“And over the bodies of the 58 Division shall I ride....”

Some people were surprised that a man who played an important role in defeating the LTTE could end up sipping coffee or tea or who knows what with the likes of Mangala Samaraweera, Ravi Karunanayake, Lakshman Kiriella and of course the inimitable Ranil Wickremesinghe. The surprise lay in the fact that these gentlemen were not at all coy when it came to ridiculing the Government, the Security Forces and even the Army Commander.

Time has passed and things have become clearer. There is commonality that goes beyond ‘common objective’: a penchant for loose words. Talk, they say, is cheap. Not this cheap, I had thought. The point about cheap thought is that the cheaper it gets the higher the possible cost for other people. I am thinking about loose words uttered to the Sunday Leader and the price that the 58 Division is being made to pay (so much for the I-love-my-men talk!).

Talk is not only cheap, talk is entertaining. Listen to the man, the world’s greatest all-rounder, a one-man hit squad, a superman who can take all terrorists single-handed and break their necks. First it was ‘I did it without anyone’s help’. Then it was ‘Gota ordered my men,’ implying that Superman was just carrying out orders from a higher authority. Noticing that he had slipped, Superman rebounds, ‘I will take full responsibility’. In the rush, he says ‘I was directing operations from the battlefield’.

Wonderful! Imagine the Lt General in his fatigues, dust covered, dim-eyed, casting his superior eye on all things still and moving, the dead, the dying, the wounded, the wonderfully alive, etc. etc. Well, the man was in China when it all happened: that fact slipped his mind.

Anyway, this business of shooting people who were carrying white flags immediately boomeranged on Superman. A media conference was hurriedly called, there was a lot of re-twisting, retracting, mis-misinterpreting and Superman proved to the electorate that he’s just good with guns, not words.

Someone observed, ‘Who the hell cares what happens to Superman, who the hell cares about politicians with bloated-egos chockfull of malice, hatred and greed?’ Correct, who the hell really cares? We care more about the men who did battle, who lost their arms and legs, whose loved ones lost fathers, lovers, husbands, brothers and friends. We care more about the 58 Division than about men who are so hungry for power that they trip over their own tongues.

Superman might be aware that the foreign press which gleefully grabbed his statement to the Sunday Leader and splashed it all over the world did nothing of the sort with his ‘retraction’ (contested, we note, by the Sunday Leader). That he obviously does not care is irrelevant here. What matters is that in a world where trial-by-media is fast becoming the norm, those who were in the thick of the battle during the final days of the war (and not in China) have been left open to all kinds of violence by this lie so casually uttered by Superman.

Here’s what could happen. Major General Shavendra Silva (GOC 58 Division) or anyone in that division can be arrested while travelling abroad. It won’t matter that Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the Treaty of Rome. There are situations when it comes to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, where the Security Council has the authority to request the Chief Prosecuting Officer of the International Criminal Court to commission an investigation with a view to prosecution, for example. And countries which asset jurisdiction in respect of such crimes on a universal basis can and will proceed to arrest and charge such persons as are believed to have transgressed these limitations.

This is what happened to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was in London on holiday when a Magistrate in Spain, acting on an application, issued a warrant for his arrest. The British courts took it up.

No one in the 58 Division can plead for relief on account of ‘merely carrying out the orders of a superior’. That is not relevant when it comes to crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. This was clearly established in the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War; people were tried, sentenced to death and executed.

In the case of Pinochet the courts had to depend on circumstantial evidence.

In this case, we have a ‘competent authority’, an impeccable source: Superman. ‘Justice’ will be swift.

So what do we make of Superman’s claim that he will stand by his men? The man, well, the Superman, loves his men so much that he has thrown them to the enemy to be devoured? Why? Well, Superman has to satisfy his Super Ego, I can’t think of anything else. Reminds me of the Muhamalai debacle. There were 400 men who perished there. Men die in wars. Certain deaths however are unnecessary. More often than not such deaths are the result of an egomaniac’s single-minded arrogance and unpardonable lunacy.

Remember this name: 58 Division. They’ve been offered as sacrifice so Superman can win an election. Does not look very ‘Presidential’ to me.

malinsene@gmail.com.