Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe has made a special statement regarding the Batalanda Commission report.
This statement comes amid the controversy that has arisen since the report was tabled in Parliament by Leader of the House, Minister Bimal Ratnayake.
A two-day debate on the report is scheduled to be held in Parliament, beginning on April 10.
The special statement made by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe regarding the report is as follows:
After the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) initiated a campaign of terror across the country.
At that time, President J. R. Jayewardene delegated the responsibility of protecting key national assets to Cabinet ministers.
The Biyagama area contained several economically significant locations, including the oil refinery, the diesel power plant, the center that supplied electricity from the Mahaweli project to Colombo, and the free trade zone. The army was deployed to safeguard these areas.
It was decided to allocate several abandoned buildings and houses belonging to the Ceylon Fertilizer Manufacturing Corporation for the security forces to use.
Several officers of the Ceylon Electricity Board were already residing in some of these houses.
During this period of terror, the Sapugaskanda Police Station was attacked, and the Officer-in-Charge (OIC) was killed. At that time, the Deputy Minister of Defense, Ranjan Wijeratne, called me and requested that the vacant houses in the housing complex be allocated to the security forces and police officers for their protection. Accordingly, the liquidator at that time transferred the relevant houses to the Kelaniya Superintendent of Police, Nalin Delgoda. Several individuals, including a provincial council member, a cooperative society chairman, and a police sergeant, were killed during this period. Additionally, another provincial council member’s house was attacked.
The government in power took steps to restore the country’s collapsed economy and ensure national security and peace.
After 1994, Mrs. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga appointed a commission to investigate whether torture had taken place in the Batalanda area. Many individuals were summoned to testify. I was called only as a witness.
At that time, I was serving as the Leader of the Opposition. The Batalanda Commission was appointed with the intention of using it as a political weapon. However, that attempt was unsuccessful. The conclusions of the report state that it was improper for a minister to allocate houses to police officers directly. Instead, the correct procedure would have been to hand them over to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), who would then allocate them to the relevant officers. The Commission report states that I and Mr. Nalin Delgoda were indirectly responsible for this action.
None of the other matters mentioned in the Commission report are related to me. The report’s conclusions regarding the numerous terrorist acts committed by the JVP between 1988 and 1990 are included in the final observations. The background of these events is also documented. The serious terrorist acts carried out by the JVP are extensively detailed in the third chapter of the Commission report. The full history of these events is included.
Beyond the above, no other allegations are relevant to me. I completely reject this report.
No one can accuse me of hiding the Batalanda Commission report. It was available as a parliamentary session report in the year 2000. However, no one requested a debate on it—not even the JVP. Many did not accept the report. Therefore, it can be assumed that no steps were taken to bring it up for debate in Parliament.
It should also be noted that no political party that has come to power so far has attempted to use this report for narrow political gain.
Additionally, there is no precedent, either in this country or in other parliaments, for debating a parliamentary session report after twenty-five years.
