Sri Lanka It's Happening

July 24, 2005

Ministers, Policemen and thugs they are all one and the same. Yesterday I wrote about how police brutality was captured on film. The other day I wrote about how ministers are also common thugs.

Today's newspapers have a report about how a group of policemen on an anti narcotic bust have been attacked by the son of a minister. (Mervyn Silva) Two things are obvious. The drug runners forgot to pay of the cops so they did the raid. The policemen dance to the tune of politicians or why else didn't they give back good as they got?

Compare this with the assault on villagers by policemen. The villagers have no political clout, they cannot have the offending policemen interdicted or suspended. The best they can do is to file a fundamental rights case. If they do that they are simply killed off.

Now compare this with the minister's son. Surely his gang of thugs is no match for the gang of trained thugs in uniform. Yet there is nothing about the cops hitting back. They appeared to have turned the other cheek. And this is not the first time that such incidents have happened.

The reason? Ministers can have policemen transferred, suspended, fired or promotions blocked. Officially they cannot do so, but this after all is sri lanka.

Posted by raditha at July 24, 2005 3:01 AM