The Spectre of Structural Violence
photo from: https://lankacgossip.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Beira-vehicles.jpg There has been a lot of violence and also a lot of talk about violence in this last month. It shouldn’t come as a surprise because violence has underlined our Sri Lankan existence at least throughout my life time. From the time our band-playing triforces were transformed into killing machines in 1971, guns military technology, poles, molotov cocktails and bombs have been used by the forces, the vigilantes and the so called ‘terrorist groups’ to wage destruction on the LTTE, on the JVP and against many local, minority groups, the most recent being the Easter Sunday massacre of innocent civilians. We have assassinated a cohort of leaders, starting with the much maligned SWRD Bandaranaike in 1956, and more recently Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Vijaya Kumaranatunga, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Neelan Thiruchelvam, Nadaraja Raviraj, Lakshman Kadirigama, to name a few of the others.