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The
prison massacres - 1
Several
articles have appeared in the last few days about July 25,
1983 attacks on Tamils. But, none have written about the prison
massacres of July 25 and 27 in which 53 political prisoners
were killed.
As the clock struck 2:00 p.m. on July 25 Monday, 300 to 400
prisoners who were outside their cells ran towards the Chapel
Section of the Welikada Prison, the high security jail in
Sri Lanka. ‘Kill the Tamils,’ they shouted.
Some barked ‘Kill Kutimani.’
I interviewed three of the 19 who escaped the massacre and
reconstructed the following account based on the information
they gave; the testimony at the magistrate’s inquest,
and the evidence led before the Presidential Truth Commission.
Welikada Prison is close to Borella Junction, where riots
broke out on Sunday night. The prisoners heard the shouting
and the explosions from the burning buildings. “We
knew something was happening, but we did not know what it
was,” said Manikkathisan, the military wing leader of
the PLOTE.
They learned about the commotion at 8:00 a.m. on Monday,
when Kuttimani told them the news about the death of
the 13 soldiers, and the riots. Prison regulations permit
the supply of newspapers to prisoners sentenced to death.
Kuttimani, Thangathurai, Jegan, Sivapatham Master, and Nadesuthan had
been convicted of taking part in the Neerveli bank robbery
of 1981. They had appealed the conviction. By about
10:00 a.m. they felt the tense atmosphere inside the prison.
Most of the 72 Tamil prisoners were locked up inside the two-storied
cross-shaped building called the Chapel Section. It
had four wings, A, B, C, and D. These wings in the ground
floor were marked A3, B3, C3, and D3. Kuttimani and
five other convicted prisoners, all from TELO, were locked
up in separate cells in the front section of B3. In
D3, 29 Tamil prisoners detained under the PTA were kept.
They were mostly young boys taken in on suspicion and were
due to be released soon. In C3, there were 28 more Tamil
PTA detainees. Douglas Devanada, Manikkathasan, Robert, Paranthan
Rajan, Panagoda Maheswaran, Baskaran, Thevakumar, Jayakody,
and others were in that section.
In A3 dangerous criminals who tried to escape were housed.
Sepala Ekanayake, convicted for hijacking an Alitalia aircraft,
was in that section. The space between the four wings
is the lobby, and iron doors stand at the entrance to the
passage to each wing. Two guards are on duty near each
iron door. In the two upper floors, about 800 ordinary
prisoners are housed. Nine other Tamil prisoners were kept
in the Youthful Offenders Building (YOB), a separate building
farther away. They were: Dr. V. Tharmalingam, Kovai
Mahesan, Dr. Rajasuntharam, A. David, K. Nithiyananthan, Fr.
Singarayar, Fr. Sinnarasa, Rev. Jayathilakarajah, and Dr.
Jayakularajah. They were kept in the separate building
because they were professionals and not considered dangerous.
Around 2:00 p.m. the Tamil prisoners heard hysterical shouts.
They heard the chant, ‘Kill the Tamils! Kill Kuttimani!’
and ‘We will drink their blood.’ Leading the screaming
crowd was a prisoner whom Kuttimani had treated with affection.
Physically he resembled Prabhakaran, who was called Thamby
by all of them. Kuttimani started calling that prisoner
Thamby, and other Tamil prisoners followed. He was one
of the prisoners who served food to Tamil prisoners. ‘Thamby’
led the crowd to Kuttimani’s cell.
A group of about 25 men carrying knives, crowbars, axes,
and iron bars with sharp points led the turbulent crowd.
They opened the iron door leading to the passage to B3 and
banged the cell doors of the six TELO convicts with the weapons
they carried. They unlocked the cell doors with the
keys they had brought, and pushed them open. The Tamil militants
fought back. They fought with bare hands. Kuttimani,
an expert in karate and boxing, dealt them shattering blows.
He hit back with his hands and legs, but he could not hold
out for long. He was outnumbered. They pushed
him. He fell. They clubbed him and then cut him
with a knife.
Then they dragged him to the lobby and put him in a
kneeling position, and gouged out his eyes with pointed iron
bars. The crowd jeered, chanting, “We have plucked
the eyes with which you wanted to see the birth of Eelam.”
The reference was to Kuttimani’s statement from the dock
made after he was sentenced to death. He said that his
last wish was to donate his eyes to a blind boy so that his
eyes would see the birth of Eelam. A prisoner then ran
up to Kuttimani, who was still in his kneeling position.
He raised the drooping head and pulled out his tongue.
He cut it with a knife. He popped it into his mouth
and danced, saying, “I drank Tiger blood.”
About a dozen more smeared their hands and body with Kuttimani’s
blood. Then they killed him.
After killing the six convicted prisoners, the mob leaders
ran to D3, which housed the 29 PTA detainees. They attacked
them. They missed Mylvaganam, a 16-year old boy who,
thoroughly frightened, crouched in a cell. Someone
spotted him and stabbed him to death. Two able-bodied
detainees in D3 watched these acts. Manikkathasan peeped
through the ventilation hole and watched what happened
in the compound. He saw the crowd running towards the
Church Section and the piling of bodies in front of the statue
of Buddha. Robert’s (Kandiah Rajendran) cell was
close to the lobby, and he gave a running commentary to the
others about the events that took place in it. Manikkathasan
lived to tell the world the things he saw. Robert was killed
in the second massacre. But his running commentary is
still remembered by those who survived.
Robert had also related to the others a discussion that took
place at the end of the Monday massacre. The gang leaders
wanted to finish off the job by killing the remaining prisoners.
There were 37 left - 28 in C3 and nine in YOB. A Jail
guard told them, “Today, it is enough.”
Thirty-five prisoners were killed, the six convicted prisoners
and the 29 PTA detainees
Next week: Second Prison Massacre
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