The Dress Rehearsal In Trincomalee

By Rajan Hoole –November 5, 2016

Dr. Rajan Hoole

“…it is clear that under natural ecological conditions intra-species aggression is seen in defence of territory or as nature’s solution to over-population. However, in the animal world, aggression rarely ends in actual death, there being some inborn inhibition to killing. It is pertinent to ask why such inhibitions do not operate in man, virtually the only ‘unhinged killer’…there were several incidents during racial riots and the war itself, of direct slaughter of civilians. This kind of ‘unhinged killing’appears to take place usually where human warfare occurs as reactive rage.” – Daya Somasundaram, from Scarred Minds

The New Frontiersmen

Elections to the District Development Councils were scheduled for early June 1981. These were being hailed by the Government and its supporters as a means to finding a political solution to the Tamil problem. Despite this, the UNP government of the day chose a strange way to usher in the DDCs. It may be explained, in part, as a perverse reaction to the attack on UNP and non-TULF candidates by Tamil militants, and the TULF’s silence on these. These included the killing of Mr. Thiagarajah, former MP for Vaddukoddai, and some policemen.

A train-load of election staff was sent from the South, many of whom did not have a clue to what election duty meant. The train stopped at Kurunegala. Minister. G.M. Premachandra, and Jayewickrema Perera, both top UNPers, addressed the election staff through loud speakers. They told them, “You are our frontier forces, you must come back with victory.” This trumpet-call was recounted by a man from Galle, who was then on election duty. He was reminded of this while witnessing the violence at the North-Western Provincial Council elections under the PA government in 1999.

In Jaffna there was a high-powered team including Ministers Gamini Dissanayake, Cyril Mathew & Festus Perera, G.P.V. Samarasinghe, secretary to the cabinet, Chandrananda de Silva, later commissioner of elections and subsequently defence secretary, and Colonel Dharmapala, defence secretary. There were also a large number of policemen brought into Jaffna under DIG Edward Gunawardene. The mindset implicit in this exercise also throws some light on the 1983 violence. Gamini Dissanayake addressed the election staff. He told them, according to the man from Galle above, to close the polling booths at 10.00 AM and cast the remaining votes. Some innocent guy asked him, “For whom should we cast them?” The Minister replied, “Why, to the animal (i.e. elephant) of course!”

The operation was so botched up that the UNP got no benefit out of it. A high point of the exercise was the burning of the Jaffna Public Library by Edward Gunawardene’s men. There had of course been militant attacks on policemen. But the considered opinion of some senior police colleagues was that Ponnambalam (Brute) Mahendran, who was DIG, Jaffna, would have handled the situation competently if not for the presence of Gunawardene and his men. The operation did achieve, however, something notable.

Until this time, with all the reservations the Tamils had about the State, there was hope that a political solution would be arrived at through negotiations between the Government and the TULF. The Government’s conduct during the elections to the DDCs – the much awaited political solution – greatly tarnished that hope. Two months later there was anti-Tamil violence in the South where the President himself blamed a section of his own party. The outrage among the Tamils occasioned by the burning of the library and the press of the Eelanadu – the only independent provincial daily in this country – was smothered in the Colombo press. What was left of liberal traditions could not be contained by the developing polarisation in the country. To responsible Tamils, both here and abroad, it seemed clear that the Tamils needed English journals of their own to highlight their concerns.

One group of Tamils in London who were associated with the Standing Committee of Tamils – a charitable group supporting work among Tamil refugees – collected contributions and started the Tamil Times. Despite the misrepresentation in this country, it has been a responsible and moderate monthly, which never supported the separatist cause in its editorial outlook. It is nearing 20 years of publication without missing a month, resisting all attempts by the LTTE to control it. About the same time, another group around the late K. Kanthasamy started the Saturday Review in Jaffna.

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