ettlement in the North-East. Yet, a good part of Gunaratne’s book, with its secret conferences among the great and the good of Colombo high society and adventurous expeditions by helicopter, reads like a schoolboy escapade of the kind popularised in English schoolboy adventure stories of the 1950s and 1960s. While on the one hand contributing to a process which through massacres of Tamil civilians and aggressive and irresponsible posturing on land matters, was legitimising attacks on Sinhalese civilians; they were on the other arming and training Sinhalese in border villages. Most of these were very old villages whose inhabitants had no quarrel with the Tamils, unlike those planted in Weli Oya.

Had a political settlement been sought, any tension would have simply vanished. But by arming Sinhalese villagers in border areas, a situation was being created where they were bound to get sucked into the conflict. There had been isolated killings of hapless Sinhalese traders and civilians in the North by Tamil militants on the lookout for ‘CIA’ and ‘CID’ agents. But there had not been a single massacre of Sinhalese villagers until 30th November 1984, which was in Weli Oya. For several of these young men from high Colombo society it was usually a matter of day trips by helicopter into an army camp in a border area, dropping off weapons and trainers to train villagers and getting back to Colombo to a good dinner and adulation. What sacrifice they made seldom exceeded tolerating a scrappy lunch, but for the villagers themselves there was no escape from the consequences that flowed from the lethal gift. Life for those in Weli Oya is described in the extract below, also from Bulletin No.4 of the UTHR(J):

“Their life is completely militarised. An old man put it, “even to piss, we have to get permission from the Army.” Children who go to school, it is said, do not look at the black board, but look at the jungle for signs of danger – as children in Jaffna used to look at the sky for bombers. This much is just the surface.

“There are many deeper complaints. The army positions are among the civilians. Several of the men said, “We do not know if the army is protecting us or we are protecting the army.” In the nights, they said, the men among the civilians are sent into bunkers with shotguns, while in their home the women are abused by soldiers. We also reliably learnt that the women are sometimes forced to pose for pornographic pictures, which are marketed within the army by enterprising soldiers. Under such a regime discipline plummets and the army itself tends to disintegrate. An ironical remark is not infrequently heard: “For what these fellows do to us, only the Tigers can teach them a lesson.” Through their sons, relatives or neighbours, most of these people have close connections within the Army. Yet, like with many rural Tamils whose sons are in the LTTE and other groups, their feelings are mixed with deep reservations.