The Coronavirus Can’t Curtail Sri Lanka’s Impunity Machine

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa pardoned Sunil Rathnayake in March. Rathnayake is a convicted war criminal who was on death row. He was convicted of killing eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year-old. Releasing him from prison is outrageous and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

AFP notes that the murdered “were killed as they returned to their bombed homes to salvage what was left of their belongings and their bodies were found buried in a cesspit near an army camp at Mirusuvil on the Jaffna peninsula.”

The depressing reality is that the Rathnayake pardon isn’t anomalous. It’s not particularly unexpected and there had been rumours this pardon was in the works. What was truly surprising is that Rathnayake actually got convicted in the first place.

The pardon has gotten plenty of criticism amongst Sri Lankan civil society and the international community. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, tells me that the pardon “is a flagrant affront to accountability and decency — a sharp slap in the face and a deep kick in the gut, begging the question of whether accountability in Sri Lanka can be achieved through domestic processes.”