Minister who lives in a bunker

Peter · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:28 pm

Quote:

Defiance from a Sri Lankan bunker

By Soutik Biswas
@ BBC News, Colombo

Douglas Devananda is the only surviving Tamil minister in the ruling Sri Lankan government alliance after last week's assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.

He lives in a leafy, upscale neighbourhood in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, with doctors and businessmen for company. But his neighbours hardly get a peek of the minister of agricultural marketing and development and Hindu affairs, and the most heavily guarded Tamil politician in the country.

The 50-year-old guerrilla-turned-politician, who leads the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party and is implacably opposed to the Tamil Tiger rebels, lives in a fortified building. He has survived a number of attempts on his life - at least 10, says an aide - allegedly by the rebels.

Last July, a girl suicide bomber came visiting him. When his security men took her to the local police station, she blew herself up there, killing four people.

In 1998, Mr Devananda was bludgeoned and knifed inside a jail where was visiting prisoners. He lost his sight in one eye.

Four years earlier, jeep-borne rebels carried out a daring commando attack on his residence in Colombo.

The gun battle killed four of his security guards. "We fought, I survived," he says.

"I live in a bunker," Mr Devananda tells people when they ask him about his home.

Even getting to the bunker is not easy - there's a check post and gunmen hunkering behind green sandbags at the entrance of where he lives now.
Mr Devananda's home itself is fenced off by high walls with CCTV cameras. The tall metal gates open into a building teeming with grim, gun-toting guards. Cell phones must be left with a guard. There is a body search. Tape-recorders and cameras are checked.

"I am very sorry sir, you know what the situation is like," the guard says.
In an ante-room there are photographs of Mr Devananda's party members who he says have been killed by the Tigers. "They have killed 45 of my men since the ceasefire began three years ago," he tells me later.

His Tamil detractors say he is a traitor collaborating with the government .

A thick door opens into Mr Devananda's expansive room - almost like a big covered shed - in which he says he works, eats and sleeps.
It looks more like a war room than a home. Aides mill around an ornate conference table. There are wireless and television sets and computers.

It has been a tense, hectic weekend after Mr Kadirgamar's killing and funeral.

"The [rebels] may try to touch me. But I won't die," Mr Devananda says softly. "You know there is a Tamil saying - 'a snake knows another snake'. So I know them. They can keep trying."

A suicide-bomber targeted Mr Devananda last July

After Mr Kadirgamar's murder, there is a lot of pressure on the government to slap a fresh ban on the Tigers. But Mr Devananda says it will not help.

"Didn't the rebels kill leaders when they were banned in the past? They should be just annihilated. There is no other way."

He says there will never be peace in Sri Lanka while rebel leader Prabhakaran is alive. "He does not want peace. He wants a piece of his land," says Mr Devananda in a well-rehearsed line. "You know what - Prabhakaran is a dictator. He cannot operate in a democratic set up. He is like Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Hitler."

Mr Devananda says he understands the futility of fighting for a separate state - he fought a nearly decade-long underground battle for an earlier party, was jailed for a few years and on his release launched the EPDP.

Now his one-seat party advocates a power-sharing federal solution for the Tamils working with the government. "His Tamil detractors say he is a traitor collaborating with the government uncritically. Douglas says the Tigers are not the sole representative of the Tamil people," says analyst Jehan Perera.

A Jaffna-born, Palestinian-trained guerrilla-turned-politician, Mr Devananda says the peace process is not working. So is a return to war the only solution? "I have to be diplomatic," he smiles. "But if there's no risk, there is no gain."

Whatever happens, Douglas Devananda's life seems unlikely to change.

"I have gotten used to this bunker existence. And they wont get me."

His aide, Maheswari Veluatham, nods her head. "It's a torture, isn't it? He is stuck inside a room all the time. He gets some fresh air only when he goes to meet the president," she says later.

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Profile of Kathiravelu Nithyananda Douglas Devananda -
Leader of the EPDP

@ EPDP HomePage

Devananda was born in Jaffna on 10th November 1957 as the second of the four sons and one daughter of Subramaniam Kathiravelu. His mother Maheswary died when he was only six years old. Kathiravelu was a member of the Sri Lanka Communist Party, a leading member of the Government Clerical Service Union (GCSU), and editor of the GCSU publication ‘Redtape’. Kathiravelu served in the Department of Inland Revenue and later joined the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, where he rose up as one of its Regional Managers.

Devananda had his primary and secondary education at the Jaffna Central College, where his mother was a teacher, till her death. While being a teenage student in Jaffna, he was exposed to, and influenced by his father’s political work and that of his uncle K.C.Nithyananda, who was a leading trade unionist of his day. In 1970, at the age of 13, Devananda joined the Manavar Peravai (Students Federation), being distressed by the government’s scheme of standardisation of marks for admission to universities.

From Jaffna, in 1974, Devananda was sent to Colombo for further studies under K.C. Nithyananda’s tutelage. Nithyananda joined the government service as a clerk and was a President of the GCSU. He rose to become a member of the Ceylon Administrative Service and served in the Ministry of Transport and the General Treasury. Nithyananda assumed the role of Devananda’s parent and mentor. In Colombo, however, it was not studies that interested Devananda, the teenager, but politics. Sinhala chauvinism and Tamil extremism enveloping the country disturbed him. He wanted to be actively engaged in the Tamil liberation struggle of the day. He joined the Eelam Liberation Organisation (ELO). He organised the General Union of Eelam Students (GUES) in Colombo, and coordinated its activities in the North and East of Sri Lanka. In 1975, he became a founder member of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisers (EROs). It was then that he assumed the pseudonym of Douglas.

When anti-Tamil riots broke out in south and central Sri Lanka, following the Parliamentary general election in August 1977, Nithyananda and his Tamil Refugees Rehabilitation Organisation (TRRO) worked tirelessly in the task of providing temporary accommodation and food to thousands of Tamil refugees. Young Devananda threw his full weight behind that humanitarian task.

When President Jayewardene appointed Nithyananda as the Chairman of the newly formed Palmyrah Development Board, Devananda functioned as his personal assistant. This was only for a short period. In 1978, the EROs dispatched Devananda alias Douglas for military training with Al Fatah of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. He successfully completed the training and returned to Sri Lanka.

Trouble was brewing in the hierarchy of the EROs. The organisation, with its leadership based mainly in London, broke up into two. A section, including Padmanabha and Douglas left EROs and formed the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF). The student body GUES of the EROs, attached itself with the EPRLF. In the EPRLF, Douglas served as a member of the politbureau and as the commander of its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

In 1980, the Sri Lanka government arrested Douglas twice under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He was incarcerated in Batticaloa prison, Magazine prison, Panagoda detention centre, and in Welikada prison. When the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots broke out, Douglas was an inmate of Welikada. He was one of the few prisoners who escaped death at the hands of the Sinhala criminals who were let loose by the authorities on 25th and 27th July to kill the Tamil political prisoners. After the two massacres in Welikada, which resulted in the death of 53 inmates, Douglas along with 27 other survivors was transferred to Batticaloa prison. In September 1983, he along with all the other Tamil political prisoners escaped from the Batticaloa prison and fled to Tamil Nadu in India.

From India, in 1984, he was sent by the EPRLF for advanced military training, and to lead a group of other EPRLF members, both men and women, for training with the Democratic Palestine Liberation Front (DPLF). Following the training, he returned to North-East Sri Lanka and resumed charge as the commander of the PLA. Based in Jaffna, he was also in charge of all political and military activities of the EPRLF in the North and East of Sri Lanka. In May 1985, Deva lost his teenage cousin sister, Shobha in the Karainagar Naval Base attack. The search lights of the Navy gun boats caught up with her and she was shredded in a hail of heavy machine gun bullets. She was the first woman cadre martyr in our freedom struggle.

In May 1986, serious internal contradictions cropped up within the EPRLF. As most of its politbureau members were based in Tamil Nadu, Douglas undertook a sea voyage to Tamil Nadu to sort out the problems. His first sea voyage ended up in a tragedy, which resulted in the death of seven of the nineteen-member entourage of Douglas. Though Douglas arrived safely on the second sea voyage, the internal contradictions could not be resolved. Consequently, Douglas and his loyalists parted company from the others, and laid claim as the real EPRLF. The two factions were however dubbed as the EPRLF (D) and the EPRLF (R).

In October 1986, certain forces in Tamil Nadu together with EPRLF (R ) framed criminal charges against Douglas for an incident in Choolaimedu in Chennai and had him arrested. He was however released on bail. Following this incident, cleavage between the two factions of the EPRLF became permanent. In May 1987, EPRLF (D) under the leadership of Douglas, together with Paranthan Rajan who led a breakaway group of the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) formed the Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF) in Tamil Nadu. However, this arrangement did not last long. Thereafter, EPRLF (D) transformed itself into the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP).

Following the Indo Sri Lanka Agreement of July 1987, the EPDP also decided to give up the armed struggle and to join the democratic process in Sri Lanka. The earlier upbringing of Douglas by Nithyananda made it easy for him to decide to eschew the path of violence and to work for the rights of the Tamil-speaking people with the cooperation of the progressive forces in the south of Sri Lanka. Douglas decided to enter the democratic mainstream as Kathiravelu Nithyananda Douglas Devananda.

The LTTE wanted to exploit the situation to wipe out all other Tamil militant organisations. It was around that time that Douglas’ brother Premananda who had just returned from India, and Sivakaran, both members of the EPDP, were abducted by the LTTE in Jaffna and tortured. To date, their fate is not known. While Douglas was making preparations to leave Tamil Nadu and resettle in Sri Lanka, once again certain forces were hatching a sinister plot to arrest him and to implicate him in some crime in India. He however managed to arrive in Colombo by the end of May 1990. When Padmanabha was assassinated by the LTTE in Chennai in June 1990, these very same forces were disappointed to discover that Douglas was in Sri Lanka weeks before the incident.

Having entered the democratic mainstream, Douglas worked hard to build his party in the North-East Province of Sri Lanka. His efforts paid dividends when nine members of the EPDP, including himself were elected to Parliament from the Jaffna District, in August 1994. Douglas was reelected to Parliament in October 2000, and again in December 2001.

In October 1995, Douglas’ residence in Colombo was attacked by the LTTE. He survived this attack due to the valiant efforts of his party cadres and bodyguards, four of whom paid the supreme sacrifice in the incident. In June 1998, Douglas was brutally attacked by the LTTE mafia detained in Kalutara Prison, when he visited the detainees who were on a hunger strike to air their grievances. He survived this attack as well, due to the excellent medical attention given by Sri Lankan medical personnel, his own will power, and the prayers of the populace that loved him. He however lost his sight in one eye.

In October 2000, Douglas was appointed as the Minister of Development, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of the North, and Tamil Affairs, North and East, in the People’s Alliance Government headed by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. During the very short stint as Minister, he worked tirelessly to provide means of livelihood to thousands and improve the lives of the people who had placed faith in him. The rehabilitated roads, community centers, schools, the information technology park and other infrastructure, and the towering temples, churches, viharas and mosques seen today in the North are all testimony to his work.

With the formation of a United National Front Government headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in December 2001, Douglas sits in the official opposition in Parliament, but maintains a healthy dialogue with President Chandrika Bandranaike Kumaratunga of the People’s Alliance and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Front, as he believes that only a joint effort by both of them could result in a lasting solution to the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka. Throughout the period commencing August 1994, and to date, Douglas has been involved in negotiations and other activities relating to a lasting political solution to the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka.

Douglas Devananda is a self-confident idealist, who is a unique fighter against fascism. He is kind, humble and simple, and a believer in humanism,. He is determined to serve his people, despite the fact that he has been wounded, scarred and blinded in one eye, and compelled to live a life in the shadow of death.

LANKALIBRARY FORUM