The immovable feast cooked in Easter fires

 

Over the last 24 years, Easter Sunday has been celebrated on various days, from the 23rd of March to the 5th of May. It is then a movable holiday or, if one wants to be overly technical about it, a movable holy-day given that the word derives from the Old English hāligdæg (hālig ‘holy' + dæg ‘day’).  Not all holidays have anything to do with divinity or religious purpose, but Easter certainly is. In Sri Lanka, however, while the ‘true’ Easter, if you will, is movable, there’s also a political Easter that is not only static but has in fact taken on greater significance. That’s the Easter Sunday of the attacks on several churches executed by…hold you breath…a since hardly-mentioned organisation led by a since-hardly-mentioned man.

April 21, 2019. The audacity of the attacks, the magnitude of the damage caused and the enormity of the tragedy certainly makes casual passover impossible, even though the politics that followed is as unholy as it can get.

So, first of all, a moment of silence.

A moment of silent in memory of those who lost their lives, were injured or who lost loved ones. A moment of silence for members of the clergy (let’s leave the relevant faith and denomination out) who called out for justice quite out of character to the ‘turn the other cheek’ recommendation.

A moment of silence for the perpetrators, the architects of the attack and those who executed them, their backers, apologists and others who through various means ensured that the name of a particular organisation and the names of particular perpetrators of a particular religious persuasion were systematically removed from the discourse on terrorism, truth, justice and retribution.

A moment of silence for whoever first touted the idea of a ‘mahamolakaru’ and all those who turned it into a refrain when talking about the tragedy, tossing around insinuations, tossed out the dictum ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ and proceeded to judge, condemn and execute…no, not the perpetrators, but some who were at worst enables on account of incompetence and negligence.

A moment of silence for the over 700 persons arrested in relation to these crimes, the over 300 enlarged on bail and the over 40 persons on whom 11 indictments have been served.

A moment of silence for those who believe justice was done the day stiff fines were imposed on some people whose ‘crime’ was, as mentioned, of the omission kind; the 'some people,' coincidentally or otherwise, belonging to a particular community which has been considered 'The Enemy' by spokespersons for both the accusing religious community and the religious community which the perpetrators belong to, now and in the long centuries that have passed.

A moment of silence for those whose fixations, ideological and political persuasions and shameless designs to use the Easter Sunday attacks to exact revenge on people they hated for reasons that had nothing to do with the tragedy pushed them to make a mockery of justice, truth and due process.

A moment of silence for selective amnesia. A moment of silence for selective and pernicious targeting. A moment of silence for ignoring the truth and in the process affecting a lovely pass for the religious fundamentalism that was the bedrock on which the attacks were planned and executed.

Those who carried out the attack were of a particular faith. Let’s not name it because that would be unholy. They prayed to an entity they considered divine before embarking on their murderous mission. Indeed they may have uttered the name of this entity at detonation-point by way of consoling themselves that the appreciative omnipotent would arrange a heavenly afterlife for them.

But no, terrorists have no religion. At least that’s the weak and laughable dismissal offered by those who were trigger-happy to attribute to an entire community numbering over ten million the crimes of a handful who happened to belong to that community because of given name, yes, not even close to, say, religious affiliation reverentially obtained and affirmed as was the case of the Easter Sunday terrorists.

Let’s forget all of the above, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s join hands with the vile, revengeful, pernicious, lying and myopic. Let’s form a human chain from Peduru Thuduwa through Colombo, Devundara Thuduwa, Madakalapuwa and back to Peduru Thuduwa.

Let us, in this hand-holding way, express unity in calling upon leaders to render justice to victims and remain conspicuously silent about the names and convictions of those who caused so much grief on that immovable and immutable Easter Sunday in the year 2019 and made us forget THAT resurrection and embraced the resurrection and re-resurrection of deceit and crass politicking in the name of justice and truth.

And let us celebrate the fact that thanks to these devious machinations, we’ve unshackled ourselves from the tyrannies of the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Let us retire prayer. Let us feast to our hearts' content. Tongue-in-cheek of course.

 malindadocs@gmail.com.

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Rev Fr Cyril Gamini: judge, jury, prosecutor and pernicious rabble-rouser

 

Rev Fr Cyril Gamini (RFCG hereafter) has found his voice. RFCG, after shooting his mouth and naming names in a zoom discussion, was duly complained about and required to make a statement. Having named names, he was required to offer tangible proof, for lack thereof would amount to defamation. He ducked. He hid under his own cassock. We wonder if he went to confession at any point thereafter. 

Anyway, RFCG is back at his own games of casting aspersions, loose-cannoning if you will. He's careful, RFCG is. He deliberately and meticulously avoids talking about the perpetrators of the crime: the NTJ, Zahran, Naufer and, if you want to be ideological about it, Islamic Fundamentalism. Instead he goes for soft targets and puts both feet in the mouth (as always). He talks about conspiracy, but not related to the attacks themselves; for him it's about negligence and the alleged protection of the negligent. And, not untypically, a wide-eyed media that tends to extrapolate beyond belief attributes the allegations of this maverick priest to 'The Catholic Church'. 

RFCG was ranting in response to comments made by Secretary, Defence, Kamal Gunaratne. He asks what moral right Gunaratne has to 'protect political leaders.' Was Gunaratne protecting anyone? Has nothing been done about the Easter Sunday attacks in terms of investigation, legal action, compensation for families of those killed and the injured, countering extremism and in ensuring that such attacks are not repeated? Gunaratne stated some facts. The state has done much in terms of the second set of questions. The details of the numbers arrested, enlarged on bail, indicted etc., are well known. Well, RFCG clearly is ignorant of all that. Other measures taken have been detailed in numerous comments, statements and reports. Yes, RFCG is not interested in any of that. What moral right does he have, then, to talk about truth and justice? We don't know how well versed he is about the Ten Commandments or if he does, the value he places on them, how many he has broken etc., but clearly he's at odds with the 9th, as per Deuteronomy 5:20: 'You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor,' in the expanded interpretation of 'neighbor' of course.

The ninth commandment honors the right to one’s own reputation.[1] It finds pointed application in legal proceedings where what people say depicts reality and determines the course of lives. Judicial decisions and other legal processes wield great power. Manipulating them undercuts the ethical fabric of society and thus constitutes a serious offense. Walter Brueggemann says this commandment recognizes “that community life is not possible unless there is an arena in which there is public confidence that social reality will be reliably described and reported.”

He asks questions to which answers have been given many times, for example, 'What are the investigations carried out by the investigation teams including the CID so far to prove that it is not such a political conspiracy?' This is like asking someone 'Is there any evidence that Jesus was born in what is today known as Iceland?' and being answered, 'Is there any proof that he was not?' The main task of investigation is to consider what happened and based on facts to make determinations on any matter, conspiracy included. In RFCG's court (where he is judge, jury and prosecutor) it's a flip: conspiracy as hypothesis and all energies to be expended to determine first and foremost and to the end whether or not hypothesis holds. Bunkem!

RFCG seems to be intent on sticking his dagger into SSP and former SIS chief Nilantha Jayawardena. Nilantha Jayawardena as indeed is anyone and everyone in the intelligence agency had to do his job: obtaining intelligence information and passing on the information to authorities that are mandated to act upon them. No negligence there. Negligence can only be attributed to agencies and individuals mandated to act upon such information. Negligence, obviously, is a significant fault.

Former President, Maithripala Sirisena was negligent, even though he is not an intelligence officer nor an investigator. The then Minister of Public Administration and Management and Law and Order Ranjith Maddumabandara, also not an intelligence officer nor an investigator, was negligent. They were both aware. They did nothing. NOTHING, repeat. The hero in charge of stuff during that period, Shani Abeysekera, is far more culpable since he had the leads and brushed them off. Indeed he had some of the would-be terrorists cornered, but was either clueless or slothful. For a full discussion, read 'The Easter Sunday Attack: negligence and the negligent.' We know what happened later. RFCG knows too, but he doesn't mention the man at all. Why not?

For the record, consider the following:  735 suspected of direct or indirect involvement in the terrorist attacks were arrested. Of them, 196 are in remand custody, 19 in detention, 81 served indictments while 453 have been enlarged on bail. There are 27 cases filed against 79 persons in the high courts of Gampaha, Candy, Kurunegala, Puttalam, Nuwara Eliya, Batticaloa, Colombo and Kegalle are being heard by three-judge benches in terms of 25,753 charges.

There's more: Assets, including property, buildings and vehicles worth Rs 365 million as well as gold worth Rs 168 million belong to the suicide bombers and relevant organizations have been confiscated so far. All relevant agencies have taken innumerable steps to investigate and press charges on all persons who have directly or indirectly supported extremism, regardless of who they are; politicians, public and private sector employees and officials make up this list.

Is RFCG interested? Of course not. He's the judge, let us repeat, the jury and the prosecutor. He's not concerned with the perpetrators or the ideology that spurred them on. Instead, he's chasing a ghost, some mahamolakaru (mastermind) and his thesis is that the negligent were in fact masterminds. Speculation, speculation! Humbuggery, humbuggery!

Seriously, if conspiracy is the big-word here, RFCG is clearly the most vocal conspirator of them all! I wouldn't go as far to say that the blood of the victims are on his hands, but RFCG's hands are anything but clean.

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