The Human Rights Question In The South

By Rajan Hoole -January 11, 2014 

Rajan Hoole

The Year 1988: The Red Moon Over Sri Lanka And The Dawn Of New Wisdom – Part 4

A particular context in which these accusations came up was the murder in police custody of the lawyer Wijedasa Liyannarachchi whose corpse was found to have more than 100 injuries. The SLFP was quick to play a leading role in protests highlighting for the first time in its 36 year history, gross violations by the state forces, which had though been long common in Tamil areas. For the elite, the Liyannarachchi affair gave them an occasion to give public expression to one side of their confused feelings. On the one hand the State, which had vocally and violently championed the Sinhalese cause in earlier years, was then killing Sinhalese youth in large numbers. On the other, while the elite were disconcerted by the JVP’s murderous violence, its apparent anti-Indian and subtly anti-Tamil rhetoric struck a responsive chord.

In this situation, the elite’s response was similar to that of the Tamil elite in the mid-80s. Although not absolutely safe, it felt safer for the elite to rain indignation against the Government’s violations – the violence of the known devil. Thus for them condemning the latter and being silent on the JVP’s violations, thereby giving them a certain legitimacy, became a fashionable way of feeling good. It was shallow and self-serving, having a useful purpose only when the JVP seemed like succeeding. This was the context behind the protest by an influential section of the intelligentsia when Liyannarachchi was killed. There were also those who had consistently protested against human rights violations over the years. They were a minority. Earlier, Human Rights had been an expression that had been spat upon as a pastime of Tamil lovers. But during the latter half of 1988, and only then, Human Rights became a very respectable term in the South of Sri Lanka.

Liyannarachchi had been working on habeas corpus cases in the South from the offices of the senior lawyer Ranjit Abeyasuriya, who was associated with the SLFP. He was abducted in Colombo upon leaving these offices on 25th August 1988 and taken by the Police to Tangalle, in DIG Udugampola’s area. A month earlier several members of Udugampola’s family had been murdered when the JVP attacked his ancestral home in the Deep South. Once the alarm was sounded over Liyannarachchi’s safety, it was decided to move him to Colombo. The Batalanda Commission has since found that Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe was instrumental in giving the CSU unit at Kelaniya custody of Liyannarachchi and that this unit was responsible for the torture to which he finally succumbed.   

To be continued..

*From Rajan Hoole‘s “Sri Lanka: Arrogance of Power  - Myth, Decadence and Murder”. Thanks to Rajan for giving us permission to republish. To read earlier parts click here

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