It was the late eighties.
Sri Lanka was heading towards more and more
turbulent times dragging along the disillusioned and frustrated generations
with her to a bottomless abyss. Widespread social inequality, rising
unemployment, brutal state repression and sharpening ethnic divide provided an
ideal platform for an unprecedented violent social explosion, not only in the
Tamil North, but even in the Sinhala dominated South of the island. The strikers
were sacked, ethnic minorities were brutalized and suppressed, dissident voices
were silenced, opposition parties were banned, elections were rigged and every
single obstacle was forcibly removed from the path leading to a constitutional
authoritarianism.
The North was already in flames. The stage was
set for a violent social upheaval in the South too.
My father was one among the 40,000 state sector
employees who were sacked within 24 hours for participating in an island-wide
strike action that demanded a reasonable wage increase to match the rising cost
of living. The ruling United National Party government adamantly refused to
negotiate with the strikers, eventually deciding to throw thousands of workers
out on to the streets. My father, despite carrying the burden of supporting a
family with two kids, refused to bow down and instead decided to leave the
capital city in order to start a farm in a remote area in the central
highlands.
The life in the farm was unforgettable. Unaware
of the true difficulties of the life, a childhood surrounded by picturesque
beauty of the mountainous region, became a wonderland that any kid would dream
of. My father's unending love spread over our world like a limitless sky. The
friends who used to visit him frequently discussed politics and social issues
while we were running around them. The conversations we overheard was full of
stories about social injustices and discrimination, though we never grasped the
true sense of any of it until we became No one of us ever imagined that
our world filled with such a beauty and dreams was destined to shatter
into pieces.
Outside our small isolated world, the society
was engulfed in flames. The disillusioned less privileged youth in the Sinhala
dominated South, followed their brethren in the Tamil North by rising up in
arms against the state. Most of the frustrated social elements in the South of
the Island were again absorbed into the rank and file of the Peoples'
Liberation Front (JVP), who staged the first failed armed uprising the post
independent Sri Lanka in the '70s. JVP's ideology was mainly made up
with a mixture of distorted socialist slogans and militant Sinhala
nationalism. Even though the uprising reflected the increasing despair and
hopelessness that was dominant within the poverty stricken Sinhala rural youth
, the mode of the struggle took more the shape of a rightwing nationalist
upheaval than a progressive revolutionary resistance. The democratic thinking
leftwing activists in the South became the ultimate target of the JVP's
armed actions on the basis that such people were acting against the collective
rights of the majority Sinhala Buddhists in the country.
My father, being a staunch enemy of majoritarian
chauvinism, became increasingly critical towards the JVP's actions and
ideological positions without abandoning his criticism about the authoritarian
regime. He was considered as an outspoken critique of the mislead youth and
therefore became an open target of his enemies.
It was the 8th of November, 1988. Both I and my
sister were at the school boarding house, after spending our weekend with my
father as we used to do frequently. It never occurred to us that our lives were
about take the most terrible blow soon after that fateful weekend. Before
leaving the house hoping to go back to the school, we never dreamed that it
would be our final farewell to the man who taught us everything about life and
love.
On that fateful night, my father was brutally
murdered along with four other friends. An armed gang of the JVP, surrounded
our house before dragging everyone out to be shot in cold blood. Their bodies
were brutally mutilated and the house we grew up was burnt to the ground.
We never heard him crying in pain. We never saw
him in a pool of blood. We never even saw his mutilated body lying in a coffin.
Therefore I still remember him as he always wanted us to remember him: A
father with a heart filled with love for us and with unending passion for
justice - As a human being made out of love and courage.
Nothing less - nothing more!
Ruwandi Silva
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