{"id":301886,"date":"2025-09-01T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=301886"},"modified":"2025-08-24T22:24:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T21:24:31","slug":"the-seventy-six-year-curse-all-has-been-washed-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/the-seventy-six-year-curse-all-has-been-washed-white\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seventy-Six-Year Curse: All Has Been Washed White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Limmat Thesis \u2013# 1, Z\u00fcrich, 23 Aug 2025<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Preface: The Burden of Writing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some things resist being written. To write them is to be caught in a web of visions, distortions, and expectations. To remain silent would have been the easier path. Yet silence has its own weight, and so I write. Whether you agree or not, whether you exist in this perspective or outside it, I write\u2014and after this, I will pass from it.<\/p>\n

The Moment: Ranil\u2019s Trial<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was an evening, close to six or seven o\u2019clock. Ranil Wickremesinghe was being brought from the Criminal Investigation Department to the court. I learned this not through the news but through a WhatsApp group call. By the time I joined, the discussion was already raging about Ranil: his past, his deeds, what he should face now.<\/p>\n

We were two worlds apart\u2014Sri Lanka and Europe\u2014yet bound by a shared history of familiarity and proximity. The talk was not formal, not analytical; it was raw, a mix of anger, hatred, jokes, joy, and spite. It was not a conversation in the true sense\u2014more a venting of passions around a long-awaited moment.<\/p>\n

A Question That Disturbed the Flow<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s your opinion?\u201d<\/em> they asked me.<\/p>\n

I stayed silent.<\/p>\n

When asked again, I replied simply:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat exactly is happening now?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That question was enough to scrape against their momentum. They knew I thought differently. They wanted a statement, perhaps a confession of alignment. But the moment was too charged for a simple or fitting answer.<\/p>\n

The Feast of Justice and Its Shadows<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ranil was sentenced\u2014not to 14 days, but to years. For some, this was a victory, a feast of justice. Friends in Sri Lanka expressed elation, pride, even intoxicated joy as they watched the scenes unfold near the court.<\/p>\n

Yet within the same conversation came calls to arrest protesters, to shoot them, to send them to \u201crehabilitation camps in the Kandakadu.\u201d Who were these protesters? Citizens, organized groups, opponents of the moment\u2019s triumph.<\/p>\n

The discussion quickly revealed a deeper truth: the lust for punishment outgrew the crimes of those punished. The cry was no longer for justice, but for vengeance.<\/p>\n

The Seventy-Six-Year Curse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is this the curse of seventy-six years\u2014the inheritance of a nation still haunted by its own unfinished covenants? Is this the Buddhist karmic retribution in another form, the old covenant rewritten for modern times?<\/p>\n

Society has become a desert of hatred. We speak of Buddhism, but what we demand is no longer \u201ceye for an eye,\u201d it is \u201ceye for flesh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Machinery of Justice and Its Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courts are no longer seats of justice; they are stages. Judgments are not truth but consensus, schemes, games. The judiciary, the media, the political parties, foreign actors\u2014all interwoven, all contaminated.<\/p>\n

People who cried for Ranil\u2019s punishment now demand more than what he ever did. In their quest for cleansing, they have become the very thing they denounce. All has been washed white\u2014but not clean.<\/p>\n

A Nation in a Copy-Paste Age<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live in a copy-paste society: institutions destroyed, rebuilt on the same flawed foundations; promises of renewal without substance. National identity has not yet been born\u2014it is trapped in a cage of manufactured crises, a product of global and regional games.<\/p>\n

Lenin\u2019s liberation is over. Dharmapala is over. We now play corporate games, partnership games\u2014never a national game that holds all together.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Weapon Called Law<\/strong><\/p>\n

The current government\u2019s strongest weapon is not trust, nor belief, but law: blindfold the people, hold justice in hand, and perform. They promised punishment for the corrupt, an end to corruption. This is not a homegrown product; it is branded like a cheap local copy of a foreign good\u2014Bata slippers, Nestl\u00e9 coffee, sold as ours.<\/p>\n

Shakespearean Theatre of Punishment<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is happening to Ranil is less a reckoning than a performance\u2014a Shakespearean drama played on a modern stage. In the Elizabethan theatre, everyone was an actor.<\/p>\n

If we can say, \u201cWe are not like that,\u201d there lies greatness. Beyond that, there is nothing. Beyond that, all has been washed white.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Udaya R. Tennakoon \u2013 Lives in Switzerland. Poet\/ Diaspora Writer, Journalist, Dramatist, Peace, Human Rights and Political Activist. Master of Art in Peace and Conflict Transformation. More about the poet may follow this <\/em>link<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23 Aug 2025 – Some things resist being written. To write them is to be caught in a web of visions, distortions, and expectations. To remain silent would have been the easier path. Yet silence has its own weight, and so I write. Whether you agree or not, whether you exist in this perspective or outside it, I write\u2014and after this, I will pass from it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[208],"tags":[642,979],"class_list":["post-301886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","tag-literature","tag-writting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301887,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301886\/revisions\/301887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}