Malaravan, Tamil Guardian, London, March 13, 2025
The recent head-to-head interview on Al Jazeera with Mehdi Hassan has brought Ranil Wickremesinghe back into the spotlight. The former Sri Lankan president was described as ‘childish’ and ‘callous’ in how he conducted himself. For many Sri Lankan viewers, as commentary flooded social media in the days after it aired, Wickremesinghe was simply an ’embarrassment’.
His discomfort was palpable when confronted with uncomfortable truths. He dismissed facts without hesitation, squirmed when challenged on Sri Lanka’s genocidal past, and evaded accountability for the deaths of thousands of ‘Sri Lankan’ citizens. But more than his individual failures, the interview also ripped away the thin veil concealing Sri Lanka’s entrenched Sinhala-Buddhist ethnocracy—a system that has not only led to mass atrocities but has also bankrupted the state, politically and economically. It has laid bare the ugly reality of Sri Lanka.
Wickremesinghe is not an anomaly. He is the product of a political order that has thrived on Buddhist nationalism, impunity, and corruption for over seventy years. Every political crisis, every economic collapse, every act of genocidal state terror is not an accident—it is the logical outcome of this system. The pogroms, the disappearances, the land grabs, the militarisation of the Tamil homeland—all are sustained by the same political order that allows men like Wickremesinghe to return to power again and again.
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His role in this system has informed the political crimes of the present. There is no imagination or introspection when operating from this system. No foresight to break free of the cycles of violence, corruption and impunity.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is Sri Lanka. A Sri Lanka that refuses change and justice, A Sri Lanka with revels in corruption and human rights abuses, a Sri Lanka which cannot reconcile with the pluralistic, multinational nature of the island.
His five-decade-long career embodies Sri Lanka’s cyclical political rot, where war criminals and economic plunderers rotate positions of power while the country stagnates. Wickremesinghe involvement in politics is captured by two questions from the audience; one from a survivor of the Black July pogrom, the other a survivor from the Mullaivaikkal massacre.
The issue of accountability were central to both questions. The state-sponsored pogrom saw thousands of Tamils killed, and homes and businesses burnt. Wickremesinghe’s response when pushed on crimes during the pogrom was telling. “There are riots in all our countries and people get burnt,” he said, before adding “but we have to know what happened was wrong”.
Then when questioned on the genocide and the derailing of the co-sponsored resolution which called for a hybrid accountability mechanism to investigate the final stages of the armed conflict, Wickremesinghe went on to deflect and minimise his role in ensure no such mechanism would ever be put into place.
The dissonance was laid bare for all. Here was a man who had built his career on appeasing Sinhala nationalist sentiment, now attempting to wriggle out of his complicity before an international audience. It was a situation that Sri Lanka’s own media establishment would and could never hold place on their own political elite. Never have they been able to speak truth to power. The reality remains that the conditions that allow leaders like Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksas to hold power remain firmly in place.
Major military camps in the North-East (PEARL 2022)
The momentum of the Aragalaya protests to bring about ‘system’ change, brought a new prime minister and a new president. What it delivered was another iteration of the same politics.
The North-East remains one of the most militarised regions on the planet 16 years after the armed conflict came to an end. Families of the disappeared continue their protest marking 3000 days in search of answers of the whereabouts of their loved ones. State sponsored land grabs and Sinhalisation of the traditional Tamil homelands continue, with protests against this being met with state harassment and surveillance.
The Sri Lankan government under Anura Kumara Dissanyake is content in allowing the same spectre of politics to continue without change. They continue to reject UN resolutions on accountability which call on the state to engage with international mechanisms to investigate war crimes and human rights violations. The budget still stifles development of the North-East, limiting funds required for the war impacted regions. Journalists ,activists and human rights defenders across the North-East are targeted and subjected to violence, surveillance and labelled as “terrorists”.
In the wake of this interview, the government has suddenly expressed interest in investigating Wickremesinghe’s involvement in the Batalanda torture camp, the Central Bank bond scam, and the Easter Sunday attacks.
Yet, mass graves continue to be unearthed in the North-East and in Colombo, Tamil families are still searching for their loved ones, and Tamils continue to suffer under the occupation of the military. What does justice look like for the most marginalised on the island?
Wickremesinghe is often called the “Sly Fox” of Sri Lankan politics. But his final trick is not one of political manoeuvring—it is the illusion of change.
The last act of the Sly Fox is to make you think the system has changed.
The last act of the Sly Fox is to make you think you are different from him.
But the truth is that Sri Lanka remains exactly as it was.