How long will it take to tell the truth?.

by R. Jayadevan

(November,15,London,Sri Lanka Guardian) Once again Sri Lanka is extending its established strategy to prevent the public know who carried out the most inhuman act of publicly displaying the bodies of the naked dead Black Tigers killed in the LTTE attack on the Anuradhapura Air Force base. The newspapers reported ‘Sri Lanka's most sacred Anuradhapura city was made unsacred by the public display of naked bodies of the LTTE suicide cadres on 23 October 2007’.

The Inspector General of Police (IGP) and a special committee has been appointed to investigate this dastardly act. How long do the investigators need to find the culprits when compelling evidences are available to the public? There are ample evidence in the picture itself to easily find the culprits. The tractor and the trailer belongs to the Anuradhapura local authority. The questions asked is:

1.Someone from the Air Force base or from the Police must have contacted the Council to send the tractor to the Air Force base to pick up the bodies from the base. Whoever did it must have had the authority to request for transport.

2.Whoever sanctioned the release of the tractor from the Council must have recorded who asked for the transportation.

3.The driver and the accompanying police officer in the tractor are vital witnesses.

Investigating these three clues would have nailed the culprits who carried out the dastardly act of displaying the naked bodies in the public. It is more than three weeks since the incident took place and the high ranking investigation are To still to report the culprit. This is another saga of deliberate procrastination practiced by the government machinery in discharging their responsibility to be accountable.

However remorseful the act of the LTTE may have been to carryout the attack on the Anuradhapura Air Force base, what was done to the dead bodies is much more disgusting and against internationally accepted standards and the religions to practised in the country to give due respect to the dead.

Procrastination is not the answer for such criminal conduct. If the government is unable to close such simple investigations with minimum effort, how could it discharge its bigger responsibility to bring peace in the country?