement he had made on the Easter Attacks during a media briefing. He was released on bail the following day after a magistrate’s inquiry. His offence: allegedly exciting or attempting to excite feelings of disaffection to the State.

The Lawyers for National People’s Power charged on Tuesday that the country was seeing a return to the ‘white van culture’. Addressing the media on Tuesday, Attorney at Law, Sunil Watagala said, “The egg hurling attack on JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the arrest of civil activist Shehan Malaka Gamage and the attack on journalist Chamuditha Samarawickrama could be seen as a chain of events and that they were targeted for expressing their opinion against the government’.

The arrest of Shehan Malaka Gamage, especially, the manner of his arrest, was condemned by the Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcom Ranjith who also stepped in to protest at a news conference on Tuesday. The Cardinal said, “Shehan has been taken away by a white van while walking on the road and no one knows as to where he is at the moment. There is a civilised way to arrest people. This type of behaviour of the police could also affect us at the Human Rights sessions in Geneva.I would like to remind the Attorney General and the IGP that satisfying politicians is not their duty.”

At the news conference, the Cardinal also made a dire announcement. He said that the Easter Sunday bomb blast issue, where the victims have still not received the promised justice, has now been taken to the Vatican. In other words, it has been internationalised, placed in the powerful realm of the Holy See.

He declared: “A course of action is being organised by the Sri Lankan Catholic Church together with the Vatican, but we will not divulge anything about it now. It is the Government which has to bear the responsibility for the consequences which Sri Lanka has to undergo if the church seeks international assistance to mete out justice to those who were affected by the Easter Sunday mayhem.

All these developments did not augur well for a government which received on Monday, the advance copy of the UNHRC’s High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s written report to be presented at the 49th Session of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council in Geneva on February 28; and was busy this week formulating its response to be sent by Saturday.

The Government had set great store in the newly amended Prevention of Terrorism Bill to wow Geneva and win the praise and support of the 47 member states in the UNHRC when it meets mid-March. The Bill which was tabled in Parliament on February 10, was hailed by its own architect, External Minister Prof G.L. Peiris, as a ‘very substantial improvement of the existing law.’

At a news conference held on February 1 to launch the ‘new look’ PTA and eulogise on its exemplary nature and liberal advances, Prof Peiris declared: “For everything, there must be a beginning. And then you move forward incrementally in stages. And we can show convincingly to any dispassionate person, any objective person that the amendments that have been gazetted represent a very substantial improvement of the existing law.”

It was for Peiris, the Sacrament of Atonement.

But the bubble of optimism that the amendment would do the trick at Geneva was burst this Wednesday by Sri Lanka’s own Human Rights Commission.

The Commission, a constitutionally set up body, headed by former Supreme Court judge Rohini Marasinghe, who was appointed a member and chairperson by the President only two months ago on December 14, and who, along with the other members, once appointed, can only be removed after an address and a vote in Parliament, thought otherwise.

In fact, they not only gave it a firm thumbs down but went the whole nine yards and called for the entire Prevention of Terrorism Act to be abolished, dumped in toto.

In a statement issued on February 15, the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission stated it had briefed diplomats last week that, “notwithstanding the amendments already suggested by the Government, the HRCSL advocates the complete abolition of the PTA.”

“The offence of terrorism,’’ the SLHRC said, “should be included in the Penal Code with a new definition for terrorism. It is explicitly for those who threaten or use violence unlawfully to target the civilian population by spreading fear thereof to further a political-ideological or religious cause.”

The Commission stated: “Amendments to the Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, Judicature Act and the Bail Act require modifications for this purpose.”

Rather takes the wind out of the Government’s new-fangled PTA sails, does it not?

When the nation’s own statutorily appointed Human Rights Commission summarily rejects the cosmetic changes proposed and, instead, tells world diplomats that the existing PTA, with or without amendments, should be dumped lock, stock and barrel; what little fanciful hope can External Minister Peiris take with him to Geneva to convince UN’s Human Rights High Commissioner Bachelet and the 47-member states of the UNCHR, that the changes made to the PTA, “represent a very substantial improvement of the existing law.”

What crumb of chance is there for Minister Peiris to salvage Lanka’s dubious human rights track record and gain absolution in Geneva when his new testament and the old have both been debunked by the Human Rights Commission at home?

Aristo logic dictates Wildlife Minister’s law of the jungle! SHERMILA: Zoo Director It seems the Wildlife Ministry has its own Aristotelian line of reasoning when it comes to logical deduction to conclude the fancied course of action. Just consider this. On 21 January, Zoo Director Shermila Rajapaksha writes to the President and the Wildlife Ministry stating she will not report to work until a formal investigation is carried out into the sabotage and fraud at the zoo and a conducive environment has been created for her return. If not done within 14 days, she states, she shall resign. The first premise: ‘Unless this is done within 14 days, she shall resign’. DISSANAYAKE: Wildlife Minister On 16 February the Daily Mirror reports that since Shermila had resumed work, the Ministry has ordered her not to report for work as the investigations are not yet over. Wildlife Minister Wimalaweera Dissanayake says that she had stated in her letter to the President that she would resign from the post if the investigations were not done within two weeks. The investigation, he says, has not been completed within the stipulated 14 days. The second premise: ‘This is not done within 14 days’. Then, Minister Dissanayake says, as the 14 day period had lapsed, Shermila should resign. The conclusion: Therefore, she shall resign. Simple, Aristotelian logic, isn’t it? The perfect Dissanayake syllogism. Evidently there is some irrefutable, incredible logic that dictates the harsh law of the jungle prevailing at the Wildlife Ministry, where survival of the silliest rules OK.