By IANS
Colombo : Former Sri Lankan cabinet minister Anura Bandaranaike, who had crossed over to the opposition Dec 14, has complained that the scaling down of his security since his defection is making him easy prey for the Tamil Tiger rebels’ assassination squad.
The media reported Monday that Bandaranaike had written a strong letter to the Sri Lankan police chief saying that the withdrawal of security had exposed him to “Prabhakaran’s assassins”.
Bandaranaike, who has been having a running battle with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, quit the treasury benches just ahead of a critical vote on the annual budget Dec 14, when the government’s fate was hanging by a thin thread.
Eventually, the government won with a 47-vote majority. And the police promptly scaled down his elaborate security, though Bandaranaike was no ordinary politician.
He is the younger brother of former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, a former speaker of parliament, and a former foreign minister, who had campaigned against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) abroad.
The LTTE led by Velupillai Prabhakaran had tried to assassinate president Kumaratunga in 1999. Hence Bandaranaike’s fear that he might be exposed to “Prabhakaran’s assassins”.
A few days ago, the Tamil MP and human rights campaigner, Mano Ganesan, had appealed to the international community to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to restore his security, which was scaled down to two constables after he became the first runner up for the prestigious US Freedom Defenders Award this year.
The US embassy had said in a release that Ganesan was in the forefront of those seeking an end to abductions, disappearances and extra-judicial killings in Sri Lanka.
“He had demonstrated commendable integrity in combating the climate of impunity for human rights violators,” the US said on World Human Rights Day.
Ganesan had set up the Civil Monitoring Commission (CMC) to keep track of abductions, and extortions which had begun to plague the minority Tamil and Muslim communities in Colombo in 2006.
Ganesan, like many others, alleged that the police and the armed forces were behind these crimes. And sure enough, the police chief, Victor Perera, admitted publicly March 6 that a “large number” of those arrested in such cases were members of the security forces.