Operation ‘Sonic’: Gnanasara Appointment Points To Sinister Plot To Ignite Communal Tensions

OCTOBER 28, 2021

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s decision to appoint the country’s most rabidly racist monk to chair a Presidential Task Force entrusted with implementing the Government’s ‘One Country One Law’ concept has been a slap in the face of minorities and the rule of law, activists and lawyers said.

Gotabaya with BBS Gnanasara

The idea of handing over a law drafting process to a convicted felon is an outrage, Sri Lankans said on social media, as the country reeled from the shock of the appointment.

Galagodaththe Gnanasara is only out of prison because of President Maithripala Sirisena’s horrendous decision to pardon the monk who was facing a six-year jail term for contempt of court in 2019. He was jailed for intimidating the wife of disappeared person Prageeth Ekneligoda and disappearances campaigner Sandya Ekneligoda, in full view of the magistrate at the Homagama court in 2016. The rabidly racist monk has been at the helm of a hate-campaign against Sri Lanka’s Muslim population since 2012. The rampaging, rambunctious monk has spearheaded at least two major anti-Muslim riots in Aluthgama and Digana.

Gnansara is the General Secretary of Sinhala extremist group Bodu Bala Sena, which is synonymous with rising anti-Muslim sentiment in Sri Lanka since the organization was first launched in 2012.

His elevation as Chairman of a task force entrusted to measure draft laws against the Government’s One Country-One Law policy, which has always been a sophisticated slogan to assert the dominance of Sri Lanka’s Sinhala-Buddhist majority against the minorities, is a new low even for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who has made no secret of the fact that he was a president for the Sinhalese people. The appointment is being seen as a direct affront to Sri Lanka’s minority communities who have long been terrorised by the BBS monk and his gang. The appointment of Gnanasara as Chair of the taskforce marks the first time the link between the Gotabaya Rajapaksa wing of the SLPP and the racist monk stands concretely exposed.

The 13-member task force comprises four Muslim representatives including two moulawis but not a single representative from the Tamil community.

The appointment marked the elevation of Gnanasara from “foot-soldier to general” Sri Lankans remarked on Twitter after the news broke.

Colombo Telegraph learns that the decision to appoint Gnanasara as head of this controversial task force might point to President Rajapaksa having ceded near-complete control to his intelligence chief Suresh Sallay.

Major General Suresh Sallay is the first military officer to be appointed to lead the State Intelligence Service (SIS), a police intelligence division usually headed by a DIG. [Image Source: www.army.lk]

The State Intelligence Service (SIS) Chief is a long time Gotabaya Rajapaksa ally, and under his presidency, Sallay is the most powerful official in the current Security establishment. Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay is the operational nerve centre of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration, feared by even the President’s closest allies.

The highly skilled intelligence officer had a specific task when Rajapaksa held office as Defence Secretary from 2005-2015, to sow communal tensions in the country in order to keep the ruling family’s electoral prospects steady. At the Directorate of Military Intelligence, then Brigadier Sallay started and nurtured both the Bodu Bala Sena and the Thowfeeq Jamath, which counted among its membership at one point, even the suicide bomber Zahran Hashim. Pitting the two extremist organisations against each other helped to keep the Rajapaksa family’s Sinhalese electoral base fired up and intact. After the Rajapaksa Government fell in 2015, it was revealed that both the BBS and the SLTJ were funded by the Defence Ministry through a slush fund set up for the purpose.

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