{"id":57329,"date":"2012-10-23T07:17:15","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T07:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=57329"},"modified":"2012-10-27T11:20:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T11:20:01","slug":"the-kp-strangeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-kp-strangeness\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018KP-Strangeness\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

Kumaran Pathmanathan<\/a><\/span>, KP that is, is a strange character and one that has become a \u2018concept\u2019 that is even amenable to inclusion in ideological lexicons, as in \u2018KPism\u2019.<\/p>\n

For a long time, he was a key member of the LTTE<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 Indeed, some would argue, that he was as or more important than Velupillai Prabhakaran<\/a><\/span> or Anton Balasingham<\/a><\/span> to that much-feared and ruthless terrorist outfit.\u00a0 He was the LTTE\u2019s main point-man internationally for all kinds of money-making rackets and arms procurement.\u00a0 After Prabhakaran and the entire military wing of the LTTE were defeated, KP was one of several pretenders to the terrorist throne, until he was captured by Army intelligence operatives and brought to Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Since then, if there\u2019s one (generous) word to describe what\u2019s happened to him, it has to be \u2018strange\u2019.\u00a0 A top notch terrorist (some would say \u2018THE top-notch LTTE operative) is not \u2018rehabilitated\u2019 or charged, unlike hundreds of others captured by or who had surrendered to the security forces.\u00a0 He was instead \u2018detained\u2019 and turned into \u2018development partner\u2019 cum \u2018liaison officer with the \u201cTamil Diaspora<\/a><\/span> (sic)\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

Last week, Director, Media Centre for National Security, Lakshman Hulugalle<\/a><\/span> said that there was no case against KP.\u00a0 \u2018No evidence<\/a><\/span>\u2019 was part of the quote.<\/p>\n

Now if KP was evidence-free and charge-less, then why arrest him and at such a high cost to boot?\u00a0 That question was dealt with at the weekly media briefing on Cabinet decisions by Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella who made it out that the man wasn\u2019t free, really, just on a long leash.\u00a0 Hulugalle said it was a victory to have a top ranking LTTE operative working with the Government on post-conflict reconciliation and rehabilitation.\u00a0 He had to, because the arrest, the manner of arrest and the Interpol Arrest Warrant certainly don\u2019t add up to \u2018no case\u2019 or \u2018no evidence\u2019.\u00a0 Such directives and actions are not birthed by whim and fancy but by solid evidence.<\/p>\n

Some are calling for KP\u2019s blood. Not all of them were exactly calling for KP\u2019s blood or Prabhakaran\u2019s blood before the latter lost all his blood in May 2009, though.<\/p>\n

Some are saying \u2018release all other LTTE suspects\u2019 or \u2018put them on a similarly long leash\u2019.\u00a0 That makes sense as per the sauce for the goose-gander theory.<\/p>\n

Forgive and forget is all sweet and warm, let us hasten to point out.\u00a0 We can talk of Angulimaala and we have whenever it made political sense to do so.\u00a0 Not just in the case of KP but in all kinds of people guilty of all kinds of transgressions, big and small, money-related and otherwise, bloody and bloodless.\u00a0 Parliamentarians on the wrong side of the house have on many occasions crossed over to the \u2018right\u2019 side if they risked being caught on the wrong side of the law.<\/p>\n

What it all boils down to then is not whether you\u2019ve abided by the law or violated it, but whether you are on the right side of \u2018politics\u2019, whether or not you are on the right side of the law.\u00a0 It all adds up to a mockery of the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

In a post conflict scenario, there can be situations where the long term reconciliation interests call for leniency, which too can be legally facilitated (Presidential pardons, crown-witnessing and so on).\u00a0 One can also point out that although they are certainly not pampered detainees like KP, all the LTTE cadres who surrendered or were arrested are enjoying a pretty comfy existence, compared to say the pickpocket picked in Nugegoda last week or the prostitute taken in from a brothel last night.\u00a0 Those who blew up buses and trains, abducted children and stuck bayonets in the bellies of pregnant mothers and infants are getting the kind of education and skill-training (free of charge, mind you) that thousands of others of the never-hurt-a-fly (relatively speaking) don\u2019t have access to.<\/p>\n

The \u2018strangeness\u2019 about KP is that the law has not been visited or referred to in the entire story.\u00a0 The people of this country are willing to forgive and forget, they can come to terms with \u2018turned-over-a-new-leaf\u2019 and \u2018that-chapter-is-closed\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 The JVP is a case in point.\u00a0 The UNP and SLFP and all their various avatars have benefitted from that forgiving and forgetting readiness of the Sri Lankan voter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still too vague for a society that depends on formal laws and things like constitutions.\u00a0 In the case of the JVP there was amnesty; in the case of \u2018Karuna\u2019, a non-prosecution.\u00a0 Files can be closed, true, but not in an ad hoc way.\u00a0 They have to be legally closed if you don\u2019t want to open a legal can of worms that can lead to a situation where we have anarchy in everything but name.<\/p>\n

KP is \u2018reformed\u2019, we are supposed to think.\u00a0 His LTTE friends in Canada, though, haven\u2019t dropped Eelam or burnt the LTTE flag, though.\u00a0 They still work with groups that are rabidly anti Sri Lanka and are hell bent on harvesting regime change by hook or by crook.<\/p>\n

Fighting the war was tough.\u00a0 When wars end, mine fields, political and otherwise, are not automatically de-mined.\u00a0 KP is a mine that appears to be deactivated but may not have been.\u00a0 Even if he is not a mine or one that has been deactivated, KP is a \u2018strangeness\u2019 that needs a legal frame, not a media one.<\/p>\n

The Government seems to be at a loss for words.\u00a0 And metaphors.\u00a0 And legal legs.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s the KP-strangeness.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation<\/a>\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a>\u00a0.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":44732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[5817,5815,5814,5819,5818,5816],"class_list":["post-57329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial","tag-kp","tag-kp-issue","tag-kumaran-pathmanathan","tag-ltte-and-kumaran-pathmanathan","tag-no-evidence-against-kumaran-pathmanathan","tag-what-is-he-doing-kumaran-pathmanathan"],"yoast_head":"\nThe \u2018KP-Strangeness\u2019 - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-kp-strangeness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The \u2018KP-Strangeness\u2019 - 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