Gratien Fernando

Wathumullage Gratien Hubert Fernando CGA (1915 – 5 August 1942) was the leader of the Cocos Islands Mutiny and an agitator for the independence of Sri Lanka from the British.

Fernando was born to Sinhalese Buddhist parents. His father was a superintendent at the Ceylon Telegraph Office.

He went to school at St Thomas' College, Mt Lavinia. He was later converted to Roman Catholicism. This conversion led him to take sides with the Burgher mutineers in the future. He was impressed by the program of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and by the anti-imperialist literature which it circulated but did not join the party. The commanding officer on Cocos, Captain George Gardiner, an accountant in Colombo who obtained an emergency war commission, while focus of the mutineers' actions, also presided at the Field General Court Martial which convicted them.

Fernando’s father petitioned the army authorities to commute the death penalty and asked Sir Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, the Civil Defence Commissioner, to intercede with Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, the British Commander of Ceylon. However, when Layton interviewed Fernando, he was adamant that he did not wish to be reprieved or pardoned. He told his family 'I’ll never ask a pardon from the British: that would disgrace the cause. Many years hence the World may hear my story'.

He was executed on 5 August 1942 at Welikada Prison, Ceylon, and two other mutineers shortly thereafter. He was buried at the Kanatte Cemetery in an unmarked grave.