KAMALIKA PIERIS

JR’s rule   was a period of lawlessness and corruption. Elections commissioner Punchihewa listed 3 elections as having the worst abuses in Sri Lanka’s electoral history. Two of these were held during the time of JR, the 1981 Jaffna District Development Council polls and the 1982 referendum.  His ministers were corrupt. Critics were beaten up, said critics.

It was when JR Jayewardene was head of state that thuggery and corruption in politics became entrenched in the central government for the first time in Sri Lanka’s political history. JR’s successors welcomed this and continued the good work, but   it started under JR.

There had been party thugs before, but they were active mainly during elections. There was the village “chandiya” as well. This time it was different. Party thugs were criminal elements used by the government and given protection in return. They came on to the political arena, after the landslide victory of the UNP Government on July 1977.  Despicable underworld characters never before seen in government now emerged,” observed Dharman Wickremaratne

  Ruling party thugs openly attacked meetings of the opposition parties. They were provided with guns. They killed on contract.  They were allowed to engage in narcotic drug peddling, extortion and armed robbery to maintain themselves.

The majority of those recruited as university security personnel in Jayewardenepura University were underworld criminals.  They regularly attacked university students who were opposed to the Government.

Each President and Prime Minister who came after JR was associated with a leading thug. The J. R. Jayewardene regime was responsible for the rise of Gonawala Sunil. There was also Nawala Nihal.

The Gonawala Perera family were active supporters of the UNP.  Gonawala Sunil worked for the UNP and had known the UNP leaders for a long time. He used to welcome UNP bigwigs at the Katunayake airport whenever they returned to Sri Lanka.  His house was regularly used for UNP small group meetings, said Dharman Wickramaratne.

Sunil had carried out attacks on Opposition politicians and stuffed ballot boxes. The thugs who regularly attacked Kelaniya University’s leftwing and other anti-UNP students from 1978 onwards were Gonawala Sunil’s men led by UNP Minister Cyril Mathew.  Gonawela Sunil had been the bodyguard of Ranil Wickremasinghe, Minister of Education in the J.R. Jayawardene government.

Gonawela Sunil was involved in the massacre of 53 prisoners at Welikada Prison in 1983 and raping a 14-year-old girl in 1982. He was convicted of  murder, and was serving in prison when he was released on a presidential pardon given by  JR  just before the 1982 presidential election. Subsequently, he was made an all-island Justice of the peace   and Chairman of the Gramodaya Mandalaya of his area.  Sunil was killed at his residence by two assassins in 1987. He was killed because his masters realized he knew too much and may get out of control.

Thuggery was used for suppressing strikes.  The General Strike of July 1980 was brutally put down. The UNP Government crushed a countrywide strike with the help of underworld thugs. The stinkers were only asking for an increase in salary.

400,000 public and private sector employees staged a lunch-hour demonstration on July 5, 1980 demanding a monthly pay increase of Rs. 300. Two armed gangs which emerged from the direction of the Government Supplies Department at Chittampalam Gardiner Mawatha, and Lake House started attacking the protesters with stones. The thugs included underworld gangster Aluthkade Paala.

They also threw a bomb killing a trade union member D. Somapala, who was a Supplies Department Employee. Somapala’s death shocked the working class. Lake House photographers had taken photos of battered blood-soaked strikers, who were attacked near Lake House, but the newspaper was more worried about publishing them and antagonizing JR than reporting the act.

Stinkers were deemed to have vacated post and a number lost their jobs. The Government suspended the payment of July salaries to the strikers. All trade union offices in State-owned buildings were closed and sealed. The strikers were given an opportunity to report for work under certain conditions. Many were able to get their jobs back claiming that they were seriously ill due to various reasons during the strike period.

This General strike caused 40,356 persons to lose their jobs, causing over 300,000 of their dependants to end up in utter misery. Some strikers who had lost their jobs committed suicide, being unable to maintain their families. Family lives were disrupted. Some became mental patients. Children were orphaned. The jobless strikers were forced to vacate the houses where they were living on rent. 

Hundreds of them became beggars. In 2013, a national newspaper carried the story and photo of a striker begging in Borella. A few managed to survive by their own effort and with the help of relatives. Others became pavement hawkers, drivers and bus conductors.

This was reversed in 1989. All July strikers who were employees in Government and Local Government Services were reinstated, given pension rights with bonuses Steps were also taken to provide each of them with a monthly allowance of Rs. 5,000 for the rest of their lives.

Thuggery was used for suppressing demonstrations. Up to the end of 1986 thugs armed with bicycle chains were seen together with the police outside the Colombo University during student demonstrations. There was also a pro-UNP Eksath Samawadee Students Front. These students unofficially resorted to thuggery in the Kelaniya and Moratuwa Universities from 1978 to 1984. 

On March 16, 1978 about 40 underworld gang members who arrived armed with clubs at the Kelaniya University attacked students who were demonstrating.  The attackers were instigated by the pro-UNP Samawadee Students Front. (Continued)