Of Friendship, War And Loss From The Cauldron Of War

One of the closest friends I made during my career as a journalist was John Rettie. Both of us were posted in Colombo in the mid-80s. I was just about three years into the profession while he was  near the end of a long, distinguished career as a foreign correspondent. Despite his travels around the world, at heart John remained a Yorkshire man. In Colombo, John was on contract with the BBC but was allowed to write for various other newspapers and magazines, as long as they were not direct competitors. He worked 24x7 in his suite in the 100-year-old Galle Face hotel, which had photos and names of VVIPs engraved on a plaque at the hotel entrance. This included Queen Elizabeth, Lord Mountbatten, a couple of yesteryear Hollywood stars of, including Rock Hudson. John’s name was also on the plaque.

John always had my back. The BBC had stringers across the island and they alerted him immediately when there was news of an incident. Those were tumultuous days in the island nation with the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) holding sway in the vast swathes of the Jaffna region. So, nearly every other day, a call on the landline—it was the pre-mobile phone era—would come from John, informing me about a mine blast here or a daring and vicious attack there. Death counts often varied depending on your source of information. Amal Jayasinghe, the AFP bureau chief, was our go-to man for cross-checking all stories and death stats. Amal was and still remains  one of the best at his job. Then there was my friend and neighbour Thomas  Abraham of The Hindu, Jayram of UNI and several others. We have an ex-Colombo group on WhatsApp and keep in touch to this day.

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John was the quintessential foreign correspondent, hard drinking, hard-working and always ready for an adventure. He loved his Old Monk, the Indian rum which J.N. Dixit, India’s high commissioner in Sri Lanka and later foreign secretary and NSA in the Manmohan Singh government, always carried back from Delhi during his frequent trips.

John had won his spurs in Moscow as the Reuters correspondent in the ’60s, when he had broken a major story and was declared persona non-grata by the Kremlin. He had spent time in Mexico and knew Latin America well. John was also a one-man crusader against Nestle—he cou­ld boycott all Nestle products and would ang­rily stop us from having the company’s instant coffee. His anger against Nestle stemmed from its campaign in South America in the ’70s when the company  spent huge amounts of dollars in a campaign to dissuade mothers from breastfeeding their babies to increase the sale of their newly-launched baby milk product.

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The BBC correspondent was a major headache for the ruling UNP government in Colo­mbo. So, there was always the threat that his visa would not be renewed. This was their way of getting back at John for his daily expose of not just the violence unleashed by the LTTE but the Lankan state’s counter-violence. He was one of those lucky journalists who did not have to go hunting for stories, people would seek him out to give him their version. John was a great storyteller, he would regale us with stories from around the world. His van in the little village of Yorkshire was called the ‘Yellow Peril’. After Colombo, John spent a couple of years in India as The Guardian newspaper’s correspondent based in New Delhi. He then retired to his estate in Yorkshire. The manor was too large for him to maintain, so he rented it out, preferring to stay in a lovely cottage in the estate instead. John and I kept in touch. I visited him once in his estate, where the clip clop of horse hoofs on the cobblestone pathway by my bedroom window woke me up each  morning.

John was diagnosed with cancer but refused to take treatment. Instead, he went to “this wonderful Tamil doctor” in Yorkshire who prescribed alternative treatment. He died soon afterwards. My one regret is that I did not go and see him for a last goodbye.

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Looking back to my time in Sri Lanka, two things stand out: lasting friendships made with fellow reporters and the sad fact that many people you get to know, like and admire are killed.

The lost lives

Richard de Zoysa was a journalist, a human rights activist and a fine actor. Of mixed Sinhala-Tamil parentage, he was the head of the Inter Press Service in Colombo and an expert on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the extreme left-wing nationalist movement that was challenging the UNP government. He would keep me abreast of all the JVP moves and patiently explain the context. The UNP government crushed the JVP movement ruthlessly. While the world noted the rights violation of the Tamils, no one has fully reported the terror unleashed by the government on suspected members of the JVP. Many hapless civilians with no connection with the JVP were massacred. On February 18, 1990, we woke up to the shocking news that a group of armed men had broken into his home and abducted Richard. The media raised the alarm fearing for his life as we all realised that his writings on the human rights violations by the police and the STF, the ‘death squads’ that picked up those seen to be sympathetic to the rebels, had greatly annoyed the authorities.

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I remember we were all praying that the worse had not befallen this wonderful journalist. But the next day, his body bearing torture marks—his jaw was broken, he had bullet marks on the head and throat—was swept ashore on the Moratuwa beach. He had been killed by a death squad that he helped expose. Death squads were hired thugs or sometimes even some enthusiastic officers within the regular police force. He was just around 31 when he was killed.

Richard’s mother fought hard to get justice for her son, named the police officers involved, they were even tried but the case was dismissed. She also initiated Sri Lanka’s ‘Mothers Front’ , an organisation of women working together to trace hundreds of sons who had gone missing and never been found. She passed away in 2005.

Lalith Athulathmudali was the defence minister of Sri Lanka in J.R. Jayawardene’s cabinet in 1987. That was the year that the India-Sri Lanka accord was signed. The agreement allowed the Indian army, euphemistically referred to as the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), to be deployed in the Tamil-dominated Northern Province as well as the Eastern Province, which also had a large number of Tamils. The accord had angered many in Sri Lanka and it was not welcomed even within the government. There was a virtual revolt by a few senior members of the Jayawardene cabinet. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa was one of them. Athulathmudali was another. He was a hate figure in India as he had often spoken out against New Delhi’s role in arming and funding Tamil “terrorists” seeking to dismember the small island nation.

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I landed in Colombo a few days after the accord was signed. I was then working for the Times of India, and Sri Lanka was a major story. I was asked to go to Colombo and, if possible, to Jaffna for a couple of reports. Unfortunately, I landed on a poya or full moon night, auspicious to Lankan Buddhists; all government offices were shut. The first thing all correspondents arriving in Sri Lanka had to do was to report to the Infor­mation Ministry.

Unfortunately, the office was closed. I had a couple of numbers with me so I started with the defence minister. I dialled his home number not expecting a response. But a mellow voice did answer. Believing it to be one of the numerous secretaries that ministers in Delhi had, I introduced myself and requested for an interview with the minister. The voice at the other end said, “Yes, come along right away. I am at home.” It was Lalith Athulathmudali. I landed at his home some 20 minutes later, not certain of the kind of reception I would get, considering I had heard many stories about him in Delhi that he was anti-Indian and was unpleasant to Indian journalists. He opened the door himself. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and track pants, he was gracious and welcoming and we sat down for the interview. I asked him all the tough questions—Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism, why Tamils were denied their rights in the country and also probed about the Israeli connection. He answered all the questions, pointing to Delhi and Tamil Nadu’s constant interference in the island’s politics.

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That was my first meeting with the minister. And since then, I continued to meet him regularly and was never denied access. He was obviously unhappy that Sri Lankan forces were confined to the Dutch fort in Jaffna, while the IPKF were in control. As a Sinhala nationalist, he could not be faulted for wanting a foreign force out of the island. Athulathmudali was shot dead while addressing an election rally on April 23, 1993, by a suspected LTTE gunman.

Neelan Tiruchelvam’s office at Kynsey Terrace, from where he ran the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, was a compulsory stop for every journalist who landed in Colombo to cover the civil war. Tiruchelvam was a Colombo-based Tamil lawyer, human rights activist, and an expert in constitutional law, and later became a member of the moderate Tamil political outfit, the Tamil United Liberation Front. He was also a member of Parliament. He was close to former president Chandrika Kumaratunga and is said to have prepared the paper on devolution of powers during her presidency. Neelan was a popular figure in the Colombo social circuit and knew everybody worth knowing, from politicians to academics to analysts. I would frequently drop into his office to understand the nuances of the devolution package, the squabbles inside the ruling UNP and his insights into the working of President Jayawardene’s mind.

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In the late ’80s, Sri Lanka was a polarised society. The Jaffna Tamils had nothing but contempt for the Sinhalese while the majority saw them as terrorists, out to dismember the Buddhist nation. There was a large Tamil population living in the capital and many of the island’s foremost business people were Tamils. Yet, after the anti-Tamil riots of 1984, most of the well-to-do Tamils, who had so long been integrated into the upper crust Sinhala society, were also alienated. They would privately trash the Sinhalese, especially when talking to Indian journalists.

But Neelan was never like that. He spoke openly about the distrust between the Tamils and Sinhalese, pointing to political leaders forever playing the Sinhala Buddhist card and thriving on the ultra-nationalist sentiments to win elections. He was equally open about the LTTE and its use of violence against innocent civilians. Neelan had friends on both sides of the ethnic divide. Neelan was killed by a suspected LTTE suicide bomber on July 29, 1999, while on his way to office.

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(This appeared in the print edition as "Of Friendship, War and Loss")