The Second Fascist Front In Sri Lanka: Gotabaya,Karuna,Devananda and this cool guys dirty deals

The Second Fascist Front In Sri Lanka – Towards Crushing The Minorities And Disenfranchising The Sinhalese. - University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) Special Report No.29

Part 1 (part 2 will be in the next sunday edition)

This report deals with the following interrelated matters:

• The State falling prey to the anarchy of a fractious Sinhalese extremist lobby represented by the JVP and JHU under a fickle presidency.

• The growing fascist environment, the leveraging effect in politics of a killer machine under the Defence Ministry and the far-reaching politicisation of the security services. In this connection it deals with unknown aspects of the Raviraj killing.

• The human agony and insecurity, particularly in the North-East, resulting from this state of affairs and their absolute incompatibility with a credible political settlement.

• Raises pertinent questions about the perversion of institutions meant to foster the rule of law.

The extent of interference and crime by an intelligence apparatus at the apex of executive power raises the question, are we still a democracy?

1. Against Civilians With a Vengeance;The Ceasefire Agreement has been abrogated, the Nordic Monitoring Mission has left and it is now a war without witnesses. Civilians on both sides are the main victims as each side pursues military advantage regardless of them. One way or the other, singly or otherwise, each side has deliberately targeted civilians of the other ethnic group.

The bus bombings in Okkampitiya in Moneragala on 17th January and near Madhu in the LTTE controlled area on 29th January, claiming in all more than two score lives, including women and children, are notable among the continuing outrages.The LTTE will not be party to any democratic settlement. It will continue along its malefic course giving mutual sustenance to its Sinhalese extremist counterparts. The State, which was functionally truncated into a “Sinhalese State” by the myopic politics of the south and precipitated the Tamil armed struggle, continues to foster impunity — the main tool of an ideologically motivated clique now in control of the government.

Regaining the sanction of the minorities is far from the aims the present government; and the long-term effects of pampering to the extremist and criminal elements are all too evident. Bolstering Sinhalese fears and sustaining itself through the rhetoric of a war to eradicate “terrorism” is its sole agenda.

The political task of marginalising the LTTE is clean outside the lexicon of hardcore “Sinhalese Nationalist” intellectuals — for that would be to win over the minorities by offering them a political settlement giving them a stake in a united Sri Lanka as equals. This for them is absolute anathema. Therefore it has not happened in 60 years of independence. The APRC fiasco extinguishes the final gleam of hope on the horizon. The present government has shown itself is unwilling to go beyond any arrangement that would dilute the present structures of control of the north-east — control that is plagued by massive human rights violations, frequently by structures set up by the Defence Ministry outside the regular forces, reminiscent of some of the well-known repressive regimes in the past century. The rulers do not treat the north-east as a part of Sri Lanka.

We have written extensively about the LTTE’s fascism, its cost and what it portends. We opposed this current round of war, because less destructive political means of cornering the LTTE have not been tried, it has proved intensely callous of civilians and their protection and is not guided by any vision that offers light at the end of the tunnel.

The war has all the hallmarks of a war of conquest and subjugation in pursuance of a Sinhalese supremacist agenda using the LTTE’s intransigence as a pretext. This we argue is not necessarily because of foreordained malice on the part of President Rajapakse, but arises from his courting fractious extremist forces with their own power agendas and being pulled by them competitively and disastrously into greater extremism.

How did the present government get into this impasse? What does it portend?

These are some of the questions we attempt to answer. It describes how extremist forces, have built structures and wield influence within the security establishment, control, influence and supervise actions of paramilitary groups particularly in the east, acting as their patrons and giving them access to persons at the apex of power. Such fascist structures establishing a stranglehold on the government was unthinkable a short time ago.

2. Defence Ministry and Parliamentary Compliance through Abduction,
    Murder and IntimidationThe fight against Tamil terror has become the opium through which the Sinhalese have, from 1977, been inured to an astounding range of abuses. Sri Lanka’s 77 years of electoral democracy is now being parodied by MPs being bribed or blackmailed to crossover in droves to the side wielding the purse and hatchet. The government survives on the volatile support of 37 JVP MPs, 27 MPs from the UNP and a number of Tamil speaking Hill Country and Muslim MPs worried that defiance would bring violent consequences for themselves and their supporters. This is one element of the disenfranchisement of the population. Another is revealing of structures that are even more insidious for democracy.

The vote on the third reading of the bloated war-budget on 14th December 2007 was expected to be a close call. The total budget was LKR 925 billion against projected revenue of LKR 775 billion. Defence expenditure was increased 19% to LKR 166.5 billion. This means, economist Muttukrishna Sarvananda points out, an allocation of LKR 8536 per person for defence against 2974 for health and 2359 for education.

To justify the cost, the government continually presented the south a rosy picture of the war. Army Commander Sarath Fonseka told the Sunday Observer (30 Dec. ’07), “Our daily target is to kill at least 10 LTTE terrorists,” and by so doing finish off the remaining “3000 LTTE terrorists” and the job, now 50% done, by the end of the year. It was made to sound easy with the human misery largely confined to the north-east.

The SLMC decided to leave the government and the Hill Country MPs representing the plantation Tamils were saying that their constituents were against the war-budget. Two SLFP MPs openly dissented and more were expected to follow if there was a visible tide against the budget. It also seemed, mistakenly, that the JVP too would vote against it.

The Pillayan Group on 1st December 2007 abducted persons close to three Tamil MPs from Batticaloa threatening them harm if the MPs voted against the budget. Those abducted were Mr. Nagalingam, secretary to Miss. K. Thangeswary MP, Arunasalam Sivapalan, nephew of Mr. Jeyanandamoorthy MP, and Mr. Sriskandaseya, brother of Mr. Ariyanendran MP. The three MPs abstained from voting and the abducted persons were released. Previously, for the second reading of the budget on 19th November the same group abducted TNA MP Mr. Kanagasabai’s son-in-law S. Sajitharan, a teacher, threatening all Batticaloa MPs not to vote against. Mr. Kanagasabai refrained from voting, the three MPs above voted against. Sajitharan was later released.

The event is a grim reminder of the alarming rapidity with which the security forces have become politicised – a dangerous legacy that Pakistan is attempting to reverse. It further carried a message that offered grim choices to all MPs from the minorities. In another technique used for gerrymandering, the security details of several MPs from the minorities who voted against the budget were slashed, from 18 to just two policemen in the case of UNP MP Maheswaran. Maheswaran was gunned down as he worshipped at a Hindu temple less than two weeks later on 1st January 2008. He is the third Tamil parliamentarian to be gunned down. Another MP Mano Ganesan, a member of the Civil Monitoring Committee, whose security too was slashed, was forced to flee the country.

Take Pillayan who was responsible for the abductions. In 2002 he was the transport head of the LTTE for Batticaloa-Amparai, among the key persons involved in child conscription (see our Special Report No.14) and a noted thug. When the LTTE split in 2004, he joined Karuna. Now with Karuna in a British prison, Pillayan is being promoted as the government’s chief flunkey against minorities in the east.

The level at which Pillayan moves and is managed emerged during the closing weeks of 2007. He and some of his fellows were guests for dinner of the commander of one of the fighting arms of the security forces at his Trincomalee headquarters, to sort out matters of mutual interest. What was a professional service commander doing with Pillayan?

It was also the STF who on 5th November escorted the Pillayan faction to the Karuna office in Batticaloa, beat up the Karuna cadres and installed him there, and a month later likewise installed him in Karuna’s Araiampathy office after an exchange of gunfire.

Further, Pillayan is now patronised by the Patriotic National Movement (PNM), a rival to the JHU, an earlier patron of Karuna. We will see below that Pillayan is a creature of an intelligence outfit directly under the Defence Secretary who is also the President’s brother. The agents assigned to Pillayan, beside their own mischief, support and instigate killings, abductions, extortion and robbery by his men.

This places in context Pillayan’s abductions in aid of the defence budget. The Defence Ministry, which functions as the property of an American citizen and the President’s brother, moved virtually to extort public funds from parliament, to serve also as a source of fat commissions. And we are celebrating 60 years of independence from colonial rule. The apparatus of state-terror now in place has a political agenda going well beyond taming the Tigers. The killing of MP Raviraj discussed below shows poignantly the government going down to the lowest depths in a bid to control MPs by terror.

The record of Karuna, Pillayan and their cadres lays bare the hollowness of the LTTE’s attribution of divine, heroic status to such mortals, who are more than willing to stoop to the lowest levels for their survival. The LTTE’s claims of ‘purity’ and ‘sanctity’ and their unquenchable ‘thirst’ for Thamil Eelam are canards used to brainwash and entrap the impressionable young.

LTTE apologists living in greener pastures ritually sustain the illusion of the LTTE’s death-defying eminence, hoping against hope that the Sri Lankan state would perpetuate and justify its existence.

3. Kool Party at Layards Road and a Fatal PactTelltale signs of the emerging terror apparatus were evinced by Joseph Pararajasingam MP’s assassination at Christmas Mass in 2005. A graphic pointer to the new dispensation was the public execution of five students at the Trincomalee Gandhi statue on 2nd January 2006 (Special Report 24). The executioners were the STF team sent to Trincomalee by Defence Advisor and JHU Treasurer, former DIG Kotakadeniya, with, according to him, the concurrence of Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse. Police Superintendent Kapila Jayasekere, formerly of the STF, directed the plot.

After the Karuna Group split from the LTTE and the Norwegians and government abandoned them to LTTE killers, the JHU and JVP befriended them. The new influence the latter acquired under Rajapakse fed into the killer apparatus being assembled from the last months of President Kumaratunga. Whatever the understanding between President Rajapakse and the LTTE which crucially aided his victory by blocking votes for his opponent in November 2005, it broke down quickly.

The aftermath of the security-forces backed Trincomalee riots in April 2006 saw mounting violence and displacement in Trincomalee District. Following the failed LTTE suicide attack on the Army Commander, the government moved to takeover the LTTE controlled areas of Trincomalee District and eventually the whole of the east.

The killing of the Bojan sisters in Jaffna in mid-January 2006 was a definite sign that the EPDP had begun killing persons with family or other alleged connections to the LTTE. The EPDP followed this up with others including the attack on the Uthayan newspaper office and killing two employees on 2nd May 2006 when President Rajapakse was hosting a World Press Freedom Day celebration in Colombo, and participating with the Navy in the Allaipiddy killings on 13th May 2006. These attacks could be seen also as part of tit for tat arrangements left behind by President Kumaratunga after the LTTE killed Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar on 12th August 2005 or even earlier.

A new compact in service of an extremist agenda emerged in May 2006. We piece the story together from information we received from a number of sources in response to inquiries over the killing of N. Raviraj MP. The various strands support the main drift, as also the revelations over the Gajanayake scandal by Lakshman Seneviratne MP.

It began at the cabinet meeting held about Wednesday 17th May 2006, soon after the Allaipiddy killings. President Mahinda Rajapakse openly castigated Minister Douglas Devananda in the presence of other ministers for the Allaipiddy and other such incidents in Jaffna. Following the meeting, one source adds, “Devananda invited

President Rajapakse and his brothers Basil and Gotabaya (I am not sure if both brothers attended) for a kool feast on Sunday, 21st May. Navy Admiral Daya Sandagiri was also there. Sivathasan was given the task of preparing kool for 25 persons (27 according to another source). The order was given on Friday and Palmyrah Board vehicles were used to buy the fish and other necessities. The invitees arrived at Layards Road at 3 pm and left at 10 pm. They posed for photographs with EPDP cadres.”

The first source who did not speak of Karuna’s presence at the meeting, said they spoke about operations in Trincomalee and the east in general and compliments were paid to Mr. Devananda for his ‘good work’ in the north. Complimenting Devananda’s good work in the north sits strangely beside castigating him in front of the cabinet. Another source abroad said that Karuna was a good deal at Devananda’s Layards Road office around this time, adding that he said over the phone from the office that he was very disillusioned and wanted to go abroad, but Devananda (Annai) had given him hope and encouraged him to stay.

A senior person with good EPDP links assured us that Karuna was present at the party and the discussion proceeded with Karuna and Devananda seated on either side of President Rajapakse, while Sivathasan translated. The main outcome was that Karuna and Devananda agreed to cooperate with Rajapakse on the break up of the merged North-East Province (an anathema to the JHU and JVP). In return for the cooperation, Karuna was promised the interim administration of the east for five years and Devananda, that of the north for the same period.

The elements were already in place, such as the JHU patronage of Karuna and Devananda. Clearly, President Rajapakse was pleased. He left backslapping EPDP members Kiruban and Vincent in a comradely gesture. Sivathasan was very upset.

As a consequence of the pact, Karuna forces were to provide units to “fight for the liberation of the east.’ There were not many more than 200 cadres under Karuna. The lack of numbers was solved by the government forces helping him to conscript boys for his army. This emerged on a conspicuous scale within three weeks of the Kool Party Pact. Human Rights Watch detailed this in a report in January 2007:

“In one incident in June 2006, the Karuna Group abducted 13 boys and young men, holding some of them for a while in a shop across the street from an army post. Some of the parents pleaded with the soldiers to intervene. Two soldiers spoke with the Karuna Group members, parents told Human Rights Watch, but the soldiers did not stop the abduction … In November (2006), after UN envoy Allan Rock raised allegations of government complicity in Karuna abductions, the Sri Lankan government promised an investigation. Instead, government and military officials launched attacks against Rock’s credibility.” Another aspect of the pact is deeply sinister.

(To be continued) Next Sunday Visit for more.

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