/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-SRI LANKA: Dissenting Actors, Singers Face Intimidation

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 1 2000 (IPS) - Sri Lankan actor Anoja Weerasinghe played the role of a queen who lost her children, her husband and her country in the stage version of a Greek anti-war tragedy last month, but little did she imagine it would happen to her too.

Weerasinghe, a most-gifted artist, had to run away to India in mid-December, fearing an attack on her life after an unknown gang twice torched her home, because of her politics. She has not returned to the country since then.

The situation is not a tragedy for her, she has lost all that was precious to her in her home, but it has also spread fear among artists in the country, and rendered a severe blow to freedom of expression here.

“I have tried to persuade her to return for the repeat performance of the play on Feb. 6, but I don’t know,” says a worried Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, director of ‘The Trojan Women’, in which Weerasinghe played the lead role of Hecube, the queen.

Bandaranayake is not just worried about his lead actor. Rukantha Gunatillake, a popular Sri Lankan singer and songwriter, who wrote the play’s musical score and also sings in it, and his wife singer-wife Chandralekha Perera, were brutally attacked in their home last week, again for political reasons.

The victims in both attacks had actively campaigned for the main opposition United National Party (UNP) in last month’s presidential poll, which was won by President Chandrika Kumaratunga of the ruling People’s Alliance (PA).

The PA has vehemently denied allegations that their supporters were involved, but artists and journalists, who condemned the incidents, blame the politically motivated attacks on the government.

The situation is reminiscent of the late 1980s, during the regime of Ranasinghe Premadasa when TV broadcaster-actor- journalist Richard de Zoysa, playwright Lakshman Perera and Premakeethi de Alwis, a reputed TV presenter and songwriter, were killed.

The killings were blamed on either pro-government squads or the People’s Liberation Front (PLF), a Sinhalese Marxist-oriented group leading a bloody uprising against the government. Zoysa and Perera were preparing to stage a political drama they had co- authored when they were killed.

Kumudini Samuel, an activist of the Women’s Media and Collective, a local NGO, says the return of the past climate of violence against freedom of expression is most disturbing.

“These attacks happened in the past too but no action was taken to bring the perpetrators to book. By doing so, we created a climate of impunity for the perpetrators and the structures that surround such attacks. Now it’s happening once again.”

The film industry was in a state of shock last week. If the gutting of Weerasinghe’s home and farm at Monaragala Village, 250 km east of Colombo where she wanted to eventually settle down, was a deliberate attack on her work, the assault on the Gunatillake- Perera couple was even worse.

The gang of eight men armed with automatic weapons surrounded their residence, just outside Colombo, and smashed the furniture in front of their terrified children. They then shaved parts of the couple’s head, while one man held a pistol at Gunatillake’s temple, demanding to know why they worked for the UNP.

The men poured a mix of kerosene and diesel on the couple and sprinkled it around the house with the probable intention of setting it on fire, but quickly bolted with Gunatillake’s vehicle and some jewellery on hearing the police was on its way.

“This is a terrible situation we are faced in,” says a frightened Ravindra Randeniya, president of the Sri Lanka Film Actors’ Guild. Randeniya was also involved in the UNP presidential campaign but from the sidelines.

“I addressed a few press conferences calling on artists to support the UNP whereas Weerasinghe addressed a couple of UNP political rallies and Gunatillake performed on the UNP stage,” he explained.

What Sri Lanka’s best known filmstar, Weerasinghe, has to say in an appeal that she has written in Sinhala, seems to echo the thoughts of all concerned citizens in the country.

“Right or wrong, have I not got the right to do what I feel and what I think is correct? I am only one person from a multitude constituting 42 percent out of the total voters who cast their vote for the UNP … Should we accept this despicable and dirty politics existing in our country,” she writes.

Honoured at several international film festivals, she says she has lost hard to replace copies of several old movies including some of her own films, including ‘Kele Mal’ (Jungle Flowers), ‘Obata Rahasak Kiyannam’ (I will tell you a secret) and ‘Gurugedera 4’ (The Teachers Home).

“In my country and abroad I do have many who are fond of me and I can easily rebuild my life with their kind assistance. But, what really broke my heart is that the flames that engulfed my dear home, has destroyed what I can never again buy with money.”

Women activists including Sri Lanka’s Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special UN Rapporteur on Violence against Women, in a statement last week denounced the arson attack on Weerasinghe’s home.

“Such attacks have been witnessed in the past under all governments and fit into a history of attempts to control culture and the free expression of artists. The recent attack and burning of the contents of the house of Anoja Weerasinghe, is one example of a criminal act of vandalism and arson,” said the statement by 19 women’s organisations.

“In this context, the destruction of Weerasinghe’s house and 22-year cultural archive at her home in Monaragala, seems a particularly malicious act. Moreover, the archive was in the process of being turned into a museum, so its destruction is a great public loss,” it said.

The group said the attack impinged on the democratic rights of artists and their right to free participation in oppositional politics, and urged the authorities to hold an impartial inquiry.

While the government said it had appointed a special probe into the Gunatillake attack, nothing has been done regarding Weerasinghe. Various statements by government politicians in state- owned newspapers claim both incidents were connected to private feuds or land disputes.

If that is so shouldn’t the government then ensure the law steps in to ensure justice. Says a rights activist, in fact the attacks are warnings to artists to stay out of politics. With parliamentary elections due in August, the ruling party is edgy.