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.