“Some Western Powers Wanted A Regime Change In Sri Lanka”

The aftermath of the stunning victory of Mahinda Rajapakse in the Sri Lanka presidential election over joint opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka is a bruising controversy.

World attention is now focussed on the recent detention of Gen. Fonseca, the former Army Commander and once-wounded war hero who led the action against the LTTE. Except for general, broad statements hinting at a coup attempt and a broad conspiracy, the Sri Lankan government has chosen to remain silent about the real reasons behind Fonseka’s confinement and impending trial.

In an exclusive interview, however, with India’s leading weekly magazine, Tehelka, Sri Lanka Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse – a former combat officer, the real boss of the armed forces and also the President’s powerful brother – made some startling revelations. He spoke to author and renowned Delhi-based senior journalist Inderjit Badhwar. Delhi-based senior journalist Inderjit Badhwar.

Q: Under what specific charges did your government arrest Gen. Fonseka?

A: I cannot talk about specific charges because the summary of evidence preceding the charge sheet is now being prepared by the military authorities under specific rules of procedure that guarantee due process and a fair trial. That is the work of the prosecutor.

Q: But because there are no specifics so far, this has the appearance of a personal vendetta.

A: Not at all. Most people are probably unaware of the damage done by the general to our military while he was in uniform, particularly in the way he entered politics.

Q: You mean, he should have stayed out of politics and not challenged the President in the election? What is this damage you speak of?

A: Of course he has that right in a democracy. But he misused his office to pervert the process. Most people tend to simplify this story into three parts – a)he fought a successful war, b)he was the army commander, c)he was arrested because he challenged the president in the election. The real issue is the damage he did is what led to his detention. He politicised the military. We share a proud tradition with India as the only two countries in the region that can boast about a neutral military, but when that tradition was subverted in Sri Lanka Lanka by Fonseka there was no option but to take action against him.

Q: As a war hero he has many admirers who urged him contest…

A: He should have had a clean break from the military and then entered politics. In his utter greed for power he used his position and contacts for his own benefits. He did this while he was chief of defense staff (CDS), and also when he was army commander. He used the army commander’s bungalow to conduct political activities and kept military resources made available to him in his official capacity for personal political use.

Q: What do you mean by political activities? And why the seeming haste to arrest him?

A: While he was CDS he was talking to commanders, senior officers, and there were complaints of a few soldiers saying he was asking them to work for him. He was clearly using the military for political purposes. If we did not act on this we would be signalling that in future others can get away with this. The tradition of a neutral military so precious to us – and to India—would have been destroyed.

Q: Can you be more specific about your phrase “using soldiers”?

A: Soldiers at lower levels manning roadblocks were stopping vehicles and seeking votes for the general. Most of them were very young people recruited during the last three years, and when their own commander contests they’re in a very confused state. In fact he tried to gather support even among army deserters to whom he gave shelter.

He was actively doing this while he was CDS. He was using officers and soldiers to conduct surveys and compute vote percentages to measure his support within the army, and this started while he was still army commander. That is why, when we found out, we acted swiftly against 15 senior army officers who were sent into compulsory retirement.

Q: Aren’t there other very serious allegations that the general was planning a coup and assassination of the President and his family?

A: Well, those are covered under civilian law and are the subject to procedures of criminal investigations which are a separate procedure. The general’s arrest is in connection with offences he committed while he was in uniform.

Q: But why was it necessary to surround his hotel with troops after the election results were announced?

A: He created that situation. He booked 70 rooms in the Taj hotel, another 70 in the Cinnamon. What for? We sent security around the hotel because we wanted to avoid post-election violence. During that time (former Prime Minister) Ranil (Wickremesinghe) spoke to me and I told him “we have not arrested you or him, you are the people who booked that hotel.”

We later found out that the security officer at the hotel, a former army army person, erased all the CCTV recordings and then altered his own attendance registry to cover up.

Q: The world, particularly the Western media and human rights groups are highlighting his arrest and charges of a vendetta.

A: I’d like to know why they didn’t highlight his public statements during the election when he was openly saying he would arrest the President if he is elected and put him and his ministers in cages.

Q: There were corruption charges against him when he was army commander that he was using his position to influence officers in the army to purchase arms from his son in law Danuna Tilekeratne’s company HiCorp International. Why didn’t you arrest him then?

A: Well, the details are only now coming out because there’s been a falling out among the suspects.

Q: His supporters say the general is being punished because he spoke out on a quick political solution to the Tamil issue, on war crimes, and the speedy resettlement of the IDPs (internally displaced persons).

A: I wish more journalists would do their homework. Why don’t you simply analyse his speeches while he was still in uniform immediately after the end of the war, and those he made when he became a candidate? His first speech to soldiers was that they had not lost their lives and shed their blood just to allow politicians to implement political solutions, “we will not allow this.” Is this not an attempt to mobilise the military against the political system? An Indian army commander making this kind of statement would have been sacked immediately.

Q: But then he entered politics.

A: His tactics changed from planning a direct military takeover to attempting to grab power through political means.

Q: How do you react to his allegations that you ordered your troops to shoot down in cold blood LTTE leaders who were surrendering with white flags?

A:Again, study the record, do your homework. Earlier, he said something else. He gave a lecture to his old school after the war and told the audience that the political leadership was trying to protect LTTE interests by asking them to surrender “But it was a war situation and they had to be killed.” Now, he reverses his stand, talks about a political solution and says I gave orders to shoot people waving white flags of surrender.

Q: What really happened?

A: This was supposed to have happened on the last day – May 18, 2010 – the day Prabhakaran was killed. The LTTE leaders were now trapped in an area 400 meters by 400 meters, about 200 of them, surrounded by the military. It is late at night, past midnight. Make a mental picture of this. Can you see them coming out with white flags in this dense jungle in pitch darkness? The situation was that some terrorist cadres counter-attacked.

Prabhakaran was trying to break out and escape to the lagoon, his son went in another direction. At the same time 10,000 surrendered cadres came down from one side. In this kind of situation in the thick of battle, can you expect a young recruit, barely a month into battle, to recognise a senior LTTE cadre and make a decision as to shoot him selectively or spare him?

Q: The war crimes issue is still being kept alive, do you recognise it as an issue?

A: Yes we recognise what a war crime is. If you use the pretext of war for revenge killings, abductions, ransom, if that is done under the pretext of a military operation it is a crime. And we have arrested, tried and punished soldiers for this. We have put officers in jail for this. But there are situations over which we have no control. They claim, for example that we bombed a hospital. If a hospital is marked as a hospital and we deliberately bomb it, that’s wrong. And we did not. But look at the last phase of the war. The LTTE was trapped in an area of one square kilometre, and in this situation of fighting it is difficult to control a stray bullet hitting a hospital. Moreover in a situation like this there’s no question of patients or civilians in the area. One has to understand the ground situation in such close combat.

Q: Many western countries are still insisting on a war crimes trial.

A: These appear to be the same countries that wanted a regime change in Sri Lanka.

Q: Why? And why would they want to back a military man?

A: Three aspects to this. First, there is a very powerful and moneyed diaspora with LTTE sympathies that plays a crucial role in these countries, participates in their vote bank politics and media. Second, because Sri Lanka did not tow the line on certain strategic policies; and third, the human rights lobbies pushing war crime trials to which they believed the UNP, supporting the general, would be more amenable.

Q: Are the general’s criticism of your government’s treatment and rehabilitation of IDP’s a source of real concern to you?

A: The reality is that when he was in uniform the general was the only person on our Security Council who opposed the early settlement of the IDPs – the only person. He kept arguing it was a huge security risk. That’s the only reason that the resettlement of IDPs was delayed. While as CDS he opposed heir release, he later made common cause with the opposition which was using the IDP issue to blame the government during the election.

Q: What finally happened?

A: My view was that the newly liberated areas like Jaffna, the peninsula, the East were safe and IDPs could be sent back there early. Fonseka had a firm “no.” So I said let them at least go to temporary camps in the eastern province. We released thousands of them but Fonseca ordered them dragged right back to the original detention areas. We were under pressure from the UN and other countries but the general kept arguing “security.” Finally President Rajapakse himself intervened. He said: “What security are you talking about? Here are 300,000 people in these camps, some 20,000 pro-LTTE as well as cadres have already escaped. So where’s the security? I want them resettled immediately!”

- Asian Tribune -