“His uncle - his mother’s brother was Major General Balaratnaraja, chief of staff of the Sri Lanka Army. This is the family: we are not terrorists. My father was an engineer and all my brothers are qualified engineers, we are not a family of terrorists!”________________
By A Special Correspondent
Courtesy: Lakbima News
(October 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) As the father of a son who has been imprisoned, for charges believed by him to be unjust, Jayaprakash Tissainayagam’s father seems to be bearing the pain courageously, even though he is 90 years old.
Any father would love to see offspring of his son and would like to see them by his side all the time. It is not easy to cope with life when a child is imprisoned, for an offence he has not committed as he believes. The LakbimaNews, weekly news paper in Colombo, talked to the imprisoned journalist JS Tissainayagam’s father, to obtain his views about JS’s much talked about prison term.
First of all he believes that the judgment of the courts against his son is unjust and feels that his son got into trouble due to his deep concern to safeguard others who were in trouble. “He has always been fighting for other people’s causes . In 1989 when he struggled for the rights of Sinhalese he was a hero: they have forgotten about that now but when he is fighting for his own people he is a villain... what kind of a justice is that? During Richard de Soysa’s time he was the one who got the articles ready for the present president Mahinda Rajapakse, a key human rights activist at that time, to deliver in Geneva,” he told this newspaper.
“I have not met him. For the last one and half years I have not met him. I am not in a fit condition to go to the prison. His father and mother have not seen him for the last one and half years!”, Martin Jayaratnam Tissainayagam, Jayaprakash Tissainayagam’s father told Lakbima News.
Ideal son
According to Tissanayagam’s father, he has always been a clever boy and an:”ideal son.” He studied at St. Thomas’s College and has won 7 or 8 top prizes at school. Later, he entered university and had passed out as a first class degree holder. After his university education in Sri Lanka Tissainayagam studied at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, at the school of International Studies.
“He was a gentle, helpful, courteous, and caring person. But he unnecessarily got into trouble by involving himself in other people’s problems . When he was taken a prisoner he had to change his clothes and there were his friends by him to take his clothes, but he did not allow his friends to carry his shoes. He carried them himself- that was the sort of man he was.”
However, the charges against him are serious and it was stated that JS Tissainayagam had supported the LTTE. This has created the impression that he was a supporter of the Tiger terrorists. The father responded “my son was born and bred in Colombo and was educated in Colombo. He is not a terrorist! All his friends are Sinhalese,Tamils and Muslims. This is nonsense that they are talking about: communal terrorism.”
“I am old and weak but even at my old age I can distinguish between right and wrong: old as I am I know what is good and what is evil, what is just and what is unjust” he said. He added further “Walter Bagehot says that life is confusing and we have to accept this confused life. Meantime we hear the voice of Gandhi Ji- truth it is what prevails, not untruth... light and not darkness. This is my belief and I know that truth will triumph someday.”
This old father has always wanted his son to be a creative writer, rather than being a journalist, and felt that he was wasting his life as a journalist. “He was more a creative writer rather than a journalist. I always felt he shouldn’t waste his life doing journalism; he is highly qualified to be a lecturer in one of the universities and that is what I wanted him to be. But what he wanted for himself was to help people and safeguard them.”
He recalled an incident, “once he got assaulted in a pub by two thugs as he was going to help an old man who was attacked by the said thugs. He and his friends had seen the old man being assaulted and went to his help and my son got assaulted.”
Letters
Tissainayagam’s father was referring to some letters he received consequent to his imprisonment of 20 years. Majority of them are from abroad wishing Tissainayagam strength and courage to face the ordeal. “He got over 600 letters. Majority of them from the USA, Canada and Europe and even people from Japan had sent letters. But mind you not even one letter from India or China. That is the kind of people who live in India and China.” He went on, “What have they got to do with this? They have only common human feelings and that we are all human beings and that is the only thing prompting them to speak for us.”
Not just JS Tissainayagam, but also his father has been a journalist a long time ago. “I have been a journalist and retired as Director of Information in 1979. Then for 15 years I worked with Mr.Premadasa as his speech writer.”
“Every time there was an emergency I worked as the chief censor for the government. After Mr. Bandaranaike’s death there was a crisis situation in the country and the press was suppressed and I was the chief censor to censor the news at that time,” he added and went on “his uncle - his mother’s brother was Major General Balaratnaraja, chief of staff of the Sri Lanka Army. This is the family: we are not terrorists. My father was an engineer and all my brothers are qualified engineers, we are not a family of terrorists!”
LakbimaNews learnt that, although the family is leading a normal life day-to-day, they greatly miss their son. However the daughter-in-law of senior Tissainayagam- (wife of JS Tissainayagam) is now living in United States of America. According to her, it is Tissainayagam’s courage, that is enabling her to cope with these difficult times.
“We have continued the way we have been but of course without his help we are finding it difficult. We are leading an empty void life. I am now talking to you but I know that my son is in prison facing a difficult time,.” his father said dabbing at his eyes.
Finally commenting on the serious eye condition Tissainayagam is suffering from, his father said that the condition is the detachment of the retina. “It is a serious condition and he had to undergo two serious operations,” and explained to us the cause: ”He fell down from the vehicle while he was travelling and injured his head and the eye was also injured. He had met with two accidents and on both instances the eye got affected.”
He went on, “Now he is supposed to take vitamins and we are finding it difficult to give them to him, because the prison authorities do not allow these items to be taken. He has to take a daily dose of vitamins but the prison hospital is not giving him this.” He sadly went on, “He cannot read any of the letters he has got from various people around the world. Someone else has to read them to him. It is we who have read them all.” -Sri Lanka Guardian
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