Rohana Wijeweera: The killing of Sri Lanka's Stalinist icon
By Charles Haviland-12 November 2014
The charismatic rebel leader modelled himself on Che Guevara
Twenty-five years ago, on 13 November 1989, the Sri Lankan government announced that Rohana Wijeweera, an extreme-left Sinhalese nationalist leader of two failed insurrections, had died in police custody - in unclear circumstances.
"I heard about the death. Of course it was not unexpected, I knew it was coming," recalls his friend, lawyer and election agent, Prins Gunasekara,speaking to the BBC history programme, Witness.
Even as the Tamil conflict flared up in the north the island had been wracked by violence in the south. Wijeweera's Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People's Liberation Front, killed those who rejected its ideology - and was crushed by the state.
