By Rajan Philips –

The riots that broke out in the Negombo prison over two days (July 5^th & 6^th) are a worrying measure of the challenge the NPP government faces in fighting organized crime and its paymasters in drug business. The political fallout has been predictable. On behalf of the government, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara has taken responsibility, visited the Negombo jailhouse, met with officials a number of times, and has made a comprehensive statement before parliament within two days of the riots. The main opposition party was equally responsible soon after the riots but has since taken the familiar route of calling for the minister’s resignation. The resignation call was first made by GL Peiris, a former Minister of Justice for the Rajapaksas, who should be in no position to call for anyone’s resignation given his rather pathetic record as a politician and a cabinet minister. Resignation to what end? That is the question.

Yet there is no surprise in all this. Even the riots in Negombo can be seen as an unsurprising explosion of a ticking timebomb – a viciously wired triangle of the drug economy, organized crime and overcrowded and under-supervised prisons. The surprise is that there are not more of them occurring more frequently. There are over 40,000 inmates in the country’s 26 prisons that can accommodate a total maximum of about 10,000 inmates. 2,600 prisoners were in the Negombo prison at the time of the riots, well over the prison’s capacity to accommodate 650 inmates. Over 700 inmates were reportedly involved in the rioting.

Overcrowded and underserviced prisons are a natural breeding place for bullying, rowdiness and violence. The mixing of remand prisoners facing trial and convicted criminals after trials aggravates the situation with convicts ever ready to gang up on remandees. These shortcomings are exploited by the criminal world of narcotics and its delegates among the prison inmates. All of the above ingredients were in the mix when matters came to a boil in the Negombo jailhouse, killing seven officers and 20 inmates while injuring more than 100 others. There was even a mastermind in the mix, conveying messages from bosses outside to drug peddlers inside and ordering them to attack the inmates who were opposed drug trafficking and may have been providing information to prison officials.

According to the Justice Minister’s statement in parliament, a group of rioters went so far as to dismantle the prison’s security infrastructure. The minister suggested that an organised group of inmates was behind this, smashing closed circuit television cameras and destroying a body scanner, which may have been part of an attempt “to disable the mechanisms used to stop drugs and other illegal items from entering the prison.” In his statement, Mr. Nanayakkara also announced the immediate measures the government would be taking to address overcrowding and expand supervisory capacity. They include streamlining bail requirements and bail hearings as well introducing ‘house arrest’ with electronic monitoring as an alternative to remanding everyone.

NPP’s Uniqueness

Sri Lanka has a sad history of prison riots – the ghastly massacre of 53 unarmed Tamil prisoners in the Welikada Prison in 1983, a wholly different riot at the same prison and its brutal putdown by security forces in 2012, and the 2020 prison clashes in Mahar. The vicious triangle of drugs, crime and prisons is a relatively new phenomenon and breaking up that triangle will require simultaneous state response on all three fronts – targeting drug trafficking, containing violent crimes, and undertaking prison reform. Each one of them is a major task in itself and will require enormous resources, along with consistent and co-ordinated effort.

At the same time, I find something politically unique and even encouraging about the present situation. For the first time, in a long time, Sri Lanka has a government that has no truck with the world of drugs and organized crime. I believe I am not wrong in making this assertion. There have been many criticisms of the NPP government – for its inexperience and its ineptitude, as a one man (AKD) show with L-board ministers, as well as for the ethical lapses and unexplained riches of some of the government members and ministers – but I have not come across anything that accuses the NPP government or its members of having links to the underworlds of drugs and crime.

Equally, I have not come across any previous Sri Lankan Head of State or Head of Government making a statement on the connections between the upperworld of politics and the underworld of crime, as President Anura Kumara Dissanayake did when he addressed parliament on Wednesday, 24 June, hours after the arrests of Rakitha Rajapakshe and his cohorts.

The President spoke of the growing practices of forex fraud, money laundering, and bribe transactions that link the world of crime and drugs to the world of banking and the universe of politics. Quite revealingly, the President mentioned a certain politician who had had 92 telephone calls with prisoners remanded or convicted for drug trafficking. 54 of those calls, the President said, were initiated by the politician while 38 of them were received by him from the prisons.

The President then challenged the main political parties to inform parliament and the country of the actions they had taken, or will take in future, against such criminally compromised individuals who are their members. Indeed! Hence my thesis, this week, that the NPP government provides a singular opportunity for Sri Lanka to fight the interconnected menace of drug economy and organized crime. I am not vouching that the government will necessarily win this fight. Only that for the sake of the country it must win it. If the NPP fails, there is no one else in today’s politics in Sri Lanka, honest enough, sincere enough and able enough, to pick up the pieces and resume the fight. Those who have gotten into the habit of caviling at the NPP government over anything and everything should give it some slack and appreciate its unique position in the fight against crime and drugs.

Crime and Politics after 1977

In singling out the current president for daring to taken on well-connected criminals and their political patrons, I must point out in fairness to state and government leaders who came before 1977, that there was no need for them to do this in their time. For the nexus between crime and politics really came about after 1977. Of course, there were thugs and IRCs before 1977, plenty of them and they were buddies with individual politicians especially in the fringes of urban politics. Recall the name Ossie Corea from the 1950s, whose gun turned out to be the murder weapon that killed Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike. Mr. Corea, a retired Excise Inspector, was also the bodyguard of SWRD’s Finance Minister Stanley de Zoysa.

But there were no widespread connections between political parties and the criminal underworld. Those connections started coming after 1977 and have grown increasingly systemic in the 21^st century under the auspices of the Rajapaksas. There is a publicly available list of over 25 ‘mobsters’, all of whom have been active criminally and politically in the years since 1977. Leading the list are the infamous Gonawala Sunil (Sunil Perera) and Sothi Upali (Upali Ranjith). The former was convicted and jailed for raping an 18-year old girl and was alleged to have been the inside mastermind of the 1983 dastardly massacre of Tamil political prisoners in the Welikada jail. He was later honoured with a presidential pardon and appointment as an all-island Justice of the Peace. He was also the bodyguard for Ranil Wickremesinghe when he was Minister of Education in the Jayewardene government. Sothi Upali was implicated in the killing of Lalith Athulathmudali and was believed to have been close to the UNP’s political mastermind Sirisena Cooray. Mr. Cooray himself was believed by some to have been not without underworld connections and credentials. The list goes on.

It would be fantastic and absurd, perhaps simply nuts, for anyone to suggest that the crime-politics nexus after 1977 was a consequence of the open economy and neoliberal globalism. It would be analytically more defensible to contextualize the crime-politics nexus in the local political developments. The authoritarianism of the new presidential system and the abuse of the referendum devise to postpone parliamentary elections were certainly major factors. In addition, state sponsored ethnic riots, the monopoly of political violence among the Tamils, and the violent second coming of the JVP became catalytic mediums for the cohabitation of politics and crime. Tamil criminals and drug lords were implicated in the LTTE’s failed assassination attempt against President Kumaratunga in 1999.

Criminal enterprises and drug trafficking were given a more convenient and safer passage to connect with the political upperworld by the growth of political security business, providing protection for MPs and officials, and involving both state security personnel and private strongmen. The notorious Beddagana Sanjeewa (Dansuka Perera) was allegedly close to President Kumaratunga’s security detail and enjoyed easy access to Temple Trees. The Rajapaksa security details – there were quite a few of them given the extended family network – were also allegedly compromised by similar infiltrations. There have been plausible suggestions that those in the security details of Rajapaksa VIPs may have been involved in some of the yet unsolved emblematic killings in Colombo.

The lead up to the Easter Sunday bombings may have included additional avenues. The new line of investigating and litigating the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks to look for potential collusion between state security officials and perpetrators of the attacks would suggest that a different passage may have been opened up between the state security domain and the universe of local Islamic extremism. There is considerable anecdotal discussion supporting this contention, including the alleged role of Isreal. A precursor to this was in already in place after the LTTE renegades in the eastern province came into alliance with the state security forces. But what turned out to be different is that domestic Islamic extremism had its independent connections to global Islamic extremism, specifically ISIS, and which may have provided the inspiration and the encouragement for the planning and execution of the Easter Sunday suicide bombings.

Against this backdrop of high level politicians connecting with low life criminals and ill inspired extremists, the NPP government certainly stands apart, almost as a new kid on the block. That is my whole point. That gives the NPP an uncompromising headstart in the fight against crime. Every other government this century has been far too compromised even to make a headstart for starters. But a great deal more than sincerity and inflexibility is needed to carry through the gamut of investigations and successful litigation. One positive development is the subtle but positive responsiveness of the judiciary to the political climate that facilitated the election of the NPP government and is now willing its success especially in the fight against corruption and crime. The government should let the courts do their part without causing even so much as the appearance of interference.