Midweek Review
Impact of Ukraine war on Sri Lanka and other matters

By Shamindra Ferdinando
The Russian Pacific Fleet’s missile cruiser Varyag was here recently. The Fleet’s press office reported on March 1: “Today, the Pacific Fleet’s flagship, Guards Order of Nakhimov missile cruiser Varyag has made a business call at Colombo, the largest port of the Republic of Sri Lanka.”
According to the Russian Defence Ministry website one of the four primary tasks of the Pacific Fleet is (verbatim) execution of foreign policy actions of the Government in economically important areas of the oceans (visits, routine entries, joint exercises, activities as a part of peacekeeping forces, etc.).
Cruiser Varyag arrived here from Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh, where the vessel participated in Milan 2024, Indian biennial multinational naval exercise (Feb 19-27). The 12th edition of the exercise involved INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant. SLNS Sayurala, an Advanced Offshore Patrol Vessel (AOPV), represented Sri Lanka.
In spite of the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government’s obvious tilt towards the West against the backdrop of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ouster in July 2022 by unprecedented violent protests targeting a President elected with a record majority, Russia and Sri Lanka seem to be keen to maintain ties.
Two weeks before Varyag’s arrival, two Iranian Navy vessels IRINS Bushehr and Tonb visited Colombo. Their arrival coincided with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s rare, but high profile visit here at a time of grave crisis in the Red Sea region, in particular with Houthi attacks on ships taking supplies to/from Israel to force a halt to Israeli genocide in Palestine.
Russian and Iranian visits should be examined against the backdrop of the costly Ukrainian conflict where Russia is battling the combined West in their proxy war directed at an ultimate regime change in Moscow, and Yemen’s Houthis, widely believed to be backed by Iran, targeted Red Sea shipping demanding an immediate end to Israeli military onslaught on Gaza.
A Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile hit the Belize-flagged Rubymar on Feb 18 in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a waterway linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The vessel carrying fertiliser sank on March 02.
President of the Sri Lanka Business and Professional Forum in Moscow, Jagath Chandrawansa, pointed out that for want of sufficient media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, in the right context, Sri Lanka is in the dark as to what was going on.
Political parties represented in Parliament, too, seemed to be largely unaware, uninterested or negligent, Chandrawansa said.
In a wide ranging interview with The Island, Moscow-based Chandrawansa discussed the origins of the conflict and the circumstances leading to a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, in late February 2022, though they had been fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine since 2014, the year the coup staged by the US to topple the duly elected President of Ukraine, though dubbed by the West as the Maidan Revolution.
“Basically, the Russian invasion/current conflict should be examined, taking into consideration repeated US and Western interventions in Ukraine that declared independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union and efforts to integrate Ukraine with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),” Chandrawansa said.
Chandrawansa compared the Western backed protest campaign (March 31-July 09, 2022) that forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of office with the removal of Ukrainian President Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych in 2014. The conflict in Donbas erupted in the wake of Yanukovych’s removal.
Chandrawansa, who had studied in the then Soviet Georgia before moving into Moscow where he has been working during the past three decades, sought to press home Moscow’s narrative that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was really a defensive action against a proxy war carried out by the West. The recent disclosure of Germany planning to supply long-range Taurus missiles, manufactured jointly by Germany and Sweden, underscored the efforts to further escalate the conflict, Chandrawansa said.
Earlier, the UK declared that it provided ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles to Ukraine. Reference was made to the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev in April 2022, less than seven weeks after Russia launched its offensive. Johnson, in his capacity as the former UK Premier, again flew into Ukraine in January 2023 soon after his successor Rishi Sunak visited Kiev to sign an expanded security agreement.
Responding to another query, Chandrawansa asserted that the West was trying to deliver a knock-out blow to Russia in Ukraine. The reportage of massive US funding is evidence of the overall Western strategy, Chandrawansa said, pointing out that in the run-up to the US presidential election, nine months away, the country is divided over its funding of Ukraine as well as the Israeli campaign. “In other words, the West has cleverly transformed Ukraine into a battleground where attempts are being made to weaken Russia. Of course, Ukraine is paying a huge price for the miscalculated Western strategy.”
The Biden administration’s efforts to secure approval for a new military aid package worth billions of USD hadn’t been successful due to strong opposition from the pro-Donald Trump far right Republicans, whereas a new controversy over German missiles for Ukraine dominated the international media as well as the sudden death of key Opposition figure Alexei Navalny, 47.
Russia owed an explanation to the world over the still unexplained death of Navalny at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence. It is also true the Western media pays hardly any attention to the plight of Julian Assange a beacon for the worldwide independent media, who is being persecuted by the West for publishing the truth about various excesses and atrocities committed by them around the world, through his WikiLeaks site. Their behaviour is even worse when covering up the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank as they mostly pretend not to see violence that is ravaging mainly innocent Palestinian civilians, who are also deprived of basic food and medicine.
Navalny’s death dominated international media for several days and still continues to draw attention amidst the war in Ukraine, Gaza and Houthi challenge to Red Sea shipping.
UN vote on Ukraine
Chandrawansa discussed how the West relentlessly put pressure on Sri Lanka over resolutions that were moved against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.
Having ruthlessly pursued Sri Lanka at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council where the Western group, in agreement with the treacherous Yahapalana administration (2015-2019), passed an accountability resolution in Oct 2015, they demanded Colombo adhered to their dictates.
In Feb 2022 and Feb 2023, Sri Lanka abstained from voting on resolutions against Russia. At the Feb 2023 vote, in addition to Sri Lanka, India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan Iran and South Africa abstained. The media here reported in February 2023 German MP Dr. Peter Ramsauer requested President Ranil Wickremesinghe to back the UN resolution against Russia. Dr. Ramsauer, the Rapporteur for Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag (Parliament) said so at the end of his visit here.
Chandrawansa recalled similar heavy pressure exerted on India by the West, particularly the US and Germany, to take a firm stand against Russia, though Quad member India continued to resist such interventions.
Responding to another query, Chandrawansa explained how the West ceaselessly pushed Ukraine to harden its anti-Russia stand over the years, after having forced its duly elected President Yanukovych out of office in 2014.
Referring to the recent announcement made in Washington that Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland would retire this month, Chandrawansa said that her role in the regime change project in Ukraine, as well as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ouster, had been well documented. “What we must realize is regardless of Nuland’s retirement, the US would pursue her hardline neo-conservative policies in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, our leaders embroiled in local politics and developing economic uncertainties haven’t been much interested in learning what is happening in the region or outside.”
Commenting on the threat posed by Houthis to Red Sea commercial shipping, Chandrawansa said that the Yemen-based group’s actions were being exploited by the US to expand its sphere of influence in the region. Interested parties have conveniently forgotten that Houthis launched Rea Sea operations demanding that Israel halt the war on Gaza, Chandrawansa said, adding that the much touted US led operation ‘Prosperity Guardian’ seemed to have failed to thwart the launch of missiles and drones from Yemen.
Sri Lanka should be wary of getting involved in US projects though the government seemed to be under heavy US prodding, Chandrawansa said.
There were a spate of conflicting reports of Sri Lanka deploying a vessel (formerly of the US Coast Guard) in support of ‘Prosperity Guardian,’ and plans to send a second ship. It would be pertinent to ask whether any of the AOPVs or OPVs in case they are deployed in the Red Sea, were equipped to counter cruise missile or drone strikes directed from Yemen or whether the bankrupt country could sustain such a long term operational deployment and for what purpose?
President Wickremesinghe’s late wily uncle JRJ, widely dubbed the 20th Century Fox and Yankee Dicky because of his overt pro-US stand, which even led to him offering the strategic Trincomalee Harbour to base the US Sixth Fleet and ended up antagonising the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and exacerbating our ethnic conflict when New Delhi retaliated by giving succor to separatist groups here. And unlike JRJ, President Ranil Wickremesinghe does not even have a people’s mandate, being only a caretaker President appointed by Parliament to complete the balance term of ousted President Gotabaya Rajapkasa. Therefore Wickremesinghe has no business to drag us into a conflict which we can ill afford just to please his masters in Washington as we already have enough problems.
Referring to the Houthi ballistic missile attack on Liberian-owned, Barbados-flagged ship ‘True Confidence’ south west of Yemen’s port of Aden on March 06, Chandrawansa asserted that the Red Sea crisis has taken a turn for the worse. The attack claimed the lives of three seafarers, first fatalities since Houthis began targeting ships last October in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes to pressure the US to rein in Israel.
Swift intervention by the Indian Navy saved the lives of 21 members of the stricken ship’s crew. Those who had been saved included two Sri Lankans. Indian Navy released the video footage of Destroyer INS Kolkata deployed in the Gulf of Aden deploying its helicopter and small boats to carry out the rescue operation.
Aeroflot incident at BIA
Recalling the circumstances Sri Lanka detained an Aeroflot flight at the Bandaranaike International Airport in early June 2022, at the height of economic, political and social turmoil, Chandrawansa asked whether President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government at least bothered to conduct a proper inquiry into the incident.
Chandrawansa, in his capacity as the President of Sri Lanka Business and Professional Forum in Moscow, in a letter dated June 05, 2022, requested the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to probe attempts to jeopardise Sri Lanka’s relations with Russia at a time the country was in unprecedented turmoil. The letter was copied to Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, PC and the then Russian Ambassador in Colombo.
The whole thing could have been orchestrated by those hell-bent on destabilizing Sri Lanka’s relations with countries considered a challenge to the West, Chandrawansa said, pointing out that it could have had a catastrophic impact on Sri Lanka-Russia relations.
Aeroflot flight SU 289 was preparing to take off from the BIA, on June 02, 2022, when a fiscal officer, from the Commercial High Court of the Western Province, walked in around 12.15 pm to the airport. He was there soon after the end of day’s proceedings of the Commercial HC of the Western Province. The official was accompanied by Attorney-at-Law Aruna de Silva, who appeared for the plaintiff, along with Avindra Rodrigo, PC. They were instructed by F.J. & G. de Saram, the leading law firm from the colonial times.
The fiscal officer delivered a copy of the order issued by High Court judge S.M.H.S.P. Sethunge. The recipient of the court order was Acting Head of Air Navigational Services N.C. Abeywardena. The BIA was ordered to detain the aircraft, pending a case filed by Ireland-based Celestial Aviation Trading 10 Ltd., against the Russian State-owned Public Joint Stock Company Aeroflot.
At the time the court officer delivered the warning, 191 passengers and 13 crew of the Airbus A 330-300 were on board. They were asked to get off the plane. The Aeroflot drama transpired in the Commercial High Court of the Western Province on June 03. The airline’s regional manager, for India and Sri Lanka, Sergey Evgenievich, was present in court.
Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera is one of the few lawmakers to publicly challenge the detention of the Aeroflot flight in spite of Sri Lanka’s written assurance to Russia that Aeroflot was free to operate to and from the BIA without hindrance. The retired Navy Chief of Staff warned that Sri Lanka shouldn’t be surprised if Russia felt that the government guaranteed Aeroflot freedom to operate to and from the BIA just to lure them.
Lawmaker Weerasekera strongly disputed Premier Wickremsinghe’s assertion that the issue was a matter between two private parties. How could that be when all know Aeroflot operated flights to the BIA on written assurance given by the government? MP Weerasekera told the writer when his opinion was sought on this issue.
The Federation of National Organisation, comprising the Patriotic National Movement (Dr. Wasantha Bandara), Patriotic National Front (Attorney-at-Law Nuwan Bellanthudawa), People’s Responsibility Centre (Wasantha Alwis) and People’s Voice for Justice and Sovereignty (Attorney-at-Law Madhaumali Alwis), in a joint letter, dated June 04, sought President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s intervention in this regard.
Lawmaker Vasudeva Nanayakkara speculated about the possibility of the US being behind the Aeroflot affair while Wimal Weerawansa alleged that the government was busy jeopardizing the country’s relations with India, having antagonized China.
Former General Secretary of the Communist Party Dew Gunasekera demanded an explanation from Premier Wickremesinghe over his alleged bid to downplay the incident. Gunasekera asserted that Sri Lanka was experiencing an extraordinary threat. The incident involving the Aeroflot flight underscored our vulnerability, Gunasekera declared.
Chandrawansa said that the release of the Aeroflot flight a few days later following a court ruling settled the matter though the government should be ashamed of itself over its failure to conduct a no holds barred investigation. If such an incident happened in any other country, it would have been scrutinized at the highest level with the participation of intelligence services, Chandrawansa said, finding fault with what he called a pathetic political party system that habitually failed to address vital issues.
Chandrawansa compared the BIA incident that dealt a deadly blow to Sri Lanka-Russia relations and the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government’s equally damaging declaration that foreign research vessels wouldn’t be allowed into Sri Lankan ports during 2024, a decision particularly meant to bar Chinese vessels.
Foreign relations at a critical juncture
Responding to questions regarding foreign relations in the wake of Sri Lanka’s post-bankruptcy status, Chandrawansa emphasized the daunting challenge in navigating choppy waters.
“We are in an extremely complex and uncomfortable situation, politically, economically and socially,” Chandrawansa said, warning of dire consequences unless the government sensibly balanced the relations.
“Of course, we have to acknowledge our dependence on exports to the West, GSP plus concessions and other opportunities. But, we have to be equally responsive to other friendly powers and countries who stood by Sri Lanka during the war against separatist Tamil terrorism (1983-2009) and after,” Chandrawansa said, recalling the Russian, Chinese, Pakistan and Cuban interventions at the Geneva-based UNHRC, out to get us at the behest of the West.
Chandrawansa explained the challenge bankrupt Sri Lanka faced due to US led ‘Quad’ arranged against China, Western efforts to force countries to take sides in the Ukraine conflict and how proposed BRICS currency could undermine the US once mighty dollar hegemony and the possible weakening of US sanctions imposed on Russia and China.
Although the launch of BRICS currency seems unlikely in the near future, Sri Lanka should be mindful of the developments as it would be a grave mistake on our part to put all eggs in one basket.
The continuing corrupt political party system has allowed all powers to exploit the country. The 99-year leasing of the strategically located Hambantota port for USD 1.1 billion to China in 2017 by the Yahapalana government under controversial circumstances can be cited as a case in point. As to what happened to that money and billions of dollars borrowed at high interest rates without that government undertaking any massive development works remains a mystery. It certainly had a big hand in the creation of the unprecedented debt crisis, from which we are still trying to extricate ourselves. The dispute during President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency over a ship load of toxic Chinese fertiliser underscored how a single incident, if not properly handled could jeopardize relations with a particular country. An angry Chinese reaction that led to the blacklisting of a State Bank here emphasized our vulnerability. That is the undeniable truth.
Midweek Review
A look back at now mostly forgotten Eelam war in the aftermath of Kashmir massacre

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the
catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army
from NE, Sri Lanka
In a telephone call to Indian Premier Narendra Modi, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake condemned the massacre of 26 civilians – 25 Indians and one Nepali – at Pahalgam, in the Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 22.
President Dissanayake expressed his condolences and reaffirmed, what the President’s Media Division (PMD) called, Sri Lanka’s unwavering solidarity and brotherhood with the people of India.
Having described the massacre as a terrorist attack, New Delhi found fault with Pakistan for the incident. Pakistan was accused of backing a previously unknown group, identified as Kashmir Resistance.
The Indian media have quoted Indian security agencies as having said that Kashmir Resistance is a front for Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support.
Pakistan has denied its involvement in the Pahalgam attack. A section of the Indian media, and some experts, have compared the Pahalgam attack with the coordinated raids carried out by Hamas on southern Israel, in early October 2023.
President Dissanayake called Premier Modi on the afternoon of April 25, three days after the Pahalgam attack. The PMD quoted Dissanayake as having reiterated Sri Lanka’s firm stance against terrorism in all its forms, regardless of where it occurred in the world, in a 15-minute call.
Modi cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia as India took a series of measures against Pakistan. Indian actions included suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) governing water sharing of six rivers in the Indus basin between the two countries. The agreement that had been finalised way back in 1960 survived three major wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999.
One-time Pentagon official Michael Rubin, having likened the Pahalgam attack to a targeted strike on civilians, has urged India to adopt an Israel-style retaliation, targeting Pakistan, but not realising that both are nuclear armed.
Soon after the Hamas raid some interested parties compared Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the ongoing Israel war on Gaza.
The latest incident in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and Gaza genocide, cannot be compared under any circumstances. Therefore, suggestions that India adopt Israel-style retaliation against Pakistan do not hold water. Also, Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE that was brought to a successful conclusion in May 2009 cannot be compared with the conflict Israel is involved in.
Sri Lanka can easily relate to the victims of the Pahalgam attack as a victim of separatist terrorism that bled the country for nearly 30 years. India, however, never bothered to express regret over causing terrorism here.
Indian-sponsored terror projects brought Sri Lanka to its knees before President JRJ made an attempt to eradicate the LTTE in May-June 1987. JRJ resorted to ‘Operation Liberation’ after Indian mediated talks failed to end the conflict. Having forced Sri Lanka to call off the largest-ever ground offensive undertaken at that time with the hope of routing the LTTE in Vadamarachchi, the home turf of Velupillai Prabhakaran, followed by India deploying its Mi 17s on July 24, 1987, to rescue the Tiger Supremo, his wife, two children and several of his close associates – just five days before the signing of the so-called Indo-Lanka peace accord, virtually at Indian gun point.
First phase of Eelam war
During the onset of the conflict here, the LTTE routinely carried out raids on predominantly Sinhala villages where civilians were butchered. That had been part of its strategy approved by ‘controllers’ based across the Palk Straits. That had been a volatile period in the run-up to the July 29, 1987, accord. Although India established half a dozen terrorist groups here, the LTTE had been unquestionably the most violent and the dominant group. To New Delhi’s humiliation all such groups supported by it were wiped out by the marauding Tigers.
Those who compared the LTTE with Hamas, or any other group, conveniently forget that the Sri Lankan group caused significant losses to its creator. India lost over 1,300 officers and men, while nearly 3,000 others suffered injuries during the Indian deployment here (July 1987-March 1990).
The world turned a blind eye to what was going on in Sri Lanka in the ’80s. The war launched by India in the early ’80s against Sri Lanka lasted till the signing of the peace accord. That can be broadly identified as phase one of the conflict (1983 July – 1987 July). That first phase can be safely described as an Indian proxy war aimed at creating an environment conducive for the deployment of the Indian Army.
Having compelled President JRJ to accept deployment of the Indian Army in the northern and eastern regions in terms of the “peace accord”, New Delhi sought to consolidate its hold here by disarming all groups, except the one it had handpicked to run the North-East Provincial Council. The Indian Army oversaw the first Provincial Council election held on Nov. 19, 1988, to elect members to the NE council. The whole exercise was meant to ensure the installation of the Varatharaja Perumal led-EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Forint) administration therein.
The second phase (1987 July – 1990 March) saw a war between the Indian Army and the LTTE. During this period, the Indian Army supervised two national elections – presidential on Dec. 19, 1988, and parliamentary on Feb. 15, 1989, that were won by Ranasinghe Premadasa and the UNP.
During that period, the UNP battled the JVP terror campaign and the South bled. The JVP that resorted to unbridled violence against the Indo-Lanka accord, at that time, has ended-up signing several agreements, including one on defence cooperation, recently, and the country is yet to get details of these secret agreements.
Raid on the Maldives
The second phase of the Eelam conflict ended when India pulled out its Army from NE Sri Lanka in March 1990. The sea-borne raid that had been carried out by Indian-trained PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam) targeting Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in Nov. 1988, is perhaps a significant development during the second phase of the conflict, though it was never examined in the right context.
No one – not even the Maldives – found fault with India for exporting terrorism to the island nation. India received accolades for swift air borne intervention to neutralise the PLOTE group. The Indian Navy sank a vessel commandeered by a section of the PLOTE raiders in a bid to escape back to Sri Lanka. The truth is that PLOTE, that had been trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka, ended-up taking up a lucrative private assignment to overthrow President Gayoom’s administration.
India never regretted the Maldivian incident. It would be pertinent to mention that two boat loads of PLOTE cadres had quietly left Sri Lanka at a time the Indian Navy was responsible for monitoring in and out sea movements.
In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army from NE, Sri Lanka.
Resumption of hostilities by the LTTE in June 1990 can be considered as the beginning of the third phase of the conflict. Having battled the Indian Army and gained valuable battle experience, the LTTE, following a 14-month honeymoon with President Ranasinghe Premadasa, resumed hostilities. Within weeks the LTTE gained the upper hand in the northern theatre of operations.
In spite of India banning the LTTE, after the May 1991 assassination of Gandhi, the group continued to grow with the funds pouring in from the West over the years. Regardless of losing Jaffna in 1995, the LTTE consolidated its position, both in the Vanni and the East, to such an extent their victory seemed inevitable.
But resolute political leadership given by Mahinda Rajapaksa ensured that Sri Lanka turned the tables on the LTTE within weeks after the LTTE appeared to be making significant progress at the beginning. Within two years and 10 months (2006 August – 2009 May) the armed forces brought the LTTE to its knees, and the rest is history. As we have said in our earlier columns that victory was soon soured. Spearheaded by Sarath Fonseka, the type of General that a country gets in about once in a thousand years, ended in enmity within, for the simple reason this super hero wanted to collect all the trophies won by many braves.
Post-war developments
Sri Lanka’s war has been mentioned on many occasions in relation to various conflicts/situations. We have observed many distorted/inaccurate attempts to compare Sri Lanka’s war against LTTE with other conflicts/situations.
Unparalleled Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, triggered a spate of comments on Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. Respected expert on terrorism experienced in Sri Lanka, M.R. Narayan Swamy, discussed the similarities of Sri Lanka’s conflict and the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. New Delhi-based Swamy, who had served UNI and AFP during his decades’ long career, discussed the issues at hand while acknowledging no two situations were absolutely comparable. Swamy currently serves as the Executive Director of IANS (Indo-Asian News Service).
‘How’s Hamas’ attack similar to that of LTTE?’ and ‘Hamas’ offensive on Israel may bring it closer to LTTE’s fate,’ dealt with the issues involved. Let me reproduce Swamy’s comment: “Oct. 7 could be a turning point for Hamas similar to what happened to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka in 2006. Let me explain. Similar to Hamas, the LTTE grew significantly over time eventually gaining control of a significant portion of Sri Lanka’s land and coast. The LTTE was even more formidable than Hamas. It had a strong army, growing air force and a deadly naval presence. Unlike Hamas, the LTTE successfully assassinated high ranking political figures in Sri Lanka and India. Notably, the LTTE achieved this without direct support from any country while Hamas received military and financial backing from Iran and some other states. The LTTE became too sure of their victories overtime. They thought they could never be beaten and that starting a war would always make them stronger. But in 2006 when they began Eelam War 1V their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran couldn’t have foreseen that within three years he and his prominent group would be defeated. Prabhakaran believed gathering tens of thousands of Tamils during the last stages of war would protect them and Sri Lanka wouldn’t unleash missiles and rockets. Colombo proved him wrong. They were hit. By asking the people not to flee Gaza, despite Israeli warnings, Hamas is taking a similar line. Punishing all Palestinians for Hamas’ actions is unjust, just like punishing all Tamils for LTTE’s actions was wrong. The LTTE claimed to fight for Tamils without consulting them and Hamas claimed to represent Palestinians without seeking the approval for the Oct.7 strike. Well, two situations are not absolutely comparable. We can be clear that Hamas is facing a situation similar to what the LTTE faced, shortly before its end. Will Hamas meet a similar fate as the LTTE? Only time will answer that question.” The above was said soon after the Oct. 2023 Hamas attack.
Swamy quite conveniently refrained from mentioning India’s direct role in setting up one of the deadliest terror projects in the world here in the ’80s.
Former Editor of The Hindu, Malini Parthasarathy, who also had served as Chairperson of The Hindu Group, released a list of politicians assassinated by the LTTE, as she hit back hard at those who raged against the comparison of the Hamas to the LTTE. The list included two Jaffna District MPs, Arumugam Murugesu Alalasundaram and Visvanathan Dharmalingam, assassinated in early Sept. 1985. Slain Visvanathan Dharmalingam’s son, Dharmalingam Siddharthan, who represents the Vanni electoral district on the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), is on record as having said that the two MPs were abducted and killed by TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation.) gunmen. The list posted by Parthasarathy included PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, assassinated in Colombo in July 1989. The LTTE hadn’t been involved in that killing either. Maheswaran is believed to have been killed by his onetime associates, perhaps over the abortive PLOTE raid on the Maldives in Nov, 1988. India never bothered at least to acknowledge that the Maldives raid was carried out by men trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that Maheswasran’s killers, too, were known to the Indian intelligence at that time.
Before rushing into conclusions regarding Hamas and the LTTE, perhaps a proper examination of the circumstances they emerged is necessary. The two situations – fourth phase of the Eelam conflict and the latest Hamas strike on Israel and the devastating counter attack – cannot be compared under any circumstances. Efforts to compare the two issues is more like comparing apples and oranges, though mutually Tamils and Sinhalese have so many commonalities having intermingled throughout history like the Arabs and Jews.
It is no doubt Jews are a people that suffered persecution throughout known history under Assyrians, Babylonians to Romans and so forth. Such persecution includes expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain 1492. So what Hitler and the Germans did was to take the historic process to another extreme.
Yet to blame the Palestinians and treat them like animals and to simply butcher them for the latest uprising by Hamas for all the humiliations and suffering they have been going through non-stop since Naqba in1948, from the time of the creation of Israel is to allow the creators of the problem, including the UK, the USA and United Nations to wash all their sins on the true other victims of this conflict, the Palestinians.
It would be pertinent to mention that Israel, in spite of having one of the world’s best fighting armed forces with 100 percent backing from the West, cannot totally eradicate Hamas the way Sri Lanka dealt with the LTTE. Mind you we did not drop 2000 pound bombs supplied by the US on hapless Tamil civilians to commit genocide as is happening in Palestine in the hands of the Israelis.
The circumstances under which the LTTE launched a large-scale offensive in Aug. 2006 and its objectives had been very much different from that of Hamas. The LTTE really believed that it could have defeated the Sri Lankan military in the North by cutting off the sea supply route from Trincomalee to Kankesanthurai and simultaneously overrunning the Kilali-Muhamalai-Nagarkovil forward defence line (FDL). The total collapse of the FDL could have allowed the LTTE to eradicate isolated fighting formations trapped north of the FDL. But, in the case of the Gaza war, the Hamas strike was meant to provoke Israel to unleash a massive unbridled counter attack that caused maximum losses on the civilians. As Hamas expected the Israeli counter attack has triggered massive protests in the West against their leaders. They have been accused of encouraging violence against Palestine. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other US allies are under heavy pressure from Muslims and other horrified communities’ world over to take a stand against the US.
But in spite of growing protests, Israel has sustained the offensive action not only against Gaza but Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.
Instead of being grateful to those who risked their lives to bring the LTTE terror to an end, various interested parties are still on an agenda to harm the armed forces reputation.
The treacherous Yahapalana government went to the extent of sponsoring an accountability resolution against its own armed forces at the Geneva-based UNHRC in Oct. 2015. That was the level of their treachery.
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Midweek Review
The Broken Promise of the Lankan Cinema:

Asoka & Swarna’s Thrilling-Melodrama – Part III
“‘Dr. Ranee Sridharan,’ you say. ‘Nice to see you again.’
The woman in the white sari places a thumb in her ledger book, adjusts her spectacles and smiles up at you. ‘You may call me Ranee. Helping you is what I am assigned to do,’ she says. ‘You have seven moons. And you have already waisted one.’”
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
by Shehan Karunatilaka (London: Sort of Books, 2022. p84)
(Continued from yesterday)
Rukmani’s Stardom & Acting Opportunity
Rukmani Devi is still remembered for her incomparable singing voice and her studio photograph by Ralex Ranasinghe with its hint of Film Noir mystery and seduction, and for the role of Blanch Dubois she played in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. This is a role she shared on alternate nights with Irangani Serasinghe in the late 60s or early 70s. (See my Island Essays, 2024, p114) She was immensely happy to be able to act in a modern western classic directed by a visionary theatre director like Dhamma Jagoda and it was to his credit that he chose to give her that role when all acting roles had dried up for her. I observed those rehearsals held at Harrold Peiris’ open garage.
I, too, am happy that Swarna has had a chance to perform again in her 70s. The question is, how exactly has she used that very rare opportunity to act in a film that has doubled its production cost within two months, and now showing in private screenings in multiplexes in Australia with English subtitles, with ambitions to be shown on Netflix and Amazon Prime. These outlets also now fund films and make challenging mini-series. Rani has clearly been produced and marketed with this global distribution in mind. How does this important fact affect Swarna’s style of acting and the aesthetics of Asoka’s script, are the questions I wish to explore in the final section of this piece.
A Sensational-Thrilling Political & Family Melodrama
‘Melodrama’ is a popular genre with a history that goes back to 19th century theatre in the west and with the advent of film, Hollywood took it up as it offered a key set of thrilling devices known as ‘Attractions’, for structuring and developing a popular genre cinema. The word ‘Melodrama’ is a compound of the Greek word for music ‘melos’ and drama as an action, with the connotation of a highly orchestrated set of actions. The orchestration (not only with sound but also the speed and rhythm of editing, dramatic expressive lighting, ‘histrionic’ acting, etc.,) always reaches toward thrilling climaxes and at times exaggerated display of emotions. The plots are sensational, propelled by coincidences and written to reach climaxes and dramatic reversals of fortune, and sudden revelations. Hollywood was famous for its happy endings with resolution of the dramatised conflicts, while Hindi melodramas and Lankan copies often ended sadly.
In the history of cinema there are highly sophisticated melodramas within Hollywood, classical Hindi cinema and also in European art cinema. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the German directors who developed a modern ‘Brechtian-Melodrama’ of extraordinary political and aesthetic power in the 70s. And of course, there are very poorly conceived melodramas too like many of the Sinhala films which were copies of Indian prototypes. Melodramatic devices inflect the different genres of Hollywood, for example the Gangster Film, the Western and created durable genre types in character, e.g. the Gangster, the Lonesome Cowboy and Indians; all national stereotypes, one embodying the underbelly of American capitalism, an anti-hero and the other the American hero actualising The American Dream. ‘The Indian,’ merely the collateral damage of this phantasy!
When the stories were centred on women the genre classification was ‘Women’s Melodrama’ as it dealt with interpersonal relations, conflicts, and sadness centred on the home primarily. Feminist film theory has developed a vast archive of scholarship on the melodramatic genre, cross-culturally, with a special focus on Hollywood and Hindi cinema decades prior to the formation we now call Bollywood, made with transnational capital and global reach. It was assumed that the audience for the family melodramas was female and that as women, we enjoy crying at the cinema, hence the condescending name ‘The Weepies’. I cut my scholarly/critical teeth studying these much-maligned melodramatic films for my doctorate, which I had enjoyed while growing up in a long-ago Ceylon.
Asoka’s Melodramatic Turn
Asoka in Alborada, but more so in Rani has made melodramatic films with his own ‘self-expressive’ variations on the structure, with an ‘Art Cinema’ gloss. He has said that Rani is more like Alborada and unlike his previous films made during the civil war. This is quite obvious. Though the advertising tag line for Alborada claimed it as a ‘Poetic film that Neruda never made’ it was a straightforward narrative film. I have argued in a long essay (‘Psycho-Sexual Violence in the Sinhala Cinema: Parasathumal & Alborada’, in Lamentation of the Dawn, ed. S. Chandrajeewa, 2022, also tr. into Sinhala, 2023), that the staging of the rape of the nameless, silent, Dalit woman is conceived in a melodramatic manner playing it for both critique and exciting thrills. This is a case of both having his cake and eating it.
Swarna’s Melodramatic Turn
The film appears to be constructed, plotted melodramatically, to demonstrate Swarna’s ability to perform dramatic scenes of high excitement in areas of taboo, the opportunity for which is unavailable to a Sinhala actress, in a Sinhala film, playing the role of a Sinhala Buddhist mother, who has lost her son to an act of terror unleashed by the Sinhala-Buddhist State terror and Sinhala-Buddhist JVP.
In short, Swarna has been given the opportunity to demonstrate how well she can perform a range of Melodramatic emotions that go from say A to, say D. She has been given the chance to move smoothly from English to Sinhala as the middle classes do; use the two most common American expletives which are part of the American vernacular; drink for pleasure but also to the point of getting drunk; offer alcohol to her baffled domestic worker; coax her son and friends to drink; dance with them in an inebriated state; pour alcohol, whisky, not arrack, like one would pour water from a bottle; chain smoke furiously; dash a full mug of tea on the floor in a rage; crumple on the floor sobbing uncontrollably; shout at her loyal aid Karu; speak with sarcasm to a police officer insisting that she is ‘Dr Manorani …’ not ‘Miss or Mrs’, like feminists did back in the day; chat intimately with a minister of the government; look angrily and scowl at President Premadasa when he comes to the funeral house to condole with her; stage Richard’s funeral in a Catholic church with a stain glass window of the Pieta; to quote a well-known Psalm of David from the Bible, ‘Oh Absalom my son, Oh my son!’; etc.
Rani is Swarna’s chance to show that she can perform in ways that no Sinhala script has allowed a Sinhala actor to do up to now, that is, behave like the Sinhala cinema’s fantasy of how the upper-class Anglophone Lankan women behave. In short not unlike, but much worse, than the ‘bad girls’ in the Sinhala melodramatic genre cinema who always ended up in a Night Club, the locus of licentiousness that tempt them. I am thinking of Pitisara Kella from the 50s and a host of other films. Sinhala cinema simply cannot convincingly present the upper-class English-speaking milieu, with any nuance and conviction, it just feels very stilted, poorly acted therefore. Saying this is not class snobbery on my part. Even Lester James Peries from this very upper class and a Roman Catholic, in Delowak Atara couldn’t do it with Irangani Serasinghe and others. The dialogue meant to be serious or just plain normal sounded stilted and even funny. But when Lester did the Walauwa as in Nidhahanaya, it was brilliant, one of our classics. Brecht it was who said (on the eve of WW2, creating a Modern Epic mode of theatre in exile, that it’s not easy to make drama about current events. It’s much easier to look back with nostalgia at a genteel aristocratic Sinhala past for sure.
In taking the opportunity to explore kinetic and emotional behaviour considered to be taboo for a Sinhala woman, a fantasy Tamil woman has been fabricated. The plot of Rani is constructed by Asoka to provide Swarna the opportunity to indulge in these very taboos. In short, the fictional Tamil Rani offers Swarna an acting opportunity to improve her career prospects in the future. In so doing she has weakened her ability, I fear, to evolve as an actress.
A Domestic Melodrama: The House Suspended in a Void
If Swarna so desired, if the script ‘allowed her’ to, she could have tried to develop a quieter, more restrained and therefore a more powerful Rani. A friend of the family, when asked, said that, “The most striking feature of Manorani was her quiet, confident dignity, before and after Richard.” To testify to such a person, Asoka and Swarna could have asked the obvious question, did she have any close friendships formed as undergraduates, who supported her during this tragedy, as there certainly were cherished friends who shared her grief. After all, she was among the elite first generations of Ceylonese women to enter University in the 1940, to medical school at that!
Asoka and Swarna have entrapped their Rani in a vacuum of a house, friendless, with a little cross on Richard’s wall to signify religion. A lot of effort has gone into the set decoration and art direction of the house, as in Alborada, to stage a fantasy/phantasy melodramatic scenario. There is no real sensory, empathetic feel and understanding of the ethos (character), of this urbane Anglophone Ceylonese-Lankan mother and son, hence the fictionalised scenarios feel synthetic, cosmetic in the best traditions of the Sinhala genre cinema’s representation of the ‘excessive and even grotesque upper-class’. Except, here the Realism of the mise-en-scene (the old-world airy house and furniture and composition of the visual components) makes claims to a realist authenticity. A little modest research would have shown that Manorani and Richard moved from one rented apartment to another in the last few years of his life and when he was abducted, lived on the upper-floor of a house, in a housing estate in Rajagiriya. Asoka said in an interview that it wasn’t possible to find in Colombo the kind of old house they required for Rani. So, they went out of town to find the ideal house suited to stage their phantasy.
I suspect that it was Swarna who called shots this time, not Asoka who was recovering from a serious illness. He said that she brought the project to him and the producer and that he had no idea of making a film on Manorani, but added that he wrote the script within 3 months. I suspect that this Rani, (this out of control, angry, scowling, bad tempered, lamenting, hysterical Rani, reaching for the alcohol and cigarettes to assuage her grief, performing one sensational, thrilling melodramatic turn after another), was Swarna’s conception, her version of Manorani that she has nursed for 28 long years. Had she resisted this temptation to display her high-intensity acting-out skills yet again, she might just have been able to tap unsuspected resources within herself which she may still have as a serious actress. Its these latent affective depths that Rukmani Devi undoubtedly tapped when she was invited to play the drunken and lost Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire in Sinhala, as a desperate, drunken, aristocratic lady, in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu (1971?).

Jagoda / Irangani
It is reported that before going on stage, Rukmani Devi went on her hands and knees to pay her respects to Dhamma, not as feudal act of deference but to acknowledge his Shilpiya Nuwana, craft knowledge/intelligence’, as one very perceptive Sinhala critic put it. That gesture of Vandeema was foreign to the Tamil Christian Rukmani Devi, but nevertheless it shows her sense of immense gratitude to Dhamma for having taken her into a zone of expression (a dangerous territory emotionally for dedicated vulnerable actors), that she had never experienced before, so late in her life. But ‘late’ is relative to gender, then she was only in her 50s!
Challenge is what serious actors yearn for, strange beings who may suggest to us intensities that sustain and amplify life, all life. Swarna might usefully think about Rukmani Devi, her life and her star persona as a Tamil star in countless sarala Sinhala films, in whose shadow and echo every single Sinhala actress has entered the limelight, Swarna more so now than any other!
As for Asoka, he needs to rest and take care of himself before he commits himself to this recent track of films which are yielding less and less with each of the two films done back to back. His body of work is too important to trash it with this kind of half thought out ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, which is a precise definition of Melodrama at its best. This film, alas, is not one of those.
That young Tamil women, often silent and traumatised, appeared following Sinhala soldiers in Lankan ‘civil-war cinema’ of the modernists, all male, is a troubling phenomenon. A ‘Sinhala Orientalism’, an exoticising of Tamil and Dalith young women as Other, is at work in some of the civil war films, as in Alborada and Rani. And then this very elevation always leads to unleashing psycho/sexual and/or other forms of violence, because the elevation (Mother Goddess in Alborada) only feeds violent male psychosexual phantasies, which in the Sinhala cinema often leads to the violence of rape and other forms of violence towards women, both Tamil and Sinhala. (To be continued)
by Laleen Jayamanne
Midweek Review
Thirty Thousand and Counting….

Many thousands in the annual grades race,
Are brimming with the magical feel of success,
And they very rightly earn warm congrats,
But note, you who are on the pedestals of power,
That 30,000 or more are being left far behind,
In these no-holds-barred contests to be first,
Since they have earned the label ‘All Fs’,
And could fall for the drug-pusher’s lure,
Since they may be on the threshold of despair…
Take note, and fill their lives with meaning,
Since they suffer for no fault of theirs.
By Lynn Ockersz
-
Business4 days ago
Pick My Pet wins Best Pet Boarding and Grooming Facilitator award
-
News4 days ago
New Lankan HC to Australia assumes duties
-
News4 days ago
Lankan ‘snow-white’ monkeys become a magnet for tourists
-
News2 days ago
Japan-funded anti-corruption project launched again
-
Features4 days ago
King Donald and the executive presidency
-
Business4 days ago
ACHE Honoured as best institute for American-standard education
-
Features6 days ago
The Truth will set us free – I
-
Business2 days ago
National Savings Bank appoints Ajith Akmeemana,Chief Financial Officer