Grease devils

by Indi Samarajiva | August 27, 2011

Law and order has collapsed around in Sri Lanka. Is it a third insurrection? Not quite. People are in a panic about the grease yakas (grease devils), shadowy figures who reportedly break into homes, assault women, and escape because grease makes them hard to catch. While they most likely do not exist as an organised threat, they have caused a disorganised panic.

In response to reported attacks, people have become vigilantes, tying suspects to trees; beating, torturing, and killing others. When some of the accused have tried to take refuge in police stations or military camps, the people have protested against and attacked the security forces. It’s been weeks, but the panic has yet to recede. Recently a policeman was killed in Puttalam and the station secured by the military.

Are grease yakas real?

The important question in many people’s minds is whether grease yakas are real. There are many first-hand accounts and photographed scratch and assault marks from women across the island, but no proof that this is an organised phenomenon. The police have said that they are a myth but reported arrests at the same time. As a supernatural, demonic force they do not exist, but there have been human crimes.

Adding confusion, there have been copycat crimes, taking advantage of the fear in many communities. A teenager was discovered with incriminating photographs on his phone and suspects actually fitting the description have been apprehended. Any copycats, however, risk their hide, as angry villagers have attacked and killed alleged yakas, including two men hacked to death in Haputale.

A Grease Devil?

Image courtesy the author.

Who are grease yakas?

The next question is, who are the grease yakas? The answers to that seem to vary by region. In southern and central areas, grease yakas are ascribed to either supernatural or criminal forces. In the war-torn North and East, however, attacks are often attributed to the military or police. Each region projects its own fears onto their phenomenon, and many groups project their own agendas.

One rumor is that the Sri Lankan President needs the blood of 10,000 women to continue his rule. A government minister responded by saying, essentially, that they already had plenty of blood. A.H.M. Fowzie unhelpfully told Pottuvil residents, “If that was so, millions of people in the country would be willing to drop a shed of their blood for the President.”

Another insidious, Temple Of Doom type rumor has been that blood was required to find a hidden sword of an ancient king, adding layers of intrigue and paranoid schizophrenia to an already unstable situation.

Why the panic?

The response of average Sri Lankans to this perceived threat, however, is not entirely insane. For one thing, some incidents do seem real. For another, people simply do not trust the police or judicial system to deliver justice or protect them from any harm. When people feel insecure, they do not trust the security forces. This is why things have gotten so out of hand.

Indeed, the Sri Lankan police are not widely known for their compassion or competence. The largely Sinhala speaking police and security forces are widely viewed as alien in the Tamil speaking North and East. Even in the south (Angulana) or urban Colombo (Mattakuliya), police stations have been attacked by residents after local youths were killed. In 2009, the police beat and drowned a mentally challenged young man in the Indian Ocean, in full view of tens of people and television cameras.

Less insidiously, the police are also known for being slow in response to crimes, and easily influenced by power, and wealth. In a word, corrupt. I’ve personally seen abused women being made to wait needlessly for hours and people within a station being treated drastically different based on class.

Does this describe all Sri Lankan police? Certainly not, and their performance has drastically improved after the war. It still remains that many people do not trust the police to protect them, do not trust the information from the media, and feel the need to take justice in their own hands.

What is the reality?

Perhaps this is my own agenda creeping in, but it seems like this panic is not supernatural so much as a breakdown of law and order. Sri Lanka still remains under Emergency Law and the Constitution has almost never been followed by the central government. This ad hoc justice system proceeds from the top on down and its contradictions have emerged most starkly in the grease yaka phenomenon.

While it seemed relatively harmless for multiple Presidents to ignore amendments regarding police and other appointments, it sent a message that law was not the way to get things done. Indeed, those Presidents often consulted astrologers more than lawyers. On the ground level, every casual bribe paid to a traffic cop cemented the message that the police were there for the powerful and not especially committed to their jobs.

Thus, in the face of fear and panic, these forces simply weren’t trusted, because that trust hadn’t been earned. Indeed police stations and the government have been attacked and blamed for harboring and creating grease yakas. While these accusations are almost certainly false, they do show a deeper problem with Sri Lankan law and order, and the societal instability that can cause. It seems fine when you’re cutting corners for the needs of men, but when the supernatural creeps in, that’s when you need the authority of rational (and trusted) law.

Indi Samarajiva is a blogger (www.indi.ca). He grew up in the western parts of Sri Lanka and lives in Colombo. If you want to know what he's thinking right now you can follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/indica), or Facebook (facebook.com/indiblog).