| by Pearl Thevanayagam
(April 21, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Suppressing dissent through martial laws in the name of eradicating terrorism and preserving national security and territorial integrity over and above individual liberties since independence were adopted by successive regimes. Starting with the government’s quashing 1958 Satyagraha protests staged by Tamil politicians on Galle Face Green, they learned to their delight, they could reply with state-organised violence.
Thus began the decline of peace in our isle which gathered momentum in 1971. They managed to stop the bleeding with band-aid solutions but failed to arrest the root causes of mass dissent.
One single murder was lead story up to 1970 and as children we were forbidden to read Page One and only Junior Page was handed over to us. We supplemented this lack of thrill with Grimm’s fairy tales and other fairy books from the Jaffna Library where they were heroes, villains, princes and princesses.
Kokilambal murder case where she plotted the murder of her husband, a temple priest in early ‘60s, with the connivance of her paramour and another labourer who worked for the couple in the farm became a daily serial sensation in Tamil newspapers and lasted for months. It caused the revival of ancient superstitious beliefs in dreams and omens since a close relative of the priest had a dream in which he identified the dung heap as the spot where his body was buried. Subsequently the killers were sentenced to capital punishment and the accomplice, Kohilambal, to life imprisonment.
Sathasivam murder case where the famous cricketer stood trial for killing his wife, Dr Kularatne for poisoning his wife with arsenic while he had an affair with his nurse, Kataragama beauty queen murder and Pauline de Croos’s last capital punishment (later commuted to life and subsequent release for good behaviour) for murdering a mentally retarded boy who was the son of her lover were front page news for months in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s.
The only visible presence of the soldiers in my childhood were the air-force, navy and army bands at Jaffna Stadium for which our nuns would march us double file and subsequently re-enact a much sub-standard version of the school band and march past.
Fast forward to the ‘70’s and we have been possessed by a maniacal killing spree that continues to this day, thanks to the government not envisaging its victory over the LTTE and failing to make a concrete and sustainable plan to integrate the soldiers who are now left high and dry compelling them to resort to mercenary killings in the absence of finding fair and just means of living.
It all began on April 05, 1971 and Sri Lanka would lose its reputation as a blissfully peaceful island fast descending into war mode. Truckloads of soldiers in pith helmets cruised along the roads amidst curfew. Even then we were happy to have three-month long Easter holidays.
Gradually news came to Jaffna that Sirimavo’s government was hunting Sinhala youth and the first news of arrest I can recall was that of Maru Sira hiding inside a water tank. At the time his picture was in the papers, I was thinking what a darling handsome boy he was and even cried that he could not have hurt a fly never mind being a member of JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) insurgents plotting to overthrow the government.
Bodies of Maru Sira’s comrades massacred in 89/90 by the UNP government have been dug out in Matale although official disclosure that those bodies discovered in the mass grave were indeed JVPers is yet to be made public.
It is well-known that Marxist JVP youth and Rohana Wijeweera were disgruntled by the bizarre educational system brought in by the then Minister of Education, Badiurddin Mahmoud to study in the vernacular which meant they could not be proficient in English. As a result white collar jobs eluded them.Under Sirimavo Bandaranaike, he also set in motion standardisation and district quotas for university entrants.
That Rohana Wijeweera would depart to Russia and inculcate himself with Marxist ideologies at the famous Lumumba University was lost on the government until his Che Guevara Movement gathered momentum and started to challenge capitalism totally reserved for the Senanayakes and the Bandaranaikes. Fear for their future and anger at the government’s move towards marginalising rural youth stoked the fires of rebellion in them.
Ironically it was Sirimavo Bandaranaike who set up the JVP youth to overthrow UNP rule but it back-fired when she reneged on her promise to offer them recognition in white-collared employment. Reams of evidence and material are available into the history of JVP rebellion and there is no need to replicate them here.
Then came the Tamil Tigers following in the suit of the JVP and they held the whole island to ransom until their defeat. Thirty-three years of bloody violence and need we say more. Why JVP failed and the LTTE took centre stage was the support the latter got from Tamil Nadu.
Now Gotabhaya is widely credited with the slaughter of JVP youth in ’89 and ’90 and the recent discovery of mass graves purported to contain their bodies is another major state-orchestrated crime the UNHRC should take into account in probing war crimes against Tamils since Rajapaksa came to power.
Time is of essence and this government has until September before it comes up with plausible excuses for the 40,000 or more civilians massacred in the war against Tamil Tigers. Denials and diplomatic manoeuvring will not placate UNHRC. Admission and atonement by the government might mitigate the weight of responsibility for war crimes but stubborn and foolhardy are its performance on world stage which casts doubt on their excuses that no civilians were intentionally targeted.
All was not fair in the war concluded four years ago.
(The writer has been a journalist for 24 years and worked at Weekend, The Daily News, Sunday Leader and Weekend Express in Sri Lanka as sub-editor, news reporter and news editor. She was Colombo Correspondent for Times of India and has contributed to Wall Street Journal; Washington Bureau, where she was on work experience from The Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley, California. Currently residing in UK she is also co-founder of EJN (Exiled Journalists Network) UK in 2005 the membership of which is 200 from 40 countries. She can be reached at pearltheva@hotmail.com)
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