--By Political Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -09.March.2025, 11.10 PM) After decades of political maneuvering, legal evasions, and public denials, the Batalanda Report (Sessional Paper No. 1, 2000) has finally been tabled in Parliament. For years, Sri Lanka’s former president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, dismissed allegations linking him to the Batalanda Torture Chambers, a site infamous for its alleged human rights abuses during the late 1980s. But with the report now in official parliamentary records, the veil of ambiguity has been lifted—and so too, it seems, have Ranil’s carefully crafted denials.
Tomorrow, March 10, 2025, the Sri Lankan Cabinet is set to discuss the next steps—a moment that could define how Sri Lanka chooses to reckon with one of its darkest chapters. The question now is simple: Will action finally be taken against those implicated, or will this report gather dust like so many before it?
If there is one thing Ranil Wickremesinghe has mastered over decades in politics, it is the art of selective amnesia.
When confronted about Batalanda, he conveniently claimed the report was never tabled in Parliament—a bold claim, considering the first page of the document itself states otherwise. Now that the report is officially on record, his deflection strategy has crumbled.
But Batalanda is not the only inconvenient truth that Wickremesinghe has tried to rewrite.
During his infamous interview on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head, Ranil attempted to dismiss Channel 4’s exposé on the Easter Sunday attacks, claiming that Parliament had requested a commission to investigate the allegations.
The reality? Parliament never approved such a commission. Instead, it was a decision orchestrated by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, with Ranil acting as little more than a puppet of the Rajapaksa dynasty.
For a man who prides himself on his legal intellect, Ranil seems to forget that facts have a stubborn way of catching up.
If being exposed on international television wasn’t embarrassing enough, Ranil now faces a legal storm in London.
After the Channel 4 Easter Sunday attack revelations, he made a serious misstep—publicly accusing former BBC journalist Frances Harrison and Pearl International Director Madura Rasarathnam of being LTTE sympathizers.
This reckless allegation will now be tested in the courts, where Wickremesinghe will be forced to defend his words under cross-examination. No carefully scripted press statements, no parliamentary privilege—just a courtroom, a judge, and the raw weight of evidence.
For decades, Ranil Wickremesinghe has carefully crafted an image of an untouchable statesman, a Teflon politician immune to controversy. But as Batalanda returns to haunt him and a lawsuit looms in London, it seems that even the most seasoned political escape artist may finally be running out of exits.
Let the legal grilling begin.
-By Political Correspondent
You can read Batalanda Presidential Commission Report in following link
https://itjpsl.com/assets/Batalanda-Commission-Report-EN-copy-copy.pdf
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by (2025-03-09 18:31:30)
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