Midweek Review

Opportunity for deployment under UN command as STF celebrates 40th anniversary

Published

2 years ago

2023/03/1

Sahan Weerasooriya

A contingent of STF personnel deployed in Colombo during Aragalaya last year

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Having received its baptism of fire, within months of formation, in early 1983, the police para-military arm, the elite Special Task Force (STF), is now ready to serve under the UN command, in the near future.

The UN deployment is a much desired achievement in the wake of it celebrating 40 years of dedicated service to the nation having sacrificed much by its heroic members.

Well over a decade after the successful conclusion of the war, the STF is now engaged in peacetime duties. Incumbent STF Commandant, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Waruna Jayasundara, says they are ready for deployment in any part of the world.

Jayasundara, who had served the STF for many years, received the top post, in June 2020, several months after the last presidential election.

Established on March 01, 1983, with a group of 60 personnel, the STF received the leadership of late Senior DIG Bodhi Liyanage, the first Commandant, and was followed by DIG Dharmasiri Weerakoon, Senior DIG Zerney Wijesuriya, late DIG Lionel Karunasena, late DIG Nimal Gunathilleke, SDIG Nimal Lewke, DIG K.M.L. Sarathchandra, DIG R.W.M.C. Ranawana, DIG J.K.R.A. Perera, Senior DIG M.R. Latiff and DIG Lionel Gunathilleke.

Having played a low-key role, during the unprecedented political-economic-social crisis that forced Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of the office of executive president, the STF now faces the unenviable challenging task of countering organized political groups pushing for political reforms.

With trade unions affiliated to various political parties, as well as professional bodies, such as the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), threatening to cripple the government over the new tax regime, law enforcement authorities are certain to come under pressure. The STF will have to throw its weight behind the police, pressed into tackling the Opposition challenge.

Tackling political dissent is a challenging task, especially at a time restrictions cannot be imposed on the media. Privately owned print and electronic, as well as uncontrollable social media, pose quite a challenge as the slightest excesses,on the part of law enforcers, are certain to reach the public.

The formation of the STF, originally called Special Striking Force, during the JRJ administration, was meant to meet the growing threat, posed by Indian trained terrorists. JRJ gave the go ahead, following recommendations made by a committee, headed by one-time Minister J.W. Subasinghe, and the late President’s son, Ravi Jayewardene, an ex-military man, too, played a major, but an unassuming role, mostly behind the scene, in its infancy, as the then National Security Advisor. It would be pertinent to mention that in spite of the JVP-led 1971 insurgency, those responsible for national security didn’t form a specialized unit, within the police, to meet any eventuality.

The formation of the STF took place four months before the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) triggered the first Eelam War, with the killing of 13 soldiers at Thinnaveli, Jaffna. In Sept. 1984, the STF suffered a demoralizing setback when the LTTE planted landmine claimed the lives of four police commandos. The blast on the Point Pedro –Valvettiturai road also wounded nine other STF men.

Those who volunteered to join the SSF/STF were, initially, trained at Katukurunda and at the Army Combat Training School, Ampara, by instructors, led by the then Maj. Ananda Weerasekera, elder brother of parliamentarian Sarath Weerasekera, who served the Navy during a turbulent period, before retirement in the rank of Rear Admiral, and Maj. S. Manawadu. Ananda Weerasekera retired from the Army after rising to the rank of Major General and later ordained as Ven. Buddhangala Ananda Thera. The Ven. Thera passed away in late Dec 2021.

Tikkam blast

Their initial deployment covered Point Pedro, Velvettiturai and Kankesanturai and the gradual expansion cannot be discussed without deliberating the role played by the then National Security Advisor, Ravi Jayewardene.

Sri Lanka obtained ex-Special Air Services (SAS) personnel via Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), one of the first British mercenary companies to prepare the STF for the battles ahead. In the wake of the Tikkam blast, the STF was re-deployed in the Eastern Province.

SSF personnel initially used SLR rifles, though they gradually acquired a range of new weapons to meet the ever increasing threat. Among the weapons were US manufactured M 16 and German Heckler and Koch. They also acquired a range of mortars, including 120 mm used by the SLA.

The British personnel imparted their knowledge and expertise on a range of subjects, including tactics adopted by anti-riot squads, weapons training, firing practices, counter terrorism search, handling explosives, mapping, use of compass and first aid.

During the Eelam War I (the period before the deployment of the Indian Army in the Northern and Eastern regions), the STF dominated theEastern Batticaloa and Ampara districts. In terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, that had been forced on Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan military, the police and its para-military arm were confined to barracks. By the time, India quit Sri Lanka mission, in March 1990, the LTTE was prepared to launch Eelam War II. Fighting re-erupted in the second week of June 1990. During the IPKF deployment, the STF joined the other services, and the police, in fighting the second JVP-led insurrection.

The STF went flat out against the JVP and the reports of excesses during that period hadn’t been denied.

The Bolgoda Lake killings during the Kumaratunga presidency were nothing but a black mark on the STF.

‘Bolgoda killings’ caused irreparable damage to the STF’s reputation in the mid-1990s, when some officers and men were found guilty of extra-judicial killings in the city and its suburbs. During Eelam War IV, an ‘STF operation’ in Trincomalee, too, brought disrepute to the force, though overall it has been a well-disciplined unit.

In response to the LTTE threat, at the onset of Eelam War II, the then President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s government launched military operations. In line with the overall counter-terrorist strategy, the STF was tasked with regaining the Ampara and Batticaloa districts. The STF achieved the challenging task, within months. In the post-IPKF era, the military and the STF faced the battle hardened LTTE that received tremendous boost, by way of experience gained by confronting the mighty Indian Army and the free flow of weapons from abroad. By then, all other Indian trained groups, including the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), responsible for Nov. 1988 abortive bid to oust the then Maldivian President, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, had given up terrorism. Only the LTTE remained committed to the macabre Eelam project. By 1993, the military and the STF cleared the East to enable the conduct of the Local Government polls.

The LTTE, on May Day 1993, delivered a stunning blow to the STF by mounting suicide attack on President Ranasinghe Premadasa. The LTTE cleverly infiltrated Premadasa’s security contingent and the STF cannot absolve itself of the responsibility for the unprecedented security lapse, whatever the political environment security chiefs had to work in. During Premadasa’s honeymoon (May 1989-June 1990) with the LTTE, the STF provided security to members of the LTTE delegation. The writer, during this period, met the late Anton Balasingham at the Hilton. There were STF personnel outside Balasingham’s room.

When Eelam War II erupted in the second week of June, 1990, the STF had to escort a small group of LTTE personnel, from the Colombo Hilton to the Ratmalana air base. They were then airlifted to Palaly and allowed to leave the base safely as Premadasa and his chief negotiator, the late A.C.S. Hameed, made a desperate bid to bring the LTTE back to the negotiating table.

With emergence of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, as the Prime Minister, and then President, in late 1994, the government entered into fresh round of negotiations. Following a 100-day truce, fighting erupted in late April 1995 with the sinking of two Navy gunboats, at the Trincomalee harbour, and shooting down of Avro aircraft, with heat-seeking missiles, as they were approaching the Palaly airbase. The LTTE made some rapid progress in the Eelam War II, though it couldn’t sustain the tempo. In the East, the LTTE stepped up pressure on STF detachments at Tikkodai, Porativu, and Ambalanturai. In Dec. 1996, the LTTE forced the STF out of its Pulukunawa detachment. In one of the fiercest attacks, faced by the STF, the combined STF-Army contingent, deployed at Pulukunawa, failed to thwart the multi-pronged attack. The LTTE captured some arms and ammunition, including artillery pieces. However, those who vacated the base, with the arrival of reinforcements, fought back to regain the Pulukunawa detachment, within 24 hours.

In 1997, the STF expanded its deployment to the Vanni region. That year, the Army, engaged in Operation ‘Jayasikurui’, suffered devastating losses in the Vanni theatre after making vast advances. After a series of heavy defeats, in the Northern Province, and an abortive bid to assassinate Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, by the terrorists, the UNP regained power, at the parliamentary polls, conducted in Dec. 2001. The stage was set for another round of talks with the LTTE, with the signing of the virtually one-sided Ceasefire Agreement, drawn up by the Norwegians.

When Eelam War IV erupted, in June 2006, the STF was asked to launch operations in support of the overall combined security forces campaign in the East. The STF played a critically important role, during Eelam War IV.

During the 40 years of service to the nation, the STF lost 464 officers and men in the line of duty, while 774 were wounded. Six of its civilian employees also died during this period.

The number of dead and wounded, suffered by the STF, when compared with the SLA, may seem insignificant, though the contribution made by the unit to defeating terrorism was DEFINITELY NOT. The SLA lost 6,000 officers and men during Eelam War IV alone, while some 27,000 received injuries.

Post-war responsibilities

Following the successful conclusion of the conflict, the elite unit received greater responsibility in fighting illicit narcotic trade and organized crime, regular law enforcement, high profile/high risk arrests, protection of radioactive materials deployed across the country, responses to crisis, VVIP Security, search and bomb disposal, fire and rescue in expressways and enforcement of the law with regard to the offenses related to the environment.

The STF faces daunting challenge in preserving the experience gained in counter-insurgency operations in the South (1987-1990) and combat operations in the Eastern Province. With the government recently declaring its intention to gradually cut the strength of the Army to 100,000 by 2030, after reducing the numbers to 135,000 by next year, an assessment is also likely as regards the STF. Currently, the STF consists of nearly 8,000 officers, and men, deployed across the country, including Jaffna.

It would be the responsibility of both political and military leadership to maintain the overall capabilities of the armed forces and the police. There cannot be any dispute over the need to reduce the number of men, under arms, as Sri Lanka struggles to cope up in an extremely rough economic crisis. The peacetime political-economic-social crisis has placed the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government, with pressure being exerted on all sectors, to cut down on expenditure. However, it would be a grave mistake, on the part of the incumbent administration, to deprive the armed forces and law enforcement the wherewithal to maintain peace and, particularly, the strength to face future challenges.

The continuing debate over the granting of police and land powers to the provinces, in terms of 13th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in late 1987, has not so far touched the fate of the STF, in case full implementation of the controversial piece of legislation, which Sri Lanka was forced to adopt, becomes a reality. As the STF, too, comes under the Inspector General of Police what would be the destiny of the para-military armm, in the event the police deployment, in the provinces, come under respective Chief Ministers.

STF Commandant DIG Waruna Jayasundara

Subsequent to the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), in late Feb. 2002, the LTTE launched a series of protests, targeting security forces bases, and police stations, in the then temporarily merged Northern and Eastern Province.

Close on the heels of the attack on the Valaichenai police station, the LTTE targeted an isolated base, held by the elite Special Task Force (STF), at Kanjirankudah, south of Batticaloa. Several hundred civilians launched a protest campaign, on Oct. 9, 2002, shortly after an incident involving STF personne, and two LTTE cadres, M. Visuvanathan, in charge of Pottuvil, and Christy Rajah. The LTTE exploited the situation to launch the protest. The LTTE used civilians as a human shield to move into the detachment, though the STF fired warning shots into the air. But, once the STF realized the LTTE’s strategy, the commandos opened fire, killing several persons. Protesters fled carrying the dead and the wounded. The STF recovered seven bodies. Of them, two were identified as Vijayaprakash and Nagarasa. To the surprise of many, Vijayaprakash was identified as one of those held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), but released consequent to the CFA.

At the behest of the LTTE, students and their parents stormed the Point Pedro Brigade headquarters, on Sept. 2, 2002, and the Valaichenai police station, on Oct. 1, 2002, inflicting considerable damage on those facilities. The LTTE obviously felt that a sustained protest campaign, directed at the troops and the police, deployed therein, in the wake of Pongu Thamil rallies, would undermine the government’s authority. Instead of taking effective counter measures to control the situation, the then government brought pressure to bear on the media not to highlight the deteriorating situation.

The government restricted the issuing of daily situation reports, and went to the extent of censoring situation reports, issued by the military. The government’s response should be examined, taking into consideration the circumstances under which the police raided the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) safe house, at Aturugiriya, on the ridiculous allegation the Army, with the involvement of ex-LTTE cadres, planned to assassinate Prime Minister Ranil Wckremesinghe, during the 2001 general election campaign.

Although the STF’s response to the LTTE threat to its camp, at Kanjirankudah, it helped the government to stabilize the situation. Tamil civilians resisted LTTE attempts to use children in protests. The government gave an interesting twist to the Kanjirankudah incident. It alleged that the Presidential Security Division (PSD) had been involved in the attack, prompting both the President’s Office and the PSD to issue statements.

The then PSD head, DIG N. K. Illangakoon, a former Deputy Commandant of the STF (he later served as IGP) said that his officers hadn’t even visited the base, ahead of the incident. Shortly after the incident, the government appointed the then SSP Nimal Lewke, the Deputy Commandant of the STF as the senior officer in charge of its personnel deployed in the Ampara-Batticaloa.

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Midweek Review

A look back at now mostly forgotten Eelam war in the aftermath of Kashmir massacre

Published

7 days ago

2025/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

LTTE directed two claymore mines at an overcrowded SLTB bus, at Kebithigollewa, on June 15, 2006. The blasts claimed the lives of 68 civilians. Seventeen years after the war, some interested parties sought to muddy the waters by falsely claiming the Karuna faction triggered the Kebithigollewa blasts at the behest of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

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:

Published

7 days ago

2025/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

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