Columns

Those who read the works of Lewis Carroll in their younger days and even in maturity would remember the entertaining book “Alice in Wonderland” and all related to it through some narrative poetry.

But, if then, the simple words of a walrus to the carpenter during a beachside walk could evoke mirth and joy as they talked of many things, today’s millions find their satisfaction—and indeed their titillation—in a more muscular, bloodletting, and vicious culture even if the oysters who innocently followed the walrus and the carpenter did end up in their stomachs.

One does not need to wait till morning and wake up to scenes of blood, gore and tears lying in the country’s streets, in police stations, or in court houses as Sri Lanka encountered a gory tale of a well-planned assassination right inside a court functioning performed with sheer bravado.

It happens today in broad daylight. That famed actor Gary Cooper might have thought it occurred only at High Noon and in the world of cinema, where he got to down the bad guy in the middle of the high, as he did in Hollywood cinema.

The gunman who shot our own Liberty Vallance had no time to be playing cinematic theatrics. He shot the man identified to him as the target and left the crime scene as cool as the Sundance Kid.

If the stories that have been circulating since the ghastly courtroom killing are to be accepted—and there is no reason right now to doubt it—our killer and the woman who played partner in the courtroom drama had already done a dry run, which only shows that they were not novices in this kind of crime that requires stealth, guts, nerves and faith in your partner not to fumble the job.

The more we read of criminal happenings in Sri Lanka by the day, especially targeted killings with firearms, the more one is convinced that the increasing murders are neither isolated nor devoid of common threads that tend to tie them to militarily trained persons.

Those who have followed with any interest military training in most parts of the world know that there are basics that are followed in the initial stages before staff is chosen and divided into groups confined and trained for specific tasks.

It is hardly likely that one would find those selected and trained as Navy Seals or hardened commandos competent in several skills, including killing an enemy with single blows or disarming an enemy with one throat lock, seated behind a desk pushing paper.

And those tasks are ingrained in new recruits from the start with several dry runs over selected targets until they can identify their ‘victim/s’ or places with eyes closed before they are finally released to eliminate their enemy—be it a person or a place of strategic or tactical value.

One wonders how many recall the incident when heavy police presence was drafted to prevent Aragalaya protestors from trying to approach parliament, calling for the 225 MPs to quit the premises.

During this standoff between the police and the protestors, there were clear video shots of personnel in black uniforms, faces quite covered, on four motorcycles with pillion riders carrying automatic weapons trying to get past the police and move towards the protestors.

Why army units were trying to take over the police job with armed motorcycle riders with automatic weapons does raise suspicions, especially when many, if not most, of the shootings in the last couple of years or more seemed to have followed the same pattern—a motorcyclist heading for the target while the pillion rider does the shooting. Most often the duo get their target—man or woman—and even a child, as it happened just the other day.

There is a third factor that is now beginning to emerge, and in conjunction with what we have already mentioned above, is creating a dangerous pattern in this modern Chicago that is beginning to rise here.

That is the news: military artillery has been broken into, dangerous firearms whisked away; heaven only knows where. The suspicion at high levels of the government structure appears to be that these weapons are filtering into the hands of gangsters and drug lords, some of whom are operating from abroad, adding still another issue to a burgeoning problem that only confounds the many we are already struggling to overcome.

But these weapons have not only disappeared from the hands of the military. Hundreds or more of them, including handguns given to politicians, business leaders and their security were largely held back and not returned after politicians turned out to be post-election uglies.

But it is not just this mafia, as the public calls it for lack of a generic term, that has made this country an unholy place to which we keep salivating and inviting the world to come and enjoy the glories of gunfights at the OK Corral.

Just a moment, though. We were told in parliament the other day that “briefly President” Ranil Wickremesinghe had 39 advisers and 67 directors ensconced in his secretariat. What they advised him on or which direction they directed him, I would not know. All I know is this crazy bunch could not win him any election.

All I ask is that President Dissanayake, who apparently has no advisers according to his Justice Minister, appoint one—for a specific purpose.

That is to start doing some research into how many persons taken into police custody, say from Junius Richard’s Democratic Socialist days, died in the hands of the police when they very graciously promised to show the khaki suits where they hid their weapons and were shot dead for their generosity.

Not that the police were themselves not gracious by using the handcuffs to tie their hands in front of them instead of locking the cuffs with the hands behind like any idiot would do.

But then we are not dealing with idiots; we are talking of the police, no?

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)