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| If anyone has forgotten '88-89' because a) it happened a long time ago, b) because no 'celebrities' were killed (except Richard De Soyza), c) because it was the UNP government and its vigilante groups that did most of the killing? |
Bandula Gunawardena alleged in Parliament that his efforts to produce a film based on the life of Richard de Soyza had been thwarted by the yahapalana government. In response, Mangala Samaraweera, while insisting that he had not stopped any films from being made as Media Minister, is reported to have urged Gunawardena to produce a movie on the killing of journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga.
We do not know who stopped Gunawardena and we do not know why Samaraweera, given his sentiments and sway, has not thought about producing a film on Lasantha’s murder. Maybe one day, there will be films on both these individuals.
What is interesting about this parliamentary exchange is that it is a reflection of the general fascination in certain segments of society about certain kinds of killings and indeed certain kinds of victims.
The Office of Missing Persons (OMP) has said that while a full list of those who have gone missing during the conflict is yet to be finalized, the number could be around 20,000. The relevant period is from 1983 to 2009.
OMP Chairman Saliya Pieris made the following observation at a media briefing:
“We have data of previous reports released on missing persons. The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) says it is about 16,000 people including 5,100 military and police personnel. The Paranagama Commission says 21,000 people have gone missing while the government had received 13,000 complaints through Grama Niladharis on missing persons. These numbers may overlap.”
‘Missing’ is not a synonym of ‘dead’ and one presumes that the OMP has operated on the basis that these are two different things. We know that some of the ‘missing’ have in fact ‘disappeared’ to other countries which have repeatedly declined to give Sri Lanka information about ‘refugees’ that might help locate at least some of ‘missing’ (Canada for example). Even then, it is clear that a significant number have gone unaccounted for. The OMP will release its report at the end of August and it will be interesting to note how many people went missing during different regimes, subject of course to the slants that length of time, death and other ‘slayers’ can have on memory and the will to pursue such things.
The OMP is mandated to record complaints related to this particular conflict. However, this was not the only conflagration which took lives. In tens of thousands. We’ve come almost 50 years since 1971, but 1988-89 is not too far away. There are those who saw all that and there are those who lived through it. Many who have first hand experience of the state-run torture and killing chambers are still alive.
The families of the dead did not all receive death certificates. Even if they did, the circumstances of their ‘disappearances’ are not recorded anywhere.
Just the other day, well known blogger and political commentator Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe launched a novel titled ‘K Point’. It’s in Sinhala. The ‘K’ of the title is for ‘killing’ and there were many torture/killing camps which had the same name. This novel is based on what went on in the Eliyakanda Vadhakaagaaraya (torture chamber), Matara, during 1988-89, a period fittingly (and sadly) referred to as ‘bheeshanaya’ (The Terror).
The book deserves the kind of discussion that lies outside the purposes of this article. However, the blurb at the back would suffice to tell us something relevant on the overall politics of memory:
‘There wasn’t a tradition of using bullets to kill people in Eliyakanda. There were gnarled and knotted clubs to beat and kill those people they wanted dead. There were water tanks in which people could be drowned but they were used only for purposes of torture because much effort had to be expended to transport water to the top of the hill in bowsers. Some of the tortured who were close to death met their fate in a dirty kitchen. On certain nights prisoners would have to walk over dead bodies to get to the back of the store room to wash their hands or urinate after having their dinner. These bodies were taken away in the middle of the night in a dhal-colored yellow ’50 Sri’ Isuzu double cab which brought cauldrons of rice and buckets of gravy from the Gemunu Camp in the Matara Fort. Death was a simple and extremely petty matter. There were even days when it was an enjoyable sport for a drunken evening.’
We don’t need to have a novel to know about proxy arrests, billas, vigilante groups, abductions, shootings, burning and burying alive, and other gruesome things such as specific methods of torture. It’s probably all there in the novel, though. In any case, it’s all erased from the manuscripts pertaining to rights abuse, crimes against humanity and such.
And so we talk about Richard and Lasantha. We talk about Prageeth Ekneligoda. About Thajudeen. We talk about the dead known by the public. As we should of course.
However, do we talk about how there are certain names remembered while the nameless are numbered? Do we ask how value is attached to certain victims while others are ‘disappeared’ into a collective, marked by a number?
Ask 100 readers of English newspapers about those who were killed in 88-89 by the security forces, the police or state-run vigilante groups. Ask them to name victims. Check how many can come up with even a single name apart from Rohana Wijeweera and Richard de Soyza. Therein lies a story, therein lies a narrative about selectivity, the politics of forgetting, the downsizing of guilt.
Thajudeen was buried, exhumed and buried again. He will no doubt be exhumed again in a way in which even Richard was not. That entire exercise betrays the true character of those who weep copiously about human rights violations. They don’t seem to remember anyone worthy of exhumation when it comes to 88-89.
It’s almost as if ’88-89’ was ‘okay’ even though the victims were largely unarmed unlike in the case of a significant number of disappearances that the OMP has been informed about. How, then, was 88-89 ‘ok’ and ‘Nandikadaal’ not? How is it that we have heard of Thajudeen but not Ranjithan Gunaratnam? How is it that people talk about Vellimullivaikkal and not Eliyakanda?
What does Mangala know that we don’t know? Why is it that we know certain things that Mangala doesn’t seem to have a clue about today (even though he was back then ranting and raving against the UNP)?
Well-known literary critic Chulananda Samaranayake who incidentally was also a rare survivor of the bheeshanaya in a recently published collection titled ‘Glimpses of a Shattered Island’ talks about his experiences. He recounts how he was referred to as a ‘son of a whore’. He had been asked if he had ever seen a mass grave. He was informed that he would be buried in one. In the poem, he writes what he did not say that day:
‘Dear Sir,
no point of asking such question
from a man who has already been buried
in a mass grave.’
Chulananda has the last line on the condition of amnesia we’ve discussed here. For him, everyone is buried in a mass grave, ‘some in uniform and some in rags’. He puts it thus:
‘This is a country
buried in the silence, injustice, betrayal.’
It’s all selective and this selectivity is no accident but a deliberate product of political convenience, he would no doubt agree. Death is a leveler, they say. Remembrance also levels, in a sense. It elevates some and re-slays and buries others. No films for the collective dead.
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