The issue buried by today’s Batalanda torture chamber protest

By – Nandana Naneththi

The issue buried by today’s Batalanda torture chamber protest

During the 1988-1990 period, the then UNP government, which led the military, police and paramilitary forces to kill 60,000 youths, had formed hundreds of torture camps across the island as part of its counter-insurgency campaign. The Batalanda housing complex, which belonged to the State Fertilizer Corporation, was just one of them. It operated for two years, from 1 January 1988 to 31 December 1990. President Chandrika Bandaranaike, who came to power in 1994, evaded the issue of the overall state repression and focused solely on the Batalanda torture camps, appointing a commission to investigate the inhumane torture and killings committed there and who was responsible. On May 5, 1998, the commission submitted its investigation report to the President.

27 years later, on March 6, in a discussion on Al Jazeera’s Head-to-Head program with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe (2022-2024), Mehdi Hassan, a British-American award-winning journalist and author, brought the Batalanda issue back to the fore. 
The Batalanda torture chamber was handed over to the security forces, and the responsibility of investigating its activities was assigned to Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was the then Minister of Industries.

Wickremesinghe argued in the discussion that the commission report was invalid because it had not been tabled in Parliament. In response, the National People’s Power government tabled the report on March 14. The political petty bourgeoisie, which supported the NPP, and the pseudo-leftist such as the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) launched a campaign demanding that the report be tabled and that Wickremesinghe be punished.

On March 10, Frontline Socialist Party General Secretary Kumar Gunaratnam, while participating in a press conference, stated that the National People’s Power government has an opportunity to implement the recommendations of the Batalanda Commission report and provide justice to the people who have been oppressed throughout the country. 

Following are the arguments he has put forward to justify the need to punish Wickremesinghe.

“Ranil Wickremesinghe, who became the successor to the President after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled in 2022, is still in his past practices. Even after coming to power in 2022, he has continued to impose taxes on the entire common people and protect the objectives of the super-elite he represents, while advancing the program of the International Monetary Fund”

Politicians including Wickremesinghe, who are responsible for this, deny responsibility for the aforementioned state suppression campaign, arguing that it was the state’s reaction to the killing of about 7000 people by the JVP, and that it should have been done to protect democracy. Therefore, if the Batalanda issue is raised, they say that it is necessary to investigate and take actions on the crimes of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna during the relevant period.

In 1986, the JVP killed Daya Pathirana, the leader of the Independent Students’ Union of the University of Colombo, for standing up for the Tamils, and in late 1987 the JVP launched a series of attacks under the fascist slogan “Motherland or Death.” 

Voters who cast their ballots in the 1988 presidential election and the 1989 parliamentary election were sentenced to death by JVP, and news on state television and radio and newspapers were banned, and those who protested against were killed. 

“Motherland first, workplace second” was the slogan the JVP brought against the working class. The JVP fought to forcefully subjugate workers and other oppressed people to its cause, in order to direct the capitalist nation-state to serve the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. 

The UNP government’s attempt to justify its terror with the terror of the JVP is true, the JVP’s terrorist politics cannot be forgiven. Meantime the then government in power killed 60,000 innocent youths, not to protect democracy but for the survival of the reactionary capitalist state.

The capitalist government of the National People’s Power, which gives political leadership to the JVP, also has no program or need to establish democracy against that state repression. 

The JVP has long forgotten the issue of state repression and the assassination campaign. After the crimes committed by the JVP, which went to the logical extreme of petty-bourgeois despair, it became an open capitalist party in 1994. It then held ministerial positions in capitalist coalition governments. Not stopping there, the JVP supported the election campaign of General Sarath Fonseka, who was an army chief during the aforementioned terror period, along with Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Moreover, the JVP, which supported the Ranil Wickremesinghe government that came to power in 2015, sat with the Wickremesinghe government’s representatives in the then so-called Constitution Council, and they were careful not to raise any voice about the 60000 youths killed during 1987-89, or the Batalanda torture chamber they are talking today. The NPP government has now generously delegated its government responsibilities to the officials responsible for the aforesaid state terror.

The NPP, which won the election in the 2024 elections, is shouldering the responsibility of protecting and maintaining the capitalist state, which is mired in economic and political crisis. Under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), its role is to raise taxes, sell off state enterprises to cover expenses, cut jobs, weaken the state welfare sector and strengthen the private sector. This program, presented in the name of building the country, is being implemented entirely at the expense of workers, students and other oppressed people. The government is forcing the oppressed people to follow its example of reducing expenses by cutting the privileges of members of parliament and ministers to some extent.

The selfish petty bourgeoisie is inciting against the workers, including the workers’ struggles that arise for democratic demands, by branding them as conspiracies and as a group that devours public tax money without serving the wages they earn, as a necessity of that policy. 

The government means to build the country by implementing this plan. The meaning of their talk about building the country’s economy is to provide opportunities for the country’s capitalists to make mountains of profit and to provide them with a free space to exploit the economy of the poor to its marrow. There is no possibility of conducting any project to protect democracy in parallel with this program.

The JVP has never been a party that cared about the democratic rights of the people. During 1987-1990, the JVP killed people who did not submit to its slogan of ‘Motherland First, Work Place Second’.
There is no reason why the motto of the current government led by the JVP, ‘Building the Country’, should be any less evil. Unlike then, today it is a state-powered movement. 

In these circumstances, the question of whether there was an alternative to the state terror of 1988-1990 is extremely relevant.
The government was able to carry out its criminal offensive unhindered not only because of the military and police force.

The Lanka Sama Samaja Party, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, the New Sama Samaja Party and the trade union bureaucracy, which were already influential within the working class, acted as a solution to the JVP attacks by approving the government’s actions and subordinating the working class. They claimed that the only path available to the working class to protect themselves from the JVP’s fascist attacks and win democracy was to follow them, and they aligned themselves with state repression by demanding state protection, including weapons. It was this reactionary, pro-capitalist policy that allowed the murder of 60000 young people.

In response, in November 1988, the Revolutionary Communist League, the Sri Lankan branch of the Fourth International Committee (the predecessor organization of the current Socialist Equality Party), called for a united front of the afore said workers’ organizations to defend democratic rights against the attacks of the JVP and the government. further the Revolutionary Communist League proposed the working class of the ruling government, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), and the Sri Lanka peoples Party (SLMP) to break away from the bourgeois parties. 

Such a front was to organize class struggles such as mass strikes, picketing, and factory sitting strikes by forming workers’ and peasants’ action committees and security and vigilance committees operating under them.

But the Nawa Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) which responded on behalf of those parties, proposed to merge the Sri Lanka Peoples Party (SLMP) into such a front. 

History has recorded more than once that a People’s Front, which united the working class with the capitalist parties, has plunged the working class into a pool of blood.

It paved the way for Franco’s fascist regime in Spain in 1936-1937, and in 1933 the Stalinist Communist Party rejected the United Front and opened the way for Hitler’s fascist regime in Germany. Based on these experiences, the Revolutionary Communist League rejected the NSSP proposal outright.

The politics of the popular front is the desire for protection through ingratiation and influence with the capitalist regime. As the Revolutionary Communist League, while rejecting the NSSP proposal, stated, “First of all, it (rejection of the united front) is an act absolutely hostile to the active organization of practical measures taken by the working class against its class enemy. Secondly, it binds the working class to fronts built on capitalist measures. It weakens and politically disarms the working class. It creates an opportunity for the class enemy to drown the working class and the poor peasants in a pool of blood.” (Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka – page 155)

This warning has been confirmed with one hundred percent accuracy. This happened even as the working class declared its readiness to fight for democratic rights.

Workers at the Acelab Estate in Uva Province fought back the JVP who had come to burn down their factory. The revolutionary Communist League (RCL) had won the Central Bank Employees’ Union, the backbone of the national economy, and the Ceylon Teachers’ Union unanimously adopted the RCL resolution. The union branch of the oldest company, Walkers Limited, affiliated with the Sama Samaj Party unanimously adopted the RCL resolution.

The Ceylon Engineering Workers’ Union branch of the Rowlands and Company, affiliated with the Ceylon Trade Union Federation, also unanimously decided to support the RCL resolution. Ravi Brush and Hecarb unions joined forces with the RCL to win workers for the struggle. A group of Chilaw fishermens who supported the RCL gathered in April 1999 and supported the United Front resolution. The government was able to claim thousands of lives with the support of opportunist party and trade union leaderships who opposed this plan.

It is crucial that today’s working class and youth are armed with these lessons. The attack on economic and political democracy is based on the capitalist class, which is in deep crisis, trying to exploit the lives of the working class to the very core. That is the source of state terror. Accordingly, the struggle for democratic rights and justice against the bourgeoisie cannot be achieved without challenging the bourgeoisie’s right to exploit. Any genuine opposition to the violation of any democratic right will inevitably raise the question of the legitimacy of bourgeois rule in this era.

Accordingly, there is no alternative to any struggle for democracy other than the establishment of workers’ and peasants’ action committees among the oppressed in the workplace, in the working class areas and in the countryside, independent of the capitalist class hegemony. Such a struggle is not just about democracy, but is destined to develop into a society that abolishes private domination over social production and plans for social needs. The Sama Samaja party (Leftist) is ready to provide its full support to this.