Sri Lanka: The politics Of The Frontline Socialist Party – Interview With Premakumar Gunaratnam
August 8, 2012
Premakumar Gunaratnam, an ethnic Tamil from Sri Lanka, who now has Australian citizenship, returned to his home country in September 2011 to help organise the launch of a new left party, the Frontline Socialist Party (FLSP), a major breakaway from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, People’s Liberation Front). He had been a JVP activist for three decades and a member of its underground political bureau since 1994. In an extensive interview with Peter Boyle for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewaland Green Left Weekly, Gunaratnam reported how he was abducted by a group of armed men between 4 am and 5 am on April 7, just two days before the scheduled launch of the new party.
Premakumar Gunaratnam. Photo by Peter Boyle.
He spotted 15-20 armed men in civilian clothes from a window on the first floor of the building he was staying in and he tried to escape, unsuccessfully. “They kept me in my room for between 15 to 20 minutes and tortured me, including sexual torture. Then they blindfolded me, took me downstairs and forced me into a van.”
Gunaratnam was driven for 30-45 minutes to another place, where the torture continued in what seemed to be a small office. He remained blindfolded for the next 72 hours, except for a few minutes while his photograph was taken by a man wearing a balaclava.
“I saw then, in those few minutes, that it was an office with desks and computers. They were abusing and humiliating me and asking about my political work, the new party, where I had been in the previous seven months and who I was working with. They asked me about the accusations that I had LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] connections – a story that had been spread by the government and the media it controlled – but it seemed to me that they did not believe this themselves.
“From the way they treated me in the first eight hours I had the feeling that they were going to kill me. I was handcuffed and my feet were tied together. I was on the floors and they kept kicking me. They didn’t give me any food or water in that time. It was not a real interrogation, which I had previously experienced in 1989-1990 when I was in military custody. This time they were just torturing me.”
Gunaratnam recognised the behaviour of his abductors, particularly in relation to each other, as that of members of the armed forces or the police. Occasionally he overheard phone calls they made to their superiors about what to do with him.
Another leading FLSP activist, Ms Dimuthu Attygalle, had also been abducted just the night before Gunaratnam was picked up. However, he was not aware of this at the time of his abduction. During the first few hours of his detention, Gunaratnam heard the voice of a woman who was being interrogated in the same place, a voice he later recognised as that of Attygalle. Later that night, Gunaratnam was moved to a different location.
There was such a big public outcry over these abductions in Sri Lanka and in other countries, including in Australia, that the Sri Lankan government came under a lot of pressure. After three days both FLSP leaders were released by their abductors. Two other leading FLSP activists, who were abducted in Jaffna on December 9, 2011, Lalith Weeraraj and Kugan Muruganandan, remain “disappeared”.
Gunaratnam was taken to the police by his abductors to the police, who seemed to be expecting him, and later he was deported to Australia.
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