President Wickremesinghe blasts Deutsche Welle journalist for pressing hard over state failure to uphold human rights
People gather to mourn the victims of 2019 Easter Sunday attacks outside the heavily guarded St Anthony’s Shrine in Sri Lanka in this file image. (Photo: Getty Images/AFP)
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has ruled out the possibility of conducting an international probe into the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks despite mounting pressure from the Catholic Church.
The call for an international probe became louder following a recent documentary by British broadcaster Channel Four that alleged the complicity of government officials in the attacks.
In a terse and frosty interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) aired on Oct. 3, Wickremesinghe said only a few people have asked for an international mechanism, not the country’s parliament.
“Sri Lanka’s government does not have international inquires, full stop. A few people may have asked but parliament hasn’t. I forgot to tell you, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said no one outside [the country] was involved,” Wickremesinghe said.
“We had the FBI, British police, the Indians, Australians, Chinese and Pakistanis. If these secret agencies have given a report, then what are you saying? You are speaking nonsense,” he added.
He said that his administration had taken steps since the Channel Four documentary aired last month.
A three-member committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge has been appointed to look into the allegations based on a whistleblower named Hanzeer Azad Maulana, he said.
Azad claimed senior officials attached to the military had close ties with suicide bombers and engineered the attacks in order to affect a regime change by the Rajapaksa family, which ruled the nation for decades.
“We don’t see the need for any international investigation. Do you have international observers in your cases?” Wickremesinghe said.
The Catholic Church has rejected government moves to appoint a committee and another separate parliamentary committee.
The Church pointed out that two commissions and a parliamentary committee already looked into the attacks on churches and hotels which left 269 people, including 45 foreigners dead, but failed to identify the masterminds.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo has been highly critical of the current government’s handling of the ongoing investigations and reiterated his call for a transparent and impartial international probe in order to ensure justice and truth for the victims.
The president put a question to DW Correspondent Martin Gak asking him if he spoke to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Sri Lanka.
The interviewer had no right to question the government’s stand on the international probe, relying just on “a piece of paper from the cardinal,” the president said.
Wickremesinghe said he was “only dealing with the Catholic bishops’ conference, not the cardinal.”
When the journalist pointed out that what he was asking was in the public interest, he retorted: “To the public interest I’m answering. Who are you?”
“The bishops’ conference wanted [to see] all the proceedings of the commission, and I gave them. There was an independent commission and they agreed. Look, as far as I am concerned, you don’t deal with the bishops’ conference, I do. They come and meet me, not you. You sit here and take a piece of paper. I have talked to the bishops’ conference, and I’ll talk to them when I go back,” an irritated President said.
The heated exchange continued with Wickremesinghe visibly angered by questions over the attacks and on alleged systematic impunity in the country with regard to wartime human rights allegations, enforced disappearances and killings in the past as highlighted by a UN Human Rights Office report a few weeks ago.
President Wickremesinghe said his government has rejected the UN report.
He was pressed on whether Sri Lanka is making amends for its failure to address accountability issues and the human rights situation in the country since the current government is relying on foreign support to overcome the country’s worst-ever economic crisis.
Wickremesinghe said he is working with the international community to put things right.
“They know we are doing it and my foreign minister is discussing with them all the time. They know all that. What you’ve got is all bunkum,” he said.