The Murder of Sivaram
[May 2, 2005]

By Dayan Jayatilleka
[Asian Tribune] 2005-04-29

The abduction and murder of D Sivaram alias Taraki, is a crime and a stupidity. It is a crime not only in the simple legal sense but in an ethical and moral sense too. And if it were conducted in the anti-Tiger cause, it is a tactical and strategic stupidity, which will hurt that cause and help the Tigers far more than any single target I can think I can think of.

Jean Paul Sartre said of his rival Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, “True, Louis Althusser is a Stalinist, but not every Stalinist is Louis Althusser!” Similarly it is true that Taraki was pro-Tiger, and possibly, even probably a Tiger, but not every Tiger was Sivaram/Taraki!

Taraki was a widely read and respected columnist, firstly for The Island, then for the Daily Mirror. In his own name he was the editor of TamilNet, pro-Tiger website, but well-produced, professional and authoritative; indispensable reading. He also wrote for the Tamil language papers, mainly the Veerakesari. He was not always pro-LTTE, and indeed his anti-Tiger articles were published as a booklet some years back.

Taraki’s pro-Tiger views were out in the open; he articulated and defended them publicly. And however wrong they may have been, he had every right to express them. That is what makes us a democracy, a pluralist society as distinct from the slave society that the LTTE has erected in its areas of control. This is indeed what is at stake in the matter of Siva ram’s abduction and execution. Are we qualitatively different from the LTTE? The fascist enemy cannot be fought by imitating him. He can be fought only by maintain a moral and ethical superiority, as exemplified in an open, pluralistic society.

Nothing is more symbolic of an open society than the inviolability of media freedom. Sivaram’s view had every right to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Of course he wasn’t only a journalist in the old sense, but which of us are? He came from an activist background (he was a PLOTE militant, and general secretary of its university student wing), and carried that activism, commitment and engagement into his journalism, albeit in the service of a cause that he had decried and fought in earlier years. All Sri Lankan journalists, are unfortunately, politically far too involved and affiliated, some with extremist organisations, others with established parties.

Taraki and I criticised one another in our writings, but we respected each other. We had once been comrades and though out of touch, still regarded each other as friends of some sort, with a shared past. He was an intellectual. He read widely, understood serious ideas (especially Foucault) wrote with clarity and power. Those who could not match his mind or pen would have sought to silence him by other, physical means, while still others who could not approximate him would applaud or countenance the abduction.

If he has been killed as retaliation for the abduction of Inspector Jeyaratnam, it is colossally stupid. Retaliation must contain some element of equivalence: an LTTE operative for a Police counter intelligence operative, not a columnist and editor. The Tigers will gain tremendously from this criminal folly of their foes, while the anti-Tiger cause will suffer greatly. Taraki was well regarded the world over, and this killing will be as costly internationally as the Richard de Zoysa murder, if not more so. It will be all the more costly, coming in the run-up to the conclave of the Sri Lankan Government and the INGOs on May 06th in Geneva, and the important Aid Group meeting in Kandy in mid-May which is already in trouble because of the JVP’s fundamentalist ‘flat earth’ rejection of any kind (not just a lopsided kind) of joint mechanism.

Sivaram challenged us with his writing. He was an uppity Tamil: confident, aware of Sinhala society and political trends, knowledgeable of international affairs. He held up a mirror before us. He was the Other in our midst. Now that he is dead, this is a lonelier place.

I knew him from 1982. He had dropped out of Peradeniya University where he was studying English literature, and was in transition to the PLOTE. His grandfather studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein in Cambridge, and the family still had a letter of commendation from DS Senanayake.

He translated my lecture on the Nicaraguan Revolution to the Marumalarchik Kalaham, the pro-LTTE Renaissance Society at Jaffna campus in late 1982, pausing to stress to the audience that the harsh criticisms of LTTE tactics that I was making were mine and not his!

In 1987, I was on the run, hiding in a lamp lit shed of a partially burnt out house, when one night, in the rain, he was brought in by Qadri Ismail, one of our young comrades (now a professor of literature in a US university). Sivaram contacted Vijaya Kumaratunga and Ossie Abeygoonesekara who promptly volunteered to give me shelter. After the Indo-Lanka accord, Sivaram (or SR as we called him) visited me late nights in my new safe house rented by Vijaya’s sister, and we lay on the floor of the unfurnished place, discussing the Tigers: he was worried about their plentiful ammunition supply.

We were together again in 1997 at the Lucerne conference organised by International Alert for the 10th anniversary of the Accord. We were very much on opposite sides by that time, but he made a fine presentation and we always could talk, socialise. Over the last few years we would meet at Colombo seminars. But we always respected and liked each other and at the worst of times could communicate more easily and had more in common than I ever could with the Weerawansas of this world.

Civilisation rests on certain rules, written and unwritten. The abduction on a Colombo street, binding, gagging and killing of D Sivaram, Taraki, violates those rules - as did that of Richard de Zoysa. The norms of civilisation require a full investigation and the punishment of those guilty.

He and I were survivors of the protracted Lankan civil wars, with their twists and turns. We wound up occupying different stances, buffeted and thrown by the tsunami of the crisis.

Sivaram was once a comrade, then a political enemy, but always a friend and colleague.

Reality is always dialectical, and that’s dialectics for you.

Our society is poorer without him.

I know I feel lonelier.

We shall never see his equal as an intellectual and personality.

Goodbye, old friend. I’ll miss you.

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Last Updated Date: May 2, 2005