The PA government is remembering the assassination of Vijaya Kumaratunga this time as a general commemoration of those killed by the JVP. An exhibition organized incurring massive expenditure is to be taken around the country for the purpose. The government also expects to institute legal action afresh against those involved in the JVP’s second rebellion.
The acceptance of all those connected with Vijaya’s politics including Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga had been that the assassination had been committed by the JVP. But the commission on Vijaya’s assassination had pointed its finger not at the JVP but at President Premadasa. Although the observations made by that were contrary to her own beliefs the President on a number of occasions used those observations to attack the UNP. Now that the JVP’s politics have become a challenge to the PA, it alleges that Vijaya was assassinated by the NP. None of them who say it has spoken a single word against the observations of the commission.
While commemorating those killed by the JVP, the government is also mentioning Richard de Zoysa as a person killed by the JVP. The responsibility for the assassination of Mr. de Zoysa should go to the UNP government rather than to the JVP. However, to commemorate with hatred the JVPers killed by that party while remembering Mr. de Zoysa, is contradictory.
The popular view in the country is that the government assassinated Mr. de Zoysa as a media person attached to the international news agency IPS for having exposed to the world, the details of the killings of people in the country at that time.
However, the truth was different. Mr. Ranjan Wijeratne who was functioning as the defence minister had wanted to have Richard assassinated not because he was a media person but because he was an active follower of the JVP. That Mr. de Zoysa was maintaining a close connection with some leaders of the JVP was not a secret to his close friends and to his mother, although it was a secret to the general public. Before he fled the country, the present leader of the JVP who is now living abroad was residing in a house which Mr. de Zoysa had obtained from a friend who had gone abroad at that time.
An attempt made by the CID to have that house, where Somawansa Amerasinghe was hiding when it was in Mr. de Zoysa’s charge before he was killed, was prevented because its owners intervened through the defence minister. Mr. de Zoysa had a close connection with Lalith Athulathmudali as well as the JVP leaders. Perhaps both these factors might have had contributed to his death, although the PA government had wanted to appoint a commission to inquire into Mr. de Zoysa’s assassination, his mother Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu opposed it.
The happenings during the period from ’89-’90 may be considered a disaster. There can be no doubt that there is blood on the hands of both the main parties involved in that disaster. At the same time we must forget that those connected with the PA government do not have clean hands and that there are persons with blood on their hands.
No party connected with that disaster can claim to be innocent. However, every such party may have facts to put forward in defense. The UNP may say: “We as a government had to suppress them mercilessly!” The JVP may say: “They had banned us unreasonably. They used power against us to the maximum.” Thus we were pushed towards an armed struggle.
However, at that time everyone was out of their minds and were acting as if they were possessed by demons. They might have thought that if they were to survive, they have to kill the enemy before the enemy would kill them. Although in the prevailing conditions it was not possible to identify the enemy clearly, there was a habit of assassinating anybody who was a suspect.
The main trump card used by the PA at the parliamentary election of ’94 and the presidential election thereafter was the killing of youth by the UNP. At that time PA talked of the killings done by the UNP and never of those done by the JVP.
However, if the leader of the PA accused UNP of the killings of the youth, the UNP retaliated, then the entire programme of the PA would have gone wrong. When the UNP took up weapons against the JVP, some parties including the SLMP took up weapons pretending that they were supplied by the UNP. The parties that used weapons to suppress the youth cannot have the right to talk of the UNP’s suppression of youth. It was the PA’s good fortune that the leader of the UNP did not have the necessary thinking to level a counter challenge. If he had done so and had challenged the PA in the manner that some parties of the PA had acted, the PA would have found itself in such a difficult position where it could not easily recover.
It was under the PA government that the leader of the PRRA group which had collaborated with the UNP government against the JVP, was arrested. It was because the PRRA consisted of political activists connected to the SLMP and some leftist parties that the government was unable to take any legal action against that individual. Thereafter, C.A. Chandraprema, who was arrested at the time of the last parliamentary election when a big noise was made about the Batalanda torture chambers, had to be freed after the election because he had been an activist of the SLMP at the time of the rebellion although he is a person connected to the UNP now.
The attempts made by the PA to survive a disaster that the country underwent, like a worm feeding on a festering sore, is ridiculous. If the PA government was a responsible government, what it should have done was not to go on feeding on that festering sore, but to inquire into the true reasons that had contributed to that disaster and to find solutions to the socio-political problems raised by that disaster, so that there will be no recurrence of such a tragic incident.
It will not be possible to put a stop to that culture of murder by talking in an entirely opportunistic manner about the murders committed by the UNP government or about those killed by the JVP. It must be stated that commissions were appointed by other countries which had experienced similar situations not in the same way that the PA has done. Instead of appointing commissions to inquire into a few selected incidents what countries like South Africa did was to consider what had happened in the country and to find out the truth, without any intention to punish.
The exposure which resulted from such inquiries had a massive effect at the psychological level and created a social atmosphere where a recurrence would not be easy. The truth commission of South Africa without confining itself to inquiring into the killings of people under its rule, also took into account the anti-human policies that had followed the African National Congress against those who had held different views as well as party members who had followed the party line.
It must be said that in the context of what was brought to light by the commission against the African National Congress, the party leader found responsible was humble enough to apologize to the whole nation on behalf of his party. Unfortunately it is such leadership that our country lacks.