Sri Lanka

Ten thousand angry mourners at Lasantha funeral

www.socialistworld.net, 14/01/2009
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI

Broad campaign launched to stop state violence

Socialistworld.net

Ten thousand angry mourners at Lasantha funeral

In Sri Lanka on Monday, Lasantha’s funeral was in effect a mass demonstration of anger. Up to ten thousand sat down in the road at a busy intersection in central Colombo. So big and determined was the action that police refrained from moving in to clear it.

At the cemetery, thousands of candles large and small were lit and left on the ground. The mourners stayed late into the dark evening, listening to speeches and making their feelings known about the grievous lack of human rights and democratic freedoms in the country.

The following day, a broad alliance of opposition organisations was launched. It condemns the government’s collusion in the killing of the widely respected editor of the Sunday Leader and demands the right of all to free expression without fear of death.

The United Socialist Party (CWI in Sri Lanka) has been fully involved in organising these anti-government initiatives, including the funeral. But it has also insisted that participation in such a broad alliance in no way indicates political support for an electoral alliance to replace the present government.

The USP has a proud record of campaigning for democratic and national rights, but has no intention of giving the slightest credence to the pro-capitalist/pro-imperialist policies of the main opposition party – the United National Party. The USP will continue to fight for genuinely socialist policies and for unity in struggle between Sinhala and Tamil workers and poor people.

Siritunga Jaysuriya is both Secretary of the USP and Chair of the Civil Monitoring Committee set up with other forces some years ago. It has pursued the dangerous task of investigating the numerous kidnappings and extra-judicial killings that take place in Sri Lanka, apparently without let or hindrance. The CMC made a statement about the Lasantha killing and the wrecking of the MTV station carried below.

Siri also wrote to the British newspaper, the Guardian, in response to its extensive coverage of Lasantha’s ‘letter from the grave’ – a powerful editorial published posthumously in the Sunday Leader last weekend.

We carry both of these below and include a link to the Sunday Leader for the text of Lasantha’s prescient letter to Mahinda Rajapakse. We are also calling for as many protests as possible to be made to the Sri Lankan government, through letters and pickets.

• Independent inquiry now into Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder
• End Sri Lanka’s 25 year long civil war
• Stop the bombings and persecution of Tamil-speaking people
• Peace talks now with working and poor people’s involvement
• Stop all violence against the media
• Full human and democratic rights in Sri Lanka
• No to dictatorship and clan rule!
• For a united struggle of Sinhala and Tamil-speaking people
• A socialist alternative to war, capitalism and imperialism

Letter to the Guardian

Colombo, 14 January 2008

Dear editors,

I write as a co-organiser of Monday’s public funeral for Lasantha Wikrematunge, whose brutal murder you have covered extensively in your paper. Over ten thousand Sri Lankans – Tamils and Sinhalese – turned out in the biggest display of public grief since the assassination of former president Kumaratunga’s husband, Vijay.

In an impressive display of strength, they ’occupied’ a busy road junction and the police were unable to intervene. At the funeral meeting, they raised their fists, pledging, "We will fight to finish this terror and bring democracy". In a display of anger against the authorities, they smashed coconuts to the ground. Until late in the evening, they stayed at the cemetery amid thousands and thousands of candles.

I am chair of the Civil Monitoring Committee (CMC) involved, like Lasantha, in exposing numerous cases of kidnapping and extra-judicial killing in Sri Lanka for which no one is held responsible. I understand fully what he means in his powerful ’letter from the grave’ to the president:- "When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me" and "like all the enquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one (into his own murder)".

Lasantha does not blame his personal friend, Mahinda Rajapakse, He admits that his paper welcomed him coming in as president in 2005. Many hoped a new era in Sri Lankan politics had begun. However, after representing the United Socialist Party and coming third in the presidential election, I had a chance to warn the new president publicly, at the televised acceptance ceremony, that if he continued his policies of war and hardship for the people, resistance would grow.

As the bloody war effort is pushed to its limits, the present government will stop at nothing to try and stifle criticism and opposition. We will honour Lasantha’s memory – his great bravery and self-sacrifice – by stepping up protests world-wide and building mass movements with socialist programmes to end war, dictatorship and misery.

Siritunga Jayasuriya

Secretary, United Socialist Party

Chair, Civil Monitoring Committee