Introduction
Journalistic accounts of the crisis in Sri Lanka refer to it as an ‘ethnic conflict’ between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority, and there is an element of truth in this perception: the war that broke out in 1983 and has continued ever since, despite periods of ceasefire, is primarily between the armed forces of a state dominated by a Sinhala nationalist agenda and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighting for a separate Tamil state. Yet this description is inadequate to capture the complexity of the situation in Sri Lanka. It simply cannot account for episodes like the following:
Norms of civilisation and humanity today seem assailed from all quarters, leaving one sickened, bewildered and despairing as never before. The actors in this grim scenario include the forces of the state, violent forces opposed to the state, shadowy vigilante groups…The gruesome tally of deaths mounts daily.
Those killed during the past three months include Kandy District MP Anura Daniel, shot in his office by men in military type unforms; General Secretary of the LSSP Trade Union Federation, P.D. Wimalasena, shot by gunmen who stormed his headquarters and set fire to its press; lawyer Charita Lankapura shot in his residence;..Chairman and Director-General of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and Competent Authority of the Independent Television Network, Thevis Guruge, shot on his morning walk; television and radio announcer Premkeerthi de Alwis, abducted from his home and killed; the Ven. Kotikawatte Saddhaissa Nayake Thera killed in his temple at Kolonnawa; Chief News Editor of Rupavahini, Kulasiri Ameratunga, shot in his home by unidentified gunmen; the Ven. Soragune Pannatissa Thera, taken out of his temple in Haputale and shot; young lawyer Kanchana Abhayapala shot at his home by an unidentified gunman; seventy-five-year-old Wellatota Pannadassi Nayake Thera shot when returning to his home in Kamburupitiya, and burnt; SLFP organiser in Kurunegala, H.P.Wijesekera, shot in Dompe; Rubber Research Board Chairman and former Deputy Minister Merril Kariyawasam shot in his office at Ratmalana; seventy-five-year-old Kahawe Wimalasiri Thera shot by an unidentified gang in his temple at Kala Oya, Anuradhapura; Moratuwa University Vice-Chancellor Prof. C. Patuwathavithana and Chief Security Officer P.A.K.Ranaweera, slain on the campus premises at Katubedde; State Pharmaceuticals Corporation Chairman Dr. Gladys Jayawardene, shot in her car at Slave Island on her way home from office.
These are some of the names that made the newspaper headlines in recent times. The fact and manner of these deaths is at least known. In addition there are the eyewitness accounts of unidentified corpses, of headless bodies floating down waterways, of numerous bodies – sometimes singly, sometimes in heaps, often hideously mutilated – burning on the roadsides. (Civil Rights Movement 1989)
This is an account of what was happening in the rest of Sri Lanka when the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) occupied the North and East after the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. While the total death toll has never been established, it amounted to tens of thousands – some estimates say 60,000, including disappearances – so the carnage was on a scale comparable to the loss of life in the war between the government and the LTTE. But this was not an ethnic conflict; it was a conflict between the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front) and the government, with both sides killing others who did not belong to either side, like the 32 schoolchildren of Embilipitiya killed by the state. It was a case of Sinhalese, including Buddhist monks, being killed by Sinhalese. Both sides used shadowy death squads: several squads in the case of the state, with names like the ‘Black Cats,’ ‘Yellow Cats,’ ‘Eagles of the Central Hills’ and ‘Scorpions,’ while the JVP used the Deshapremi Janatha Viyaparaya (DJV or Patriotic People’s Movement).[i]
In the case of Tamils, the killing spree started earlier, continued into 2008, and included the internationally recognised war crime of conscripting children and sending them to the battle front:
The LTTE took on the TELO at the end of that month [April 1986]…The manner in which the TELO members were killed shocked Tamil people everywhere. Many died without knowing what hit them. Twelve were killed near Manipay while they were asleep. Several were caught unawares, shot and burnt at junctions at Thirunelvely, Mallakam and Tellipallai. Eight persons were killed at the camp behind St John’s principal’s bungalow…The people were so terrified that few had the courage to give shelter to the fugitives…Some went home saying things such as: “We have produced our own Hitlers”. (Hoole et al. 1990, pp.81-82)
In the early 1990s, very young children from poor families taken by the LTTE in Jaffna were corralled in camps…In July 1991, most of the thousand or so killed in the LTTE’s desperate bid to overrun Elephant Pass were women and children…A woman in the Vanni regularly met young members of the LTTE fighting cadre who told her about their gruelling life…They told her, “Once you come into this organisation, there is no alternative. You must make up your mind to die. When volunteers are called for a dangerous job, we all raise our hands”. (Hoole 2001: 404, 415, 416)
These aspects of the LTTE’s politics have aptly been described as ‘the political culture of auto-genocide,’ (Hoole 2001: 403), and this epithet could apply equally to the politics of the state and JVP in the late 1980s. A characterisation of the crisis in Sri Lanka must account for these phenomena as well as the fighting between the state and the LTTE.