In this situation, the elite’s response was similar to that of the Tamil elite in the mid-80s. Although not absolutely safe, it felt safer for the elite to rain indignation against the Government’s violations – the violence of the known devil. Thus for them condemning the latter and being silent on the JVP’s violations, thereby giving them a certain legitimacy, became a fashionable way of feeling good. It was shallow and self-serving, having a useful purpose only when the JVP seemed like succeeding. This was the context behind the protest by an influential section of the intelligentsia when Liyannarachchi was killed. There were also those who had consistently protested against human rights violations over the years. They were a minority. Earlier, Human Rights had been an expression that had been spat upon as a pastime of Tamil lovers. But during the latter half of 1988, and only then, Human Rights became a very respectable term in the South of Sri Lanka.

Liyannarachchi had been working on habeas corpus cases in the South from the offices of the senior lawyer Ranjit Abeyasuriya, who was associated with the SLFP. He was abducted in Colombo upon leaving these offices on 25th August 1988 and taken by the Police to Tangalle, in DIG Udugampola’s area. A month earlier several members of Udugampola’s family had been murdered when the JVP attacked his ancestral home in the Deep South. Once the alarm was sounded over Liyannarachchi’s safety, it was decided to move him to Colombo. The Batalanda Commission has since found that Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe was instrumental in giving the CSU unit at Kelaniya custody of Liyannarachchi and that this unit was responsible for the torture to which he finally succumbed.

The Bar Association took an unprecedented step. The Association resolved (Sunday Times 11.9.88) that “no member of the Association would appear for a police officer in any court until all police officers connected with the arrest and death of Mr. Liyannarachchi are interdicted and criminal proceedings are instituted against them forthwith”.

The resolution was evidently drafted in haste under the clamour of the moment. To be consistent, the Bar Association should have taken the position that none of its members would appear in a case where there is good reason to believe that the prospective client is guilty of the offence he has been charged with. For, there could have arisen a situation where the Attorney General charged in court the very man who was beyond reasonable doubt Liyannarachchi’s killer. The accused in turn may have retained a brilliant member of the Bar Association who found holes in the Attorney General’s case, and got the killer released.