{"id":37433,"date":"2012-04-07T02:21:16","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T02:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=37433"},"modified":"2012-04-07T02:21:31","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T02:21:31","slug":"41-years-after-1971-jvp-where-have-the-decision-makers-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/41-years-after-1971-jvp-where-have-the-decision-makers-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"41 Years After 1971 JVP: Where Have The Decision Makers Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Kamal+Nissanka&amp;x=13&amp;y=5\">Kamal Nissanka<\/a><\/span> &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3553\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/liberal-party-of-sri-lanka-on-llrc\/kamal-nissanka-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3553\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3553\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-3553\" title=\"Kamal Nissanka\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/kamal-nissanka1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/kamal-nissanka1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/kamal-nissanka1-50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3553\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kamal Nissanka<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The April Insurrection was commemorated by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and 71 Sahodara Sansadaya \u00a0in Colombo on the 5<sup>th<\/sup> of April 2012. Peratugami Samajwadi Pakshaya had also given prominence to the event through social media. All were in agreement that the comrades who died are martyrs. Then there are members who involved in the actual uprising taken into custody or surrendered as requested by the then Sirima administration. They were initially locked up in almost all the prisons throughout Sri Lanka and surrendered were detained at Vidyalankara and Vidyodaya Universities.<\/p>\n<p>Though various groups commemorate the event the general feeling among the people is that Rohana Wijeweera , founder leader of the JVP had given leadership to the 1971 April uprising which for me is an erroneous judgment.\u00a0 Rohana with five others were taken into custody at Ampara on the 13<sup>th<\/sup> of March 1971. Others arrested by the police with Rohana were Kelly Senanayake, Premarathne, Nissanka, Lal Somasiri and Premathilaka. However Rohana, Premarathna and Lal Somasiri were then taken to\u00a0 Mgazine\u00a0 prison \u00a0in Colombo on the 14<sup>th<\/sup> of March 1971.On the 16<sup>th<\/sup> morning they detained in\u00a0 Jaffna prison. On the 22nd of March Lal Somasiri and Premarathna were produced before the Kalmunai magistrate and they were bailed out or released.<\/p>\n<p>During the few days at Jaffna prison Rohana was in extensive consultation with Premarathna and had given him lot of instructions regarding future activities. On release Premarathna had met Piyathilaka on the 24<sup>th<\/sup> of March at Vidyodaya university and conveyed him the messages given to by \u00a0Rohana Wijeweera.<\/p>\n<p>Piyathilaka in his statement to police had admitted that Premarathna met him on the 24th of March at Vidyodaya after his release from Kalmunai magistrate courts<\/p>\n<p>According to the evidence Rohana had given instructions that if the things got worsened to attack police stations and security centers and to send a team of 5oo from student wing to Jaffna to rescue him. In fact a large team was sent to Jaffna on the 5<sup>th<\/sup> of April.<\/p>\n<p>However Rohana denied at that he had instructed the committee to launch the insurrection but maintained view that it was a design and conspiracy of Loku Athula and his group.<\/p>\n<p>The decision to attack police stations was taken by a committee comprising 9 members said to be politbureau.\u00a0 They were S.V.A.Piyathilaka, Lionel Bopage, J.Uyangoda,Sunanda Deshpriya, Nimalasiri Jayasinha alias Loku Athula , W.T. Karunarathne, Susi l Wickrama, \u00a0Wijesena Vidanage alias Sanath ,Somasiri Kumanayake, and\u00a0 Anura Ranjith Kurukulasooriya.<\/p>\n<p>Out of these decision makers members Sanath and Susil died during the insurrection. Loku Athula\u00a0 and Kumanayake became crown witnesses and\u00a0 were granted amnesty from Sirima administration .S.V.A. Piyathilaka became a big businessman after the release in 1977 but was killed by somebody on a personal grudge. Lionel Bopage involved in JVP politics after release in 1977 but severed connection with JVP by 1984.Uyangoda is an academic without any serious commitment to politics. Sunanda lived with NGO\u2019s and now a controversial character. I have no idea about where about of Karunarathna.<\/p>\n<p>Out of nine decision makers I think Sanath(Galle) \u00a0and Susil (Matara)involved in the uprising . Loku Athula later joined with the fighting group at Kegalle. Other decision makers were not directly involved with the insurrection.<\/p>\n<p>My personal view is that these decision makers were not armed with the deep understanding of Marxism \u2013 Leninism at that time. Regarding war or revolution their knowledge was very very limited. I still believe that not a single member of this committee had read \u201cMao Tse Tung\u2019s \u201cOn Protracted War\u201d or serious book on war. Even though the Cuban Revolution was not a working class revolution it took 6 years to win the protracted struggle launched after Monkada attack.<\/p>\n<p>However April Uprising that is commemorated by us is the direct result of the decision of 9 committee members who gathered at the Sangaramaya of Vidyodaya University on the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> of April 1971.<\/p>\n<p>The decision was given to Police area leaders on the 4<sup>th<\/sup>. Members rallied round area leaders without a proper training, arms and ammunitions. They went to attack the police stations thinking that the leadership would stand by them till the final breath. On the 6<sup>th<\/sup> of April it was clearly understood that all the police stations were not attacked and most of the leaders of the respective districts and police stations had not done their part of job. By 7<sup>th<\/sup> and 8<sup>th<\/sup> it felt that that there was no coordination among the few fighting units. The main fighting units were visible in Kegalle, Kurunegala,Laggala, Medirigiriya, Anuradapura(Oththpppuwa), Kataragama,Deniyaya and Elpitiya. So by radio news it was understood that the revolution was a failure. Two groups attempted to retreat to Wilpattu and Sinharaja areas. They felt that they are leaderless. After a week they felt major countries including the socialist countries \u00a0\u00a0and Non aligned countries came to rescue the government. With air attacks directing at the rebels and people rallying round the government everything was going against the rebels. Fighting units had no option but to listen to surrender call by the government. Though there was a surrender period during the whole month April security forces tortured and killed many of JVP members. In fact lots of persons without any link to JVP also scarified their lives owing to personal grudges with security persons or local politicians.<\/p>\n<p>Out of nine committee members who took the decision to send their members before police stations to face bloodshed only six are among living. These petty decision makers are not visible in any of the meetings held on behalf of the April martyrs.\u00a0 These opportunists are now sought asylum (economic not political) in western countries or working hard for their personal gains.<\/p>\n<p><em>*<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Kamal+Nissanka&amp;x=13&amp;y=5\">Kamal Nissanka<\/a>\u00a0is the\u00a0Secretary\u00a0of the Sri Lanka Liberal Party<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":3553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>41 Years After 1971 JVP: Where Have The Decision Makers Gone? 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