File Photo: Chandrika and Vijaya Kumaratunga , and Ossei Abeygunasekara of the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party held talks with all Tamil militant leaders including K. Padmanabha and L. Ketheeswaran of the EPRLF at their office , Sooleimedu, Madras, 1986ONE Year Death Annivesary
Ketheeswaran was consistent in his dedication to the welfare of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. In the early 1980s which saw growing communal violence directed at Tamils it was natural for a decent left oriented Tamil with an intellectual bent to join the EPRLF, which he did. The struggle he joined was destroyed by the LTTE in 1986. After very difficult times for his people, Ketheeswaran found openings for his interests in justice and a political settlement among Colombo-based NGOs. He strongly objected to the degradation of human rights in the 2002 ceasefire agreement and on occasions was almost alone in voicing his concern over the conscription of children in the Colombo NGO fora, which Norway, the NGOs and the Government wanted to downplay. Erik Solheim was quick to mark him out as an adversary.
Ketheeswaran never forgot that he had been a militant. He stayed on in the EPRLF and left it only in 1994 after differences with an individual who too later left. His background enabled him to easily make the transition to activism in civil society. He was constant in his concern that other militants too should be given the means and opportunity to come out into civil and political life. He pushed for the Norwegian initiated peace process to address this cause for all militants including from the LTTE. But after the Karuna split the Norwegians pinned the label ‘paramilitary’ on all non-LTTE groups and this effort came to a standstill.
Ketheeswaran wanted the Norwegian initiated process to go on, but became very upset and utterly disillusioned when the LTTE started a campaign of political killings, culminating in the assassination of T. Subathiran of the EPRLF in June 2003, a man he had known as a fine and committed human being. Kethees’ writings and analyses became critical for dissenters who challenged the Norwegian approach to the peace process. This approach, while lax on human rights and democracy, looked for quick fixes as some crude arrangement convenient to the Government and the LTTE. Kethees was neither a romantic nor a mere analyst. Where possible he collaborated closely but quietly in challenging the forces opposed to human rights and democracy, whether it be the LTTE, the Government or the Norwegian facilitators. Unfortunately for him and his security, he became isolated even within the INGO and NGO community in Colombo that had been his home turf. His insistence on ensuring human rights in the peace process and his opposition to appeasement of the LTTE to the detriment of the people, resulted in his being further isolated, and to his peril, singled out and labelled a critic of the LTTE or simply ‘anti-LTTE’.
Kethees would not be silenced, he voiced his own concerns about human rights and the primacy of a political settlement in a series of articles under the pen name Sathya in the Daily Mirror. The earlier Peace Secretariat headed by Jayantha Dhanapala had kept itself above the local political fray. When the Rajapakse presidency committed itself to a political settlement and offered Ketheeswaran the position of deputy head of the new Peace Secretariat, Kethees sought the opinion of his dissident friends. All were concerned for his security, but if the President was committed to a political settlement, many felt that it would be good for a Tamil to be in that position to push both a political settlement and human rights concerns. They were thinking of the Peace Secretariat as a body that could advise the President while keeping above the political fray. After his death and given the current reality where his fears are coming true, some of his NGO colleagues have expressed agreement with him. Had they done so four years ago, his cause would have developed the critical mass that would have minimised the danger to his life.
In time both the Government’s human rights record and its commitment to a political settlement began to look dubious as the Defence Ministry and the President’s allies, the JHU and JVP, began pushing him in their direction and he seemed to be caving in. The Peace Secretariat was being driven into a partisan role. Kethees constantly on his own asked his contacts for independent information on human rights violations and was determined to pressure the Government from within. Kethees knew about the plight of the 17 ACF workers stranded in Mutur. When the news of their killing came out on 6th August, Kethees was upset over his helplessness in the situation and was convinced that the Army was responsible. Six days later he was killed. As a person playing the role of a conscientious civilian he felt that he did not need security and had declined offers of it. He died another Tamil dissident caught up in fateful developments beyond his control.
When will the Sinhalese polity learn? While there is nothing sacrosanct about a united Sri Lanka after 50 years of dreary misgovernment in the North-East, most Tamils know that separation will result in the diminishment of all of us. We would go down as peoples who had so much in common, but could not muster enough tolerance and humanity put aside fond nationalist myths and live together. When will the Sinhalese polity learn that the dwindling numbers of Tamil dissidents who are picked up and dropped to suit the momentary whims of those in power are the last hope of a united Sri Lanka? There will be no united Sri Lanka after the fantasies of the JHU and JVP.
When will the Tamil expatriates learn to think responsibly about a force that has five times in 20 years presided over Jaffna being overrun or massively destroyed and civilians evicted and killed without any end in sight? They would easily do it five times again in the next 20 years simply for the egomania and survival of the leaders. When will they learn about a force that has tortured and killed thousands of dissidents and has only to show as its achievements thousands of vanished youths and children it used as cannon fodder and covered up its crime by flattering them with rows of martyrs’ tombs? In the context of today’s humanitarian catastrophe, the hapless people living in the LTTE controlled areas, long abused by the LTTE whom they cursed, are being callously attacked with government missiles. A number of children are among the injured in the Vanni receiving very rudimentary care in Killinochchi Hospital. Whether they were conscripts or school children, the Government dismisses them as cadres under training. In representing their plight the LTTE today carries no credibility internationally. This places on Tamil dissidents the responsibility to speak on their behalf.
About Kethes: Loganathan was born in Colombo,though the Loganathan's family originally from Puloly-Vadamarachchi in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. His father was a prominent Banker Chelliah Loganathan, the former General Manager of Bank of Ceylon. He studied at St. Thomas’s College Mt. Lavinia and Loyola College, Madras before proceeding to Georgetown University and later the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands. After completing his education, Loganathan returned to Sri Lanka and worked as a social science researcher and with Marga Institute in Jaffna. With the outbreak of the Sri Lankan civil war in 1983, he joined the EPRLF, a Tamil militant group that eventually became a rival to the LTTE. Loganathan's role was essentially academic and political, rather than military, and he left the group in 1994. He continued to work as an author and journalist. He along with his good friend Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu had helped form an independent think tank named the Center for Policy Alternatives and served on its board of directors till March, 2006. Loganathan was increasingly critical of the LTTE on human rights grounds; he particularly criticized the rebels for their use of child soldiers and intolerance of political dissent. In March 2006, President Mahinda Rajapaksa offered Loganathan the post of deputy secretary general of the government's peace secretariat.Loganathan was assassinated by a single man who called himself as from the 'CID', as told by his family members. and Human Rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, UTHR and other Sri Lanka observers have also held the LTTE responsible for this murder. Some refer to the fact that the website Nitharsanam.com, which they say is connected with the LTTE, accused Ketheesh as a traitorIts a well-known fact that Tamilnet and Nitharsanam announced his death, before Kalubowila Hospital where he was admitted on 12th night announced his death.
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