‘Childish’ and ‘utterly insulting’ - Wickremesinghe defends war criminals in car crash Al Jazeera interview
Former Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe left viewers “flabbergasted”, after a heated interview for Al Jazeera English’s ‘Head to Head’, where he denied shielding war criminals, defended his controversial reappointment of Shavendra Silva, and refused to answer on the thousands of forcibly disappeared Tamils.
The interview, aired earlier today, saw Wickremesinghe visibly uncomfortable as he was pressed on allegations of war crimes, government corruption, and his administration’s failure to credibly investigate the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.
He threatened to walk out several times during the interview, the first just eight minutes into the hour-long discussion, and repeatedly refused to answer questions with regards to accountability, including on his own role in alleged crimes.
“No contest,” replied Wickremesinghe abruptly, when questioned on his failure to account for war crimes committed against Tamils, by host Mehdi Hassan. He refused to speak further on the topic and when pressed simply repeated “UN has said that. I am not contesting. Next question please.”
When pushed again, Wickremesinghe repeated “no contest”. “If I go to answer you will shout at me. Guilty as charged, no contest, or whatever it is. Get to the next question.”
“It’s a little bit childish for a former president of the country to not be able to answer the question,” responded Hassan.
“If I am childish, Gandhi is also childish. I am only doing what Gandhi did… You don’t know history,” said Wickremesinghe. “What can I do?”
When asked next on enforced disappearances and how many people the government had located - a critical issue for Tamil families who have been protesting for over 8 years demanding to know the whereabouts of their loved ones - Wickremesinghe simply responded “no contest again,” as the audience shook their heads.
‘Exemplifies the attitude of the Sri Lankan establishment’
“Mr Wickremesinghe’s attitude to your question about justice for the victims, the callousness, it just exemplifies the attitude of the Sri Lankan establishment at large and how we got to a point of mass atrocities on a mass scale,” Madura Rasaratnam, Executive Director of PEARL, who was on the expert panel.
“There are unbearable similarities between what happed on the beaches of Mullivaikkal and what happened in Gaza. In both cases you have populations hemmed against the sea, subject to humanitarian siege conditions, incessant aerial bombardment, atrociously high casualties, medical procedures done without anaesthetic on purpose. The UN estimates about 40,000 people died in the space of 5 months. At the end of the war 1,000 people were dying a day. Many, many more are unaccounted for.”
“Those crimes occurred because you have a political system, which Mr Wickremesinghe is apart, for the past 70 years that has prioritised ethnocratic politics, pleasing the majority, at the expense of good governance, at the expense of fairness, at the expense of justice… So what happens you get there?”
Shielding Shavendra Silva, accused of war crimes
Wickremesinghe was further challenged over his decision to reappoint war criminal Shavendra Silva—who has been sanctioned by the US State Department for his role in war crimes and extrajudicial killings—as Sri Lanka’s Army Commander.
Defending his decision, Wickremesinghe said he was “satisfied that General Silva was not involved in it”—directly contradicting multiple UN reports that detail Silva’s role in the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals and the execution of surrendering Tamil combatants.
Those remarks were described as “astonishing” by former BBC Sri Lanka correspondent Frances Harrison, who was also on the panel. “To say that there isn’t a case to answer… is utterly insulting to victims.”
When pressed on the bombing of hospitals, Wickremesinghe seemingly conceded that attacks did happen but claimed “action” had been taken against those responsible, without elaborating. “But the large scale this thing, I wouldn’t say that,” he quickly added.
Defending the Rajapaksas
Wickremesinghe also flatly denied accusations that he shielded ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled Sri Lanka in 2022 following mass protests. “In my country, it’s the attorney general, who is not a political figure, who decides on prosecution,” he said. “We can only send the evidence before him.”
When asked why Gotabaya was allowed to return to Sri Lanka without arrest, Wickremesinghe dismissed any responsibility:
“He could come [back] in. There’s no charge against him. How could I? Am I a dictator?”
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, alongside his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been widely accused of orchestrating war crimes, including the genocide of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in 2009, as well as corruption and economic mismanagement that led to Sri Lanka’s financial collapse.
Dismissing allegations on the Easter Sunday bombings
The former president also faced scrutiny over renewed accusations by the Catholic Church that his government covered up "other forces" involved in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.
Dismissing the claims as "all nonsense", he went as far as to accuse the Catholic Church of engaging in political manipulation.
“The head of the Catholic Church [in Sri Lanka] is talking nonsense?” asked Hasan. “Yes,” Wickremesinghe replied.
Dodging accusations of torture and extrajudicial killings
The former president also denied allegations made by a government commission that he was complicit in the use of torture, illegal detention, and extrajudicial killings at Batalanda, a housing complex he resided in during the late 1980s.
When confronted with a government inquiry naming him as a “main architect” of securing the site, Wickremesinghe first denied the report’s existence, before backtracking and questioning its validity.
“Where is the report?” he remarked with his hands folded. “I deny all those allegations… where is that commission?”
“There is nothing to be found against me… I am telling you there is no report.”
A copy of the report was shared by the International Truth and Justice Project and can be found here and held up by Harrison during the interview, who said she was “flabbergasted”.
“It shows the impunity that he is supporting. It’s absolutely shocking”
“Wickremesinghe took the reform of the state, that he is a product of as seriously as he is taking the interview,” said Rasaratnam.
Watch the full interview below.