Shenali D Waduge

It is interesting how two groups terrorized 2 communities beyond measure. Both targeted youth and both are responsible for their deaths, their indoctrination, trauma to their families & ruining their youth & disabling their talents. Are there no legal framework to hold both these groups accountable for ruining the lives of youth from late 1960s to date? Youth of post-independence were enticed into one of these 2 movements & their entire lives went astray.

The JVP was created on 14 May 1965 by Rohana Wijeweera. Not only did he meet a tragic end, but the youth he indoctrinated also perished as a result of 2 JVP insurrections. The party is full of controversies, contradictions and conversions in ideology too departing from the reason it was initially formed. Its ties and links both local & international make it an unreliable political entity, surviving primarily due to its hold on youth & its funding from external sources & its ability to muster public sentiment against the 2 main political parties highlighting their shortcomings from the gallery. Nevertheless, at some point of time, the JVP stalwarts have either supported both of the main political parties (directly & indirectly) as well as provided grass-root campaigning in support of them, happy to remain whining in Parliament & amongst public with 3% of votes. JVP-LTTE have strong ties & both in turn are now connected to Islamic fundamentalism too.

JVP drew its members from rural Sri Lanka. Most were from humble Sinhala Buddhist homes. Many were from universities across the island.

Though professing communism even the General Secretary of the JVP Lional Bopage was qualified in the UK while being in the JVP. He was also supporting of LTTE separatism & now living in Australia after leaving the JVP in 1984.

Noteworthy is that the 1978 JVP manifesto supported separatism a stance they took from 1973 – the year after Prabakaran formed Tamil New Tigers & when the Republican Constitution was formed. Therefore, it was clear that both JVP & LTTE were not going to allow Sri Lanka to take a course of growth & development.

While JVP supported separatism the LTTE or pro-LTTE Tamils did not extend same support for JVP. This created rifts within the ranks of the JVP. JVP abandoned support for self-determination for North simply because it impacted their vote & support. Another occasion of warped ideology. JVP was always a party that had multiple ideologies bending them when it suited the personal objectives of its politbureau. It is interesting how the JVP has been able to garner the youth with such internal ideological confusions. It is an open secret that JVP is the appendage of the UNP & the formation of a secular – pro-liberal NPP” seals this fact.

JVP was initially Maoist. Do today’s JVP know what a Maoist ideology is? During what part of JVP history did it get associated with CIA, yet why would JVP be accused of attacking the US embassy, unless it was the perfect ingredient to launch itself?

The JVP has backed virtually every political party in power or aspiring to come to power from 1970 onwards. JVP had ties even with the JRJ Govt & explains why Wijeweera was released. JVP backed CBK in 1994 & then went against her. JVP was against Mahinda Rajaapkse in 2004 but backed him in 2005 & then tried to bring him down. In 2010, JVP joined with UNP/Fonseka & till 2015 worked towards toppling him by supporting a Western-Indian backed alliance. Clearly JVP has no principle or ideology. The manner that JVP has been used over the years indicates its role in Western-Indian backed regime change. It is an allegation they cannot shy from. Every time a regime is targeted to be removed, JVP is at the forefront of attack be it a govt in power or a govt being supported to come to power. What everyone needs to understand is that the JVP exists, not to come to power but as a catalyst for change, an agent of external forces unleashed to create mischief & fool the masses in particular the youth.

The youth have been misled since 1960s by the JVP & breakaway FSP group.

How many Sinhala youth believed in the JVP & died as a result?

How many of these youth could have become engineers, accountants, doctors had they not turned into rebels.

Look at the state of the universities & the infiltration of JVP-FSP into the minds of youth, taking them into the streets to protest while their own children obtain foreign degrees. Misleading the youth has caused a major brain drain to Sri Lanka.

The LTTE began its murderous chapter also in the same period as JVP but chose to kidnap & forcibly train children who comprised a major portion of their fighters. These children were as young as 10 years old and came from poor & low caste homes & not too many high caste/class Tamils bothered about their lives so long as they could educate their children & send them overseas for studies & gain asylum to permanently live on foreign shores. In the eyes of these Tamils, those low caste Tamil children would have never become accountants or engineers or doctors, therefore they were only good for the jungle & gun.

Today, not a single international entity is bothered to question pro-LTTE supporters on how many Tamil children LTTE sacrificed? No one is bothered to count these dead Tamil children many killed by LTTE for trying to run back home. The gruesome stories that once-child soldiers of LTTE revisit and the silence of the West & international humanitarian agencies showcases their hypocrisy & bias.

Nevertheless, scores of Tamil children perished given a gun instead of a pen, given a combatant kit instead of a school uniform & inside bunkers instead of home, worshiping a megalomaniac leader instead of their parents.

Between LTTE & JVP, thousands of young lives perished from 1970s to 2009, imagine the trauma for the families who have maybe lost more than one child. Worse than dying are the ones that are living continuing to be fooled by both entities. The LTTE Diaspora youth naturally want to keep the kitty going & not surprisingly with their foreign accents, they are keeping the show going. The JVP are happy to nurture their youth inside universities via ragging & other elements at play with help perhaps JVP lecturers & seniors. The mentality of not allowing others to shine while their own enjoy the luxuries of their status highlights the hypocrisies of both JVP & LTTE. Look at the lives of these leaders against what they promote for the rest.

The links with JVP-LTTE to pro-Islamic elements is certainly noteworthy seen in the manner family members of the Easter Sunday suicide bombers were members of JVP & contested elections while LTTE Diaspora did not shy from backing the Galle Fact protest & together their supporters provided meals, social media propaganda & whatever other support required.

This threesome are not helping the country in the least & add to the issues related to corruptions by politicians, public officials even private sector & the general public. While on the one hand we have major problems related to corruptions, at another level we can never nurture young minds to intelligently and intellectually take Sri Lanka out of the mess, primarily because they are being instigated to take to the streets in protest, to behave in uncouth ways, to rebel and resort to violence, to traumatize fellow  youth & submit them to abiding their commands by fear.

All this has not produced the youth we expect to proudly take over the future. JVP & LTTE put thousands of youth to their grave & now they are killing them alive with their warped ideologies that are selfish & self-serving using youth as guineapigs, carrying out what is tasked of them & outsourcing that to the youth while they happily enjoy the fruits of that labor.

Shenali D Waduge