Resurrection of Gamini Dissanayeke aka Greatest Spin by a rationalist?
Supem Tissera
‘I crucified Gamini Dissanayake’ - Carlo Fonseka
The following is an extract from the address delivered by Prof Carlo Fonseka at the launch of Edward Gunawardena’s book ‘Memorable Tidbits Including the Jaffna Library Fire’
Ladies and gentlemen, the striking front cover of Edward Gunawardena’s Memoir proclaims that among the tidbits of his memorable, eventful life of some seventy-eight years is the story of the Jaffna library fire. It seems to be that calling the Jaffna Library fire a tidbit is a bit like calling Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth the Second, ‘miss’.
Edward was our man on the spot and he was an eye witness to the event. His clear, authoritative, comprehensive account of the Jaffna Library Fire bearing the title ‘Who Burnt the Jaffna Library?’ occupies thirty seven pages of this 390 page book. It comprises chapter 11 of the book.
I now think that it was a period when time was out of joint and Edward Gunawardena had been sent to set the historical record right. It was my delusion that it was Minister Gamini Dissanayake who burned the Jaffna Library. I became guilty of an act which shall remain a permanent source of regret in my mind. I need to use this platform and try and make amends for the injustice I inflicted on Mr. Gamini Dissanayake. But before that, let me say a few words about the Memoir of Edward Gunawardena.
The facts of the life and birth of my distinguished, scholarly policeman friend are very engaging to the younger generation as far from the social history of our country of that period. His very readable memoirs, buy the copy and read it!
Edward is, I would say, an out and out Josephian having entered the baby class of St Joseph’s College in January 1939 and leaving in December 1952 to enter the Arts Faculty of the University of Peradeniya. I joined St Joseph’s in 1947 and got to know him well in [his second year of school]. Then in university, he read and excelled in science and geography and graduated with honors in 1957. He recounts with the commendable modesty how he was chosen to the Police Department and entered the police training school in 1958.
After a very fruitful, productive and distinguished service, he took early retirement as a Senior DIG in 1987. Along the way he went on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Michigan State University and earned the Master of Science degree in Criminal Justice. As most of us here know, Edward is a very literate man and very straightforward. In 2001, he published a sprawling novel called ‘Blood and Cyanide’ on the theme of a life in a bilingual, multi religious, multi-cultural society. The novel deserves to gain much better note. In my judgment Edward Gunawardena is the most literate police officer Sri Lanka ever had. His memoirs give a very liberal, educated, cosmopolitan man’s insightful views on the interesting times we have lived in.
LTTE masterminded
[But] let me come to the burning question in this book. My friend, author Dr Gunadasa Amarasekara really exhausted this subject and I have very little to add in way of providing details about it. Who burnt the Jaffna library? Edward has demonstrated beyond any matter of doubt that it was the LTTE that masterminded this crime against civilization. Why did he do that? Dr Amarasekara explained the doer’s motive but principally I think it was to prove to the world that the Sinhalese Buddhists are [bad] people. And the world believed the LTTE propaganda.
Not only the world, I too was one who believed that Mr Gamini Dissanayake was the villain. And during the 1994 presidential election campaign I crucified Mr Gamini Dissanayake for this crime which I believed he committed. After reading Edward’s account I now realize that I committed that [villainy] because I believed in the absurdity that it was Gamini Dissanayake who burnt the Jaffna Library or masterminded it. Let me spell out the way in which I came to excoriate Mr. Gamini Dissanayake on the election platform. In 1993, I read a poem on the burning of the Jaffna Library titled ‘Murder’. It was published in the Ceylon Medical Journal as a filler. I gathered that it was the English translation of a poem written by M.A . Nuhuman, who was a senior lecturer in Tamil in the University of Peradeniya. I was greatly moved and touched by the poem. Let me read it out to you.
Last night I had a dream
Lord Buddha was shot dead
By the Buddhists
Guardians of the …
His body lay drenched in blood
On the step of the Jaffna Library
Under the cover of darkness
Came the ministers
‘His name not in our list
Why did you kill him?’
They asked in anger
‘no sirs, no. there was no mistake.
Without bumping him off
It was impossible to harm even a fly.
Therefore …’
‘okay okay.
Hide the corpse’
And the ministers vanished
Then they dragged the corpse into the library
They keep the books
Rare and valuable
90000 in all
They lit the fire
With the Silagowadha Sutraya
Thus the remains of the compassionate one
Were burnt to ashes
Along with the Dhammapada
I’ll just say I was so moved by this that I immediately embarked upon translation to Sinhala. And then came the presidential election campaign of 1994. I was a prominent speaker on Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga’s platform. It occurred to me that I might put that poem into my election speech. I really believed that Gamini Dissanayake was responsible for this. At the end of the speech which lasted about 20 or 30 minutes, where I talked about the Dhushanaya and Bhishanaya I finally come to this poem.
The truth
Then I read my own part, “Mey maha ghathanayat sambadhan wu Gamini Dissanayake Mahatha mey ratey janadhipathi nowewa.” [Let not Mr Gamini Dissanayake, who is associated with this assassination be elected as President of this country].
I read that thirty times on platforms. It depresses me and I need to make amends. I thank you Edward for documenting the truth with your mastery of criminal justice. And now I, all I can do is to tell the Dissanayake family [I knew Gamini Dissanayake, he was very polite and courteous to me] that I wronged him because I didn’t know. All I can do now is make amends for the gross injustice I inflicted upon him. So I ask Mrs. Shrima Dissanayake, Naveen Dissanayake and Dr Lanka Dissanayake to forgive me.
If he so desires, Naveen Dissanayake can be like Jesus Christ and say, “Father, forgive him for he did not know what he was
doing.”
Arthur Arambepola
UNP ministers could never investigate and exonerate themselves owing
to the violence instigated by them in the five day period 31st May to
4th June 1981.
You can read the following web pages.
http://www.topssrilanka.com/article28415-jaffna-ddc-elections-in-1981-how-unp-rigged-voting-eye-witness-tells-llrc.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/101003/News/nws_13.html
http://transcurrents.com/news-views/archives/1041
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2010/08/01/an-eye-witness-account-of-the-day-when-the-jaffna-library-was-burnt/
Nissanka Rajapaksa
එම මහත්මයාත් ඇතුලත් පොලීසියට මෙම අපරාධය ගැන ලොකු චෝදනාවක් එල්ල වෙලා තිබියදී ඔවුන්ට එම චෝදනාවෙන් ගැලවීමට එදා එජාපය හෝ ඊටපසු බලයට ආ වෙනත් කිසිදු ආණ්ඩුවක් ඉඩ ලබා නොදීම ගැන එතුමා මෙතෙක්කල් වේදනාවෙන් ඇඹරි ඇඹරී ඉන්න ඇති. ඒ නිසා වලකජ්ජ ගහන්න කලින් මෙම රහස එලි කරලා තමාගේත් අනිකුත් ලොකු හා කුඩා හවුල්කාරයන්ගෙත් නිර්දෝශීභාවය හෙලි කරන්න තීරණය කරන්න ඇති.
Nissanka Rajapaksa
There was nothing spontaneous in that July pogrom against Tamil people. Hardly a fortnight before the pogrom, President Jayawardne was quoted by Ian Ward in the “London Daily Telegraph” of 11 July as saying, “… I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now… Now we cannot think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us… The more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here… really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy…”
After the pogrom that devastated the lives of many thousand Tamil people and the reputation of Sinhala Buddhists as compassionate and hospitable set of people, Gamini Dissanayake, Minister of Land and Land Development and also the President of the Lanka Jathika Estate
Workers’ Union, told its Ex-co on 05 September the same year, “….We have decided to colonise four districts including Mannar with Sinhalese people by destroying forests. A majority of Sinhalese will be settled there. If you like you also can migrate there.” [“Sri Lanka: the story of the holocaust.” N. Shanmugathasan. (1984). p.74]
This war by the Rajapaksas was ideologically and politically the continuation of President Jayawardne’s Sinhala supremacist approach to the Tamil political conflict.
Nissanka Rajapaksa
"The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, none of all thy piety or wit shall lure it back or cancel half a line. Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it "(Omar Khayyam)
Retired DIG Edward Gunewardene’s (EG) book ‘Memorable tidbits and the burning of the Jaffna library’, launched recently marks a chronic trend in autobiographies. It is a shock and awe WMD type attack on the sensibilities of the readers. It has speculative assertions unsupported by verifiable facts. It appears to be based on personal agendas, festering prejudice and conjecture. The author’s rank service in the SL Police acts as an impressive spring board from which to pounce on the credulity of readers. The result? His police colleagues especially and most citizens believe silence is golden – which is also a telling response.
People in SL from June 1981 believed with very good reason that the Jaffna library was burnt down either by the then UNP government supporters from Kurunegala in retribution for the killing of Tamil UNP candidates for the DDC elections or state security personnel for the killing of three policemen on 31 May 81. Significant parts of Jaffna town were torched but brought under control by the Army and the SL Navy. No one had said anything different ever since. Until EG did.
Former President Premadasa in 1991 famously accused two of his own ministers of the wanton act. He said "During the DDC elections (1981) some of our own party members took many people from other parts of the country North and created havoc and disrupted the elections in the North. It is the same group of people who are causing trouble now also. If you wish to find out… you have only to look at the faces opposing us" The Jaffna District Minister UB Wijekoon stated unambiguously that "the library was set on fire spontaneously and not pre- planned after several UNP candidates were shot and killed" (Sunday Times) . The Hartley College and Valvettithurai libraries were later burnt in 1984. (BBC report 2010). Minister Champika Ranawaka when visiting Jaffna (24 June 2010) said it was the work of ‘goondas’. He said ‘I have to apologize and beg pardon of the Tamil community’. President Rajapaksa is quoted as having said "The UNP is responsible for large scale riots and massacres against the Tamils in 1983, vote rigging at the DC elections and the burning of the Jaffna library".
Despite above EG has 31 years after remarkably concluded that it was a ‘diabolic perpetration’ of the LTTE. This must be based on pure speculation and no less diabolically.
According to EG (page 349) "The tactics the LTTE adopted to confront the police reached a crescendo on the night of June 1 (1981) … to give them the maximum propaganda. There was nothing else for the LTTE to destroy in Jaffna than the public library. To the world the Jaffna library was symbolic of Tamil Hindu culture…and the Vellala aristocracy. But the world knew little of the rigid caste structure that dominated the social fabric of Jaffna. It was certainly not an institution to be admired or venerated by non Vellala Tamils. What better target for destruction". Was he so advised by the non Vellala Tamils or is this purely vintage EG? Certainly none of his colleagues present there told him that.
EG now rivals Channel 4 for damaging reports on SL. Nothing could have been more appropriate to harm communal relationships, energize the GTF and convince the international community than this blatantly untrue story by a senior police officer who also had a stint in Police Intelligence. It kicks the eminence granted to the LLRC report in the teeth.
He had apparently sat on his theories for 31 years while SL was left to rot being called ‘barbarians’ for this and other apparently dastardly acts. Yet EG kept mum. Was this then a confession of professional negligence or culpability that he had hidden? What compelled him to maintain silence for so long and then shatter it with what has to be the somersault of the century?
Did he then report his ‘findings’ to the IGP? No. He knew personally at least one DIG who had gone directly to President JRJ bypassing his IGP before. That however turned out with the EQD’s help to be something more revealing or was it embarrassing? So why did he not do the same with this? It was surely information of great import that would have taken SL more quickly off the international pariah list.
EG did not even inform any of the later IGPs he served under about this ‘revelation’ either. Neither did he tell his buddy the next President, Premadasa, who gave him chairmanship of the Lotteries Board in retirement. Presidents DB Wijetunge, Chandrika BK or even the present President was not taken into his confidence. This alleged war crimes exploit of the LTTE was all stored for his ‘tidbits’.
Had EG died before he wrote his piece, this wondrous tale would never have surfaced. SL would have been deprived of his life’s most profound work, if it was not found reckless. His ‘exposure’ may if it is believed bring the police specially its special branches which had thought otherwise for the same length of time, contempt and ridicule as never ever before. It surely has not. Is it because it reflects only on the former DIG? His naivety is beyond belief. His credibility is questionable. He has like many politicians, mistakenly taken the people of SL to be unrivalled country bumpkins.
EG wants readers to believe that it was the LTTE that burnt down the 93,000 book Jaffna library. The same LTTE that the world was told was venerated as saviours by all but a few of the over 30 million Tamils of SL and India, that had fought with tremendous courage that drew admiration even from its foes and which finally died fighting to the last man. Would separatist insurgents anywhere and not just this ‘most formidable terrorist organization in the world’ (CIA) that fought even the Indian army to a standstill, burn down the very symbol and pride of their people on ‘caste’ grounds and still retain its support and image as a savior? EG must think it could.
EG turned up in Jaffna just a few days before both the fatal DDC elections and the ‘burning’ took place. What took EG there when the DIG Jaffna, the enormous and jovial ‘Brute’ Mahendran, a Tamil, had been in situ from 1980. A formidable UNP civilian strike force was also sent to Jaffna at the same time. Two or three cabinet Ministers too arrived. Their names are known. Were these arrivals a mere coincidence after the fact?
Could it have been because EG or someone else had a premonition of what the likely course of events in Jaffna would turn out to be? And is it an amazing coincidence that many of the police witnesses like Mahendran are dead? Not all of them though. The writer contacted some. What they said could make readers if not EG blush.
Of course there are Tamils who have their pet theories too .They say that the pogroms of 1977 and 1983 were led by the Sinhala elite! Does this ring a bell for EG when he recounts what happened in Jaffna in 1981? It was only after 1983 that the ranks of the LTTE swelled, when over 100,000 Tamils displaced from Colombo went to Jaffna and more to India. The taunts of Lokubandara MP later Speaker of the house ‘why don’t you go back to India"? were apparently echoed shamelessly by Neville Fernando MP and Chandrapala MP (all UNP). They may have made many people, and not only Tamils, squirm.
EG recklessly gambled with his professional background when he based his deductions merely on caste. There is just one small step from caste to the giant step of race.
What has EG to say of the Tamils whether Vellala or otherwise or even those opposed to the LTTE who up to now have never blamed anyone but the Sinhalese for the ‘burnings’ not only of the library? Could it be that while Sinhala mobs rampaged without let or hindrance from the security, an incipient insurgent movement aided them?
Sadly he did not tell his (Peradeniya?) University batch mates Prof. Carlo Fonseka and Prof Gunadasa Amarasekera who were his honoured guests about it either for the same 31 years. Instead he called them for the book launch and kept mum until he sprang like a tiger. Or so we are led to believe. What was their response?
With possibly a shout of ‘eureka’ Carlo announced his mea culpa! Carlo admitted he had for 31 years been spreading nasty canards about Gamini Dissanayake‘s involvement in the burning. What was Carlo’s job that made him employ himself so diligently for nearly a half a life time to spread what he now admits were false rumours? O tempora! O mores!
Interestingly an assembly line of memoirs of retired SL service officers appears to be rolling out. Since dead men tell no tales, facts have been scattered with rare abandon to the winds. O Sri Lanka I weep for thee.
If this trend in memoirs continues, SL will very soon take an unsurpassable lead in the world in fairy tales of conflict resolution.
‘What in the name of God is this fellow doing with Napoleon’s b…s" (‘Wellington’ in ‘Black Adder’)
Nissanka Rajapaksa
Burning Of The Jaffna Public Library: Whodunit?
By Tassie Seneviratne -
Who burnt the Jaffna Public Library (JPL)? This has been a vexed question ever since this most unfortunate incident took place on that fateful night of May 31-June 1, 1981, exactly 33 years ago.
Tassie Seneviratne
Different versions have been put forward and various academics and ‘righteous’ persons have been accepting versions they were gullible enough to accept or believe what they preferred to believe for questionable reasons. I am urged by a sense of duty to my country to make known what I have come to know in this regard as misleading reports have been coming up of late.
How I came to know what I know is like the question and answer in the famous nursery rhyme:
“Who killed Cock Robin?”
“I,” said the sparrow, “with my bow and arrow”.
It was a police sergeant who was attached to the Jaffna Police Station who told me that he poured petrol from a barrel and ignited the fire with a match stick at the Jaffna Public Library. This Police Sergeant who had worked with me in Colombo earlier, kept in touch with me thereafter. Long after the fateful incident, he found it hard to contain this act on his part within himself, and realising that he was misguided, became quite remorseful and confided in me. More recently I came to know that he had confessed it to another Senior Police Officer (who retired in the rank of DIG) with whom we had mutual ties. I did not press the Sergeant to tell me who else was behind it. It was a well-known and accepted fact that some Government Ministers and Senior Police Officers, sent for election work, were behind the mayhem that was created during the Jaffna District Development Council elections when the burning of the JPL took place.
Now a new dimension has been brought in to the issue of the burning of the JPL in a much belated ‘Intelligence report,’ that has been gobbled down by interested parties to suit their own agendas. According to the intelligence report of Retired Senior DIG Edward Gunawardena, the burning of the JPL was the work of theLTTE with a view to implicate the Sinhala people and win the sympathy of the international community. This is the first time such a report has been put forward, and that too by a person, who on his own admission, had been accused of complicity in the arson.
Did not these academics of the likes of Dr. Carlo Fonseka and Gunadasa Amarasekara consider the principle of ‘conflict of interests’ – when a report comes from an interested party? Are they now trying to pursue a line different to what their earlier motives suggested? So fickle even academics and ‘righteous’ people can be! The danger is that they mislead the people with their sanctimonious talk. My Police mind makes me even wonder if this ‘intelligence report’ is not conducted after the act!! The importance of the JPL to the Tamil people would only have struck academic minds. The thought of destroying it would have been conceived only by sick academic minds.
Furthermore, will the Tigers, given that they were the most inhuman murderers of all communities including Tamils, fighting for Tamil Elam, destroy the strongest and most precious cultural possession of the Tamil people — the records of the very cultural claims they were making? Inconceivable by any stretch of imagination!!
*The writer is a retired Senior Superintendent of Police