Sri-Lanka Human Rights Violations: Political Assassinations and Violence in Sri-Lanka

Sri-Lankan politics have a long history of violence.

S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (who was Prime Minister from 1956 to 1959) was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959.

The government under President Ranasinghe Premadasa killed many opponents, but put the blame on groups such as the LTTE and/or JVP. Some of the leading people alleged to have been murdered by the Premadasa regime include: General Denzil Kobbekaduwa, Lalith Athulathmudali and Vijaya Kumaranatunga.

Vijaya Kumaranatunga was the husband of Chandrika Kumaratunga (President from 1994 to 2005) and he was murdered in 1988.

Soon after the killing of her husband, Chandrika Kumaratunga fled the country with her two children seeking self-imposed exile in the UK.

In 1995, alleging Ranasinghe Premadasa and Ranjan Wijeratne (a minister)

to have been behind the assassination of her husband, she appointed a Presidential Commission of inquiry into the assassination of Vijaya Kumaratunga. The commission implicated Ranasinghe Premadasa and Ranjan Wijeratne.

General Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa was murdered in August 1992. A Presidential Commission concluded that President Ranasinghe Premadasa as well as members of the Sri Lankan Army such as Major W A N M Weerasinghe were directly responsible for his death.

Lalith Athulathmudali, a senior minister, was murdered in April 1993.

Initially, the government blamed the LTTE and produced the body of a Tamil youth named Ragunathan found near the scene of the shooting the following day. He had apparently died from taking a cyanide capsule. However, these claims were later proved to be false.

A Presidential Commission carried out by the Sri Lankan Government concluded that Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa was directly responsible for the assassination. It also concluded that the Tamil youth Ragunathan, was murdered by the same people who killed Athulathmudali, by forcibly administering him with cyanide.

Ranasinghe Premadasa and Ranjan Wijeratne were both brutally murdered!

"If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him." Hindu Proverb

Useful links for more information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12004081

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21964586

http://www.reuters.com/article/2006/11/10/us-srilanka-assassinations-idUSCOL15928620061110

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DH10Df01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijaya_Kumaranatunga