Former Sri Lankan president and accused war criminal Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has said she will vacate her official residence in Colombo within two months, following the enactment of the Presidents’ Entitlements (Repeal) Act, which stripped ex-heads of state of housing and other privileges.
Her remarks come after former president Mahinda Rajapaksa was compelled to leave his Wijerama residence under the same law, an eviction he and his allies decried as “political terrorism.”
Kumaratunga, who governed from 1994 to 2005, told the Daily Mirror that she had secured a private house in Colombo but needed time to relocate due to ongoing renovations and her recovery from a recent hip replacement surgery.
“I found a small house with some renovation to be done. My son said he would come and help me for a week,” she explained. “In the meantime, three weeks ago, I fell and fractured my hip. I had a hip replacement surgery. It is a serious surgery. I have physiotherapy two or three times a day. Therefore, I cannot move and do any work at that new house at the moment.”
Pending the repeal, Kumaratunga said she wrote to current Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake requesting permission to remain in her current residence for life by paying rent, but her request was refused. She added that she had already spent Rs. 14 million of her own funds on renovations.
“When I came here, there was not even a blade of grass here. It was only gravel. I got landscaping done. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government refused to pay it at that time,” she said.
Kumaratunga contrasted her situation with that of other former leaders, insisting she had nothing to hide. “I was the only one out of the five retired Presidents not to be investigated by the current government. I have not done anything wrong,” she claimed.
She also launched a scathing critique of the Dissanayake administration, accusing it of prioritising vendettas over governance. “They don’t know how to prevent corruption in their own government. They only keep shouting about capturing fraudsters. They did not say a word about developing the country. Education is in a mess. Health is a mess. The only other slogan they had is chasing the former Presidents out of their residences.”
Kumaratunga said her attempts to rent a house in Colombo were hampered by fears of JVP-linked media intimidation. “Once I inspected these houses and settled for them, owners came out with various excuses not to proceed with the transactions. Then I heard they were worried the JVP would deploy their beloved media man called ‘Suda’ who slandered me in filth.”
“In many countries, there are many more privileges than this. Even in India, there are better privileges,” she claimed, adding that she has no home in Colombo after selling her Rosmead Place residence.
A record of atrocities
During her tenure as Sri Lanka’s president from 1994 to 2005, Kumaratunga over several mass atrocities and torpedoed efforts at brokering a peace agreement.
These massacres include the 1995 Navaly Church bombing, the 1995 Nagerkovil school massacre, the 1996 Kumarapuram massacre, the 1998 Thampalakamam massacre, and the 1999 Puthukkudiyituppu massacre.
These massacres saw the indiscriminate killing of Tamil civilians and the use of cluster bombs on churches.
In 2015, she told an audience, "I have not done anything wrong… I don’t have blood on our hands”. Earlier that year, she had boasted of having won “75%” of the war during her tenure by going to war with the LTTE. And despite her tenure in office marred by the bombing of churches, schools and the massive military invasion of Jaffna, killing countless Tamil civilians.
Kumaratunga has repeatedly denied the need for an independent international investigation into war crimes. In 2017, she told a gathering in Jaffna, “We have no intention to drag the soldiers before courts and send them to gallows”.
In 2018 she was awarded France’s highest national honour, the Medal of “Commandeur de la Légion D’Honneur”.
