Midweek Review

EPIC-MEMORY and BRECHT

Published

3 years ago

2022/07/6

Grusha walking on the bridge made of human bodies. Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle in Thamil, Co-direction by P. Niriella and K. Rathidaran. Tr. by Dr K.M. Shanmugalingam, 2016.

by Laleen Jayamanne

‘Memory of the World’

UNESCO established the Memory of the World Programme in 1992 to preserve for posterity the audio-visual heritage of humankind, stating that war, social upheaval and lack of resources have accelerated its destruction.

“Significant collections worldwide have suffered a variety of fates. Looting and dispersal, illegal trading, destruction, inadequate housing and funding have all played a part. Much has vanished forever; much is endangered. Happily, missing documentary heritage is sometimes

rediscovered.” UNESCO

UNESCO has also promoted the preservation (through revival), of the vital endangered category of human culture it calls, ‘The Intangible Heritage of Mankind’; the ancient arts of music, dance, theatre and ritual. As temporal arts, they are ephemeral by nature, passed through guru-shishya parampara transmission encoded in bodies through practice, in what used to be called the Third World.

Thanks to the availability of digital technological tools of preservation, exhibition and connectivity, the work of these visionary programmes has been considerably enhanced. Now, the fragile celluloid film, which was once the medium of preservation of artefacts, has itself been saved, restored and preserved digitally. Apart from this kind of essential programme of preservation, the very idea of attributing memory to the ‘world’, in the UNESCO formulation, is fascinating to speculate on because we usually think of memory as an inalienable human organic faculty of the mind without which we would live in a perpetual state of amnesia, in a timeless and depleted present. It seems to me that ‘memory of the world’ as an idea can also be imagined as something more than historical memory, which by definition is the written record, usually organised chronologically. ‘The world’ can now also suggest not only the human but also the earth itself and all that it sustains, plants and animals and even microbes and fossils and minerals and the cosmos, too. This is the zone that some artists have begun to explore within a ‘deep-ecological’ consciousness of what is known as the Anthropocene – the epoch of man-made ecological devastation.

‘Epic-Memory’

Walter Benjamin, the German theorist of culture, in his essay, The Story Teller, described another kind of memory, created by humans over millennia, which he called ‘epic memory.’ He invites us to imagine how to think about an idea of memory that’s more ample than our personal memory, by offering a dazzling image of ‘epic memory.’

“One must imagine the transformation of epic forms occurring in rhythms comparable to those of the change that has come over the earth’s surface in the course of thousands of centuries. Hardly any other forms of human communications have taken shape more slowly, been lost more slowly.

Memory is the epic faculty par excellence.

Memory creates the chain of tradition which passes a happening on from generation to generation.”

What Benjamin calls the ‘chain of tradition’ has been severed or partially lost in societies subject to colonisation and the forces of modernity have also destroyed many traditions. So we are looking for ways in which an expansive mode of remembering might be generated by artists through creative work, especially in the post-war situation of Sri Lanka where experiences of loss and trauma are widespread and some of their causes left unaddressed, forgotten, repressed, for many reasons. And now especially, with Sri Lanka in a state of profound crisis open to new possibilities of collective life free of ethnic nationalism and violence, an idea of epic memory might be of some use. It is the case that we don’t have ancient epics like India’s, Silappatikaram, Mahabharata and the Ramayana or the Greek ones, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Yet a modern idea of epic memory can perhaps still be formulated with what we do have.

The epic form was originally an oral form, which required from the bards a prodigious memory, trained through repeated recitation, which is why the muse of the epic form was called Mnemosyne, meaning epic memory in Greek. The written form of the epic came into being much later in history, based on the much older collective oral poetry of legends and myths of ‘the people’ handed down orally. Both in the UNESCO idea of ‘memory of the world’ and Benjamin’s definition of ‘epic memory,’ what is clear is that memory is a collective creation, taking shape over vast epochs. According to Greek myth, Mnemosyne, is the mother of the nine muses, and the word mouseion in Greek (from which the word museum is derived) means the dwelling place of the muses, who are the inspiration for the different art forms. This is a rich vital aesthetic image of the museum which is worth thinking about.

Then, one might be tempted to think that this is the same as the idea of ‘civilization’, which is the sum total of a culture’s pre-history and history as expressed in artefacts and written record. Usually this is indeed how nation states constitute themselves and give themselves an identity formulated on ethnicity, language, religion, custom, myths, etc. This is dangerous territory because states have deployed their myths to justify authoritarian and racist policies to divide and rule multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic societies such as Lanka. The Rajapaksa regime mobilised the Mahavansa narrative of Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony of Lanka to secure its own rule and some artists joined in with the mythic-epic genre films and shows. But I think the UNESCO idea is counter-hegemonic because it’s not created by a centralising state. Its memories may not fit easily into a master narrative of mythic inevitability. There is an element of chance and the possibility of ‘minor narratives’ emerging, which can’t be totalised into primordial myths.

Brecht’s Theory of Epic Theatre

To create a clearer picture of how to craft an idea of memory with great amplitude and rich potential, we can start with a modern example, the work of Bertolt Brecht, which Lankans have been quite familiar with (since the mid 1960’s), in all three languages. He famously created an ‘epic theatre’ and a theory of modern epic practice, as opposed to the traditional ‘dramatic theatre’. He called traditional dramatic theatre Aristotelian because it followed the basic structures analysed by the Greek philosopher in his Poetics. Walter Benjamin wrote several essays defending Brecht’s idea of epic theatre because what Brecht did was something quite unusual within the history of European theatre at the time. Instead of following the 1920s avant-garde German Expressionist theatre or French Surrealist theatre or constructivist Soviet practice, he looked to classical Asiatic theatrical forms such as Peking opera and its conventions of staging and highly formalised abstract forms of acting, to create a modern epic practice. For some artists of the left, Brecht’s theory appeared to be a strange move, looking to traditional Asian practice of the deep feudal past – not at all modern. Benjamin showed how Brecht’s modern epic form was suited to their time of the rise of fascism in Germany and its appeal to irrational emotions and ideas of racial purity and superiority. According to Aristotle the epic form contains three genres in one. That is, the lyric or ‘first person’ expression of subjective feeling as in love poetry, the dramatic as in actions and reactions organised in dialogue, in ‘second person’ and narration, which is the power to tell a story or narrate in ‘third person’. Therefore the ample epic mode can combine all three genres with ease, which means that it has the power to shift focus from one to the other, in complex combinations.

The traditional idea of ‘epic memory’ itself has an act of performance built into it through what is sung and is not something private and personal but consists of mythic stories, legends common to a people. But there is a crucial distinction Brecht and Benjamin made here between myth, on the one hand, and the epic form, on the other. The epic as a genre is a much later historical development from myth and though it does deploy myth, it does so on its own terms. Because, historically speaking, the epic is a later human achievement than myth, it also has had the rational power to comment on the myths it uses. That is to say, the epic form, with its many flexible techniques, has the power to create a sense of distance from the mythic universe of the ancients, which appears irrational and fated.

This idea of a historical ‘distance’ of the epic form (from the original myths), was taken up by Brecht and made into a method of constructing his epic drama. He called it, using a long German compound word, ‘verfremdungseffect’, variously translated as ‘distanciation’ or ‘Alienation-effect’ or ‘de-familiarisation’ or ‘making-strange’. Fine scholarship is available on this idea, my favourite was developed by Eugenio Barba and his Odin Theatret in Denmark. To create a dramatic situation which can immediately be ‘frozen’ and turned into a scene which is narrated and commented on, is one of the well-known ways in which Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle was performed in Colombo, in the 1965 by Ernest Macintyre’s ‘Stage and Set’ production. The tender scene of a lyrical song sung by Grusha to her adopted infant son, can swiftly change to a bawdy commentary by the chorus. Sudden changes of point of view, mood and tone, are calibrated to give the spectator a chance to perceive a situation from more than one angle. It’s a way to introduce the exercise of reason into the spectacle of theatre, according to Brecht, to break its spell even as it is deployed. Brecht was here influenced by Eisenstein’s theory of montage, which he introduced into theatre. Eisenstein’s theory of montage created a clash between one shot and another, so as to produce a new idea in the mind of the spectator. So the continuously flowing conventional dramatic action could be interrupted, fragmented and anything-what-ever from ‘the memory of the world’ could be inserted to break the flow. So it’s the introduction of a radical film technique, montage, into theatre to make the mind constantly alert and instantly beguiled and then relaxed by the commentary of the chorus. These disjunctions can be very subtle or very direct depending on the skill of both actor and director.

Professor Saumya Liyanage’s recent article, on the play ‘Sanga Veda Guru Govi Kamkaru’, clearly indicated that the brilliant young playwright-director Chamila Priyanka had created an epic mode of theatre, which the judges of the drama competition failed to understand, (The Island, 11/5). Liyanage said that there is a to and fro movement between empathy and distance in the way the play was constructed and directed. The current Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe referred to Brecht in parliament, comparing his current task (to save Lanka), to that of the selfless Grusha’s action of saving the baby, treading on the rickety bridge. Whether he wanted empathy or analytical distance by offering this parable from the Caucasian Chalk Circle we don’t know, but he could assume that Lankans at large would know the reference. But we also know the play well enough to see what a thoughtless comparison it was.

The Artists’ Protest March

I saw a Brechtian epic mode in full flight in the artists’ protest march (#GotaGoGama), the other day on the streets of Colombo, which converged on Gall Face. Actors wearing handmade cardboard masks of the various yakas and the sunniyas were doing wild dancing moves using these marvellous creatures of the folk imagination of Lanka to exorcise the political demons sucking the people’s life-blood. These performers were such a refreshing counter to the expensive kitsch fascist-mythic-nationalist spectacles and films made under the Rajapaksa regime. And to see and hear a group of women walking rhythmically and playing the heavy drums slung across their bodies strung from their necks or tied at the waist, was a powerful moment for me, as I never imagined that Lankan women would be allowed to play these ritual drums belonging to a male tradition of such vitality. Traditionally, women only played raban pada! While the documentary camera excitedly cut between many performances very fast, I got the sense of an epic vision being performed as street theatre. Gamini Hattotuwegama’s pioneering street theatre work of the 70’s and 80’s seems to have taken on an unimaginable mass form, matured, diversified, loosening up and airing so many different stratified and compacted layers of the blood-soaked earth, of this famed ‘island of Dhamma’, Sri Lanka.

Perhaps artists can generate some ideas from these two modes of imagining memory (‘memory of the world’ and Brecht’s epic mode), which are quite distinct from personal memory. Artists working on traumatic experiences of the civil war and the formidable state ideologies that led to and orchestrated it, may find it useful to try to mobilise an ample epic mode of perception. I think so because it has this flexible montage structure, not tied to a strict linear chronology. ‘Montage’ is a term taken from engineering, of fitting different pieces of machinery together, so it contains the idea of assembling something with different components, stuff, to make something happen. While one might work on oneself and one’s sense of loss and a host of other urgent feelings that resist linguistic expression, one can also create certain disjunctions, breaks, (distanciation, make-strange the familiar), through an epic mode of composition. The need to repeatedly go back to the traumatic moment is often limitless, with no end in sight. Each repetition yields less as it becomes routine with no exit. Whereas, epic vision-memory, understood in a Brechtian way, is centrifugal not centripetal, it ripples out. It is not centred on man and nor is its vision cut to the measure of MAN. It is non-anthropocentric and non-anthropomorphic. Epic vision-memory helps us to see and feel and understand that we are part of something vaster and also much finer and subtle than ourselves. Epic vision gives us antennae like insects have. Tantric Buddhist idea of a ‘subtle body’ (Sukshama Dehaya) might be a line of investigation for those attracted to the rich visual traditions of Mahayana Buddhism which include vast scroll paintings which visually activate ‘nadi’ or a nervous system that connects many life forms too.

Brecht’s epic vision, in not giving ‘happy endings’ or resolving all the dramatic conflicts, leave us with an ability to discuss alternatives, as in say The Good Woman of Szechwan (Hita Honda Ammandi). I think the famous Chennai bonze statues of poets, (including a female one), and scholars (including an English scholar-missionary), and the epic heroine of Silappatikāram, Kannagi, lining the ocean front of the Marina really is a marvellous epic configuration that could also be understood in the Brechtian modern sense of the epic as well. They are positioned against the background of the ocean and address the people of Tamil Nadu evoking epic memory. The idea of debate so dear to Brecht also was staged when the Kannagi statue built by the Karunanidi’s DMK government was removed from her pedestal by Jaylalitha as Chief Minister, inaugurating a statue ‘battle’ and then returned from a museum, back again to her pedestal, with a change of government. There appears to be a sense of humour too in these serious political moves and counter moves, a marvellous sense of epic performance. This kind of jostling, argumentative, magnificent vision evoked by these bronze statues of Tamil Nadu is surely a modern mode of epic memory conjoined with the ocean, the sand and the sky – a memory of the world for sure.

Epic form is not the same as mythic form. The epic is Janus-faced (has two faces) facing two opposed directions. One face is turned toward myth and the other faces history. And situated in between the two, it has ample space-time to play and shuttle between the two modes of knowledge by making sure that history itself is not allowed to turn into myth.

And Laughter?

I saw on YouTube a well-known Sinhala actor perform a strange oration of excessive praise, a Rajapaksha varnanawa, invoking the glory days of Dutugamunu. What struck me was how much the brothers Mahinda and Gotabhaya laughed when they were praised in more and more exaggerated ways (drawing on the heroic parallels), by the actor who appeared to be carried away by his own brilliance at flattery and histrionic performance. I couldn’t help but think that the two brothers were looking at each other in a certain way and laughing, as much as to say, ‘does he really believe this stuff he’s spouting, what an idiot!’ They appeared to know that these were stupid but useful myths that they had themselves mobilised as history for their gain, but the true believers and the fools were the people themselves. This is just my reading of laughter of the two authoritarian brothers. Laughter is a tricky involuntary human impulse hard to control and pin down rationally. But one hopes that the last laugh will not be theirs’ to enjoy.

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Midweek Review

UNHRC in Mullivaikkal dirty politics

Published

2 days ago

2025/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk is scheduled to visit Colombo later this month. The House on June 5 announced the visit, two days after the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Marc-André Franche, informed Speaker, Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne, of the impending visit.

A press release issued by the Parliament, dated June 5, 2025, mistakenly identified Volker Türk as the High Commissioner of the International Commission on Human Rights. Parliament never bothered to correct the statement posted on its website. Franche was accompanied by UN Peace and Development Resident Advisor Patrick McCarthy.

BTF (British Tamil Forum) General Secretary V. Ravi Kumar, in a letter dated May 27, 2025, urged the UN rights chief to visit Mullivaikkal where he alleged a genocide was committed in 2009. Kumar also requested the Austrian lawyer to visit Chemmani, where mass graves have been unearthed recently, as alleged by the BTF. Kumar, a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), received British citizenship many years ago. The Tamil Diaspora, spread over Europe, Canada and various other parts of the world, includes a significant number of former members of Tamil terrorist organisations.

The National People’s Power (NPP) government, without hesitation, should allow the UN official to visit Mullivaikkal, Chemmani or any other place desired by the Tamil Diaspora. The government shouldn’t allow the BTF and other interested parties to make wild allegations on the basis of not including Mullivaikkal and Chemmani in the UN official’s itinerary. The government should also invite Volker Türk to visit Nanthikadal lagoon where the Army eliminated the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his remaining diehard members in a last encounter on May 19, 2009, the day after Sri Lanka brought the war to a successful conclusion.

Senior military commanders, who spearheaded the successful war against the LTTE, should declare their support for the UN Human Rights chief’s visit to Sri Lanka. Whatever the differences they may have had among themselves during the war, retired Army, Navy and Air Force officers must sink their differences to set the record straight.

The BTF shouldn’t be allowed to manipulate the forthcoming UN human rights chief’s visit here. Perhaps, they should consider seeking a meeting with the UN official to explain their position. There is absolutely no harm in making representations on behalf of Sri Lanka as all stakeholders want to ascertain the truth.

As for the impartiality of previous High Commissioners, like South African of Indian Tamil origin Navaneethan ‘Navi’ Pillai, the less said is better.

The last UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Colombo was Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. The Jordanian was here in 2016, the year after Yahapalana leaders Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe betrayed the war-winning military by co-sponsoring a US-led resolution against Sri Lanka at the Geneva-based UNHRC. A treacherous act, indeed. There had never been a previous instance of a government betraying its own war-winning military. The UN official must be reminded that a terrorist organisation had never been defeated before the way the Sri Lankan military crushed the LTTE in a relentless combined security forces campaign (August 2006 to May 2009) that brought the LTTE to its knees by January 2009.

Those who cannot stomach Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE conveniently forget that Prabhakaran launched Eelam War IV on August 11, 2006, with the intention of capturing the Jaffna peninsula. They tend to forget how the Nordic truce monitoring mission found fault with the LTTE for launching the war. Declaring that the LTTE advanced over the forward defence lines near Muhamalai entry/exit point and cadres landed on several beaches on Kayts and Mandaithivu islands, the Norwegian-led five-nation truce monitoring mission said: “…. considering the preparation level of the operations it seems to have been a well prepared LTTE initiative.” (SLMM blames LTTE for Jaffna battle, The Island, Sept. 08, 2006).

Human shields

The majority of those who had been demanding accountability on the part of the Sri Lankan military and war-winning political leadership never asked Prabhakaran not to compel the civilians to accompany the retreating LTTE units. After having fiercely resisted the fighting formations on the Vanni front for several months, the LTTE began gradually withdrawing and, by January 2009, Prabhakaran was in a desperate situation. The man who ordered former Indian Prime Minister and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination was taking cover among hapless Tamil civilians.

The then National List member and presidential advisor Basil Rajapaksa received a one-page missive on Feb. 16, 2009, from the then Norwegian Ambassador, Tore Hattrem. The following is the text of Ambassador Hattrem’s letter, addressed to Basil Rajapaksa: “I refer to our telephone conversation today. The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population, now trapped in the LTTE controlled area, has been transmitted to the LTTE through several channels. So far, there has been, regrettably, no response from the LTTE and it doesn’t seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree with this in the near future.” (Secret missive to Basil Rajapaksa revealed: Norwegians believed LTTE won’t release hostages, The Island, April 01, 2015).

Unfortunately, the war-winning government and post-war governments never made an honest attempt to use all available information to prove that the LTTE used civilian shields to hinder the advancing Army. Perhaps, the retired military commanders should bring Hattrem’s letter to UN Human Rights official’s attention.

Having succeeded Michelle Bachelet (2018 to 2022) Volker Türk may not be aware of some of the developments and some interested parties in Geneva are widely believed to have suppressed vital information contrary to their narrative.

The BTF never asked Prabhakaran not to hold civilians hostage. Tamil Diaspora never appealed on behalf of the civilians forcibly held by the LTTE. Regardless of anti-government/military propaganda, civilians sought refuge in the government-held areas at an early stage of the Vanni offensive that was launched in March 2007.

In February, 2007 the LTTE detained two UN workers for helping civilians to reach government lines (LTTE detains UN workers, The Island, April 20, 2007). The NGO community and the truce monitoring mission remained silent to protect Tiger interests. What really baffled the government was the UN Office in Colombo having secret negotiations with the LTTE for the release of its workers (UN workers in LTTE custody: “UN had talks with Tigers on the sly,” The Island, April 23, 2007).

The so called human rights defenders turned a blind eye to the developing situation. Western powers, Tamil Diaspora and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) that infamously declared the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil-speaking people in the run-up to the Eelam War IV, remained silent. Had they taken a stand against holding civilians against their will, the armed forces could have eradicated the LTTE’s conventional fighting power much quicker and spared many a life on both sides.

In the wake of The Island revelation, then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa urged the UN not to mollycoddle terrorists. Rajapaksa questioned the rationale in the UN trying to secure the lease of its abducted workers through secret negotiations (UN workers in LTTE custody: Lanka urges UN not to shield Tigers, The Island, April 25, 2007).

The UN mission in Colombo not only kept the government in the dark, it refrained from informing the UN Secretary General’s Office of the abduction of UN workers. When the media raised the abduction of UN workers at their daily press briefing in New York, the Secretary General’s spokesman Michele Montas disclosed they weren’t alerted (The Island expose of UN employees abducted by LTTE: UN HQ admits Colombo Office kept it in the dark, The Island April 28, 2007).

In other words, the UN mission in Colombo in a way facilitated the LTTE’s sordid operations. Had the UN resorted to tough action, the LTTE wouldn’t have held Tamil civilians as human shields for their protection.

No basis for comparison with Israeli actions

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher made reference to Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE when he addressed the United Nations Security Council in May this year on the massive death and destruction inflicted by Israel on Gaza.

It would be pertinent to remind all concerned that the Israeli military action directed at Gaza and other countries, with the backing of the US-UK combine, cannot be compared in any way to Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE simply because of the terrible monstrosity of Israeli actions. Top British diplomat Fletcher cannot be unaware how successive UK governments encouraged the LTTE to wage war here with covert support, especially by the partial British media that white-washed LTTE atrocities, while magnifying even the slightest transgression by the Sri Lankan security forces, with the help of NGOs funded by them.

However, the British provided critical support during JRJ’s time by allowing ex-British personnel to train Sri Lankans.

The UK allowed the LTTE to establish its International Secretariat in London at a time India sponsored several terrorist groups fighting to divide Sri Lanka on ethnic lines.

It would be pertinent to ask whether the UK at least secretly urged Prabhakaran to give up human shields as the Army pressed its dwindling fighting cadre on the Vanni east front. Instead, the UK, with the French backing, sought to pressure President Mahinda Rajapaksa to halt the offensive. The President and his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, steadfastly refused to bow down to combined British-French pressure. They sustained the offensive until the eradication of the terrorist organisation. The war could never have been won without their resolute leadership.

Geneva must recognise that until the eradication of the LTTE, conscription of Tamil children continued. The LTTE sacrificed thousands of children in high intensity battles with the military after a steep decline in adults joining the fighting cadre. The UN had been so concerned about deaths of children it sought to reach a consensus with the LTTE to halt deployment of child combatants.

The NGO community, or Tamil Diaspora, never asked the LTTE to stop throwing children into battle. In spite of agreeing to halt child recruitment, following talks with Olara Otunnu, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC), Prabhakaran never stopped the despicable practice (Pledge to stop using children in combat: UN, LTTE to discuss modalities, The Island, May 11, 1998). UNICEF, too, appealed to the LTTE not to forcibly conscript children. The LTTE simply ignored such requests. Otunnu travelled to the North, in May 1998, to meet Prabhakaran’s representatives, British passport holder Anton Balasingham (died and buried in the UK in December 2006) and S.P. Thamilselvam (killed in SLAF strike in November 2007). They agreed on halting children, below 18, in combat operations and stopping recruitment of those under 17 (Tigers agree to end use of children below 18 in combat, The Island, May 9, 1998).

The Tamil Diaspora never ever demanded an end to child conscription. They felt comfortable as their children were not living in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Child recruitment had never been an issue for the Tamil Diaspora or the TNA. The child recruitment was finally brought to an end after the combined security forces eradicated the LTTE.

How many children escaped with their lives thanks to the annihilation of the LTTE militarily? The LTTE had to be destroyed at any cost. Sri Lanka paid a very heavy price to restore peace. The Gaza conflict with Sri Lanka’s war against the separatist Tamil terrorism cannot be equated as the modern massive firepower of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) by land, air and sea is simply overwhelming in comparison to the combined Sri Lanka security forces, under any circumstances.

Sri Lanka actually fought a lone battle against the most ruthless terrorist outfit with immense conventional capability. Western covert support and availability of ship loads of arms, ammunition and equipment and a steady sea supply allowed the LTTE to wage war until Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda’s Navy sunk their floating warehouses on the high seas. Intelligence provided by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), and the US, led to the total destruction of the LTTE. Therefore, the US, too, helped Sri Lanka to save children by hastening the LTTE’s destruction, albeit only to speed up its fall when it became clear that the Tigers were not invincible as they earlier tried to make them out to be.

The Air Force carried out operations in support of the Army while carrying out a strategic campaign that relentlessly targeted the enemy. That was meant to break the backbone of the LTTE.

Dhanapala’s advice disregarded

One of Sri Lanka’s famed career diplomats, the late Jayantha Dhanapala, discussed the issue of accountability when he addressed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), headed by one-time Attorney General, the late C. R. de Silva, on August 25, 2010. Dhanapala, in his submissions, said: “Now I think it is important for us to expand that concept to bring in the culpability of those members of the international community who have subscribed to the situation that has caused injury to the civilians of a nation. I talk about the way in which terrorist groups are given sanctuary; harboured; and supplied with arms and training by some countries with regard to their neighbours or with regard to other countries. We know that in our case this has happened, and I don’t want to name countries, but even countries which have allowed their financial procedures and systems to be abused in such a way that money can flow from their countries in order to buy arms and ammunition that cause deaths, maiming and destruction of property in Sri Lanka are to blame and there is therefore a responsibility to protect our civilians and the civilians of other nations from that kind of behaviour on the part of members of the international community. And I think this is something that will echo within many countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, where Sri Lanka has a much respected position and where I hope we will be able to raise this issue.”

Dhanapala also stressed on the accountability on the part of Western governments, which conveniently turned a blind eye to massive fundraising operations in their countries, in support of the LTTE operations. It is no secret that the LTTE would never have been able to emerge as a conventional fighting force without having the wherewithal abroad, mainly in the Western countries, to procure arms, ammunition and equipment.

Sri Lanka could have built its defence on Dhanapala’s statement to the LLRC. Even more importantly Sri Lanka ignored wartime US military advisor Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith’s defence of the Army that it didn’t execute surrendering LTTE cadres. In other words, the US official contradicted the then retired General Sarath Fonseka, who, with no shame whatsoever, accused the Army (that he earlier led to victory against all odds), of war crimes, to curry favour with the LTTE lackey TNA ahead of the 2010 presidential election.

Similarly Lord Naseby provided a golden opportunity to counter lies when he obtained confidential British diplomatic cables that were sent to the Foreign Office in London from Colombo during January-May 2009. In spite of them being heavily censored, the cables that had been sent by Smith’s British counterpart in Colombo, Lt. Col. Anthony Gash, effectively countered the wild UN allegation pertaining to the deaths of over 40,000 civilians on the Vanni east front.

The British estimated the number of deaths around 7,000. The British figure tallied with a survey carried out by the UN in Colombo during August 2008 to May 13, 2009, in the Vanni region. The UN recorded over 7,000 deaths but Sri Lanka never had a cohesive strategy to utilise all available information in a manner to counter lies.

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How Geneva erred on Mannar mass graves

Michelle Bachelet

The Tamil Diaspora wants United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk to visit what they call Chemmani mass graves. There must be mass graves all over the northern and eastern provinces. Have they forgotten the large number of Tamils executed by the LTTE? Where did the LTTE bury the body of Velupillai Prabhakaran’s deputy Gopalswamy Mahendraraja alias Mahattaya? Mahattaya was executed on the mere suspicion of serving India’s interests. There can be skeletons of Indian officers and men killed in the northern and eastern regions during 1987-1990 deployment here. India altogether lost well over 1,300 personnel here.

Let me remind you of the Mannar mass grave farce. Radiocarbon dating analysis by the Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory in Florida, US, in respect of six skeletal samples sent there in January 2019 with the intervention of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) established in accordance with October 2015 Geneva Resolution, proved that the skeletons belonged to a period that covered the Portuguese and the Dutch rule.

This was after Volker Türk’s predecessor Michelle Bachelet, typical of UN hacks negatively dealt with Mannar mass grave site in a report titled ‘Promoting Reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’ submitted to the ongoing 40th session of the HRC.

The following is the relevant section bearing No 23: “On May 29, 2018, human skeletal remains were discovered at a construction site in Mannar (Northern Province), Excavations conducted in support of the Office on Missing Persons, revealed a mass grave from which more than 300 skeletons were discovered. It was the second mass grave found in Mannar following the discovery of a site in 2014. Given that other mass graves might be expected to be found in the future, systematic access to grave sites by the Office as an observer is crucial for it to fully discharge its mandate, particularly with regard to the investigation and identification of remains, it is imperative that the proposed reforms on the law relating to inquests, and relevant protocols to operationalise the law be adopted. The capacity of the forensic sector must also be strengthened, including in areas of forensic anthropology, forensic archeology and genetics, and its coordination with the Office of Missing Persons must be ensured.”

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

A tale of two dams and destruction of a national asset

Published

2 days ago

2025/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

Maussakele Reservoir

The idea in the development process, particularly where developing countries are concerned, is to keep the cost of development as low as possible. That is why most developing countries have given priority to developing the heavy construction industry, as it affects the development of infrastructure. In some developing countries, until very recently, heavy construction had been a no-go area for foreign contractors.

First Major Development Project

The Gal Oya scheme was the first major development project in post-Independence Sri Lanka. As the country did not have the ability to construct such a large project at the time, the contract was awarded to a US company Morrison-Knudsen. The total cost of the project in 1949 prices was around $100 million according to information from Hansard. The contract itself was a cost-plus contract, where the contractor was paid for all expenses plus a fee for profit and risks.

The next major scheme was the Udawalawe project which was delayed due to many reasons, including the government’s financing constraints. After the Gal Oya Project, the financial position of the government had deteriorated quite fast, which led to the 1953 Hartal and a change of government in 1956. In early 1961 the government took over the fuel distribution from the foreign companies without paying compensation. As most of them were US companies, the US government cut off aid and the World Bank stopped funding.

The government’s finances were such that undertaking a major project like Udawalawe was difficult without external funding.

In the meantime, a local company, Ceylon Development Engineering Co. Ltd. (CDE), pioneered in the field of heavy construction. CDE was set up by the late Pin Fernando, long before the state organisations, and handled over a hundred projects, including contracts for the Irrigation Department and other government agencies. Some of CDE’s projects included Chandrika Wewa, Pimburettawa, Rajangana (one of the largest projects it undertook with no foreign assistance was in the early 1960s), Bowatenna, Rathkinda and Inginimitiya.

Gal Oya reservoir

Transfer of Technology for Udawalawe

The Udawalawe project was about the same size as the Gal Oya project. Since the government had no funds, it thought of giving the contract to a local company. The only local company capable of such a project was CDE, but it had not done a project of that magnitude before and required technical expertise from outside. The transfer of technology to a local company, for the first time in Sri Lanka, happened with this project.

The Sri Lankan government had established good relations with the socialist countries, which were supporting major industrial projects in the country. The government requested technical expertise for the project from Czechoslovakia, which readily agreed to give the required technical help and supervise CDE. Skoda Export of Czechoslovakia was the main contractor, alongside Technoexport, while CDE was the approved sub-contractor. The entire project included two power houses. The project was started in the mid-1960s and was completed in 1968.

The project was completed at a cost of less than $10 million. This was almost fifteen years after Gal Oya, which had cost around $100 million. This was revealed by the late Eddie de Zilwa, who was the Commercial Director of CDE from its inception, when I became the CEO of the company in the mid-1980s.

The Mousakelle Dam

Once the Udawalawe project was off the ground the government requested assistance from Yugoslavia for technical help for the Mousakelle project, which included the dam, tunnels, and power house.

The Yugoslav government readily agreed and nominated an experienced Yugoslav company, Ingra of Zagreb to work with CDE as sub-contractor. This was Sri Lanka’s largest concrete dam until Victoria was built in the 1980s.

The cost of the project was even less than that of Udawalawe. The local company had by then gained enough experience in these types of projects and was pre-qualified to bid for projects funded by the Word Bank and Asian Development Bank. This is what technological transfer is all about!

The CDE should have been further developed. It was saving the government millions of dollars (billions in the present context) in foreign exchange. It would have been treated as a national asset if it had been in a high performing Asian economy.

The late Gamini Dissanayaka, after taking over as the Minister of Mahaweli Development, described CDE as a ‘National Asset’. However, after 1977, attitudes changed. The acceleration of the Mahaweli programme was high on President J. R. Jayewardene’s agenda. The original plan was for the project to be completed in a thirty-year period by utilising local capacity.

Instead, foreign companies invaded the heavy construction field (tied up with the development aid) leaving little room for local companies like CDE, which had built up its capacity for such work. The experience I gained from the exposure to Sri Lanka’s development effort in the 1980s and 1990s convinced me that Sri Lanka was not going anywhere with the thinking prevalent at the time. I tried to convince ministers that we were on the wrong path, but in vain.

In a serious development effort, building local ability and capacity should be the goal of any government. The opposite of this holds true for Sri Lanka. It was not only the heavy construction industry that suffered – most industries that had made some progress perished due to economic liberalisation.

A country that cannot identify the companies which are an asset to its development process and others that are a drain on its foreign reserves, it faces a serious issue. The impression one gets is that Sri Lanka expects some foreign country to come and develop it.

The Turning Point

President Jayewardene’s thinking came to light in 1981, when the Mahaweli Authority called for International Competitive Bids (ICB) for the Mahaweli system ‘C’ canal project.

CDE was the lowest bidder at Rs. 194 million, and the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) recommended to the Cabinet to award this tender to CDE. At the Cabinet meeting, the President took his own minister by surprise saying that the contract for the project could not be awarded to a local company and it must be given to a Japanese company, whose bid was almost double that of the local company. He probably did so, expecting to please the Japanese and beg for more aid.

In the meantime, a state bank, expecting the tender to be awarded to CDE rushed in and offered to open the Letters of Credit for machinery, which they did with no documentation being signed by the company. When the machinery started arriving, there was no work for the machines.

The cost of machinery at the time was Rs. 77 million and the company was stuck with a huge debt without sufficient revenue to service it. The company later signed the documentation in good faith, though the bank did not appreciate this fact.

The company made a request that it be considered a development loan and the Central Bank refinance this. No response was received from the Central Bank.

The fact that CDE had helped the country save millions of dollars (billions in the present context) on projects had no effect on the government.

The state bank concerned had been taken over by some neoliberal thinkers, who were happy to lend money to importers rather than development-oriented companies.

The bank earlier had visionary leaders who understood the development needs of the country and played a dual role of commercial bank as well as an unofficial development bank. However, with the ‘Washington Consensus’ of the 1980s all that changed.

The Samanalawewa Dam

Samanalawewa reservoir

When the Samanalawewa project was to be undertaken on a Japan-UK loan, the Japanese company approached me and wanted CDE to price the Japanese part of the project, which was the dam, while the tunnels and power house were to be the British part.

They promised sub-contract work for CDE, which was desperately needed at the time. However, they bid for the project at three times the price we had quoted and were awarded the tender. I immediately met President Jayewardene and briefed him on what had happened. He told me that we needed aid.

I told him that if that process continued, there would come a time when our loans would be beyond our ability to repay.

The Bottomline

The purpose of this article is to highlight the fact that Sri Lanka has not yet understood the basics of development and how to build up its capacity. The destruction of an industry in which we reached international standards and others that could be of use in the future has happened over the past 45 years.

The ultimate result of destroying the only company that had received international recognition was that our costs of development hugely increased, including part of the foreign debt and infrastructure costs. This has not been understood, and the mistakes are being repeated.

If CDE had been in any of the East Asian countries, one could imagine how they would have reacted. Innovation and research and development have yet not been identified as core areas of development. The IMF and other agencies will not encourage developing countries on these lines.

Inability to understand that we can’t depend on low-tech development anymore and that we have to move into high-tech development is far beyond the ability of the authorities to understand.

As the volume of work for local companies was dwindling, I contacted a prominent Middle-Eastern company, Abu-Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) with the intention of a joint venture in West Asia. Being impressed with the track record of CDE, they agreed to form a joint venture named CDE-Al Safya, to bid for work in the region. When it came to obtaining bid-bonds, we had to cover our part. Our bank, a state-owned one, refused to issue a bid-bond, and that was the end of the joint venture. If it had supported CDE in this joint venture, it probably would have been a major foreign exchange earner for the country, with many others finding work as sub-contractors.

The negative mindset is found not only among the politicians but also those in state institutions. A campaign to change thinking is required if this country is to move forward.

(Sunil Abhayawardhana was CEO of Sri Lanka’s largest heavy construction company. He has a master’s degree from the University of Wales and is working on a PhD in economics. He is a member of the Asia Progress Forum, which can be contacted at asiaprogressforum@gmail.com).

By Sunil Abhayawardhana