The Hon. Anura Karunathilaka - Minister of Urban Development, Construction and Housing

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, it is truly regrettable that we have to participate in this debate in Parliament regarding a reprehensible, inhuman attack against humanity in our recent history. Not only that, Hon. Presiding Member, we must also feel ashamed as human beings that we had to see the dead bodies of those victims and witness and hear the lamentations of their relatives and friends. However, we know this attack was not merely the barbaric act of a group blinded by superstition. We cannot treat it that lightly. As Minister Bimal Ratnayake also reminded, we recall how in 2015 the people of this country, through democracy, expelled one of the most corrupt, power-lustful, tyrannical family regimes in recent history. Although traditional political leaders came to power thereby, what enabled that ouster was a massive public mobilization. That public mobilization arose from the revulsion towards family rule, not from trust in the group that assumed office.

¶ 02 We know that the group built around that family, which had lost power and been rejected by the people, kept searching for a path to regain power. Historically, such groups have always used racism to seize and retain power. Likewise, they operated under the battle cry that national security is in danger and that a saviour must be created to protect it. Sinhala and Tamil ethnic extremisms, pointing fingers at each other and feeding off each other, created fertile ground for this clique to act. They staged one after another of slanderous conspiracies to grab power. We saw the results. First, they tried to socialize the narrative that the LTTE was attempting to rise again, and to come forward in the name of national security to seize power through that. Therefore, when two police officers were murdered in Vavunativu, they fabricated false evidence to cultivate and spread the idea that it was done by the LTTE.

¶ 03 Regrettably, a few individuals in the intelligence services also engaged in this. That is why, to the Criminal Investigation Department, the Army Intelligence presented four reports with intelligence charts stating that it was done by the LTTE. But by now it has been revealed that a person named Gaffoor of Zahran’s group carried out that shooting. This is good evidence that within this planned politics of extremism, even some then-existing state intelligence elements were complicit. We also know that the then Maithripala-Ranil Government bears responsibility for allowing this situation to arise.

¶ 04 President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe were engaged in a cold war over power. They manoeuvred their loyalists to weaken each other. As a result, the state was weakened; officials became inactive; those who were supposed to act responsibly regarding national security forgot that duty and operated under different agendas. When the attack was being planned, when that barbaric attack took place, and when national security collapsed as a result, a large number of those who should be responsible were sitting on the Opposition benches of this House. Yet now those same people come early morning to Parliament and shout that national security is in danger, while at that time, when national security truly was imperiled, they sat silently in Parliament; in Cabinet they kept their mouths shut without a sound. As a consequence, today we have to speak about that barbaric attack. Some of them then too had ulterior motives. During the President–Prime Minister cold war, when their leader weakened, certain groups, driven by the desire to capture leadership, acted in that way. Today they represent this Parliament and participate in this debate on the Easter attacks.

¶ 05 That is truly unfortunate. Those who knew about this matter were not only the planners and executors of the attack. We know there were Cabinet Ministers who publicly said, “I did not go to church because my father told me.” Not only that, a lady who usually went to St. Anthony’s Church in Kochchikade — now the wife — did not go to church that day. Why? Because they knew in advance that such an attack would occur. Though innocent worshippers went to church for their faith and belief, those who planned it and those who assisted knew this would happen. That is the unfortunate fact. Not only that, we know that certain elements of the Opposition—