Sri Lanka has announced that it has secured 95 red notices against organised criminals believed to be overseas. On paper, this sounds like resolve. In practice, it sounds suspiciously like déjà vu.

Every few years, we rediscover transnational crime. We hold press briefings. We count fugitives. We promise consequences. Then the list quietly ages, the fugitives remain abroad, and the domestic networks continue operating with uncanny resilience.

A red notice is not an arrest warrant. It is a request. It depends on cooperation from foreign jurisdictions that may not share Colombo’s urgency—or Colombo’s paperwork standards. So the first question is not how many notices were issued, but how many are realistically enforceable.

Who are these fugitives?
Which jurisdictions are they in?
And more importantly: who enabled them to leave in the first place?

Organised crime does not operate in a vacuum. It requires travel documents, advance warnings, and institutional blind spots. Yet the narrative always begins conveniently after the criminals have left the country.

If this is truly a crackdown, where are the domestic enablers? The facilitators? The officials who looked the other way? Or are we once again confusing distance with disruption?

There is also the timing. Crime crackdowns tend to surface when public frustration is peaking—over prices, jobs, or governance failures. The optics are reassuring: the state is “doing something”. The outcomes, historically, are less reassuring.

Until there are actual extraditions, court appearances, asset seizures, and dismantled networks—not just numbers—this remains what Sri Lanka does best: administrative theatre.

The question Newsline asks is simple:
Are these notices the beginning of accountability—or merely the annual ritual of pretending crime lives somewhere else?