Human Rights & Paranoia

By Rajan Hoole –September 24, 2016 

Dr. Rajan Hoole

Count Down To July 1983 – Part III

Other events to fire the imaginations of those looking for conspiracies followed in quick succession. Amnesty International released a report on conditions in Sri Lanka in early July. It dealt with the conditions in which those arrested under the PTA of 1979 were being detained, extra-judicial killings, torture, and more recently the death of Navaratnarajah on 10.4.83 after two weeks in custody. The AI had in fact sought to discuss the report with the Government before releasing it and had sent a 72 page draft to President Jayewardene on 7th February. On 6th April, AI was told that neither the President nor a representative of the Government would discuss the report.

This was again a sign of growing paranoia. There was to be a good deal in the Press about AI and other Human Rights agencies being a Marxist conspiracy. Giving apparent substance to such thinking was the fact that Suriya Wickremasinghe, a key activist in the Civil Rights Movement of Sri Lanka, was the daughter of the late Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe, a founder leader of the Communist Party of Ceylon. In fact several of the concerns raised by the AI had been raised by the CRM earlier. For example the CRM’s Human Rights Day Review of 3rd December 1979 signed by its president the Rt. Rev. Lakshman Wickremesinghe, the late Bishop of Kurunegala, and its secretary, Desmond Fernando, dealt with the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Emergency Regulations and the Liberation Tigers Law.

These, the CRM Review said, “contain provisions that go far beyond any reasonable or permissible requirement of national security. They provide for arrest without warrant and without any obligation to inform relatives of the fact of such an arrest and the place of detention. They permit the prolonged detention of persons in Police custody, or in any place the minister may determine, without any rules or legal safeguards whatever, concerning their conditions of detention and interrogation”.

Another event was the appearance in the Manchester (London) Guardian of 6th July, of an article by David Selbourne. Selbourne who was covering Sri Lanka had already been to Jaffna, seen the scene of the Kantharmadam arson, spoken to many people and had made an appointment with the Chief Justice, when he was picked up by the Police and deported on the night of 25th June. The provocation for this treatment was his visit the year before, in June 1982. Having been with Athulathmudali at Oxford University, he was privileged to have a motor car ride in Colombo in the company of President Jayewardene and ministers Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake. During the ride, and in other conversations, Selbourne was treated to some uninhibited remarks by his jolly companions. Selbourne reported Athulathmudali to have said, “We are going to break heads” in connection with solving the Tamil problem (Saturday Review 10.8.85). This was later denied by Athulathmudali (SR 26.10.85). Selbourne had then on his return to Britain written several frank articles in British journals and in the Illustrated Weekly of India.

Selbourne’s article in the Guardian following his deportation in June 1983 was titled, “Sri Lankan Army fails to stem violence”. It stated: “Even saffron-clad Buddhism with all its pieties is now armed with sub-machine guns”. The article quoted Amirthalingam to the effect that the TULF in keeping with its non-violence would launch a satyagraha in October. He was further quoted thus: “The underground Liberation Tigers, whose actions constantly protected by the Tamil community have claimed the lives of 37 members of the security forces since 1977, are at the forefront of the struggle for Tamil self-determination.”

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