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In early October 2024, then just-elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was permitted, with the blessings of the Roman Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith looking benignly on, to speak to the Catholic faithful from the inner sanctum of the Katuwapitiya Church where a jihadist exploded himself one sunny Easter morning in 2019, killing more than a hundred of the faithful, including children praying with their parents.

Telling home-truths to the President

The NPP President, electioneering for his party in the scheduled General Elections to be held a few weeks thereafter, repeated a weary assurance of bringing ‘justice’ to victims of this attack and other blasts on churches and hotels that rippled like a poisonous wave across Sri Lanka. True to form, the Catholic community comprised a large part of his party’s votes as the NPP won an ‘unprecedented’ two thirds majority. The President’s ‘promise’ on ‘system change’ in regard to investigations into the 2019 attacks was a strong propelling factor.

But what reverberates in my mind is what a survivor of that attack told Mr Dissanayake that day. That survivor, a mother whose entire family had been massacred in Katuwapitiya, asked him a simple question about ‘innumerable commission reports and committee reports…’ ‘What is the need for further investigations? Why have the perpetrators not been identified after all that effort and the money wasted?’ she questioned. Relevantly if not most cuttingly, she queried; ‘why not publicly release the reports, why not take action, why does political power protect the untouchables?’

The newly minted President responded at the time that he is not a judge but that he will do whatever is needed ‘within his limitations to the best of his ability.’ This conversation came forcibly to mind in the wake of President Dissanayake explaining last week the measures his Government has taken to address the cry for justice by this mother and countless others. That explanation came after the Catholic Church threatened to bring the Catholic flock to the streets in protest, if ‘justice was not served’ by this Easter Sunday and if there were no perceptible results of the investigations.

‘Full’ COI reports and ‘part’ COI reports

But much in the manner of the mountain labouring to bring forth a mouse, President Dissanayake only proclaimed that he has sent the ‘full’ Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on the attacks to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). As the Opposition immediately screeched that the relevant COI report had already been handed over to then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who had forwarded it to the relevant authorities, we were then informed that ‘withheld’ pages of the report have also been forwarded this time around.

That is distinct, we are told to previous versions forwarded to the CID and the Attorney General which was not the ‘full report.’ The e-version of the ‘full’ report was handed over to the Catholic Bishops Conference in 2023 with lagging doubts continuing as to whether some parts were missing from that version. The then Minister of Public Security assured the Catholic community that it was the ‘full report.’ In a public address on Easter Sunday, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith stated that initially the Bishops Conference was given only the Commission’s recommendations (volume one) but that later, that all its seven volumes were handed over on condition that they should not be made public.

The fact that the full report was not available for public scrutiny was taken by the Cardinal as a further factor that Sri Lanka’s ‘Deep State’ was behind the attacks, with sections of a ‘defeated government’ responsible for the lagging status of the investigations. That apart, several pertinent questions emerge from President Dissanayake’s announcement. To some extent, the public withholding of certain pages of the COI report including sensitive witness testimony impacting on criminal investigations, may be justifiable.

Puzzling Presidential claims

But if partial versions of the COI report in question were forwarded to the criminal investigation authorities and the state prosecutor, (the very agencies tasked with applying the criminal law to the Easter Sunday atrocities), by the political authority at various times earlier, why is this issue being raised for the first time now? Are we to assume that the ‘full report’ has only just been sent to the relevant agencies as the Government claims? These questions boggle the proverbial imagination.

In fact, this statement by President Dissanayake is itself puzzling in more ways than one. He passionately pledged, as we may remind, with the blessings of the Cardinal, in Katuwapitiya seven months ago, that he was genuine about ‘securing justice.’ If so, why wait all this while to send the ‘full’ COI report to the criminal investigators after he sat in the Presidential seat? Does all of this heighten public confidence in the tenor of the investigations, we are compelled to ask? Evidently not, must be the answer.

Given the dizzying parade of reports going to and fro, we wonder if the esteemed members who constituted this Commission may themselves recognise what these documents are in the first instance or be able to identify these several ‘parts.’ Missing pages of Commission of Inquiry reports are no new phenomenon to Sri Lanka. I recall the Chair of one Commission looking into a particularly famous (or infamous) torture site telling me at a point that some pages of the report had gone mysteriously missing at a later point.

What the Francis teaches us

Meanwhile, the CID has announced with due gravity, that it is perusing this ‘full COI report’ and that a ‘committee’ has been appointed to examine its contents. That committee comprises several members of the CID, the police and the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID), some of whom have been alleged to be part of the unholy manner in which warnings were disregarded that fateful Easter Sunday.  Again, this is not a confidence-inspiring factor. On its part, from a stern resolve to ‘protesting’ if justice is not served by this Easter Sunday, why has the Catholic Church abruptly changed to a much softer tune?

Perhaps the good Cardinal, now in Rome for the funeral mass of the late Pope Francis and for the conclave that meets thereafter, may enlighten us when he returns. In the weeks ahead, an enormously intimidating task dawns in regard to electing a new head of the global Roman Catholic Church able to confidently step into the papal shoes of a Pope whose outreach to the afflicted and the poor, from the migrants of Lampedusa to the warring nations of the Sudan, went far beyond the Church leaving an indelible mark on humanity itself.

Indeed, though looked askance by Catholic conventionalists at times for his trenchant criticism of the politically ‘powerful,’ the Francis papacy conveyed a warning against preaching religion for political purposes. The late Pope was beloved for his desire to be a disciple of Jesus Christ rather than a ‘powerful man of the world.’ His humility and the brushing away of rich trappings of papal traditions wss legendary. The outpourings of the world as it celebrated the life and teachings of this extraordinary Pope, was heartfelt. Sri Lankan Catholic Church leaders may learn from that steely determination.

A long way to go

In the meantime, we may also remember a father mourning his dead children who asked President Dissanayake in Katuwapitiya, not to ‘engage in political shows in coming to church but actually demonstrate justice that will speak by itself.’  Undeniably the rampant politicization of the investigations into the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks has impeded the process.

We have a long and arduous journey to go before his plea is realised.