By Asoka N.I. Ekanayaka –

Prof. ANI Ekanayaka

As 2023 dawns how short is the memory of our people ! How fleeting their sympathy for the victims of monstrous crimes! How indifferent to the moral imperative for the guilty to be held to account ! Nevertheless wherever the history of our time is read by future generations the case of Dr Shafi, an innocent doctor who was diabolically framed up and cruelly vilified for a crime he never committed, will  stand out as a permanent blot on the Sinhala Buddhist society of our day and age. The good news that he has at the very least and very belatedly been paid his back wages having been totally vindicated of the dastardly racially motivated  false accusations made against him, is something to momentarily cheer the hearts of those few who yearn for justice and truth in what is now a corrupt bankrupt failed Sinhala Buddhist beggar State, currently perishing amidst the inability to pay its debts, provide for its people, or effectively govern itself.  

The reports that Dr Shafi has graciously donated the whole of his salary arrears to charity underlines the stark contrast between the gracious generosity of a good and decent member of a minority community and the malicious wickedness of the militant fanatical Sinhala Buddhist bandwagon which sought to destroy him. That Dr Shafi  has been fully vindicated and grudgingly paid his back wages by the Ministry of Health  having been unfairly sent on compulsory leave for 3 long years is small consolation indeed. Surprisingly the government has still not formally withdrawn the case against him which means that technically he is still on bail ! That is how the ‘rule of law’ works in Sri Lanka. More importantly, we cannot forget the diabolical conspirators in this monstrous crime involving malicious defamation of character  with the intention of  inducing hate,  provoking ethnic conflict and ruining a man and his family. This article is a call to bring those responsible for this crime to justice. Regrettably the miscreants are nearly all alive and kicking, nonchalantly enjoying prosperous lives and social recognition. That is the quality of justice in Buddhist Sri Lanka today ! 

Lest we forget the principal villains in this historic scandal included leading Buddhist monks one of whom a sanctimonious humbug  continues to sit smugly as a member of parliament  and pontificate on the issues of the day. At that time  evidently another  senior Buddhist figure from the Asgiriya chapter publicly called for the doctor to be stoned. Yet another is reported to have demanded (no doubt according to his own twisted understanding of the five precepts!) that the doctor should be brutally punished according to ancient barbaric practice that may have included torture . 

Other culprits included at least  one of today’s dime a dozen University professors with small brains and  great ambitions  who inundate academia in this day and age. Particularly blameworthy were various hospital administrators dominated by a shameless dental surgeon (as it happens a student of mine!), who as hospital director had the audacity to confidently advice court on gynecological matters far removed from his training in  dental health. That such a misfit was astonishingly given a hearing in court hardly speaks well for the independence of the judiciary. Nor can we ignore the complicity of a fake print and electronic media  especially the  prominent Sinhala Buddhist oriented national Divaina newspaper which set the ball rolling with a palpably false sensational headline in May 2019 accusing a Muslim doctor of sterilising Sinhala women. This was accompanied by widespread gutter journalism where the print and electronic media stubbornly continued to spit out the same false story even as new evidence emerged to exonerate the doctor. 

Others more peripherally involved in this diabolical slander included those in the police and intelligence services,  various hospital staff, a docile politicized Ministry of Health, and the foolish Buddhist women (some of whom subsequently became pregnant!) who either induced by bribery or motivated by primitive religious fanaticism, or driven to panic by provocative newspaper headlines  were lured into falsely claiming that they had been rendered infertile. Finally one must reluctantly point the accusing finger at the rest of Sinhala Buddhist society in this country including respectable professional organizations, political parties, the GMOA and the general public all of whom by their silence apathy and indifference in one way or another acquiesced in this abominable crime.  

The pain suffering and alienation experienced  by Dr Shafi and his family during  five  long years  of persecution following the grotesque defamation of his character is incalculable. The story might be a fiction writer’s dream. His arbitrary arrest and callous treatment by the police was an outrage. He had to experience the unspeakable humiliation  of being paraded in handcuffs amongst the staff of the very hospital where he had rendered yeoman service for many years. His being denied bail and remanded for 4 months was a gross violation of the basic principle that a man is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Adding to the  anguish of prolonged separation from family, the  squalor, overcrowding, foul atmosphere, physical discomfort, and dubious company he was forced to endure while under remand, are painful recollections that might torment a sensitive human being for the rest of his life. 

 Nor can we even begin to imagine the severity of the  psychological trauma suffered by the Shafi family whose lives were totally disrupted  by this sordid scandal. Amidst the shame and embarrassment of the vile stigmatization of an innocent  husband and father, the humiliation of widespread public hostility and being treated as social outcasts, and the fear and insecurity  provoked by even death threats, the family was compelled to leave their home  and take refuge in  a far off city. The cussed attitude and sadistic cruelty of the intelligence services (which have evidently been brutally purged of its most outstanding and fair minded sleuths) was such that  Dr Shafi even after being released on bail was forced to travel many miles from a distant outpost once a week to fulfill his bail requirement at the CID in Colombo, instead of being allowed the courtesy of doing so at the nearest police station.

From a historical perspective  Sri Lanka’s “Shafi Affair” is comparable to the notorious “Dreyfus affair” which to quote Wikipedia “ was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The Dreyfus Affair came to symbolize modern injustice in the Francophone world and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and anti-Semitism”. Unlike in Sri Lanka where the role of the media was negative if not destructive and discriminatory, the role of the press and public opinion in the “Dryfus affair” proved influential in serving the cause of justice.

The “Dreyfus affair”  is the story of one of the most shocking “frame ups” in modern history where in 1894 Captain Dreyfus  an innocent French officer was falsely tried and convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in  the draconian “Devil’s Island” in French Guyana. The account of his suffering and final exoneration in which the great French author Emile Zola played a heroic role in proving his innocence, is one of the most captivating and turbulent episodes in French history with many lessons for future generations. Long ago  as a young boy I recall my father taking me to the long extinct “Fawn cinema” in Union Place one afternoon to watch the ‘Emile Zola’ movie that was being screened ! It was my turn about two years ago to return the favour by sending the Shafi family the link to the 45 minute historical video documentary of the “Dreyfus Affair” in the hope that it would be a source of comfort inspiration and fresh courage in the face of their own comparable experience in Sri Lanka  more than a century later. It is a documentary well worth watching and may be accessed at the following link:

As one contemplates the  decline fall and  shameful disintegration  of a once thriving nation it becomes clear that  Sri Lanka  is an island where  wrongdoing flourishes with little accountability and complete impunity. At the recent 51^st Sessions of the UNHRC the UN acting Commissioner for Human Rights in a damning indictment mentioned how 13 years since the end of war, tens of thousands of survivors and their families continue to seek justice and to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones. as well as the lack of progress in establishing the truth about those responsible for the Easter massacre.

In a manner of speaking Sri Lanka is a place where you can do almost anything and get away with it, where  so often the administration of justice  seems zealous  in pouncing on the good and recalcitrant in allowing the evil to slip away, where a decent man  who loves justice can be arrogantly thrown into prison for 4 years for being momentarily carried away in his criticism of the system, where monstrous criminals including war criminals  rapacious politicians and their families who  cover up their crimes while robbing the country dry are never brought to justice.

The Bible records that in 740 -700 BC Almighty God through the utterance of  the great  prophet Isaiah  pronounced a series of “woes” on a decadent nation whose people  were  alienated from God being “deaf and blind” to the Truth. These fearful imprecations included: “Woe to  those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light  and light for darkness ,  who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter . . . . .  who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!“ (Isiah  5: 20,23) Though uttered  millennia ago that sounds like a description of Sri Lanka in this day and age. 

Amidst all the superficial distractions at the dawn of a New Year this article is intended  to ensure that the “Shafi affair” is not forgotten but rather the painful memory of a national disgrace kept alive. One longs for the day when under a righteous government a “Special Commission of Inquiry” would be set up to bring to light the whole truth about the Shafi frame up where all who were complicit in this dastardly crime will be brought to justice, those who were peripherally involved forced to confess their guilt and apologise, and those who were dominantly involved punished more severely with fines deprivation of civic rights or even prison.  

This is not because the Shafi frame up is any worse than the countless unsolved murders, massacres, prison massacres, crimes, war crimes, atrocities, abductions, racial riots, summary executions and monumental robberies and their cover up that this writer now in the 8^th decade of life has lived through and which stain the post independence history of Sri Lanka. But sometimes the cruelty malice bigotry  and cover up underlying the maltreatment of one man, mirrors the true degenerate character of an entire society.

Meanwhile Dr Shafi himself to his credit bears no malice towards his persecutors. But the demands of justice would be better served if he sued the main offenders for defamation of character compelling them to pay crippling damages which he can if he wishes donate to charity in these hard times for poor people.

Hopefully 2023 will not be remembered for the vanity and humbug of sham celebrations commemorating 75 years of independence in a failed state that would arguably have been far better off if it had remained a British colony. Rather one hopes 2023 will be remembered as the year in which those responsible for the shameful Shafi frame up were held to account, as a first step towards ending the culture of impunity in this otherwise beautiful island.