Sri Lanka’s new government has decided to re-investigate several sensitive unresolved cases, including the 2005 murder of a Tamil journalist and the 2019 Easter Sunday attack.
The government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has asked police to reinvestigate unresolved cases like the 2005 killing of journalist Dharmeratnam Sivaram, the Easter Sunday bombings, the death of businessman Dinesh Schaffter in 2022, and the shooting incident involving a police officer in 2023.
Police spokesperson Nihal Thalduwa said the public security ministry has instructed the acting inspector-general of police to collaborate with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to expedite the investigations following a recent government review.
The cases were reviewed recently and “instructions were given to assign more officers,” Thalduwa said on Oct. 12 in Colombo.
Rights activist Freddy Gamage, chairperson of the Professional Web Journalists Association, said reinvestigating Sivaram’s murder and other cases is crucial as 44 journalists and media workers, mostly from Tamil-dominated northeastern areas, have disappeared or been killed in the country.
“Journalist Sivaram was highly respected” in the entire nation, Gamage, editor of the Meepura News, told UCA News on Oct. 14.
Sivaram was abducted in 2005 outside a police station in Colombo, and later, his body was discovered just 500 meters away from the parliamentary complex. He was the chief editor of the Tamilnet.
Like Sivaram, many activists have been killed or disappeared. Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of enforced disappearances globally.
Lasantha Wickramatunga, a former editor of the Sunday Leader, was assassinated on his way to office in 2009. The crime occurred in broad daylight on a public road a few hundred meters from a security checkpoint.
Schaffter, former director of the Janashakthi PLC Group, was found tied up in his car at the General Cemetery in Borella in 2022. He died the next day while undergoing treatment.
Two UN teams recently visited Sri Lanka to investigate the unlawful killings and have submitted a report. Their “findings will be crucial in ensuring accountability for the victims’ families,” Gamage said.
A Catholic nun from the Colombo archdiocese, who wished to remain anonymous, said priests and laypeople at the northern Nawali church were among those who have been killed or disappeared in the past.
At least ten priests were killed, and three others went missing during the 26-year-old civil war in the Tamil-dominated areas.
The Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Nawali was bombed in 1995, resulting in the deaths of at least 147 Tamil civilians who sought refuge inside the church.
“Justice must be served in this case as only by punishing the criminals can we ensure that such incidents do not occur again,” said the nun.
A fresh probe into the Easter Sunday simultaneous bombings that targeted three churches and killed nearly 275 people has been a long-pending demand of the Church in the island nation.
source : uca news