{"id":230535,"date":"2022-12-31T16:50:58","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T11:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=230535"},"modified":"2023-01-05T13:56:35","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T08:26:35","slug":"the-malicious-shafi-frame-up-will-2023-see-the-guilty-being-punished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-malicious-shafi-frame-up-will-2023-see-the-guilty-being-punished\/","title":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Malicious \u201cShafi Frame Up\u201d:\u00a0Will 2023 See The Guilty Being Punished?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Asoka N.I. Ekanayaka<\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/strong><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"

Prof. ANI Ekanayaka<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>read by future generations the case of Dr Shafi<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>an innocent doctor who was diabolically framed up and cruelly vilified for a crime he never committed, will\u00a0 <\/span>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\u00a0 <\/span>false accusations made against him,\u00a0<\/span>is something\u00a0<\/span>to momentarily cheer the hearts of those few who yearn for justice and truth in what is now a corrupt bankrupt failed\u00a0<\/span>Sinhala Buddhist beggar State, currently perishing amidst the inability\u00a0<\/span>to pay its debts, provide for its people, or effectively govern itself. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The reports that Dr Shafi has graciously donated the whole of his salary arrears to charity underlines the stark contrast between the gracious generosity\u00a0<\/span>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.\u00a0<\/span>That Dr Shafi\u00a0 <\/span>has been fully vindicated and grudgingly paid his back wages by the Ministry of Health\u00a0 <\/span>having been unfairly sent on compulsory leave for 3 long years is small consolation indeed.\u00a0<\/span>Surprisingly the government has still not formally withdrawn the case against him which means that technically he is still on bail !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 \u2018rule of law\u2019 works in Sri Lanka. More importantly, we cannot forget the diabolical conspirators in this monstrous crime involving malicious defamation of character\u00a0 <\/span>with the intention of\u00a0 <\/span>inducing hate,\u00a0 <\/span>provoking ethnic conflict and ruining a man and his family.\u00a0<\/span>This article is a call to bring those responsible for this crime to justice. Regrettably the miscreants are nearly all alive and kicking,\u00a0<\/span>nonchalantly enjoying prosperous lives and social recognition. That is the quality of justice in Buddhist Sri Lanka today !\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lest we forget the principal villains in this historic scandal included leading Buddhist monks one of whom a sanctimonious humbug\u00a0 <\/span>continues to sit smugly as a member of parliament\u00a0 <\/span>and pontificate on the issues of the day. At that time\u00a0 <\/span>evidently another\u00a0 <\/span>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 .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Other culprits included at least\u00a0 <\/span>one of today\u2019s dime a dozen University professors with\u00a0<\/span>small brains and\u00a0 <\/span>great ambitions\u00a0 <\/span>who inundate academia in this day and age.\u00a0<\/span>Particularly blameworthy\u00a0<\/span>were various hospital administrators\u00a0<\/span>dominated by a shameless dental surgeon (as it happens a student of mine!),\u00a0<\/span>who as hospital director had the audacity to confidently advice court on gynecological matters far removed from his training in\u00a0 <\/span>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\u00a0 <\/span>especially the\u00a0 <\/span>prominent\u00a0<\/span>Sinhala Buddhist oriented national Divaina<\/em> newspaper which set the ball rolling with a palpably false sensational headline in May 2019 accusing\u00a0<\/span>a Muslim doctor\u00a0<\/span>of\u00a0<\/span>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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Others more peripherally involved in this diabolical slander included those in the police and intelligence services,\u00a0 <\/span>various hospital staff,\u00a0<\/span>a docile politicized Ministry of Health,\u00a0<\/span>and the foolish Buddhist women (some of whom subsequently became pregnant!) who\u00a0<\/span>either induced by bribery or motivated\u00a0<\/span>by primitive religious fanaticism, or driven to panic by provocative newspaper headlines\u00a0 <\/span>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,\u00a0<\/span>the GMOA\u00a0<\/span>and the general public all of whom by their silence apathy and indifference\u00a0<\/span>in one way or another acquiesced in this abominable crime. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/span>pain suffering and alienation experienced\u00a0 <\/span>by Dr Shafi\u00a0<\/span>and his family during\u00a0 <\/span>five\u00a0 <\/span>long years\u00a0 <\/span>of persecution following the grotesque defamation of his character is incalculable. The story might be a fiction writer\u2019s dream. His arbitrary arrest and callous treatment by the police was an outrage.\u00a0<\/span>He had to experience the unspeakable humiliation\u00a0 <\/span>of being paraded in handcuffs amongst the\u00a0<\/span>staff of the very hospital where he had rendered yeoman service for many years.\u00a0<\/span>His\u00a0<\/span>being\u00a0<\/span>denied bail and remanded for 4 months was a gross violation of the basic principle that a man is presumed innocent until proved guilty.\u00a0<\/span>Adding to the\u00a0 <\/span>anguish of prolonged separation from family, the\u00a0 <\/span>squalor, overcrowding,\u00a0<\/span>foul atmosphere,\u00a0<\/span>physical discomfort,\u00a0<\/span>and dubious company\u00a0<\/span>he was forced to endure while under remand, are\u00a0<\/span>painful recollections that\u00a0<\/span>might torment a sensitive human being for the rest of his life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Nor can we even begin to imagine the severity of the\u00a0 <\/span>psychological trauma\u00a0<\/span>suffered by the Shafi family whose lives were totally disrupted\u00a0 <\/span>by this sordid scandal.\u00a0<\/span>Amidst the shame and embarrassment of\u00a0<\/span>the vile stigmatization of an innocent\u00a0 <\/span>husband and father,\u00a0<\/span>the humiliation of widespread public hostility\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>being treated as social outcasts, and the fear and insecurity\u00a0 <\/span>provoked by even death threats,\u00a0<\/span>the family was compelled to leave their home\u00a0 <\/span>and take refuge in\u00a0 <\/span>a far off city. The cussed attitude and sadistic cruelty\u00a0<\/span>of the intelligence services (which have evidently been brutally purged of its most outstanding and fair minded sleuths) was such that\u00a0 <\/span>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,\u00a0<\/span>instead of being allowed the courtesy of doing so at the nearest police station.<\/p>\n

From a historical perspective\u00a0 <\/span>Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>\u201cShafi Affair\u201d is comparable to the\u00a0<\/span>notorious\u00a0<\/span>\u201cDreyfus affair\u201d which to quote Wikipedia \u201c 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\u201d. 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 \u201cDryfus affair” proved influential in serving the cause of justice.<\/p>\n

The \u201cDreyfus affair\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>is the story of one of the most shocking “frame ups” in modern history where in 1894 Captain Dreyfus\u00a0 <\/span>an innocent French officer was falsely tried and convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in\u00a0 <\/span>the draconian “Devil’s Island” in French Guyana.\u00a0<\/span>The\u00a0<\/span>account of his suffering and final exoneration in which the great French author Emile Zola played a heroic role in proving his innocence,\u00a0<\/span>is one of the most captivating and turbulent episodes in French history with many lessons for future generations. Long ago\u00a0 <\/span>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 \u201cDreyfus Affair\u201d\u00a0<\/span>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\u00a0 <\/span>more than a century later. It is a documentary well worth watching and may be accessed at the following link:<\/p>\n