My incarceration and the aftermath

"Three years ago, on January 8, 2005, the writer and his colleague were taken captive by the LTTE. The writer Jayadevan was held in captivity in the Vanni for 62 days and his colleague for 42 days. On the third anniversary of the incident, Jayadevan relates his experiences and opinion."

by Rajasingham Jayadevan

(January, 15, London, Sri Lanka Guardian)Three years have gone fast since my incarceration by the LTTE in Vanni in 2005. My colleague A.K. Vivekananthan and I were taken into captivity on January 8, 2005 and both were held for 42 days and 62 days respectively. We consider our experience prior to, during and post our captivity as exceptional experience. We are better positioned to understand the issues despite facing the wrath of the LTTE machinery for our determined and outspoken stand to reflect the evilness of our so-called national liberation struggle to the open world.

My adverse experience with the LTTE prior to my captivity involved a campaign of personal vendetta of certain individuals against me. Though I encountered difficulties with the petty parochial mindsets (including late Anton Balasingam) in the UK, I confronted them all as local issues. The LTTE benefited from my overt practical support to them, which I provided on my own right over a period of time. I also had to encounter unimaginable difficulties for taking this stand which I did with sincere intent.

Our incarceration gave us the much needed personal understanding of the psyche of the nerve centre of the LTTE and also opened our eyes about the predicament faced by the people living in the Vanni enclave. For me, people come before any sympathy for controlling parties. As such, I saw a regimental regime knuckling our people in Vanni like abject creatures. My regular visits to Sri Lanka between 2004 and 2006 further enforced my conviction to find ways to release our people from the clutches of the evilness that is pervading Sri Lanka.

What I saw during my captivity in the Vanni was generations of Tamils struggling to live amidst the two brutal military machineries and they have lost their willpower and are living in servility. Whenever we had the opportunity to see the civilian population, we were able to understand their facial expressions which told us of the pain and suffering enthralled on them. There were occasions when we heard some utterances, which poignantly revealed this sentiment. We were saddened to see the plight of the LTTE cadres too. They too are humans and they are entangled in the murky situation created for the Tamils and they must be considered as victims of the tragedy that has been conferred upon the Tamil people.

On my return from captivity, when I attempted to reflect my experience in Vanni to the wider world, I encountered the wrath of the LTTE apologists in the Tamil Diaspora. I was subject to most humiliating and threatening campaign for being honest in what I had to tell. Vituperation, vulgarity and contempt were the dictates of these so-called liberators who went on the spree to reflect their venom and hate to subjugate me. Even my family members were not spared. I consider the experience post release from captivity was worse than my experience in captivity in the Vanni.

I have seen many of my friends succumbing to such campaigns in the past and deciding to take a back seat from engaging in politics. Having gone through the harrowing experience in my life on many occasions; I decided not to give in to the campaign of blackmail, threats and intimidation of the conditioned mindsets. I thought it would be a failure on my part to succumb to their pressures. In the society, where death is the ultimate and easy penalty meted to silence the willpower of persons, death threats came to me to silence my voice. I always recall my father’s teachings about death which always guided me to stand up during most difficult times.

He taught ‘death is an inevitable event and one must not live thinking of death all the time. Such people are comparable to the dead’. His valuable teaching comes from ‘Thirumanthiram’ of Thirumoolar - a brief of the tantras in Tamil. I feel my experience is reflection of the tragedy Sri Lanka is facing and part of the tragedies many people have experienced and are even now experiencing. Tragedies have become part of our lives and even though we live miles away escaping from the real violence facing our people, our sufferings are bonded by our birth in that country and by our distinct identities originating from there.

Three years after, where Sri Lanka is heading?

Within the past three years we have seen rapid change of attitude of the international community towards Sri Lanka. When rampant killings and colossal destructions took place in the past two and a half decades, the international community displayed very little interest in Sri Lanka. Mere condemnations and public statements of the Human Rights NGO’s were the only source of solace for the victims of the brutal war that has destroyed the fabric of peace and tranquillity that prevailed in the island nation. We must give all the credit to former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for taking the bold step to sign a peace accord with the LTTE. This peace accord was the foundation for exposing the failures of the warring parties in Sri Lanka. With my interactive engagement in politics, I will say a golden opportunity has been missed by not electing Ranil as the President of Sri Lanka at the last Presidential election. He had the conviction and a track record to proceed through a peaceful process to end the conflict in Sri Lanka permanently.

The LTTE must be fairly and squarely blamed for not allowing the Tamil voters to vote in the Presidential election and thus permitting the hard-line and visionless Sinhala nationalist Mahinda Rajapaksa to be become the President. The LTTE saw the election of Ranil as an international conspiracy to undermine them. The LTTE did not have the political foresight, when it crossed the bounds to prevent people from voting. The LTTE’s present predicament is the result of this idiotic behaviour and it is another historical blunder.

International human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch (HRW) must be praised for taking a firm stand against the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka. The HRW made a genuine effort to engage with the Tamil Diaspora and produced an exceptional report with hard evidence about Tamils being coerced to fund the LTTE war in Sri Lanka.

The HRW came under scandalous campaign of the LTTE, but their report opened the eyes of the international governments. The response from the governments was very blunt and the LTTE had to eat sour grapes and their activities were significantly curtailed in the Diaspora as a result. The LTTE will find it very hard to redeem itself to its previous position in the Tamil Diaspora as the Tamil opinion is turning against it in fast progression.
The hard-line Mahinda government, without realising the feelings of the international community and the Tamil people, is extending the decades old suppressive policy against the minorities. A weak government which is dependent on the support of the extreme sentiments in parliament is taking the country on the path to anarchy. When world opinion is heavily demanding a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the government is vehemently opposing any move to neutralise the situation and help the peace process playing its due role while engaging in war efforts. Sri Lanka cannot continue with its age old campaign to confront violence with violence and proceed in the path of not finding ways to end the conflict by peaceful means.

The unfolding events in the international arena give uncomfortable signals to Sri Lanka. The more Sri Lanka resists the pressures, the more it will come under international scrutiny. Did Charles Taylor, the former head of Sierra Leone ever think that he would ever face the International Court of Justice in The Hague?

As the commander of the armed forces, the President will be made to justify his conduct when a full scale military campaign is let loose to fight the LTTE and when the civilian population in the north die and maimed as a result of the offensive. For Pirabakaran his crusade is life and death. The cyanide capsule hung around his neck will determine his fate before attempts are made to bring him to justice.