88/89 Bheeshanaya: A shared bloodbath

A number of factors contributed to the bloody 1971 JVP insurrection. On one hand, the JVP had been inspired by the successful armed struggle by the Cuban revolutionaries in 1959

If one goes through the social media posts and some of the statements made by the politicians in the mainstream media for the past few days about the dark period of 1988/89, he would definitely be at a loss to imagine the United National Party (UNP) governments under Presidents J.R.Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa to have suppressed an armed insurrection in the late eighties, without killing a single person.   

These social media posts and politicians explain how the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) under the guise of the Deshapremi Janatha Vyaparaya – DJV (Patriotic People’s Movement) killed people during the insurrection that the latter waged in the years 1988 and 1989, as if the state armed forces and the pro-government paramilitary groups were passively looking on.   

JVP has come under an avalanche of censures for a claim made by Nalin Hewage, a former JVP Southern Provincial Councilor during a fierce verbal clash at a televised debate last week between him and two MPs of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), Tissa Kuttiarachchi and D. Weerasinghe. Hewage in response to an allegation by Weerasinghe that the JVP killed his father during its second insurrection in the eighties shot back claiming that anti-social elements such as rapists, robbers, bootleggers and cattle rustlers had also been killed during those dark days. 

Social media 

Social media has been agog with questioning the JVP as to who gave the party the right to kill anti-social elements during their insurrection. They liken Hewage’s statement to a recent instruction by Public Security Minister, Tiran Alles to the police to shoot the drug peddlers, claiming that it wouldn’t be a sin.   

As far as the killings of political opponents are concerned many are of the view that it has been the monopoly of one or two groups while the others have been law- abiding and innocent. No, it was not the case, it is a distortion of facts and history. In Sri Lanka, blood is in the hands of almost all political parties, in the south as well as the north. That was the case with armed rebels and those parties that have been in power alone or in coalition with others, especially after the JVP’s first insurrection in 1971.   

A number of factors contributed to the bloody 1971 JVP insurrection. On one hand, the JVP had been inspired by the successful armed struggle by the Cuban revolutionaries in 1959. The ruthless bloody crackdown of the Malaysian Communist Party which was said to have claimed 500,000 lives in 1965 led to the JVP to be formed initially as a secret organisation in the same year (1965), despite it being not an armed movement then. In turn, the secrecy of the new group became an invitation for the government to crack down on it. Both the United National Party (UNP) government and the successive Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led government that came to power in 1970 provoked the JVP to take arms with a series of arrests and assaults of its members.   

The first insurrection of the party beginning on April 5, 1971 thus resulted in the deaths of hundreds of security personnel and civilians at the hands of the rebels and over 10,000 killings of real and suspected JVP supporters by the armed forces and police, apart from another around 20,000 people being incarcerated.  

The numbers do not explain the human tragedy. Armed forces and the rebels seemed to attempt to outsmart each other in cruelty and brutality. The JVP cadres brutally killed the suspected collaborators of the police in villages and their cadres – real and perceived – in turn were tortured before being killed. Somawathie Manamperi, a grade 10 student in Kataragama became the symbol of the state brutality. She with some other girls were raped and later forced to walk naked in the town and buried alive. JVP leaders still recall in public meetings an incident where one of their members, Kamalabandu was cut into pieces with an electric saw during interrogation. Tyre pyres and dead bodies floating in the rivers - for which the government was accused - were first witnessed in the country during those days.   

It was the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) along with the Communist Party Sri Lanka (CPSL) and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) that was in power then. SLPP is a recent breakaway group of the SLFP and almost all older leaders of the SLPP acted as the front runners of the SLFP then. J.R.Jayewardene, the leader of the then Opposition, UNP openly expressed his party’s support for that brutal crackdown. Thus all were involved in the bloodbath.  

Second insurrection 

The unfair proscription of the JVP by the UNP government in 1983 falsely accused it for the anti-Tamil pogrom in the same year that led to the second insurrection of the southern rebels. The party, subsequent to the release of their leaders from the prisons in 1977, was so immersed in electoral politics when it was proscribed that the leftist parties accused it of having abandoned revolutionary politics. Three years into the proscription, the JVP again took up arms and fought against the government and other real and suspected collaborators of the government. They accelerated their activities with a fresh vigour after the induction of Indian armed forces in Sri Lanka, under the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in 1987.  

Some leftists, despite their opposition to the UNP government, formed paramilitary and vigilante groups such as the People’s Revolutionary Red Army (PRRA) to fight against the JVP which then launched its attacks under the name of DJV. These groups were reportedly armed by the state. Other Opposition parties including the SLFP and leftist parties were also supplied with arms. State Minister for Defence Pramitha Bandara Thennakoon told Parliament last year that over 100 MPs have not returned the weapons they had been provided with between 1980 and 1990.   

During the Presidency of Ranasinghe Premadasa there were also some other vigilante groups such as the “Kaha Balalllu” and “Kalu Balallu” apparently formed by the state armed forces. It was a brutal race of killing between pro-government and anti-government groups.   

Brutality on the part of both belligerent parties during the second insurrection was many-fold compared to the first insurrection. In spite of the absence of any credible source about the number of people killed by both parties the general perception that has been oft referred to various reports is that DJV had killed between 6000 and 7000 people while the number of those who disappeared - for which government and the paramilitary and vigilante groups were blamed - exceeded 60,000. Five Presidential commissions were appointed later to look into these disappearances by former Presidents Premadasa and Chandrika Kumaratunga.   

Symbol of the cruelty

The symbol of the cruelty of the JVP during its second insurrection was the ruthless killing of family members of former DIG Premadasa Udugampola including his mother and a child. However, such incidents were offset by the government by similar brutality such as the inhuman torture and murder of Attorney-at-Law Wijedasa Liyanaarachchi according to whose postmortem report there had been over 100 wounds in his body, including fractures of ribs.   

Media reported about tyre pyres, floating dead bodies in rivers and mass graves from various parts of the country in those dark days and later for which the government was blamed. There were reports about torture chambers in various places such as Batalanda and Eliyakanda. Almost all leaders of the Smagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) were in the UNP then. The current leader of the SJB, Sajith Premadasa is the son of President Ranasinghe Premadasa.   
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa also reminded the “JVP terror of 1988/89” at the May Day rally of the SLPP on Wednesday. However, he was sympathetic to the rebels during that “terror,” despite his party, the SLFP had also received weapons from the government. He along with Vasudeva Nanayakkakra were briefly detained by the airport authorities when they took thousands of photographs and documents including affidavits to Geneva in September 1990 when the then United Nation Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) was sitting, to prove the human rights violations by the government. He and the late Mangala Smaraweera had formed a” Mothers’ Front” which was also seen as an anti-government entity.  

This history indicates that no party or group referred to above has the moral right to point fingers at others for killings. Despite the accountability being forgotten, every party had the duty not to create such dark eras in the future.