Please let them go! (An appeal for the release of Premakumar Gunarathnam and Dimuthu Atigala)

Sri Lanka's political craze is incomprehensible.

Now, the de facto leader of Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) leader Premakumar Gunarathnam and FSP senior cadre Dimuthu Atigala have disappeared.

Premakumar lived an illegal life without any clear reason as an internal leader of the People's Liberation Front (JVP) for at least 16 years.

He was not in any legal document of the party although he was one of the senior most leaders. But he lived a normal life with his wife who was a doctor being a loving father to his two kids who educated in elite schools in Colombo. Later, they migrated to Australia apparently for a better life.

Premakumar could be made a popular JVP leader and his Tamil name also could be marketed well in the JVP's Sinhala chauvinist politics that went in the guise of socialism.

But JVP hierarchy did not do that and Premakumar also appeared lacking interest in that regard.

FSP spokesman Senadheera Gunathilaka a.k.a. Comrade Opatha is also a similar guy. Both were powerful internal leaders who had their bandwagon. They marketed their elusive characteristic as revolutionary nature of the party. JVP hierarchy exploited the labor of the honest and energetic lower strata cadres marketing these duo as revolutionary symbols of the party and they also were well aware of the party tactic.

After the split, JVP betrayed them and Premakumar who used forged identity was the direct victim. There was no any charge against Opatha. Premakumar had come to Sri Lanka from Australia on the request of his followers and he was unable to return since his forged identity was betrayed by the JVP.

His wife came to meet him, perhaps since the kid/s direly needed to see him. She was followed by intelligence from airport to airport and finally held her there for questioning as she was about to leave.

Premakumar lived under cover in fear of threats to his life, as FSP says. But it is clear that the FSP also has not taken his security serious. The middle aged leaders of FSP have all crawled into their family homes leaving behind  this helpless lone man to stay in the night alone in a lonely house.

Duminda Nagamuwa accompanied Dimuthu Atigala to Thalawathugoda and let the woman to take a night bus alone to go to Godagama. I have questions regarding these acts.

Finally, both Dimuthu and Premakumar disappeared.

JVP betrayed Premakumar. Perhaps the JVP wants to see the death of Premakumar who they have labelled as a traitor.

I can't understand why the government want to kill this man who is not linked to any type of subversive act in the recent past, as I perceive.

But a similar line of people from Prageeth Ekneligoda disappeared leaving mysteries behind as the causes of their deaths.

I beg from the armed powers that abducted Premakumar and Dimuthu to spare them, drop them somewhere and let them go to the FSP conference on April 09 unless they are produced in court.

I don't think there is big conspiracy behind this FEP issue. They are a bunch of middle aged, middle class family men who appear to contemplate the wrongs they did to this country through their narrow political strategies . They may have beautiful ideas today but I don't think the generation will recover from the blood politics of chauvinism they were engaged in the first decade of the new millennium.

If someone wants to take lives of Premakumar and Dimuthu, they may be in want of revival of violence and terrorism in this country which will not bring any good at all.

Please let them go!

-Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe

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