Guns in closets

Wednesday 30th August, 2023

Sri Lanka is awash with illegal firearms, which have found their way into the underworld during the past several decades. Protracted armed conflicts led to an exponential increase in the number of lethal weapons in the wrong hands. There are many trigger-happy former military personnel working as sicarios for various crime syndicates. It is against this backdrop that State Minister of Defence Premitha Bandara Tennakoon’s recent statement in Parliament about a huge stock of firearms issued to political parties during the Jayewardene and Premadasa governments in the late 1980s should be viewed.

State Minister Tennakoon has reportedly informed Parliament that the defence authorities issued about 700 firearms to 154 politicians in the 1980s, when the JVP went on a killing spree, but none of them has been returned. This figure, we believe, is an underestimate. According to anecdotal evidence, thousands of firearms were distributed among politicians under threat during that period, and almost all of them have gone missing. Naming some of those who had obtained firearms during the UNP governments, State Minister Tennakoon said former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had received 104 shotguns when she was in the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party (SLMP), and they had not been returned.

The issuance of firearms to political parties in the late 1980s should be put in perspective. The JVP was on the rampage at the time; it was running a parallel government to all intents and purposes and did not spare anyone who refused to obey its dictates. Its death-dealing sparrow units physically eliminated anyone who had the courage to voice dissent. Among its many victims were politicians, trade union leaders, student activists, public officials, Buddhist monks, and businesspersons. Some political activists threatened by the JVP banded together to protect themselves, and the armed groups they formed for that purpose became as ruthless as the JVP killing squads; they beat the JVP at its own game. Some of them later switched their allegiance to the UNP, and worked as its shock troops.

The SLMP, other leftist parties and the SLFP, too, had to protect themselves against the JVP hit squads, which struck at will. The UNP also had a Caravan of Death, which scoured the country, and eliminated JVP activists; it also killed some political opponents of the UNP. What happened to the firearms the pro-UNP vigilantes used to carry out extrajudicial killings?

State Minster Tennakoon has stopped short of disclosing the number of firearms and the amount of ammunition the Premadasa government, of which incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe was a Cabinet Minister, gifted to the LTTE. Prabhakaran received truckloads of arms and ammunition from that regime in addition to cement, steel and cash to fight the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Those weapons were subsequently trained on the Sri Lankan military when the honeymoon between the Premadasa government and the LTTE ended.

Now that State Minister Tennakoon has made a disclosure in Parliament about missing firearms, will he reveal how the Defence Ministry proposes to recover them?

Difficult as it may be to trace the weapons issued to political parties during the JVP’s reign of terror, the defence authorities have to make a serious effort to trace them. Those who have failed to return the firearm they were given must be made to explain their failure.

Most of all, where have the JVP’s weapons gone? Have the defence authorities ever tried to trace the JVP’s hidden arms caches? Perhaps, the police may be able to ascertain information about them from the JVP members who survived the brutal suppression of their party’s terror campaign in 1989. Missing firearms pose a grave threat to national security and public safety, and everything possible must be done to trace them.