COLOMBO – I think he is right on one particular point which I keep saying, too. It is Gota’s racism which led to the forced cremation of Covid-19 Muslim dead bodies.
Unfortunately, the documentary “Oddamavadi” which Aman Ashraff directed and premiered at One Galle Face a few days ago has reduced this despicable phenomenon to just being “politics of Covid-19.” This term is too innocuous to capture the psyche of racism and its virulent structure on which Gota installed the culture of governance of the country.
To be fair, I haven’t seen the documentary in full. But if the trailer that was released was anything to go by, it was that there was either a conscious effort at oversimplification of what was indeed a far more dangerous trend that gripped the Muslims and other faith communities in fear, or a lack of sensitivity to, or understanding of, the full complexity of what was a whole-of-government policy targeting Muslims.
It is not “politics”, it is grand project. It is Racism.
While he corrects attributes the practice of forced cremation during Gota’s Presidency to racism, there is what I consider a cardinal error in his following remark:
“President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his regime thought it fit to punish the Muslims ,Tamils and other minorities since they did not vote for him.”
Oh, no. The racist mindset of Gota was a factor that pre-existed the presidential election of 2019, it was not a by-product of the outcome of that election. Gota would have behaved the way he did even if Muslims (and other minorities) had voted for him at the presidential election overwhelmingly.
That was Gota, in his true elements.
