{"id":100494,"date":"2020-03-29T15:29:10","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T22:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=100494"},"modified":"2020-03-29T15:29:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T22:29:10","slug":"pardoning-sunil-rathnayaka-is-the-right-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/03\/29\/pardoning-sunil-rathnayaka-is-the-right-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Pardoning Sunil Rathnayaka is the Right Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The president\nmust be commended for pardoning Sunil Rathnayaka. It\u2019s the right thing to do.\nThose who howl foul about it are missing the point. They are wrong on many\ncounts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunil\ncommitted no war crime. Some half-baked reporters say Sunil was in prison for a\nwar crime. No such accusation or charge was made against him in court. He was\ncharged for murder and other offences but not for war crimes. So many others\nwho have committed murder, arson, terrorism and robbery have been pardoned over\nthe years. A very large number of Tamil terrorists have received presidential\npardon. They killed scores of civilians. There cannot be two different laws and\ntwo different treatments for different convicted persons. Sunil too deserves\nthe same pardon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court\nconvicted only Sunil for the crime which could not have been committed by a\nsingle individual. That itself proves his conviction is wrong. Going through\nthe material presented to court, one cannot be satisfied that all relevant\ncontext was presented. The incident happened just a year after the then\npresident was bombed by a Tamil old woman and a retire military officer was\nalso bombed by another on the same day. In that context taking precautions is\nonly just. The incident happened at a time when LTTE infiltrated into villages\nin the north with a view to gather information and ultimately launch an attack\nafter their repeated attacks the same year failed. LTTE was well known to use\ncivilians to do their terrorist acts. Using civilian spotters\u201d was a common\ntactic of Tamil terrorists. Were these facts presented to the court\nsubstantially?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alleged\nincident is not the only case where Sunil was involved. He was involved in many\nincidents where his courage and bravery saved massive catastrophes saving\nthousands of lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these\nmatters must be considered when judging the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LTTE Rump\nand the war crimes mafia were trying to use Sunil\u2019s convicted case as a\nstepping stone to convict other military officers. Thankfully their plans were\nfoiled by the timely action by the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\nshameful that some true Sri Lankans also losing their heads over nonsensical\nbad luck stories of war losers. They have a lot to learn from Japan. Even if\nthey believe Sunil or anyone else in the military committed war crimes, they\ndeserve human respect. Japanese people including the PM openly venerate\nadjudged war criminals who were involved in some of the cruellest acts known to\nmankind. Has that resulted in anything bad for Japan? On the contrary, a nation\nthat is grateful to its saviours thrives and succeeds. A nation that forgets or\nworse punishes its saviours has no future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President\nGotabaya has done the right thing in pardoning Sunil Rathnayaka. He and his\nfamily must be compensated for the grief they went through all on behalf of the\nsafety and prosperity of the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara The president must be commended for pardoning Sunil Rathnayaka. It\u2019s the right thing to do. Those who howl foul about it are missing the point. They are wrong on many counts. Sunil committed no war crime. Some half-baked reporters say Sunil was in prison for a war crime. No such accusation or charge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}