Bogus abduction story: Switzerland did not follow due process, not Sri Lanka
Posted on December 18th, 2019
The Swiss has issued a strange statement criticizing Sri Lanka for the lack of due process. The truth is quite the opposite. It took a magistrate’s order to finally get the Swiss embassy to produce its local staffer to make a formal complaint to the CID on Sunday 8th December 2019, exactly 13 days after the alleged incident and keeping the supposed victim inside embassy compound with her family. What is the Swiss reputation for keeping an alleged victim inside an embassy compound for almost 2 weeks without even offering medical attention inspite of them claiming she was suffering ‘deteriorating health’? It is now clear that all those who made statements on behalf of this local recruit prior to 8th December 2019 were all incorrect. It has also been proven that the allegations made by the local recruit are also incorrect & contradictory and that was the reason for her arrest. Sri Lanka has wasted time on a bogus abduction case that did not take place when Sri Lanka should have been questioning Switzerland over giving instant political asylum to Switzerland to a Sri Lankan police officer wanted for murder. Is this Swiss ‘due process’ giving asylum to a man and his family fleeing a crime? If the woman is arrested for false allegations, what is the crime the Swiss have committed in for aiding and abetting the false allegations? Sri Lanka please continue to follow due process and question Switzerland for harboring a murderer wanted in Sri Lanka!
The response of the Swiss following the arrest has been to issue a press release.
Sri Lanka was using national laws and international standards to arrest Sriyalatha following the Swiss embassy wasting everyone’s time for over 2 weeks.
It is good for the Sri Lankan authorities to check whether the Swiss have been paying EPF/ETF of this woman to see how far Swiss has held their end of responsibilities as an employer. As per Swiss press release, the Swiss is continuing version that she was ‘abducted’ on 25th Nov 2019 but where is the evidence to prove it?
The Swiss press release errs as the Swiss did not disclose the name of the victim or bring the victim to make a formal statement of complaint as an international standard procedure required. The embassy only produced the victim” before the deadline given by the Magistrate ended. If the embassy and the supposed victim had given statements immediately after the incident – there would have been no requirement for so much of cross-examinations and cross-questioning.
The Swiss embassy must take total responsibility for not following protocols and international standards without trying to pin blame on Sri Lanka.
Has the Swiss embassy produced the video-conferencing virtual medical examination report for this is a crucial evidence to establish her health condition and match it against actual medical examination.
We question Swiss ‘due process’ and ‘rule of law’ in the case of Sriyaltatha Perera/Garnier Barrister Francis
- She was not abducted
- There was no white van
- There were no ‘unidentified abductors’
- She was not questioned for 2 hours
- She was not ‘threatened’ or ‘detained’ on the street
- She was not asked ‘embassy-related information’
- There was no incident as sensationalized by the New York Times article
- There was certainly no ‘deteriorating health’ that required an air ambulance that the Swiss embassy requested to fly her and her entire family to Switzerland
- Whatever the Swiss embassy said, whatever the Swiss government said have all been proved as incorrect and not corresponding with the contradictory statements issued by the woman who was never abducted.
Swiss must explain
- Why Swiss envoy would need to visit Sri Lanka’s PM at his residence when it was clear her story did not make sense
- Their incompetency to cross examine its own staff member to collaborate her story given that Swiss are screening people before visas are given.
- Requesting air ambulance to fly Sriyalatha to Switzerland with her family when the embassy knew she was not the least sick. The Sri Lankan General public are shocked at the shallowness of a diplomatic mission to have lied as they did after seeing the woman appear for the first time showing no signs of deteriorating health. Is this the due process Swiss is bragging about?
What was equally shocking and noted by the general public was the excessive hugging and embracing of the woman by Swiss embassy female staff and on the day of the arrest by a foreign male. It makes a mockery of her refusal to be examined by a male doctor! This was quite a weird looking scenario in the light of the daily statements that revealed she was obviously not telling the truth and it now makes us wonder whether all this was part of a set up to defame the government but getting badly backfired during the process.
While Sriyalatha’s lies are getting exposed. What Swiss cannot hide:
- Swiss-LTTE network is very much continuing – https://www.mfa.gov.lk/tam/the-ltte-swiss-network/ (2014) http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/66748 (2019)
- Over 640 political asylums given by Swiss embassy in past 2 years
- Swiss gave over the desk visa to a wanted murderer and family CID CI Nishantha Silva and other officers who had given evidence against senior military officials probably on the assurance of being given asylum to Switzerland.
These are no proper ‘due process’ for which Switzerland’s reputation is marred.
Sri Lanka doesn’t have stolen wealth. Sri Lanka didn’t relax bank regulations to store wealth during Wars and use bank confidentiality clauses to continue to bank stolen wealth. Therefore, Sri Lanka is no rich country. Sri Lanka is no home to terrorist runaways or Sri Lanka does not bank terrorist funds and Sri Lanka also does not provide safe haven for bogus asylum seekers or facilitate political asylum for people wanted for murder in another country.
So, what is the Swiss now blabbering about? To answer that we have to go back over 12 days to November 25th the day originally mentioned as the ‘Temporary Abduction’ of a local recruit of the Swiss embassy.
The Government must now issue the exact sequence of events against the lies and fake news spread.
The Government must officially and publicly request apology from all who were promoting a distorted version and request them to make a disclaimer correction to their news releases.
The Government IT team must carry a short description in all of its news giving an account of what really happened to nullify the promotion of lies to discredit Sri Lanka.
The GoSL must apply the same due process and the Swiss are preaching and question Swiss on aiding and abetting people wanted for murder as political asylum seekers.
GoSL must not be deterred by the fancy press releases issued but go by rule of law that Sri Lanka has upheld and which could have concluded investigations if only the Swiss did not hide an alleged ‘victim’ in its embassy compound from 25th Nov to 7th December without producing them before the police to make formal complaint.
Shenali D Waduge
December 17th, 2019 at 1:35 am
Shenali, once again you have done what the government should have done. We expected so much from our president as he declared before the election that he will never allow anyone to infringe upon nation’s sovereignty or betray it’s independence. The Swiss have implied that the government led by “Gota” have started the alleged “WHITE VAN CULTURE IMMIDIATELY” by this concoctted story. It was very disappointing to see the president has surrendered to the Swiss when he told that moron (the Swiss ambassador) the Swiss have done nothing wrong. Where are the defence and the foreign ministers hiding?
December 17th, 2019 at 12:26 pm
This is yet another excellent investigation by Shenali. We readers owe you a huge applause.
A first world diplomatic lies accused for building up a sham story to disgrace to Sri Lanka.
Next step is to ascertain how the local counterpart former minister Rajitha Senaratne helped to evolve the first somewhat less conspicuous complaint with ‘Pistol in the mouth threat’ which left her ‘debilitated in a mental coma’.
We still have not heard Rajitha’s statement to the Police as to how he came to know this incident to explain it in such minute detail. Any listener to RS’s TV statement would have surmised that he is a close confidante of Mrs Srialatha Perera / Garnia Bannister Francis.
December 17th, 2019 at 2:27 pm
It is now getting clearer and clearer that the Swiss Embassy fiasco is nothing but an international attempt to ‘soften’ Sri Lanka prior to ACSA, SOFA and MCC entrapments Sri Lanka will face in the coming months and years ahead. Clearly, they have a plan for Sri Lanka and this they have mentioned quite openly – their vision of Sri Lanka in 2050 – a vassal state of the American Empire no less.
The Christian West is slowly building up a case to tighten the noose around Sri Lanka’a neck at the next Geneva sessions. Sri Lanka should be ready for this. We urge the new Foreign Minister – Dinesh Gunawardana to get up to speed and act dynamically and proactive on this issue without wasting time. So far he has not been seen to have taken charge of a situation that is developing rapidly to discredit the new administration. To say the least, his lacklustre performance so far does not bode well for the future of the new Gotabhaya administration’s foreign policy. It is high time Sri Lanka established an all-weather circle of friends – first in Asia and then globally.
As for the Swiss embassy’s undiplomatic behaviour, Sri Lanka should move unbowed and yet diplomatically to throw the bogus ‘abduction ball’ back on their court as well as keep the Colombo Diplomats informed of Sri Lanka’s stance. Not thqt it will matter much with the Western Block diplomats for we have already seen what a partisan lot they are. The Swiss embassy should be held to task over granting asylum status to the fugitive – Nishantha (de Silva) Kandappa and also for keeping a complainant incommunicado for almost two weeks contravening the Sri Lanka law and denying Sri Lanka law enforcement officials from doing their duty. After all the first complaint came from the embassy itself.
The Human Rights watchdogs should take up the case of excessive ‘fondling’ of a woman supposed to be in distress by a large Swiss matron and later by an almost ‘masked’ swiss male official.
December 17th, 2019 at 5:13 pm
GOSL should file a case against Swiss Embassy, asking their Foreign Ministry to apologize for the way their Embassy covered up this bogus abduction of one of their low grade staffers.
This is clearly an attempt to defame the new president and the country, with the help of a foreign embassy, which has violated the diplomatic protocol and sided with the perpetrators whose motive was to thrash Sri Lanka in the international stage.
GOSL should not let Swiss Embassy get away with this serious breech of undiplomatic conduct by this despicable act of its staff which did everything to damage the reputation of our country.
If this happened in another country, the Swiss Ambassador and his staff would have been expelled for fabricating lies and harbouring criminals in their embassy.
Sri Lanka need to stand up to these Western bullies, who have the audacity to treat us like idiots, and think that they can get away with bloody murder.
December 17th, 2019 at 7:26 pm
Problem started with our own foreign service that apologised at the beginning. We have apologist brown sahib mentality and our FS need a major clean out.
BTW, swiss is doing some ones bidding here and there are some major assaults on its way unless GR got good people to advise him on foreign agendas and the story around this swiss issue.
Our people lived hard but got proud lives and had the privilege of fighting and dying on the frontline whenever we called a war.
Certain foreign party”s with the help of local traitors want to dismantle our cultural heritage since that’s what bind our people and the nation.
I cannot believe we also have unp monk division , which raised major questions that’s not answered yet. That’s how London Vihara unp monks that started to remove highly respected and my former teacher , Dr Saddathissa from the temple. We have great Buddhist scholars in the country and outside and foreigners are after these scholars as well.