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Their father, who was taking them to school in his car, had stopped at the junction to buy breakfast for them. As he was returning with the food in his hands, two gunmen wearing motorcycle helmets appeared behind him and instantly started shooting. As the first gunshot was heard, the eldest one tried to open the car door and get out. He heard the last word of his father, “epa, epa,” – “don’t, don’t.” Then there were more shots and their father fell down. The gunmen came closer and shot him again, then disappeared on a motorcycle.
The name of the man who was shot down was Deshabandu Dushyntha Seneviratne. He was 40 years old, and the opposition leader of the Galle Municipal Council. He was a member of the United National Party and the chief ministerial candidate for the forthcoming elections of the southern provincial council. He was running opposed to the ruling party candidates.
The four siblings will ask themselves throughout their lives, who killed their father and why? The family has already announced that he had no personal enemies and was in fact a very popular person, liked by everyone.
If there was no personal hostility or animosity, why anyone would be killed is naturally a question for these children. In all fairytales and stories that teach morals, an enemy always has some kind of resentment or cause to extremely dislike the person who is targeted. Often, it is the villain who gets killed and the killer is a hero, standing for some higher principle. Thus, besides the personal loss, there will be a moral issue that will haunt these children – who is the hero? Their father or the killers? Or perhaps they will wonder whether such considerations are altogether irrelevant.
All that is known about the dead politician is that he was popular, judging by the number of votes he had received every time he contested the elections to the Galle Municipal Council. His friends also say that he was a good orator and was therefore capable of drawing more attention to his party.
This popularity was shown also by the large number of people who gathered outside Karapitiya hospital when news of the shooting spread. Therefore, it is not far from the truth to speculate that as a candidate, he would have drawn more votes at the coming provincial council elections for his party.
Can that be a just cause for a killing? No civics books will say that that is so to these children. In fact, they will be told the very opposite. The participation in elections and contesting of elections are some of the most basic rights of any citizen, they will be told. If they were to doubt this, it would be impossible for them to honestly participate in political life within their country.
As to who killed their father, the children saw that it was two gunmen wearing helmets. Will they ever know who these two persons were? Judging by the experience of recent times it is very unlikely that they will ever be identified. Adults, to put the minds of these children to rest, may explain to them that some unidentified gunmen are hired by others to do such jobs.
Early in their lives the children will be learning about contract killings, and they will forever wonder about those mysterious persons who plotted the killing. In all likelihood, they will know very little or nothing at all about those mysterious characters that deprived them of their father.
The children would have heard about such things as police investigations, courts and judges. Images of men in khaki uniforms would be among the impressions in their minds. Several such officers may have taken statements from these children about what they saw that morning. Perhaps, they may be called to give statements at the inquest inquiry by the magistrate.
As the days go by, when the mysteries behind the death of their father remain unresolved, these children will naturally wonder about the role of these men in uniform, and even that of the courts. When these officers and the courts cannot reveal to them who killed their father and why, they are unlikely to have any faith in these institutions in the time to come.
The realization these children will soon have is that they’re part of a very large group in their country who will never know about who killed their parents or why they were killed. They will also know that, by and large, people in their country have little curiosity about such tragedies. This way, these children will be learning the unwritten and unspoken rules operating within their motherland.
These rules include: that killing for hire is a job for many people now; that these hired killers are supported through a very secret process which hardly anyone can penetrate; that trying to penetrate that curtain may carry the risk of death; that it is no longer an obligation of the state to investigate crimes with competent investigators, promptly and efficiently; that the state in fact does everything possible to disorient and destabilize the criminal investigating agencies; that absence of evidence is the claim that will be made by the prosecutors – that is, the Attorney General’s Department – as the reason for their failure to prosecute this crime; that the judiciary, too, will prove impotent to deal with this situation; that being a member of an opposition political party is an offense, though it is not an offense under the penal code, that carries a death sentence; that, on the whole except for their immediate family, nobody is sad or worried about the murder of their loved one.
Four pairs of eyes of four young children, despite what they saw, are destined not to have any real explanation offered to them by the state or by the society. While these children are told over and over again to love their “marthrubhumi,” or motherland, in that motherland there is no longer any guarantee of justice.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. His blog can be read at http://srilanka-lawlessness.com.)
