The United National Party today called for the immediate removal of the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, as they don’t believe the shooting at a JVP meeting in Katuwana, Hambantota will be independently investigated and solved under his administration.

As with all other extra judicial killings, abductions, involuntary disappearances and killing of protesters, we don’t have any reason to believe, there will be independent investigations and a proper judicial process initiated, in this double murder, says UNP MP Mangala Samaraweera.

“Such is the efficiency of this Secretary to the Defence Ministry, who brags that crime in Sri Lanka has not increased as opposition politicians claim,” he said in a statement issued today.

He states that the UNP firmly believes, “a Secretary who takes pride in being the almighty of defence and enforcement of law and order,” having the police department too under his administration, is totally responsible for all custodial killings and the serious increase in sexual abuse of children and various other crimes in the country.

Samaraweera claimed it is under this same Secretary to the Ministry of Defence that for the first time the public heard, of a group of police personnel taking into contract killing and also an army officer getting into the business of killing for money and that 2 police stations were completely mobbed by villagers for custodial killing of youth.

This country, cannot afford to allow such an “inefficient, non administrative service person” to handle a serious and important ministry as its Secretary, and allow “the country to go chaotic and into anarchy,” he said.

“People of this country, whatever their political affiliations cannot live with such unsolved crime, dictated by politically backed armed thugs under a Secretary, who is not even willing to accept he is a total failure as a State officer,” charged the Matara District MP and Convenor of the UNP Media Committee.

We (UNP) therefore don’t believe even this shooting and killing at Katuwana will be independently investigated and solved under his administration, Mangala Samaraweera said demanding that the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence be immediately removed and the position be vested with a career administrator, “as the first step in restoring sanity in law enforcement.”

‘Armed gang sponsored by Rajapaksas’

Two persons including a female died due to a group of unidentified men on motorcycles shooting at a Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) local meeting held in Katuwana in the Hambantota District on Friday (June 15).

The Marxist party accuses the government being involved in the incident, while the Media Center for National Security (MCNS) claims “an internal dispute among two JVP groups” is suspected to be the cause for the shooting.

The UNP stressed, any political party, whether in the government or opposition, has the same equal right to participate in democratic political activities without restrictions, intimidations and threats and therefore, it is the undisputed and unchallenged responsibility of this government to allow such democratic political activity, in any part of the country.

“The responsibility of this armed thuggery in breaking up a democratic political meeting at the cost of 2 lives and injuries to many others, therefore has to be totally borne by the Rajapaksa regime, more so, because it is their family bastion of political power, the shooting had taken place,” MP Mangala Samaraweera says in the release.

He further alleged it is no secret in Hambantota that an armed gang in this area is operating in the open with T-56 riffles in hand and the people in the area claim, the police are ineffective as this “armed gang is being sponsored by the Rajapaksas”.

It was in this area that a bus carrying UNP supporters was shot at during the 2010 January presidential elections and a woman was killed. “We are yet to hear of the outcome of the investigations into that killing, 02 years and 06 months after the shooting,” the parliamentarian said.