The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 9 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part9.

htm

The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon

Part 9

Sachi Sri Kantha

[4 July 2001]

Four Musketeers of the UNP

Minister Wijeratne’s assassination and Rashomon theme
In his eulogy to Minister Ranjan Wijeratne, Mervyn de Silva subtly
informed the readers about the conflicts involving the personalities
who occupied the higher ranks of power pedestal in Colombo in
1991. Of course, he was experienced enough not to name the then
President Premadasa and his accomplices. Being a movie critic during
the early phase of his journalistic career, Mervyn de Silva rather
alluded to Kurosawa’s Rashomon theme, on the difficulty in
extricating truth of a dramatic event. In his words,
“a dramatic event as perceived by four persons; different
versions of the same reality, though only a single, shocking and
gruesome incident. Each person sticks to his/her story faithfully,
convinced that it is the whole truth, the only possible. Each is
plausible and quite convincing. And yet each is somehow
‘coloured’, unconsciously distorted by the ‘mind’ rather than
the eye that sees.” [Lanka Guardian, March 15, 1991, pp.6-7]
Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), the acclaimed Japanese movie director,
linked two short stories Rashomon (Rashomon gate) and Yabu no
Naka (In a Grove) written by author Ryunosuke Akutagawa to create
his Rashomon movie. His movie-script tells about a rape in a forest
and a subsequent murder of raped woman’s husband, from multiple
angles of participants and witness.
For the benefit of readers, who may be unfamiliar with the Rashomon
theme, I briefly paraphrase the plot of this Japanese masterpiece from
Donald Richie’s The Films of Akira Kurosawa [1970, 2nd edition,
pp.70-80].
First, a woodcutter tells how he went into the forest and found
some items belonging to the woman and went to the police.
There, he tells how he found the body. Then a priest presents
his testimony about how he saw the murdered man Takehiko

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and his wife before the tragic events. Then, the policeman tells
how he captured the bandit who committed the crime.
Policeman’s testimony was interrupted by the bandit Tajomaru
who tells his participant version of the crime. Then, the woman
victim who was raped tells her version. This was followed by the
woman’s murdered husband who presents his version through
the lips of a ‘medium’. Finally, the woodcutter revises his first
testimony, which he says needs correction.
According to the bandit (accused), he first raped the woman in
front of her husband and when he was about to leave the scene,
the woman stopped him and demanded a duel between him and
her husband. In that duel, he killed the husband and the rape
victim ran away.
According to the woman victim, when the bandit left her after
the rape, her husband spurned her because she lost her purity.
Then, in a spurt of grief, she killed her husband and ran away.
According to the woman’s husband, after the rape, his wife
agreed to leave with the bandit, but insisted that bandit should
kill her husband first. After the bandit left the scene in anger, he
committed suicide - being shamed by his wife’s behavior.
According to the woodcutter, once the rape was done, bandit was
pleading with the woman to join him. She said that only men can
decide and she cannot decide what to do. Her husband and bandit
then had a duel and bandit killed the husband. Then, the woman ran
away.
My comment on Mervyn de Silva’s eulogy
Mervyn de Silva in his eulogy had mentioned that Rashomon was
Kurosawa’s first movie, which was factually incorrect. I wished to
correct this error and I also wanted to bring to his attention some
facets of bandit Tajomaru’s logic, as presented by Akutagawa, the
original author of the two stories. Thus, I sent the following letter
dated March 31, 1991, to the Lanka Guardian.
“Akira Kurosawa’s first directorial venture was not Rashomon,
as stated by columnist Kautilya in his eulogy to Minister Ranjan
Wijeratne. In 1943, Kurosawa made his movie directorial debut
with a film titled, Sugata Sanshiro, about a judo master. His
first popular movie Yoidore Tenshi (Drunken Angel), starring
Toshiro Mifune as a sick gangster, was released in 1948.
Rashomon was released in 1950. It did introduce Kurosawa and
the Japanese cinema to the Western audiences. But giving undue
credit to Kurosawa for the Rashomon theme is like asserting that
Cecil B de Mille authored the Bible. The Rashomon movie was

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based on two short stories (Yabu no Naka and Rashomon)

authored by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), who
committed suicide at the age of 35 years. Akutagawa adopted
these two short stories from the tales of the 11th century
Japanese anthology, Konjaku Monogatari. So much for the
origin of Rashomon.
Columnist Kautilya, in reminiscing on Rashomon to impress his
readers, subtly implies that Minister Ranjan Wijeratne is the
samurai Takehiko [the murdered person in the movie]. And with
extensive citations from the Indian newspapers Hindu and
Dinamani, who have their own axes to grind, Kautilya also
focuses on the LTTE as the robber Tajomaru (presumed villain
of the Rashomon story). One can be surprised by the fact that
author Akutagawa’s portrayal of robber Tajomaru resembles the
logic presented by the LTTE for their past killings:
‘To me killing isn’t a matter of such great consequence as you
might think... Am I the only one who kills people? You, you
don’t use your swords. You kill people with your power, with
your money. Sometimes you kill them on the pretext of working
for their good. It’s true they don’t bleed. They are in the best of
health, but all the same you’ve killed them. It’s hard to say who
is a greater sinner, you or me...’ confesses Tajomaru in his
defence, to the High Police Commissioner. Did Kautilya notice
this sequence perceptively in this movie?...”
Once more, Mervyn de Silva (using his wisdom) preferred not to
publish this letter in the Lanka Guardian in 1991. Thus, it failed to
join the ranks of 43 of my other letters he published in his news
magazine between 1981 and 1996. I should add that among the 43
letters, three specifically dealt with Pirabhakaran.

Four Musketeers of UNP

A retrospective look from late 1988 to October 1994 reveals the
power struggle which depleted the front-line positioned four
musketeers of the post-Jayewardene phase of UNP. First, Premadasa
and Wijeratne joined hands to prevent Athulathmudali and
Dissanayake reaching the presidency sweepstakes. Secondly,
Wijeratne having gained stature as the JVP-smasher staked claim to
Premadasa’s throne. Miracle or not, Wijeratne was assassinated in a
car bomb blast in March 1991. Thirdly, sensing that Premadasa had
become a lone wolf, Athulathmudali and Dissanayake pounced on
him through a parliamentary plot. Fourthly, Premadasa with

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street-smart toughness evicted both of them from the party. Fifthly,

Premadasa had a quick draw on Athulathmudali. Sixthly, Premadasa
followed the path of two of his tormentors - Wijeratne and
Athulathmudali. Finally, Dissanayake as a lone wolf, while perfecting
his throne-capturing act, paid for his sins. All four of them fell for
their Himalayan-sized avarice one by one.
The official versions, though challenged by accumulated evidences,
implicate LTTE in the assassinations of all four musketeers of UNP.
This is simple and convenient for many Sinhalese to believe and
painless for the politically-corrupt Sri Lankan law enforcement
agencies to peddle. However, ardent supporters of these four UNP
musketeers (which include the immediate family members of the
deceased) have expressed reservations on the official versions peddled
by the Sri Lankan media.
While not negating the fact that Wijeratne and Premadasa (being the
de facto and de jure Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan army,
during 1991-93) would have been legitimate military targets of LTTE,
one should note that from January 1991 to May 1993, the
relationships among the four UNP musketeers were not cordial.
Though Athulathmudali and Dissanayake presented a veneer of
cordiality to the public after their expulsion from the UNP by
Premadasa, their unity was bonded only by their mutual hatred of the
man from Kehelwatte. Even when they formed the new breakaway
party (DUNF), they were bickering on who would be the prime leader
of that splinter party. Their co-leadership ploy resembled the farce of
two persons trying to sit in one toilet seat at the same time.
Following the departures of Athulathmudali and Premadasa, the last
man standing turned out to be Dissanayake. The DUNF party he
co-founded with Athulathmudali split into two factions, one led by
Athulathmudali’s widow Srimani and the other led by Dissanayake.
Subsequently, Dissanayake returned to the UNP through the
connivance of Premadasa’s successor D.B.Wijetunge, and elevated
himself to the ranks of UNP’s presidential candidate - merely 18
months following Premadasa’s assassination.
Probability Analysis on the Beneficiaries of Four Assassinations
I present below the probability analysis on the beneficiaries of the
assassinations of UNP’s four musketeers, which occurred between
March 1991 and October 1994.
(1) Minister Ranjan Wijeratne
Date of assassination: March 2, 1991
Place of assassination: Colombo

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Immediate beneficiary of assassination: R.Premadasa (the

President of Sri Lanka)
Level of antagonism shown by beneficiary to victim: high
Beneficiary’s accessibility to area of strike: convenient
Method of assassination: explosive bomb in car
Accessibility of assassination material to beneficiary: easy
Assassin’s availability to beneficiary: easy
Beneficiary’s relationship to LTTE: had become
confrontational since mid-1990.
(2) UNP-breakaway party’s co-leader Lalith Athulathmudali
Date of assassination: April 23, 1993
Place of assassination: Colombo
Immediate beneficiaries of assassination: R.Premadasa (the
President of Sri Lanka) and probably Gamini
Dissanayake (co-leader of the UNP-breakaway party)
Level of antagonism shown by the main beneficiary to victim:
high
Beneficiary’s accessibility to area of strike: convenient
Method of assassination: shooting by gun
Accessibility of assassination material to beneficiary: easy
Assassin’s availability to beneficiary: easy
Beneficiary’s relationship to LTTE: had become
confrontational since mid-1990.
(3) President Ranasinghe Premadasa
Date of assassination: May 1, 1993
Place of assassination: Colombo
Immediate beneficiaries of assassination: Gamini Dissanayake
(main leader of UNP’s breakaway party) and
India’s policy mandarins
Level of antagonism shown by beneficiaries to victim: high
Beneficiary’s accessibility to area of strike: convenient
Method of assassination: suicide bombing
Assassin’s availability to beneficiary: not easy, but available at
a price

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Beneficiary’s relationship to LTTE: had become

confrontational since 1987.
(4) UNP’s Presidential candidate, Gamini Dissanayake
Date of assassination: October 24, 1994
Place of assassination: Colombo
Immediate beneficiary of assassination: Chandrika
Kumaratunga (prime minister of Sri Lanka)
Level of antagonism shown by beneficiary to victim: high
Beneficiary’s accessibility to area of strike: convenient
Method of assassination: suicide bombing
Assassin’s availability to beneficiary: not easy, but available at
a price
Beneficiary’s relationship to LTTE: cordial at the time of
assassination

Political Assassinations
Anti-LTTE propagandists like Rohan Gunaratna repeat ad nauseam
that LTTE is the only organization to assassinate the heads of state
belonging to two countries. The manner in which the investigations
on the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi and Premadasa progressed
during 1991-94, prompted me to write the following letter to the
Tamil Times, in which I commented on the then prevailing situation.
Excerpts:
“Political assassinations and what follows when an associate of
the assassinated leader ascends to the power has remained
predictable since the times of Julius Caesar. Bertrand Russell, in
his classic work, Power (1938) wrote,
‘A politician, if he is to succeed, must be able to win the
confidence of his machine, and then to arouse some degree of
enthusiasm in a majority of the electorate. The qualities
required for these two stages on the road to power are by no
means identical, and many men possess the one without the
other’.
According to this principle, the associate of an assassinated
leader is placed in a precarious position, if he is not photogenic
or does not possess mass appeal. So, he will do everything not
to revive the memories of his assassinated colleague. Lyndon
Johnson ascended to the power following John F.Kennedy’s

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assassination in 1963. Hosni Mubarak became the leader of

Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.Narasimha
Rao was lucky to become the prime minister due to the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Similarly, D.B.Wijetunge owes
his position as the President to the assassins of R.Premadasa.
One can see parallels in the styles of how Johnson, Mubarak,
Rao and Wijetunge have behaved in ‘solving the problem’ of the
assassinations of their immediate predecessors. Johnson and
Mubarak rushed to deliver the ‘verdict’ and tried their best to
erase the public memories of their assassinated predecessors,
though it is questionable how much they succeeded in this
venture. Still doubts remain about who assassinated Kennedy
and Sadat, and for what reasons. Rao and Wijetunge worked in
the opposite direction to that of Johnson and Mubarak. But their
motives remained the same. They are least interested in finding
an answer to the assassination, which brought them to the
pinnacle of power.
Politicians who step into the shoes of their assassinated
predecessors do not gain much by reviving the memories of their
deceased seniors. An exception to this rule of thumb occurs
when the new leader is a family member of the deceased leader.
Thus the ‘chapters’ on the murders of S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike
and Rajiv Gandhi were closed in quickest possible time, because
Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Rajiv Gandhi who followed them
respectively were related to the deceased leaders...” [Tamil
Times, December 1994]
All told, once the victim’s funeral and the formal mourning phase is
passed, the beneficiaries count their blessings and carry on with their
careers rather than trying to find out who committed the
assassination. Premadasa (if he was not the culprit, as pointed out by
Rajiv Sharma: see, The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon - part 8) was not
bothered in finding out who killed Wijeratne. Premadasa’s successor
Wijetunge was not keen in finding out who killed his predecessor,
since he was competing with the ‘populist image’ of his predecessor.
Dissanayake was not that interested in finding out who killed his
colleague Athulathmudali, since it did not serve much for his own
political ascendancy. Finally, Chandrika Kumaratunga has not
bothered about finding out who killed Dissanayake, because she was
the immediate beneficiary of that assassination.
President Premadasa’s assassination
(as viewed by the New York Times)
President Premadasa was the second Sri Lankan head of state to be
assassinated, the first one being padre Bandaranaike. Few days later,

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the New York Times editorially commented on Premadasa’s

assassination; rather than paying the usual eulogy to the fallen head
of state, the editorialist wrote a sobering reflection on why the
assassination could not be averted. Moreover, the editorial also linked
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s dubious contribution to the nation-building
process and its repercussions to the Sinhala-Tamil unity.
What is striking for me in this editorial was the emphasis on the ‘why’
component of the assassination and not on ‘who’ did it. There was
not a single sentence of praise for Premadasa. I reproduce this New
York Times editorial of 20 sentences in entirety, though the first 16
sentences provide a capsule summary of events of the post-1956
period, known to all Eelam Tamils. But, this editorial was written
mainly to an American audience (non-Tamils) who had to be
appraised on the background to the ‘why’ component of Premadasa’s
assassination.
The Tragedy of Sri Lanka
“When Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, it was called
Ceylon and seemed to have it all: reasonable prosperity, a stable
parliamentary system, habits of nonviolence and a landscape of
bewitching beauty.
Now Sri Lanka, its official name since 1972, is synonymous with
strife and tragedy. Last Saturday its president and two dozen
others were blown to bits by a suicide bomber. This followed
the murder of the president’s chief rival and leader of the
opposition. The cycle of retribution seems certain to continue.
How did things go so horribly wrong? Sri Lanka’s story says a
good deal about the unintended consequences of rooting politics
in religion an ethnicity. It starts with the election victory in 1956
of the Oxford-educated Solomon Bandaranaike, a year that also
marked the 2,500th anniversary of Buddha’s attainment of
Nirvana. Capitalizing on religious fervor, the prime minister
made Buddhism the favored religion and decreed that Sinhalese,
spoken by Buddhists, was henceforth the sole official language.
This angered a minority a mainly Hindu Tamils, who saw
themselves at a permanent disadvantage since they spoke a
wholly different language than the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese.
So Bandaranaike temporized, and suggested allowing
‘reasonable use’ of Tamils. Communal riots erupted, and the
well-meaning prime minister was murdered in 1959 by a
Buddhist fanatic. In due course there followed a full-scale civil
war as an extremist Tamil faction clamored for a separate state
and found support in India, with its 50 million Tamils, just

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across the strait.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi saw a chance in 1987 to placate
Indian Tamils and win points as a peacemaker in Sri Lanka. He
dispatched 50,000 troops to Tamil strongholds on the island as
part of a peace accord signed in Colombo. But India’s
sometimes brutal soldiers were unable to disarm Tamil militants,
and in 1991 Gandhi himself was assassinated, almost certainly
by a Tamil extremist.
The lesson is sobering. When an ethnic majority diminishes the
citizenship rights of a well-established minority, even an idyllic
island can plunge into a bloodbath. It is an open question
whether Sri Lankans can ever recover what has been lost. But
there is time for other countries to ponder Sri Lanka’s tragic
experience.” [New York Times, May 5, 1993]
It is an irony that even in death, Premadasa (though being the Sri
Lankan head of state, at the time of his death) was not recognized by
name by the New York Times; however, the two who predeceased
him in a violent fashion (padre Bandaranaike and Rajiv Gandhi)
received mention by name in the editorial.
The following assertions in this editorial needs reiteration. First, it
acknowledges the ‘full-scale civil war’ in Sri Lanka in which ‘an
extremist Tamil faction’ [LTTE] was ‘clamoring for a separate state’.
Secondly, the sobering lesson for other countries from Sri Lanka’s
predicament is that ‘when an ethnic majority diminishes the
citizenship rights of a well-established minority’, assassinations are
bound to happen. Thirdly, ‘whether Sri Lankans can ever recover
what has been lost’ is an open question. These three assertions
acknowledge the role played by Pirabhakaran and his army in turning
Sri Lanka into a moribund state.
Why I stress these assertions is to rebut the propaganda of Minister
Kadirgamar, his cronies, Sinhalese commentators and Indian policy
mandarins that Pirabhakaran is only a ‘terrorist’ and nothing else.
Here is a recent sample of this propaganda.
Colombo’s pro-war newspaper The Island carried a bizarre editorial
‘Why only McVeigh?’ last May, prior to the execution of Timothy
McVeigh’s death penalty. It took to task the US Secretary of State
Colin Powell as follows:
“...It was only the other day that US Secretary of State Colin
Powell urged Sri Lanka and the LTTE to negotiate and evolve a
solution to the northern conflict. While a negotiated settlement
of the conflict is the best, if possible, the question is whether
such exhortations by powerful nations do not smack of double

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standards. For, they themselves do not hesitate to deal with

those who unleash violence against the state and civilians in the
most stringent manner, while preaching to others on virtues of
negotiating.
Take for example, McVeigh. He was thrown in prison and
condemned to die by lethal injection. The US law took its due
course against him and the American public are demanding that
he be executed - the first federal execution in 38 years. While
this treatment is meted out to McVeigh, Sri Lanka is urged to
talk to the LTTE, whose leader Prabhakaran, is responsible for
dozens of blasts and hundreds of massacres in comparison to
which McVeigh’s crime might fade into insignificance...”
[Island-Colombo, May 13, 2001]
Pirabhakaran is not a McVeigh but a military leader
The first rule in scientific analysis states ‘Before correlation, balance
the units of items to be compared to a common denominator’. This is
taught to children at the secondary school level. Simply put, one
cannot mix either kilogram and milligram or kilometers and miles. If
done, the outcome will be laughed at. Sometimes even rocket
scientists lose their reputations for disobeying this rule as
demonstrated a few years ago, when the collaborating groups of a
space probe experiment on either side of the Atlantic, used kilometers
and miles interchangeably in their calculations and ended up with pie
in their faces. Sri Lanka’s science-challenged journalists are oblivious
to this first rule in scientific analysis, since they thrive in obfuscation.
By comparing the crime of Timothy McVeigh (1968-2001) and the
war-related operations carried out by Pirabhakaran’s army, the
editorialist of the Island revealed his ignorance in American law and
especially the McVeigh case. McVeigh in his deposition had stated
that he was the sole perpetrator of 1995 bomb blast of Oklahoma’s
Federal Building. In the first instance, he never had an ‘army’ to lead.
Secondly, for more than ten years the turmoil in Sri Lanka has been
recognized in international circles as a civil war, and Pirabhakaran
leads one of the warring factions of this civil war. One can be relieved
by the prevailing circumstance that the current US secretary of state
Colin Powell has a military background and is not an ignoramus like
the editorialist of the Island newspaper.

What is a civil war and how it differs from terrorism?

The lackluster UNP leader Dingiri Banda Wijetunge, who followed
Premadasa for the presidency in 1993 was the ignoramus who became

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a laughing stock by equating LTTE’s military manoeuvers in a civil

war against the Sri Lankan army as ‘terrorism’. Here is a recent
commentary on that episode, as presented by an anonymous
correspondent to the same Island newspaper.
“ ‘We do not have an ethnic problem, we have a terrorist
problem’ was how a certain former president of this country
characterized our situation. The same person, visiting Paris for
an Aid Consortium meeting responded harshly to a European
foreign ministry official, who inquired about the human rights
situation in the country with the following words: ‘What human
rights problem? We do not have any human rights problem.’
The diplomat had been aghast. He had been taken aback by the
man’s tone and all he had to say later was: ‘May God help you
if these are your leaders,’ “ [Island - Colombo, March 4, 2001]
I’m of the view that one should not assess harshly D.B.Wijetunge (a
man with a limited world-view), when even more literate politicians
like Minister Kadirgamar who routinely romps the world for podium
limelight, peddle the same view unabashedly. Thus it is pertinent to
present what are the criteria used to categorize a civil war and how a
civil war is differentiated from terrorism.
I’m more than happy to refer readers to an excellent retrospective
study by Roy Licklider, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers
University, which appeared in the American Political Science
Review journal of September 1995. The title of his paper was, ‘The
consequences of negotiated settlements in civil wars, 1945-1993’, in
which he has included Sri Lankan case also as one of his study
samples. Licklider has defined a civil war as ‘any conflict that satisfies
all of the three following criteria.
1. Some influential leaders must be concerned about possibly
having to live in the same political unit with their current
enemies after the killing stops. This concern must be important
enough to influence the kind of settlement they are prepared to
accept.
2. There must be multiple sovereignty, defined by Charles Tilly
as the population of an area obeying more than one institution.
‘They pay taxes (to the opposition), provide men to its armies,
feed its functionaries, honor its symbols, give time to its service,
or yield other resources despite the prohibitions of a still-
existing government they formerly obeyed’ (Tilly, 1978). This
criterion differentiates civil wars from other types of domestic
violence, such as street crime and riots, in which there is no
centralized control of the opposition. To distinguish civil wars

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from colonial wars, each side must have significant number of

troops made up of local residents.
3. A civil war, by our definition, involves large-scale violence,
killing people. I used the operational definitions of the
Correlates of War project: (a) 1,000 battle deaths or more per
year and (b) effective resistance, that is, at least two sides must
have been organized for violent conflict before the war started
or else the weaker side must have imposed casualties on its
opponent equal to at least 5% of its own (to distinguish between
civil wars and political massacres).
[American Political Science Review, Sept.1995, vol.89, no.3,
pp.681-690]
However unpleasant it has to be to his adversaries, by Prof. Roy
Licklider’s three stipulated criteria for a civil war, Pirabhakaran can
only be categorized as a civil war leader and not as a ‘terrorist’. Let
me recapitulate. He has organized an army. He has a population
behind him which provide men (and women) to his army and honor
the symbols of his military unit. Importantly, the population of the
area where Pirabhakaran commands support, ‘give time to it’s [his
army’s] service, or yield other resources despite the prohibitions of a
still existing government they formerly obeyed’. Also, Pirabhakaran’s
army has ‘significant number of troops made up of local residents’.
Sri Lankan army has been accused of using hired mercenaries. But
Pirabhakaran’s army is made up of local residents.
Next, I wish to focus on when Pirabhakaran’s army transformed into
one of the warring parties in the Sri Lankan civil war. This is because,
there is some confusion on this issue about the date of transformation
in the published literature. [Continued]

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