Lenin once said: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
This quote quite aptly describes recent developments regarding the Batalanda torture camp and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s involvement in the brutal counterinsurgency campaign against the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in the late 1980s. Wickremesinghe was then the Minister of Industries in the United Nationalist Party government led by Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa.
For over three decades, successive governments in Sri Lanka failed to act against perpetrators of horrific violence against JVP cadres. A panel appointed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga to investigate allegations of torture by state actors, targeting members of the JVP or those linked to them at the site in Battalanda camp produced the “Batalanda Commission Report” in 1998, which noted among other things that “The terrorism of the JVP was met with State Terrorism.” But the report was not presented to parliament. Nobody has been punished for the unspeakable violence unleashed by the state all these decades.
That could now change.
Recently, over a span of a week, a series of developments unfolded, which indicate that the long silence on the Batalanda torture camp could end.
Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power government, whose core component is the JVP, has promised to send the report to the Attorney General for action and has scheduled a two-day debate on it.
Sri Lanka was a very violent place in the 1980s. The UNP was in power during that decade. In 1980, it crushed a general strike, using legal and extralegal means, that left Sri Lanka’s organized labor unions crippled for decades. In 1981, mobs associated with UNP politicians burnt the Jaffna Public Library, which at that time had one of the largest collections of books in Asia. The incident was a turning point in race relations in Sri Lanka and was among the factors that triggered the Tamil militancy, which would convulse Sri Lanka for the next three decades. Then in July 1983, Sri Lanka witnessed the worst pogrom in its history. Police watched on as UNP-backed goons attacked Tamils and looted and burnt their properties. The UNP government then tried to frame several leftist political parties. Although the ban on the smaller leftist groups was lifted, the ban on the JVP, the strongest leftist group that was a threat to the government’s hegemony, was never lifted and JVP members and associates were harassed and imprisoned for years, pushing the JVP to take up armed struggle against the government in 1987.
The 1987-90 period was particularly bloody in Sri Lanka. The JVP killed close to 2,000 UNP supporters, while the government killed about 60,000 JVP supporters and sympathizers
The UNP’s counterinsurgency campaign was particularly brutal. Torture, extrajudicial killings and sexual assault were common, and several torture camps were known to exist. That Wickremesinghe, then minister of industries in the UNP government, was involved in the torture camps at Batalanda, was well known even in the 1980s.
In 1995, Kumaratunga set up the Commission of Inquiry into the alleged atrocities at the Batalanda camp. However, the Commission of Inquiry into the Establishment and Maintenance of Places of Unlawful Detention and Torture Chambers at the Batalanda Housing Scheme was appointed under the Commission of Inquiry Act of 1948, and not the Special Presidential Commissions of Inquiry (Special Provisions) Act, No. 4. 1978, which would have given the Commission stronger powers.
Although hundreds of people came forward to depose before the Commission, its proceedings continued until 1997, and it was only in the year 1998 that the Commission handed its report to Kumaratunga. The Commission report was not handed over to the attorney general for further action, as recommended by the Commission, and was never tabled in parliament. It drew little attention from local or international human rights defenders. Although a few journalists continued to report on Batalanda, expectations for a proper investigation remained low.
The UNP and the SLFP have alternated in power from independence until 2024. It is likely that they maintained an unspoken agreement to not take strong action against each other.
Meanwhile, the JVP returned to mainstream politics in 1994. For nearly 30 years, their political opponents leveraged the party’s involvement in two insurgencies — in 1971 and 1989 — to dissuade voters from supporting them by portraying them as unfit to govern due to their history of violence.
Believing that its history of armed struggle was a significant barrier to gaining votes, the JVP chose to downplay its violent past and despite losing nearly 60,000 cadres and supporters and having many survivors of the bloodletting of the 1980s holding senior positions within the party, the JVP didn’t push for an investigation into the UNP’s crimes against its members.
In 2019, the JVP rebranded itself as the National People’s Power (NPP) and became a dominant force in politics as public trust in traditional parties eroded, especially after the economic crisis of 2022. Their political opponents continued to believe that the party’s involvement in the 1980s insurgency could be used against them, as many believed the wounds of that violent decade had yet to heal.
Even after securing a landslide victory in November 2024, the NPP made no immediate moves to investigate the UNP’s violence inflicted upon them in the 1980s. Many assumed that Wickremesinghe’s role in the brutal counterinsurgency would continue to be ignored despite the NPP now being in power.
The turning point came in the first week of March 2025 when Al Jazeera aired an interview with Wickremesinghe. During that interview, he was quizzed on the Batalanda Commission report. A visibly flustered Wickremesinghe dismissed the report’s validity because it was not tabled in parliament.
It prompted many Sri Lankans to call on the government to investigate Batalanda Commission Report. The public support for such an inquiry seems to have changed the NPP’s perspective, making them realize that, for most Sri Lankans, the party’s involvement in an uprising against an unpopular government is not a dealbreaker anymore.
On March 14, the chief government whip, Minister Bimal Rathnayake tabled the report in parliament, followed by an emotional speech where he recalled the sacrifices made by the JVP’s fallen cadres and youth who yearned for social justice. JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva pledged to take legal action against perpetrators based on fresh investigations based on the Batalanda report. He said that many new witnesses will come forward when a legal inquest is held. Parliament will debate the Batalanda report in two stages in April and May 2025.
At a press conference, Wickremesinghe insisted that the Commission was politically motivated and its sole purpose was to discredit him. UNP chairman Wajira Abeywardana told journalists that the JVP killed 1960 UNP members in the 1980s and that the state unleashed its counterterror campaign to bring peace and stability.
Recent discussions about the Batalanda torture camp mark a sea change in how Sri Lanka approached the political violence aimed at leftists in the 1980s. It could potentially break decades of silence and impunity surrounding one of Sri Lanka’s darkest periods. The outcome could profoundly reshape national attitudes toward accountability, historical reconciliation, and the ongoing efforts to heal the wounds of the past.
These have been weeks where decades happened.
