What can the government do with the Batalanda report?

One of the best cases in point for the massive wastage by successive governments on so-called commissions of inquiry is the Batalanda Commission which has resurfaced after 27 years, following former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s interview with Al Jazeera that was aired on March 6. 

The Batalanda commission report has been a much talked about issue in the late 1990s, since the subject matter of the report was a torture chamber where hundreds of youths - who were alleged to have taken part in the second insurrection of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) were subjected to torture and death. 

However, its significance gradually waned with the passage of time. It was so forgotten that the political party that represented the victims of the Batalanda torture chamber, the JVP later had political dealings, though strategically, with the United National Party (UNP), the party that was accused of establishing such torture chambers in the country, and Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man whose name was associated with the Batalanda torture chamber.

Yet, following Wickremesinghe’s Al Jazeera episode, the Batalanda commission report kindled fresh enthusiasm in a section of those who were born before eighties and saw or heard about dozens of dead bodies strewn along the roads in many parts of the country and floated in rivers. Hence, the political parties such as the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), a breakaway group of the JVP has been pressing the government to take action against Wickremesinghe.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga came to power in 1994 with a huge mandate (with 62 percent of votes) following her strong pledge to take action against “Bheeshanaya and Dhooshanaya” of the previous UNP regime of Presidents J.R.Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa. Prior to the 1994 Parliamentary and Presidential elections she, along with her supporters dug out skeletal remains from a mass grave in Suriyakanda in Ratnapura District to create a massive public opinion against the UNP government. 

Once she assumed power, she appointed the Batalanda Commission in 1995, received its report in 1998, used it against Ranil Wickremesinghe at the next (1999) Presidential election and the Parliamentary election in 2000 and totally forgot about it. Thus, a report about a place where hundreds of people were tortured to death was conveniently swept under the carpet, amidst political turbulences, especially the escalation of the separatist war, during the next few years.  

Sri Lanka has a crooked history of commissions of inquiry, especially on human right violations. Successive Presidents have appointed at least nine commissions on disappearance of people during armed conflicts in North as well as South. Southern parts of the country have seen more disappearances (over 60,000) than the North and the East had seen, despite the separatist war having prolonged for three decades whereas the southern insurrection in the late eighties had a life span of about three years.  

The highest number of disappearances were reported during the Ranasinghe Premadasa administration when the Batalanda torture chamber also existed. It was the armed forces and the state sponsored vigilante groups that were blamed for almost all these disappearances. And Premadasa, interestingly appointed three commissions to investigate into these incidents.

After Premadasa’s assassination by the LTTE in 1993, his temporary successor, Prime Minister D. B. Wijetunge, revoked the warrants of those three Commissions and initiated yet another Commission. Yet, there are no publicly available reports compiled by those four commissions. 

After the SLFP swept into power in 1994, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga also established three ‘zonal’ Commissions of Inquiry into “Involuntary Removals and Disappearances.”  As work of these commissions was still left unfinished, a fourth “All-Island” Commission of Inquiry was set up by Kumaratunga in 1998 to follow up unfinished cases. Its final report was published in 2001. 

President Mahinda Rajapaksa also appointed a missing persons commission (the Paranagama Commission) in 2013 which had received over 19,000 complaints from the North and the East followed by the Yahapalana Government establishing a permanent Office of Missing Persons (OMP). 

When Wickremesinghe was questioned about the success of the OMP at the recent Al Jazeera interview he stated that only 16 persons have so far been traced. Mahinda Rajapaksa also appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the Udalagama commission and the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) to address the human rights issues in Sri Lanka.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed a commission to probe the reports of previous commissions and to report to him. Three commissions have been appointed to investigate the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks, one by President Maithripala Sirisena and two by Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Finally, no human rights issue was addressed, thousands of missing persons are yet to be located, nothing came out of Easter Sunday commissions, in spite of the enormous pressure on public coffers. Responding to a question raised in August, 2014 by the then MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the Leader of the House Dinesh Gunawardena told Parliament that Rs.270 million has been spent on 17 Presidential Commissions between 2005 and 2013. 

However, the reports of most of them had not been presented to Parliament, leave alone taking follow-up actions. Gunawardena stated that there was no legal binding on the part of the government to do so, indicating an intentional massive wastage of public funds. 

In February 2015, the Sunday Times reported that the previous Rajapaksa government had spent Rs. 400 million on foreign advisors of commissions on human rights. The Sunday Times also said in February 2022 that successive Governments have splurged Rs. 504 million on ten Special Presidential Commissions over the previous eight years.

The National People’s Power (NPP) government has tabled the Batalanda Commission report in Parliament on March 14. Two days later Ranil Wickremesinghe issued a special statement quoting the report as saying that he was indirectly responsible for handing over houses for police officers whereas the report actually says that he and SSP Nalin Delgoda were “indirectly responsible for the maintenance of places of unlawful detention and torture chambers in houses” at the Batalanda Housing Scheme.

Yet, nobody could be punished purely based on this report. Only an appropriate court has to investigate the specific charges against specific individuals based on available evidence before imposing any punishment on them. 37 years have passed since the existence of the torture chamber mentioned in the report during which time a lot of evidence could have been destroyed intentionally as well as with the passage of time. It would be a gigantic task for the government to prove allegations against Wickremesinghe or any other individual.