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Selected
Writings by Sachi Sri Kantha
20 Years since Minister Douglas Devananda’s
Major Dance in Terrorism
14 July 2004
Twenty years and two months ago, - in May 1984 –
there was a daring kidnapping episode in Jaffna involving two
Americans. It was the first of its kind in Sri Lankan soil, and
fortunately until now, has never recurred. A newly-wed American
couple, the Allens from Ohio, were kidnapped from their residence.
It created a week-long international stir, and involved diplomatic
rope-pulling of three countries – Sri Lanka, India and USA. The four
political leaders who were at helm then and caught in the swirl of
event – Indira Gandhi (India’s prime minister), M.G.Ramachandran
(Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu), J.R.Jayewardene (Sri Lanka’s
President) and Ronald Reagan (American President) have departed from
the scene. I haven’t heard about the two victims – the Allen couple
- since then, and presume that they are still alive. But, one of the
perpetrators of the kidnapping terrorism is still in political
limelight. He was none other than Minister Douglas Devananda.
Since he escaped from a suicide-bomb attack on July 7th in Colombo,
Devananda has received sympathetic coverage in the news media in
Colombo and Chennai as well as from the press release of American
embassy in Colombo. Quite humanistic indeed. But, one should not
forget that the same Devananda played the opposite role of a
terrorist in the life of two American citizens, Stanley and Mary
Allen. With his then EPRLF buddies – K.Padmanabha and Varadaraja
Perumal -, Devananda was in Madras, manipulating the deed through
the cadres of his People Liberation Army (PLA). He was the
‘commander’ of this PLA. This sordid and dumb kidnapping episode of
two American citizens in Jaffna soil hardly received any mention or
analysis in the Broken Palmyra (1990) book, authored by Rajan Hoole
and his three colleagues – probably for two reasons; (1) the authors
were sympathetic to the Marxist rhetorics pouted by the EPRLF group.
(2) it was not committed by the LTTE.
For the record, first I
provide the 1984 news reports from the New York Times, USA Today,
the Hindu and Economist. Then, I provide excerpts from the then
Tamil Nadu police chief K.Mohandas’s 1992 book on MGR [MGR:
The Man and the Myth], which exposed Devananda as one of the
perpetrators of this kidnapping terrorism to the world.
(1) New York Times [May 12, 1984]
U.S.
Couple Kidnapped by Guerrillas in Sri Lanka
"COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 11 (AP). Eight armed insurgents
kidnapped an American couple in northern Sri Lanka today and
reportedly threatened to kill them unless the Government here paid a
ransom of $2 million and freed 20 imprisoned rebels. ‘You have only
72 hours to comply with our demands,’ the kidnappers said in a
ransom note, according to the National Security Minister, Lalith
Athulathmudali. ‘There will be no negotiations.’
The Americans were identified as Stanley Bryson Allen, 36 years
old, and his wife, Mary, 29, of Ohio. The Defense Ministry said
Mr.Allen was an engineer for the Ruhlin Company of Ohio and was
supervising a water project in the northern city of Jaffna sponsored
by the United States Agency for International Development.
Mr.Athulathmudali told reporters the ransom note said it was from
the People’s Liberation Army, an obscure splinter group of the Eelam
Tigers [sic]. This is an underground organization fighting for a
separate Tamil nation in northern Sri Lanka that would be called
Eelam. The Tamils, most of them Hindus living near Jaffna, 180 miles
north of this capital, constitute about 18 percent of Sri Lanka’s 15
million people. The majority Sinhalese people are predominantly
Buddhist. The National Security Minister said the Sri Lankan
Government would respond to the ransom note with ‘a deafening
silence’. He said Sri Lanka would never succumb to terrorism.
Foreign Minister A.C.S.Hameed met with the United States Ambassador,
John H.Reed, and assured him that the Government would do everything
possible to protect the lives of the two Americans. The Government,
meanwhile, ordered all foreigners to leave the Jaffna region.
Mr.Athulathmudali said the evidence suggested that the American
couple had been taken to southern India to the state of Tamil Nadu.
He said they were kidnapped from their home, gagged and carried off
in a pickup truck, which was later found abandoned 25 miles to the
west along Sri Lanka’s coast. The minister said the ransom note,
which was delivered to the provincial administrator in Jaffna,
demanded that the ransom be paid to the Indian state authorities in
Tamil Nadu to be given to the rebels. He said the note accused the
Allens of working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
More than 400 Tamils were killed and 150,000 made homeless during an
outbreak of ethnic violence in Sri Lanka last July. At least 50
people have been killed in and around Jaffna since late March in
more violence.
Couple Married in March [Special to the New
York Times]
The Allens were married on March 24 in suburban Cuyahoga Falls,
and they left for Sri Lanka three days later. Mr.Allen has worked
for the Akron-based Ruhlin Company, a construction firm, since 1967.
He became a project manager in 1982 and was heading a $4 million
fresh-water distribution system being built in Sri Lanka. A company
official said the project was started last October and was to be
finished in April 1985. Mrs.Allen was a secretary for Ruhlin in
Akron before the couple married."
(2) USA Today [ May 15, 1984, p.3A]
Abducted U.S. pair reported released
"Hoping for ‘the best of news’, the family of an American couple
kidnapped in Sri Lanka waited anxiously Monday after receiving news
that the pair had been released in a dense jungle. Hundreds of
troops and police on the island nation off the southeast coast of
India were searching remote jungle roads for Stanley B.Allen, 36,
and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, 30, who were kidnapped by Sri Lankan
rebels last Thursday.
The Allens were freed in an area
inhabited by leopards, elephants and other wild animals, Sri Lankan
National Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali said. ‘I fear there
may be a danger to their safety’, he said. The rebels had demanded a
ransom of $20 million in gold and had threatened to kill the couple
on Monday – Sri Lanka’s highest religious holiday – if their demands
weren’t met. They had accused the Allens of being CIA spies. But
they were freed after appeals by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
and other religious and political leaders, officials said.
Vice President George Bush has been in India since Saturday on a
goodwill tour, but he played no role in the couple’s release. Sri
Lankan officials say they did not meet the rebels’ demands. ‘We
await with warm hearts for the best of news,’ Pat Daymon, 27 –
Mary’s sister – told reporters outside her parents’ home.
Tamil separatists who abducted the Allens are a minority ethnic
group of Hindus pushing for independence from Sri Lanka’s Buddhist
majority. Allen ‘had some concerns about his wife going with him to
Sri Lanka,’ said the Rev.David S.Belasic, who performed the ceremony
at the couple’s March 24 wedding. ‘They obviously had a great love
for each other and wanted to go ahead with a life together. They
certainly didn’t plan on being held hostage.’
Mary –
nicknamed ‘Sarge’ by her brother Jim when he returned from a tour of
duty in Vietnam – met Stanley while both worked for the Ruhlin Co.
of Akron. Allen, who went to work for Ruhlin in 1967, was overseeing
a $4 million water-purification project in Sri Lanka. In Washington,
State Department officials said they were in ‘constant touch’ with
the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka, but resolving the kidnapping ‘is the
job of the host government.’
U.S. policy regarding kidnapping is well known, said Kevin
O’Connell of the Office for Combating Terrorism. ‘We will not pay
ransom or release prisoners. We make no deals with kidnappers. That
way everybody is a little bit safer.’
(3) The Hindu [May 18, 1984]
Aim of
exposing CIA achieved – EPRLF
"Madras, May 17: The Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation
Front (EPRLF) has said that it pulled off the kidnap stunt on the
American couple, Stanley and Mary Allen, to expose the activities of
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Jaffna before the projected
visit of the Sri Lanka President, Mr.J.R.Jayewardene, to the United
States next month.
EPRLF sources in Madras told UNI that it
had never been their intention to harm the hostages. They only
wanted to draw the world’s attention to the plight of Tamil
political prisoners languishing in Sri Lanka jails. ‘We achieved our
objective in the world-wide publicity we received from our kidnap
drama’, they said. The EPRLF said they readily accepted the Prime
Minister, Mrs.Indira Gandhi’s appeal for the release of the hostages
‘as we have full faith and confidence that she will do something to
help the harassed Tamils in Sri Lanka.’ The front appealed to
Mrs.Gandhi to use her good offices with Mr.Jayewardene to get the 20
political prisoners released.
The sources said they had announced that the kidnapped couple
was released at 8.45 pm on Monday at Kilinochi – 24 hours before the
actual release – to take the heat off the militants by security
forces in Jaffna. Giving their version of the kidnap, the EPRLF said
they had been watching the activities of the Allens for the past six
months. ‘Although they claimed they were water resources experts,
they did little on this project, and along with two other Americans,
were taking photographs and making logistic studies of the Jaffna
peninsula.’
The EPRLF then decided to kidnap all the four
Americans, but before they could execute their plan, two Americans
left Jaffna and they learnt that the Allens planned to leave on May
15. On the night of May 10, seven armed militants entered the beach
house of the Allens and took them away at gunpoint. The two were
blindfolded and taken in a jeep to a residential area 20 km away and
lodged in a house. The militants took the jeep to Kangesanthurai
port, a northern point of Jaffna peninsula and abandoned it there,
to create the impression that the kidnappers and their captives had
escaped to South India."
(3) Economist [May 19, 1984, p.39]
The
innocents and the terrorists
"Stanley and Mary Allen from Akron, Ohio, a home-spun young
couple, just married, went to Tamil country in northern Sri Lanka to
work on a scheme to provide drinking water for the local people. On
May 10th eight guerrillas broke into their home and marched them
off. Six days later the innocents were freed unharmed and unransomed
after reproachful comments by other guerrilla groups, by Mrs.Indira
Gandhi, by officials of India’s Tamil Nadu state, and by 20 Tamil
prisoners whose release had been demanded in a ransom note (along
with pound 1.4 million in gold). Even terrorists can get
embarrassed.
The kidnappers were from a group that calls
itself the Eelamist People’s Revolutionary Front (Eelam is the name
given by separatists to their would-be Tamil state). Its
secretary-general, Mr.K.Pathmanathan [sic: the correct name is
Padmanabha; who was a pal of Dayan Jayatilleka whose father Mervyn
de Silva, should have contributed this newsreport, since he was the
Sri Lankan correspondent of the Economist] who is believed to have
had training in Lebanon, was picked up in Delhi with five colleagues
and questioned. Mrs.Gandhi, who has an election coming up, is
anxious to woo her Tamil voters, but not to the extent of allowing
India to become embroiled in a terrorist war; she has enough
problems in Punjab. It was recently reported that three new
terrorist groups had been formed in the Indian sanctuary of Tamil
Nadu.
The Sri Lankan government’s answer to separatism is not
encouraging. Its armed services are not trained to take on
terrorists. Its ‘all-party’ conference on the Tamil problem,
launched in January by President Junius Jayewardene, was boycotted
from the start by the main opposition Freedom Party and is now being
snubbed by the Tamil United Liberation Front. The TULF, which,
despite its fierce name, is a moderate organisation, is planning a
non-violent civil disobedience campaign in the Tamil areas as a
protest against civilian deaths caused by ‘army activities’. Not
enough, say the Eelamists; terrorism will continue."
Devananda exposed as the culprit – 8 years later
by K.Mohandas
K.Mohandas, the then police chief of Tamil
Nadu, who was a confidant of MGR, exposed Devananda as the culprit
of the 1984 kidnapping drama in his 1992 book. Since, it was
Mohandas who resolved the kidnapping drama by his tactical reflex
and ‘psychological bluff’ [in Mohandas’s words], I’ll let him
describe how he got Devananda. I have highlighted some specific
sentences for emphasis. Here are the relevant passages, spread in
seven paragraphs:
"Mention must be made of an extraneous
episode, when the electioneering was in full swing, which attracted
world attention. American nationals, Stanley Allen and his wife Mary
Allen, who were working as water-resource experts under the UN Aid
programme in Jaffna (Sri Lanka), were kidnapped by unidentified
persons who sent a message to President Jayawardene, demanding a
ransom of gold worth 50 million dollars and release of 20 of their
colleagues who were under detention. The message also served an
ultimatum that, if their demands were not met within three days, the
couple would be shot dead.
It was the U.S. Consul General in
Madras who first broke the news to me at about 11:00pm one night and
appealed for my help. When I wondered what I could possibly do about
an incident in Sri Lanka, he said that since I had been dealing with
the Tamil militants problem, he thought that I could use my
expertise. I told him that I would try to do what I could, but, in
the meanwhile, the names of detainees (whose release the kidnappers
had demanded) could be ascertained and passed on to me so that my
officers might be able to identify the militant group involved.
Hardly had he rung up, when a call came through from
G.Parthasarathy, Chairman of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee
in New Delhi, repeating the story and asking me to help. I informed
MGR who asked me to go all-out and get the hostages released.
It was a tall order, but, when some of the names of the
detainees were furnished by the American Consul-General, my officers
quickly ascertained from our files that they belonged to the PLA
(People’s Liberation Army) which was the military wing of the EPRLF.
A massive search operation was immediately ordered to get at any of
the leaders of the PLA or the EPRLF present in Madras. Partly on
information furnished by a reliable source and partly by luck, we
raided a house in Madras city and – lo and behold! – the catch was
beyond our wildest dreams. There were six men and two women found
sleeping. Among the men were (1) Varadaraja Perumal, who later
became Chief Minister of the North-Eastern Council; (2) Padmanabha,
the Chief of EPRLF, who was killed, along with 13 others in Madras
city in 1990, and (3) the self-styled ‘General’ Douglas, the ‘Chief
of Staff’ of the PLA. The men were picked up for questioning,
leaving the women behind.
They were taken to a big hotel and
comfortably accomodated. Then the grilling began, with only 10
hourse left for the threatened execution of the Allen couple. They
denied any knowledge but, when confronted with the names of the
detainees whose release was demanded, they admitted that they
belonged to the PLA. But they contended that their followers could
have acted on their own.
When the questioning did not yield
any information beyond this, I myself went to the hotel and, in
typical dramatic style, told them that whatever happened to the
Allen couple in Jaffna would happen to them right in the hotel room.
‘If they are shot’, I told them, ‘you will be shot right in this
room. If they are released, you will be released.’ With four hours
to go for the threatened killing of the Allens, mine was purely a
psychological bluff. It worked and ‘General’ Douglas got in touch
with his contact in Jaffna right from the hotel room and ordered the
Allens’ release in coded words.
Four hours and 68 cigarettes later (as I put it in a recent
article), news trickled in through our special channels, that the
Allens were left at the Jaffna Bishop’s residence – blindfolded but
without any physical harm. My sigh of relief could be heard a mile
away. The President of the United States thanked and congratulated
the Prime Minister of India and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
The latter had a special word of praise for the team which worked
round-the-clock and behind the scenes to bring off a well-deserved
coup.
MGR presented me with a wrist-watch with an in-built
tape recorder. He did not say what was the provocation, ut I
surmised that it was for the good work done in the Allens’ rescue –
an intelligence operation which could not be officially recognized
or rewarded…" [source:
MGR – The Man and the Myth,
1992, pp.91-93]
Now, to Devananda’s net-bluff
Has anyone
checked the profile of Devananda, which is featured in the
EPDP website?
. It corroborates few of the facts presented in Mohandas’s 1992
recollections. One sentence states,
"In the EPRLF, Douglas served as a member of the
politbureau and as the commander of its military wing, the People
Liberation Army (PLA).
Another sentence informs,
"In September 1983, he [Douglas, that is] along with
all the other Tamil political prisoners escaped from the Batticaloa
prison and fled to Tamil Nadu in India."
Subsequent two sentences reveal,
"From India, in 1984, he was sent by the EPRLF for
advanced military training, and to lead a group of other EPRLF
members, both men and women, for training with the Democratic
Palestine Liberation Front (DPLF). Following the training, he
returned to North-East Sri Lanka and resumed charge as the commander
of the PLA."
About that world-news making kidnapping
terrorism of American couple in Jaffna which happened in May 1984 –
which caused ripples in the diplomatic circles in Washington DC,
Madras and Colombo, Devananda’s profile in the net is sheepishly
mum.
To hell with the truth – as any slimy politician
would retort. But the young Douglas who wilted against the
psychological bluff – for fear of his life - of Mohandas in Madras
in 1984 has vanished now. His profile states,
"Douglas Devananda is a self-confident idealist,
who is unique fighter against fascism. He is kind, humble and
simple, and a believer in humanism. He is determined to serve
his people, despite the fact that he has been wounded, scarred
and blinded in one eye, and compelled to live a life in the
shadow of death. [Updated 27th July 2002]."
Either you believe him or believe my word, that
Devananda has indeed an unparalleled ‘record’. There hasn’t been a
professional cross-dresser and a political scoundrel like Douglas
Devananda among Eelam Tamils in the past 20 years. |
