Cardinal Ranjith’s opposition to capital punishment following the Easter Sunday verdicts raises a difficult question: how should a State punish those held responsible for catastrophic failures without turning justice into vengeance?
COLOMBO, Monday: The death sentences imposed on former Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando and former Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara over their failure to prevent the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks have opened a new and potentially uncomfortable chapter in Sri Lanka’s long search for accountability, with Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith making clear that the Catholic Church’s demand for justice does not extend to supporting capital punishment.
Fernando and Jayasundara were sentenced to death by a divided three-judge Trial-at-Bar on July 31 after being convicted over their failure to act despite intelligence warning of an imminent terrorist attack. The convictions represent one of the most consequential judicial outcomes arising from the Easter Sunday catastrophe, although the two former officials retain their rights of appeal.
Cardinal Ranjith has now reiterated the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty while maintaining its determination to pursue justice for the victims of the attacks.
The distinction is important. For years, the Cardinal has been perhaps the most persistent public voice demanding that responsibility for Easter Sunday be established, repeatedly insisting that investigations must reach beyond individual failures and identify everyone responsible for planning, facilitating or enabling the attacks.
His position therefore raises a larger question about what precisely Sri Lanka means when it demands justice for Easter Sunday. If the ultimate penalty imposed by a court is regarded as unacceptable by the Church, even in a case arising from one of the country’s worst terrorist atrocities, the debate necessarily moves beyond guilt and towards the purpose and proportionality of punishment. The Cardinal’s position is clear – that the Church does not condone killing anyone.
That question has acquired even greater relevance following discussions on Monday at the “Ratama Ekata” National Operations Council, where attention was drawn to the possible implementation of the death penalty for drug-related offences. The Government’s consideration of capital punishment as part of its intensified campaign against narcotics therefore comes at almost precisely the moment when the Easter Sunday verdicts have placed the morality and effectiveness of the death penalty back before the country.
Sri Lanka retains capital punishment in law but has not carried out an execution for decades. Consequently, a death sentence and an actual execution remain very different propositions.
Any move towards resuming executions would therefore represent a profound change in State policy and would inevitably attract constitutional, human-rights, religious and international scrutiny.
There is also an important distinction that should not become lost in the debate. The convictions of Fernando and Jayasundara concern their failures as senior State officials in the period preceding the attacks.
They do not, by themselves, answer the question the Cardinal and victims’ families have repeatedly raised: who conceived, organised, facilitated and ultimately stood behind the Easter Sunday operation?
The Cardinal’s position is therefore not necessarily contradictory. It is possible to demand the fullest accountability while opposing execution as the punishment ultimately imposed upon those convicted. What his intervention does, however, is force Sri Lanka to confront a harder question than whether somebody must be punished.
It is whether justice is measured by the severity of punishment or by the completeness of the truth. And, be that as it may, after seven years of questions surrounding Easter Sunday, discovering that complete truth remains unfinished business.
