Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Security tightened outside Hulftsdorp court complex moments after underworld kingpin alias Ganemulla Sanjeewa was shot dead inside a courtroom

Last week, underworld kingpin Sanjeewa Kumara Samararathne, alias ‘Ganemulla Sanjeewa’, was shot dead inside the Colombo magistrate court by a gunman disguised as a lawyer. The killing, as shocking as it was, also highlighted major security lapses: Producing a high-risk inmate before the magistrate was unwanted at a time when much of bail hearings are taking place over Skype. 

However, what is equally disturbing is hyperventilating over the incident, projecting it as an existential threat to national security, which is not the case.

Sri Lankans have an obsession with lumping everything together in the realm of national security -from egg imports to the Millenium Cooperation grant of 480 million dollars, which the country lost due to a similar fallacy.  That effectively provides an expansive interpretation of national security, which not only makes the whole affair confusing but also dangerously leviathan. 

National security should be gauged in matters of priority concern for sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the people – and challenges which may be latent now but have a historical record of seriously undermining the state and its very survival as a functional unit. 

The underworld is still law and order- concern unless the Sri Lankan underworld morphed into the kind of narco-mafias in much of Latin America, which are essentially states within states.

While this description may sound superficial or overly philosophical, there is a point where the difference between the two would be laid bare most graphically. If a nation is faced with a serious threat to its national security, which, by extension, is an existential threat to its survival and security of its people, a state worth its salt would use all means available, right and wrong, and necessary evil, to defeat it. In the extremes, though not unusual, the law and order and moral and ethical conventions take a back seat because the state should survive in a functional form for the law and order within it to exist. 

That is not a benign state of affairs. That was how the JVP was defeated in 1989-90, and the LTTE’s sleeper cells in Colombo were liquidated, and that is why Israel has pulverised Gaza.

Those are extreme examples. But, under any circumstances, invoking national security grants the government a large gamut of laws and regulations which curtail personal liberties and civic freedoms while also turning a blind eye to the excesses and violations of law enforcement agencies and security forces. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa thrived in creating imaginary national security boogeymen, at the same time, cultivating a personal cult and dynastic rule. Journalists and political dissenters were hunted down, and then the investigations were obstructed under the pretext of national security. 

I, myself, do not want to test the resolve of the NPP government in fighting an imaginary national enemy because when Marxists and communists do that, they have historically made tinpot despots like Rajapaksas look like convent nuns.

Sajith Premadasa keeps hyperventilating about a crime wave. However,  statistics beg to differ. Sri Lanka is, by international comparison, a low-crime country. Its homicide rate ( 3 for 100,000 people) is below the world average (6) and low and middle-income countries (6), OECD countries ( 5) and on par with high-income countries (3).
You are extremely unlikely to get mugged in the street or carjacked in this country. The obsession to oversell a non-existing crime wave is common in two groups. One is the NGO captains looking to skim some money by solving imaginary problems. The intensity of this campaign may reduce as the US curtail USAID funding and Scandinavian good Samaritans get busy with their own migrant problems. The second group is the self-interested politicians and their acolytes, who amplify isolated incidents to generate a public perception that runs counter to reality. That was how Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the presidential election.

There are also more sinister elements who had internalised the securitised state of the past. Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekara was heard lamenting about opening roads for the public and removing checkpoints. 

Hyperventilating about imaginary threats and marginal grievances is not necessarily new in this country, and like everyone else, the stakeholders in this government excelled in it. However, now that it is in power, it should not give a free pass to the opposition to indulge in the same. Legitimate criticism of the government and selfish ploys to undermine the collective prosperity of people are two totally different matters. An imaginary crime wave would effectively sully Sri Lanka’s image as a safe destination for travel, effectively ruining the livelihood of many hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans. Such degenerative scheming should be exposed.

Sri Lanka, nonetheless, has an emerging law and order problem where growing underworld gun violence is concerned.

For instance, in  2024, a total of 103 shooting incidents were recorded, with 56 linked to underworld activities. Of the 63 fatalities,  45 were connected to organised crime. 

Thirteen shootings were reported in the first month of this year, with seven linked to organised crime.
Police say intensified gang rivalries between underworld gangs have contributed to the rise of gun violence. There are 58 identified underworld gangs with 1400 members, many operated by their exiled leaders from foreign countries, mainly Dubai and India.

Sri Lanka needs a practical approach to neutralise the underworld, and considering the experience of local security apparatus in fighting more sophisticated terrorist groups and its intelligence cells, that should not be much to ask. Yet, the country needs political will to dismantle the underworld rather than trying to contain it, as most law enforcement officials and politicians prefer. Sri Lanka did not strategise to contain the LTTE, but to annihilate it. So does El Salvador, in its successful fight against the underworld, which has now made the once world’s homicide capital into Latin America’s safest country, safer than many cities in America.

 However, Sri Lanka’s fight against the underworld is compromised by its catch-and-release strategy, where underworld kingpins are produced before the court and released on bail after completing the bare minimum of the mandatory remand custody. The whole idea of flight risk is not counted, and most suspects, released on bail, simply disappear and reappear in a foreign safe haven to remotely manage criminal operations. This sinister cycle continues. If Sri Lanka is to combat the underworld decisively, it should revamp its legal system and introduce mandatory prolonged detention for the underworld, similar to the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Combatting the underworld would address other major societal problems- drug addiction and petty crimes mainly associated with drug addicts to finance their daily doses.