Patali Champika Ranawaka, the former Sri Lankan cabinet minister and one-time General Secretary of the Sinhala nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), drew attention this week after calling for the humane treatment of detainees – remarks that are in sharp contrast to his previous comments on Tamils.
Speaking publicly, Ranawaka said: "Whether it's Suresh Sallay or even Zahran, if they are being questioned, they should be treated as human beings."
“Whether it’s Suresh Sallay or even Zahran, if they are being questioned, they should be treated as human beings,” former minister Patali Champika Ranawaka says that it is important for prisoners to be treated humanely. Ranawaka also said that although he too was once misled, he… pic.twitter.com/f5m2uWsXeQ
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In 2007, Ranawaka, then newly appointed as environment and natural resources minister, labelled journalists and human rights activists reporting on the armed conflict "white Tigers, media Tigers, leftist Tigers."
He then went further. In a statement on how the state should deal with what he called dissidents, whether Tamil fighters or peace activists, he said:
"If these treacherous bastards cannot be crushed by the law of the country, whatever possible method should be employed. Of course, people will die. What can we do about it? Are you asking us to leave them alive? These are traitors to the nation!"
Five years later, in 2012, Ranawaka turned to Mullivaikkal. When then-Tamil National Alliance leader R. Sampanthan called for devolution of powers, Ranawaka responded with a threat. "Does Sampanthan want to create 100 more Mullivaikkals. One Mullivaikkal is enough. Don't try to get 100 more."
The statement invoked the site of the final massacre of the war, where tens of thousands of Tamils were killed in the closing weeks of the Sri Lankan military's offensive in 2009.
The following year, in 2013, Ranawaka went further still. In a conversation with the Japanese envoy, he refuted war crimes allegations against the Sri Lankan military and downplayed the number of Tamils killed during the final stages of the Mullivaikkal massacres.
In 2015, as power and energy minister, Ranawaka gave an interview to The Hindu in which he sought to foreclose Indian pressure on Tamil rights entirely. "That India is a guarantor of the northern Tamil people's rights should now be a thing of the past," he said, urging New Delhi to abandon its longstanding position in support of devolution under the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution.
When international pressure on Sri Lanka over war crimes eventually intensified, Ranawaka's submitted a cabinet memorandum calling for general amnesty for all those accused of war crimes, framing the proposal as a matter of fairness on the grounds that it was "inappropriate to single out the armed forces as the only perpetrator." The memorandum proposed that thousands of former LTTE combatants should also face trial if military personnel were prosecuted.
Ranawaka is now the leader of the United Republican Front, a party he founded in 2023 after splitting from the JHU. He has in recent years sought to reposition himself as a reformist figure, backing the SJB's Sajith Premadasa in the 2024 presidential election