Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe criticized the stance of the European Union (EU) against him, claiming the Union had first attempted to depose him before crediting him for Sri Lanka’s economic recovery.
During a fiery interview with British broadcaster Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head, which aired on Al Jazeera last evening, Wickremesinghe also questioned the integrity of human rights watchdog Amnesty International.
When questioned on criticism he received from the EU on his handling of protesters at Galle Face, Wickremesinghe said: “The European Union had funded some of the agencies, and called for my resignation, the same union thereafter praised me as the man who took SL out of economic crisis.”
Despite this, Wickremesinghe said he still “liked” the EU.
To Hasan’s question on human rights concerns raised by Amnesty International, Wickremesinghe responded, “Amnesty International is discredited in our part of the world,” his explanation of why being cut mid-sentence by the broadcaster.
During the interview former President Wickremesinghe denied shielding ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa from prosecution.
“In my country, it’s the attorney general, who is not a political figure, who decides on prosecution – We can only send the evidence before him,” Wickremesinghe said when asked if he’d covered for ex-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country in 2022 following mass protests.
On letting Gotabaya Rajapaksa back into the country without arrest after Wickremesinghe took over the presidency in 2022, the the former President said: “He could come [back] in. There’s no charge against him. How could I? Am I a dictator?”
Hasan also pressed Wickremesinghe on renewed accusations by the Catholic Church that his own government had protected “other forces” involved in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings carried out by an ISIS-affiliate.
In response, Wickremesinghe called the allegations “all nonsense” and an example of “the politics of the Catholic Church.”
“The head of the Catholic Church [in Sri Lanka] is talking nonsense?” Hasan clarified. “Yes,” Wickremesinghe said.
Wickremesinghe, who was Prime Minister in 2019, was responding to public statements by local Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, as well as exclusive comments the Cardinal had made to Al Jazeera’s Head to Head team before the TV recording. In a phone call with Al Jazeera, Ranjith said Wickremesinghe had failed to heed the Church’s request for a truly independent investigation and called an earlier inquiry and report during Wickremesinghe’s presidency “not worth the paper it was written on”.
Turning to truth and reconciliation for Sri Lanka’s civil war with the LTTE (also known as the Tamil Tigers), Hasan asked if justice had been served to the thousands of victims of the conflict that ended in 2009. Wickremesinghe conceded: “No. Justice has not been served to any of the communities.”
Pressed on why, as President, he reappointed General Shavendra Silva – whom the US State Department accuses of war crimes – to head Sri Lanka’s armed forces, Wickremesinghe said, “It’s a practice not to replace military commanders during [an] election.” He added, “When I took over, I checked on it and I was satisfied that General Silva was not involved in it.”
Wickremesinghe went on to deny allegations made by a government commission that he knew of illegal detention, torture and killings happening at Batalanda, a housing complex he was living in as a minister in the late 1980s.
“I deny all those allegations,” he said when confronted with a government inquiry that named him as a “main architect” of securing the housing complex and alleged he, “to say the least, knew” about the violations taking place there.