By Asoka N.I. Ekanayaka –

Prof. ANI Ekanayaka

Faced with the historically radical revolutionary JVP with its fierce Marxist /Leninist antecedents nowadays covering itself with the respectable warm reassuring human face of the NPP, one can’t resist recalling the familiar metaphor about ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’. This article is not primarily intended to offer my opinion about the appropriateness of such a comparison. After all that would be only an individual opinion, and it would be fiercely contested as a misrepresentation of that party. Rather it would be fairer to see how the JVP today identifies itself in its own words and images. Accordingly I would encourage the interested reader to visit the JVP website in the English language which can be accessed here and in particular the subsidiary link describing what it calls its “Programme of the proletarian socialist revolution”. No one can disclaim responsibility for this website or maintain that it is obsolete for it contains numerous contemporary news items including the JVP New Year message for 2023. So let the JVP speak for itself and explain where it stands in its own words.

What is immediately striking at the top left hand corner in the first of the above links (also the website  home page) is the prominent image of the monster Rohana Wijeweera who masterminded  the unspeakable brutalities with which the JVP tormented  the ordinary people of this country in the 1971 revolution and far more in the 1987 revolution. So Wijeweera (who according to Wikipedia admired Stalin and Mao), continues to be their hero down to the present day. By their own admission they continue to honour and revere the man who abused persecuted and slaughtered the people all those years ago.

At the top right hand corner of the home page is an image of the ‘hammer and sickle’ the well known Communist symbol which was first used in the 1917 Russian revolution and then through the initiative of Lenin became the prominent symbol in the flag of the former Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 until 1991 when that cruel and repressive empire that enslaved many Eastern European countries collapsed. 

So in the design of its own web page the JVP (in common with Communist parties in many parts of the world), still glorifies the Communist symbol that defined the former USSR with its monstrous legacy of political tyranny and oppression, contempt for freedom and complete denial of human rights behind the “iron curtain”. The Communist hammer and sickle symbol which adorns the JVP homepage today is the same symbol which defined the Stalinist era with its brutal prison system secret police, executions and massacres.

It was under this insignia that the horrors of “Gulag”(so vividly described by the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book the Gulag Archipelago) were perpetrated with its arbitrary abductions and arrests, brutal interrogations, torture,  mass transportation in unheated cattle cars to forced labour camps in Siberia, terrible destruction of families, hundreds of thousands rotting in exile for years resulting in broken lives and the premature death of many millions of innocent people. It is for the JVP to explain why its homepage carries the image of the Communist symbol under which such monstrosities were perpetrated. There is no need for this writer to speculate on the answer.

The subsidiary link in the JVP website describing what it calls its “Programme of the proletarian socialist revolution”, is self explanatory. A perceptive reader may draw his/her  own inferences from it about the real underlying Communist mindset of the JVP/NPP notwithstanding the genial exterior and alluring utterances  with which they project a saintly image of themselves on public platforms. Readers may click on the link, read the JVP “Programme of the proletarian socialist revolution” and form their own conclusions allowing the party to speak for itself. 

Without attempting to prejudice the reader my own perception was that it sounds like a Communist manifesto replete with the same old banal revolutionary verbiage that has characterised output by the 4^th International over the years. A random computer word count reveals that the document contains the word “capitalist” 111 times, “class” 53 times, “Imperialist” 42 times, “socialist” 42 times, “bourgeois” 37 times, “proletariat” 15 times, and “revolutionary” 12 times – all part of the familiar Marxist/Leninist revolutionary socialist jargon! There is also at least a hint of a respectful attitude towards North Korea which is held up as a country that had followed the path of socialist development and “had deviated from the capitalist path of development by eliminating the bourgeois property system . . .”. All this of course is not inconsistent with the large pictures of the 6 party leaders displayed in an adjacent link with the infantile fetish of “Comrade” prominently prefixing each of the names.  

As for the nature of the “proletarian socialist revolution” envisaged by the JVP in its own words, those who visit the website and go through the contents at the given link may form their own conclusions. I confine myself to a single comment. Those who peruse the “programme” might be particularly interested if not perplexed alarmed or even terrified by the tone and implication of the following extracts which are herewith quoted verbatim.

The document opens  by stating “The proletariat in this neo-colony, where the capitalist production system dominates and a bourgeoisie subservient to imperialists is in power, faces the challenge to prepare for socialist revolutionary tasks and achieve them. In order to achieve them the Sri Lankan proletariat presents this programme”. The document concludes by stating “All over the world and within our country, all anti-imperialist progressive forces must be united under the leadership of the revolutionary proletarian movement”. 

In between the contents include 60 points. Point No 54 (conclusion) states “The proletariat in power has to create a new economy and socialist production system while the exploitation of classes, the existence of classes, and the ownership of private property has to be eliminated”. Point No 55 concludes with the words “The socialist revolution in Sri Lanka will eliminate the private ownership of property and abolish the basis of class division in society, thus putting an end to the process of exploitation of man by man, and thereby man finally liberated”. (Please note the Emphasise are mine).

So says the JVP (now clothed in the benevolent raiment of the NPP) in their own words. 

Finally in a recent correspondence I posed 3 simple questions to a very senior member of the NPP. The answers  reflect the embarrassing predicament of those who while projecting an image of being democratic socially sensitive liberals, nevertheless are forced to compromise their intellectual integrity by having to make excuses for the far left Marxist/Communist revolutionary character and sordid past of their coalition partners. 

The first question related to whether the JVP has any association whatsoever direct or indirect however obliquely with North Korea; whether it receives any kind of funding or other support or encouragement from North Korea; and whether it shares even marginally a common ideological perspective with Kim Un Jong’s ruthless communist regime?The answer to this question was a taciturn “The NPP nor the JVP have any link with North Korea”. 

The second question averred to the millions of common people who suffered unspeakable hardships at the hands of the JVP during the 1987 insurrection and inquired if, and if so when and where, the present generation of JVP/NPP politicians have ever extended an unqualified public apology to the people for the brutalities inflicted on them during that insurgency? The answer did not admit to any such apology being given. Instead the respondent skirted round the question by claiming that it was the JVP which was the victim of state terror during that period grumbling that people want the JVP to apologise when it is successive governments that must be held accountable for their crimes.

The third question asked why if the JVP genuinely regretted the manifold sufferings inflicted on millions of ordinary people during the 1987 insurrection, it to this day continues to hero worship and annually celebrate the memory of the monster Rohana Wijeweera who masterminded the insurrection? The NPP respondent defended the commemoration of Rohana Wijeweera saying “You have a right to your views, but so do others”!

In my final reaction to these responses by a very prominent NPP politician I conceded that consistent with the old aphorism “we must agree to disagree”! However I maintained that the sordid record of “state terrorism” of which the JVP might have been a victim does not absolve it from the obligation to confess and apologise for its own ruthless crimes against millions whom it tormented with Pol Pot style death threats if they went out to work, putting a bullet in the head of those who did and  forcing grieving relatives to carry the victim’s coffin inches off the ground as the final indignity. The stubborn pride and arrogance which far from apologising actually criticises everyone else, but glorifies the wretch who masterminded the manifold persecutions of the 1987 insurrection, reflect the hypocrisy of the holier than thou self righteous image which the JVP/NPP is projecting at this time.