Reaping a late harvest Musings of an Old Man

island.lk · Feb 18, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe, who returned to Sri Lanka in late Nov, 2001, ending a 12-year self-imposed exile in Europe, declared that India helped him flee certain death as the government crushed his party’s second insurrection against the state in the ’80s, using even death squads. Amarasinghe, sole surviving member of the original politburo of the JVP, profusely thanked India and former Prime Minister V.P. Singh for helping him survive the crackdown. Neither the JVP nor India never explained the circumstances New Delhi facilitated Amarasinghe’s escape, particularly against the backdrop of the JVP’s frenzied anti-India campaign. The JVP has claimed to have killed Indian soldiers in the East during the 1987-1989 period. Addressing his first public meeting at Kalutara, a day after his arrival, Amarasinghe showed signs that the party had shed its anti-India policy of yesteryears. The JVPer paid tribute to the people of India, PM Singh and Indian officials who helped him escape. By Shamindra Ferdinando Forty years after the killing of Daya Pathirana, the third head of the Independent Student Union (ISU) by the Socialist Students’ Union (SSU), affiliated with the JVP, one-time Divaina journalist Dharman Wickremaretne has dealt with the ISU’s connections with some Tamil terrorist groups. The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) hadn’t been among them, according to Wickremaretne’s Daya Pathirana Ghathanaye Nodutu Peththa (The Unseen Side of Daya Pathirana Killing), the fifth of a series of books that discussed the two abortive insurgencies launched by the JVP in 1971 and the early ’80s. Pathirana was killed on 15 December, 1986. His body was found at Hirana, Panadura. Pathirana’s associate, Punchiralalage Somasiri, also of the ISU, who had been abducted, along with Pathirana, was brutally attacked but, almost by a miracle, survived to tell the tale. Daya Pathirana was the second person killed after the formation of the Deshapremi Janatha Vyaparaya (DJV), the macabre wing of the JVP, in early March 1986. The DJV’s first head had been JVP politburo member Saman Piyasiri Fernando. Its first victim was H. Jayawickrema, Principal of Middeniya Gonahena Vidyalaya, killed on 05 December, 1986. The JVP found fault with him for suspending several students for putting up JVP posters. Wickremaretne, who had been relentlessly searching for information, regarding the violent student movements for two decades, was lucky to receive obviously unconditional support of those who were involved with the SSU and ISU as well as other outfits. Somasiri was among them. Deepthi Lamaheva had been ISU’s first leader. Warnakulasooriya succeeded Lamahewa and was replaced by Pathirana. After Pathirana’s killing K.L. Dharmasiri took over. Interestingly, the author justified Daya Pathirana’s killing on the basis that those who believed in violence died by it. Wickremaretne’s latest book, the fifth of the series on the JVP, discussed hitherto largely untouched subject – the links between undergraduates in the South and northern terrorists, even before the July 1983 violence in the wake of the LTTE killing 12 soldiers, and an officer, while on a routine patrol at Thinnavely, Jaffna. The LTTE emerged as the main terrorist group, after the Jaffna killings, while other groups plotted to cause mayhem. The emergence of the LTTE compelled the then JRJ government to transfer all available police and military resources to the North, due to the constant attacks that gradually weakened government authority there. In Colombo, ISU and Tamil groups, including the PLOTE (People’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) enhanced cooperation. Wickremaretne shed light on a disturbing ISU-PLOTE connection that hadn’t ever been examined or discussed or received sufficient public attention. In fact, EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students), too, had been involved with the ISU. According to the author, the ISU had its first meeting on 10 April, 1980. In the following year, ISU established contact with the EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front). The involvement of ISU with the PLOTE and Wickremaretne revealed how the SSU probed that link and went to the extent of secretly interrogating ISU members in a bid to ascertain the details of that connection. ISU activist Pradeep Udayakumara Thenuwara had been forcibly taken to Sri Jayewardenepura University where he was subjected to strenuous interrogation by SSU in a bid to identify those who were involved in a high profile PLOTE operation. The author ascertained that the SSU suspected Pathirana’s direct involvement in the PLOTE attack on the Nikaweratiya Police Station, and the Nikaweratiya branch of the People’s Bank, on April 26, 1985. The SSU believed that out of a 16-member gang that carried out the twin attacks, two were ISU members, namely Pathirana, and another identified as Thalathu Oya Seneviratne, aka Captain Senevi. The SSU received information regarding ISU’s direct involvement in the Nikaweratiya attacks from hardcore PLOTE cadre Nagalingam Manikkadasan, whose mother was a Sinhalese and closely related to JVP’s Upatissa Gamanayake. The LTTE killed Manikkadasan in a bomb attack on a PLOTE office, in Vavuniya, in September, 1999. The writer met Manikkadasan, at Bambapalitiya, in 1997, in the company of Dharmalingham Siddharthan. The PLOTE had been involved in operations in support of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s administration. It was President Premadasa who first paved the way for Tamil groups to enter the political mainstream. In spite of some of his own advisors expressing concern over Premadasa’s handling of negotiations with the LTTE, he ordered the then Elections Commissioner Chandrananda de Silva to grant political recognition to the LTTE. The LTTE’s political wing PFLT (People’s Front of Liberation Tigers) received recognition in early December, 1989, seven months before Eelam War II erupted. Transformation of ISU The author discussed the formation of the ISU, its key members, links with Tamil groups, and the murderous role in the overall counter insurgency campaign during JRJ and Ranasinghe Premadasa presidencies. Some of those who had been involved with the ISU may have ended up with various other groups, even civil society groups. Somasiri, who was abducted along with Pathirana at Thunmulla and attacked with the same specialised knife, but survived, is such a person. Somasiri contested the 06 May Local Government elections, on the Jana Aragala Sandhanaya ticket. Jana Aragala Sandhanaya is a front organisation of the Frontline Socialist Party/ Peratugaami pakshaya, a breakaway faction of the JVP that also played a critical role in the violent protest campaign Aragalaya against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. That break-up happened in April 2012, The wartime Defence Secretary, who secured the presidency at the 2019 presidential election, with 6.9 mn votes, was forced to give up office, in July 2022, and flee the country. Somasiri and Jana Aragala Sandhanaya were unsuccessful; the group contested 154 Local Government bodies and only managed to secure only 16 seats whereas the ruling party JVP comfortably won the vast majority of Municipal Councils, Urban Councils and Pradeshiya Sabhas. Let us get back to the period of terror when the ISU was an integral part of the UNP’s bloody response to the JVP challenge. The signing of the Indo-Lanka accord, in late July 1987, resulted in the intensification of violence by both parties. Wickremaretne disclosed secret talks between ISU leader K.L. Dharmasiri and the then Senior SSP (Colombo South) Abdul Cader Abdul Gafoor to plan a major operation to apprehend undergraduates likely to lead protests against the Indo-Lanka accord. Among those arrested were Gevindu Cumaratunga and Anupa Pasqual. Cumaratunga, in his capacity as the leader of civil society group Yuthukama, that contributed to the campaign against Yahapalanaya, was accommodated on the SLPP National List (2020 to 2024) whereas Pasqual, also of Yuthukama, entered Parliament on the SLPP ticket, having contested Kalutara. Pasqual switched his allegiance to Ranil Wickremesinghe after Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ouster in July 2022. SSU/JVP killed K.L. Dharmasiri on 19 August, 1989, in Colomba Kochchikade just a few months before the Army apprehended and killed JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera. Towards the end of the counter insurgency campaign, a section of the ISU was integrated with the military (National Guard). The UNP government had no qualms in granting them a monthly payment. Referring to torture chambers operated at the Law Faculty of the Colombo University and Yataro operations centre, Havelock Town, author Wickremaretne underscored the direct involvement of the ISU in running them. Maj. Tuan Nizam Muthaliff, who had been in charge of the Yataro ‘facility,’ located near State Defence Minister Ranjan Wijeratne’s residence, is widely believed to have shot Wijeweera in November, 1989. Muthaliff earned the wrath of the LTTE for his ‘work’ and was shot dead on May 3, 2005, at Polhengoda junction, Narahenpita. At the time of Muthaliff’s assassination, he served in the Military Intelligence. Premadasa-SSU/JVP link Ex-lawmaker and Jathika Chinthanaya Kandayama stalwart Gevindu Cumaratunga, in his brief address to the gathering, at Wickremaretne’s book launch, in Colombo, compared Daya Pathirana’s killing with the recent death of Nandana Gunatilleke, one-time frontline JVPer. Questioning the suspicious circumstances surrounding Gunatilleke’s demise, Cumaratunga strongly emphasised that assassinations shouldn’t be used as a political tool or a weapon to achieve objectives. The outspoken political activist discussed the Pathirana killing and Gunatilleke’s demise, recalling the false accusations directed at the then UNPer Gamini Lokuge regarding the high profile 1986 hit. Cumaratunga alleged that the SSU/JVP having killed Daya Pathirana made a despicable bid to pass the blame to others.