"To us all towns are one, all men our kin. |
"To us all towns are one, all men our kin. |
Who were the planners who were in a position It was an attack which required considerable organisational resources. There was a need to mobilise a large number of goondas to attack simultaneously in many different parts of the country. The plan required that lists of names and addresses of Tamils be prepared from electoral registers in respect of electorates not only in Colombo but also in Kandy, Badulla, Nuwara Eliya and elsewhere. The plan required arrangements to be made for the transport of goondas from outside Colombo. The plan required that the goondas should be supplied with the implements to commit murder and arson. Again, it would not have been open to the planners to advertise in the daily press for the recruits they required to implement a plan such as the one that they had in mind. Nor was it open to the planners to set about recruiting large numbers of persons in advance, to implement a contingent plan. If they had given advance notice of the plan to the thousands who were required to implement the plan, the danger of a leak would have increased in proportion to the number of persons who were made aware of the plan. A plan which involved murder and arson must be kept secret. But this was more so, where the plan was a contingent plan and which must therefore await the happening of a future event, the timing of which may not be entirely within the control of the planners. It would not have done, if the world had become aware of the plan before the time had arrived for its implementation. The best kept secrets are those that are known to the smallest number. And the contingent plan that was put into operation on 24 July 1983 was a secret that was well kept. It was a contingent plan which was known to a relatively small number - until the contingent event occurred and the order was given to implement the plan. At the same time it was necessary that once the plan was made operational, the planners should have the capacity to mobilise thousands to do the deed at relatively short notice. But thousands cannot be mobilised at short notice, unless the thousands belonged to an existing organisational network. The planners were persons who were in a position to command and use such an existing network - a network with knowledge and experience of strong arm methods.
The New Statesman may have added, if it had known, that the largest concentration of 'storm troopers' was to be found in the trade union wing of the ruling party, the Jathika Sevaya Sangamaya, appropriately called the J.S.S., for short. The President of the J.S.S. was Industries Minister, Cyril Mathew and it was not without significance that the overwhelming majority of the members of the JSS were employees of government owned Corporations which functioned under the Industries Minister. In the words of a Dutch Working Group in its Memorandum of Human Rights Violations and Ethnic Violence in Sri Lanka in December 1983:
Who were the planners who were in a position to command considerable organisational resources?...continued... |
