By Mohamed Harees –

Lukman Harees

One of the most troubling aspects of Sri Lanka’s forced cremation scandal is the inordinate delay in bringing those responsible to justice. Although the policy was implemented under the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, the present government cannot continue to treat accountability as an inconvenient afterthought while the anguish it caused to the Muslim community remains unresolved.

That delay is not a procedural footnote. It is part of the injustice. It tells the country, and especially the Muslim community, that the state still has not fully absorbed the depth of the harm caused when families were denied the right to bury their dead in accordance with faith and custom. A racist policy that stripped people of dignity in death should have triggered swift scrutiny, public explanation, and consequences for those who designed, defended, and enforced it. Instead, the long wait for justice has deepened the sense that powerful actors can wound minority communities and then simply outlast the outrage.

A wound that has not healed

The forced cremation policy was one of the most painful episodes of Sri Lanka’s pandemic years. It did not emerge from neutral public health reasoning. It emerged from fear, politics, and a willingness to override religious dignity in the name of emergency. Muslim families were told that burial was not allowed, despite scientific objections and international criticism. Their grief was made heavier by the knowledge that the policy was not necessary in the way the authorities claimed.

That is why the issue remains alive. It was never just about what the state did to the dead. It was about what the state did to the living families left behind. It imposed a second trauma on people already struggling with loss. It turned mourning into confrontation. It made religious practice feel conditional on state approval.The anguish caused by that policy cannot be measured only in legal terms. It was emotional, spiritual, and social. It told a minority community that its rituals could be suspended when politically convenient. That message lingers long after the policy itself has been withdrawn.

Delay is a form of denial

The present government’s slowness in bringing perpetrators to account has become part of the scandal. In matters of public harm, delay is never neutral. It protects those who benefited from inaction. It weakens public confidence. It signals that the state is more comfortable with managed forgetting than with hard truth. For the Muslim community, every month without meaningful action compounds the injury. The pain did not end when the policy ended. It continues in the silence that follows. It continues in the absence of visible responsibility. It continues when the state appears to believe that a formal apology, or the passage of time, is enough. It is not enough. A policy that caused such deep anguish demands more than regret. It demands an accounting.

The policy was wrong at its core

Sri Lanka’s forced cremation policy was not justified by science. It made a choice that singled out a community, overrode religious practice, and ignored evidence that contradicted the policy. That is not a minor administrative lapse. It is a profound failure of governance. The policy also revealed something deeper about the country’s institutions- entrenched institutional racism. When fear rises, evidence can be set aside. When political pressure mounts, minority concerns can be treated as secondary. When power is concentrated, it becomes easier to impose harm and harder to challenge it. That is exactly why accountability is necessary: to show that such decisions cannot be made with impunity.

The Muslim community deserves more than sympathy

Expressions of sympathy are not the same as justice. The Muslim community in Sri Lanka deserves recognition that it was subjected to state-inflicted suffering. It deserves a clear acknowledgment that the policy brought anguish, humiliation, and spiritual injury. It deserves to see that the state understands the difference between managing a health emergency and violating a community’s rights.

That recognition must be more than rhetorical. It should include reparations for families who endured the pain of forced cremation. It should include a public record of how the policy was made, who supported it, who rejected scientific objections, and why dissenting voices were ignored. And it should include consequences for those whose decisions or advice enabled the harm.

Without that, the wound remains open.

Accountability must be personal and institutional

The problem is not just one government or one leader. The forced cremation policy was made possible by a wider institutional culture that allowed prejudice to operate inside emergency decision-making. That is why accountability must be both personal and institutional.

Personal accountability means identifying the individuals who made, recommended, defended, or enabled the policy. They should be subjected to investigation, professional review, and, where appropriate, legal consequence. Institutional accountability means examining how such a policy could pass through the health system, the advisory process, and the executive apparatus without being stopped.

If the state fails to do both, the lesson to future officials is dangerous: a discriminatory policy can be imposed, defended for a time, and then quietly absorbed into the past.

Why the delay matters politically

The inordinate delay in accountability is also politically corrosive. It creates the impression that the state is reluctant to confront the previous administration because doing so might be inconvenient. But justice is not supposed to depend on political convenience. The fact that the policy was implemented under the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government should not freeze action now. Nor should it become an excuse for present leaders to avoid responsibility.

A serious government would understand that the continuation of delay suggests weakness, not prudence. It shows an unwillingness to draw a line under discriminatory governance. It leaves minority communities wondering whether the state’s commitment to equality is real or merely seasonal.

Sri Lanka cannot rebuild trust by asking victims to wait indefinitely.

The need for structural safeguards

Even if accountability were finally pursued, the country would still need safeguards to ensure that no future government repeats the same mistake. That means health policy must be guided by evidence, not political panic. It means minority rights must be reviewed before emergency measures are adopted. It means public health decisions must be transparent enough for citizens to understand who is making them and on what basis.

The state should require formal scientific justification for emergency measures that affect burial, cremation, religious observance, or bodily dignity. It should publish the evidence it relies on and allow scrutiny from independent experts. When communities are likely to be affected, they must be consulted before the decision is made, not after the damage is done.

This is not only about protecting Muslims. It is about building a system where no community is left vulnerable when fear and power combine.

Reparations are part of truth

There is also a moral obligation to repair, not simply to explain. Families affected by the policy suffered a violation at the most intimate moment of life: the death of a loved one. That injury did not end with the cremation itself. It extends into memory, mourning, and trust.

A formal reparations process would acknowledge that the state caused harm and accepts responsibility for it. Compensation alone cannot restore what was taken, but it can at least recognize that the harm was real. A public apology, if accompanied by reparations and accountability, would carry more weight than apology alone.

Sri Lanka should also preserve the record of what happened, so that the episode is not quietly smoothed over by bureaucracy. Testimonies, decisions, and official justifications should be documented. The country needs a truthful archive of its own failure.

A test of democratic seriousness

How the present government handles this issue will say a great deal about the health of Sri Lankan democracy. States are judged not only by how they behave in ordinary times, but by how they act when they are confronted with their own wrongdoing.

If the government continues to delay, it risks sending a message that accountability is optional when the victims belong to a minority community. That would be a devastating signal. It would tell Muslims that their suffering can be acknowledged without being seriously addressed. It would tell the public that state power remains stronger than state conscience.

If, however, the government acts decisively now, it can begin to repair some of the damage. It can show that it is willing to confront not only the policy itself, but the culture that allowed it. It can demonstrate that apology will be followed by consequence. And it can restore some measure of confidence that rights in Sri Lanka are not merely decorative. NPP Government has shown political courage and will to state that political racism will not be tolerated. Taking action to root out institutional racism is also paramount.

Conclusion

Sri Lanka’s forced cremation policy was a national disgrace. The forced cremation scandal was one of the darkest episodes of Sri Lanka’s pandemic response. It brought anguish and suffering to the Muslim community, violated religious dignity, and revealed how easily emergency power can be used against minority rights. The inordinate delay in bringing those responsible to justice is now part of the same injury. A democracy worthy of the name does not hide from its harm. It names it. It investigates it. It repairs it.

Sri Lanka has a choice. It can leave the cremation scandal as a wound that festers in memory, or it can confront it honestly and build a future in which no community is again asked to sacrifice its dead to the state’s fear. The present government cannot keep postponing accountability. It must investigate the policy, identify those responsible, acknowledge the harm done, and provide reparations. It must also ensure that no future administration can repeat the same abuse under the cover of public health.

Sri Lanka has a choice. It can continue the politics of delay, or it can finally choose justice. Only one of those paths offers a future in which minority communities can trust the State again.