Around one year ago, I received a telephone call early in the morning. The screen displayed a +41 number, so I immediately knew that the caller was in Switzerland. Apart from one of my friends in the Foreign Ministry who is working for our mission in Geneva, I could not think of anyone else I knew living in Switzerland. Then a familiar voice came on the line: “Pramod, this is Ratnapala Gamage who used to work for the Lankadeepa”.
The newspapers and their companies may have their rivalries, but their journalists often do not. Journalism is a calling that cuts across all boundaries and journalists from all institutions flock together. One of the perks of this job is that one gets to know senior journalists who inspire us with their stories – both written and unwritten.
Ratnapala Gamage is one such senior journalist whom I have been privileged to know for quite some time. During that brief telephone call, Gamage told me he was writing a book on the battle against terrorism, a sort of memoir as it would be based on his work as a Defence Correspondent for the Lankadeepa. I knew being a defence correspondent was no easy task, having had the pleasure of editing the copies sent from the battlefield by our own defence correspondent, the late Ranil Wijayapala. Even in those early days, Gamage already had a title in mind for the book – Ranabimaka Panhinda, titled in English as “Notes from the Battlefield”.
This book was launched recently at the J.R. Jayewardene Centre in Colombo. Gamage could not make it due to family commitments in Switzerland, so this was a unique book launch in the sense that the author was not physically present. But the author must have watched the livestream and several other defence correspondents domiciled abroad also sent video messages.
Journalistic perspective
This Sinhala book, dedicated to Lankadeepa Editor and veteran journalist Siri Ranasinghe and the battle against terrorism Heroes who sacrificed life and limb to liberate the Motherland, is a primer on the 30-year-conflict that ravaged Sri Lanka. Much of the book is written from the perspective of a journalist who had covered the battle against terrorism almost from its beginning to its very end in May 2009.
But the book does not begin from the beginning, so to speak. Nor does it begin from the end of the battle, as some journalists have done in their own books. Instead, Gamage has chosen the LTTE leader’s infamous Vanni press conference during the peak of the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) as a starting point for this 322-page book. Here he describes how they were compelled to get “visas” to enter the territory controlled by the LTTE, which shows for all intents and purpose that a de-facto separate state existed in Sri Lanka for many years. This was in fact the first and the last press conference held by the LTTE leader, who perished in the final days of the battle. Students interested in the history of the battle will find Gamage’s verbatim recollection of the press conference useful and fascinating.
The second chapter deals with a night spent in a military bunker, for a promotional drive for the Army which was seeking additional manpower for the battle against terrorism. Another chapter deals with the first-ever flight of the Air Force to Palaly from Colombo after two aircraft were shot down by the LTTE. Lake House lost three of its journalists in one such incident (these incidents are highlighted in detail in the book). As I have taken many of these daredevil flights myself, I can almost feel the atmosphere and suspense inside the cabin as the pilots did their manoeuvres to avoid any enemy missiles, which Gamage has described in detail. By this time, Jaffna town and many other areas had been regained by the Security Forces.
The book also details some of the exploits of the Army’s LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) which penetrated deep into enemy-held territory to carry out strikes. Some of these hair-raising stories are being told for the first time – at the time they operated behind enemy lines, only a very few men even in the Army knew about them. According to the book, Gamage had even met some of members of the LRRP, but their identities have not been revealed due to obvious reasons – only their bravery.
Heroic acts
Lest one think that the book is exclusively about the exploits of the Army, Gamage devotes a fair number of pages for the heroic acts of the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF). Some of the individual acts of heroism of key SLN and SLAF personnel are also highlighted. Since the book does not strictly follow a strict chronological order, Gamage has been able to insert information in places as he sees fit. This is as it should be, because many things happened during the war years out of sync.
The Black July of 1983 has been given a separate chapter. This, after all, triggered an intensification of the battle. Many even say it started the war, but the war began many years earlier. But suffice to say that it was a huge black mark for Sri Lanka, which had managed to stave off an ethnic flare-up for many decades. The book gives a graphic description of some of the atrocities committed in subsequent years by the LTTE, apparently to avenge July 83.
No book on the battle will be complete without a description of the entry of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka, following the implementation of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord signed amid much opposition by President J.R. Jayewardene and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in July 1987. Gamage also touches upon the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by LTTE assassins on May 21, 1991. (It still irks me that the Daily News missed this story, having gone early to press).
The Army has given the Parama Weera Vibushana – the highest military honour given for exceptional acts of bravery – to only around 35 soldiers so far. The award is almost always posthumous, as these soldiers usually sacrificed their lives for the cause of the Motherland.
Accordingly, you can read the story of the famous “Hasalaka Weeraya” (Gamini Kularatne) among the pages of this book. But in a war, defeat goes hand-in-hand with victory and the author has described some of the setbacks suffered by the Security Forces including the capture of the Elephant Pass camp by the Tigers.
Of course, the book also details many of the heavy defeats suffered by the enemy as well as some of the terror attacks that took place in Colombo and elsewhere.
Attack on BIA
There is one LTTE attack that I would never forget – the attack on the Bandaranaike International Airport and the adjacent SLAF camp, since I was at the airport in the early morning of July 24, 2001 to catch a flight to Frankfurt on an invitation extended by BMW AG. Gamage reveals many of the details of this attack, possibly for the first time, in an absorbing chapter.
While the battle against terrorism remains the main theme of this book, Gamage has made an effort to remind the reader of some of the other political and social developments that took place during the battle years, including the appointment of Lakshman Kadirgamar as Foreign Minister. His campaign led to a ban on the LTTE in many countries.
Gamage wore many hats as a journalist and Defence Correspondent was only one of them. He took a special interest in writing what editors call “human interest” stories. In this book he tells one such story – about an old woman from a rich family who was a victim of a hit-and-run accident in Balapitiya. Unfortunately, none of her sons and daughters came to the hospital to claim the body and her funeral was done at Government expense. The author also tells the story of an impoverished youth who battled to care for his ailing mother. These two contrasting stories may strike the reader as being out of place in a book about the war, but interspersed in that main story are many other stories (of humanity and inhumanity) that need to be told.
Wars are ugly. Wars are deadly. But they sometimes happen. They can even be necessary. And usually there are no happy endings in wars and conflicts. Covering a war is not easy. Many journalists have lost their lives while covering wars. “No story is worth your life” is a maxim that we learn in this profession. But sometimes you want to take just one step further to tell that story.
Gamage has been there and done that – in the thick of battle. This book is a lucidly written personal account of the battle that will be read for years to come (I am told that English and Tamil translations are on the way) by all those who are interested in this somewhat dark chapter of our history. We must learn lessons from that history to usher in peace and reconciliation in this resplendent isle of ours.