Silencing the voice: The forgotten tragedy of Richard de Zoysa

Silencing the voice: The forgotten tragedy of Richard de Zoysa

By Venuri Gangodawila

It was 18th February 1990. A fateful day. It was the day that the murder of the Sri Lankan journalist, human rights activist, author, poet and actor, Richard de Zoysa occurred. So as we pass 18th February 2018, how can we not talk about the loss of his life which has left an unsurpassed gap in many purviews?!

Early life

Being born to a Sinhalese father, Lucien de Zoysa and a Tamil mother, Manorani Sarvanamuttu, Richard Manik de Zoysa was of mixed nationality. Entering St. Thomas College, Richard was a shining personality in the English Theatre which was prominently conducted within his alma mater and was also an active member in the school’s debating team, which perhaps had laid the foundation to all his brave encounters in the literary world.

Richard’s various encounters

Richard was a man with multiple musings. As said above, he was a young, an inspiring and “a full of life” character who touched various artistic destinations. Poetry was conspicuous among those, where he used the pseudonym ; Angela de Silva, to publish his work, as it was a threatening time period for the fearless critics like himself, under some political leader’s governmental regime which he himself thoroughly critiqued.

Acting was also one of Richard’s well known skills. In the teledramas like Yashorawaya by Parakrama Niriella, where he played the character “Rinsley”- one of the sons of Mr. and Mrs.Weerasekara and who was a “not-so-open” character where he appears late in the drama and is soon disappeared and also in the movie “Yuganthaya”, by Prof. Lester James Peries, which was produced after Martin Wickramasinghe’s well-known literary trilogy’s second part, where he played “Malin Kabalana”, a more fragile, sensitive, and a well refined character where it closely tallied with his own life as a man who had a vision about the real conditions of the society. He was fortunate to work alongside the well-crafted actor, Gamini Fonseka, who played as his raspy father. His skilled portrayal of the character of “Malin Kabalana” must have been strongly backed by his adventures in Shakespearean Theatre back at school.

Zoysa’s political philosophy

Well, this can be a little tricky topic to discuss. Nevertheless, Richard de Zoysa is believed to be an active supporter of the leftist movement and said that he was an ally of the famous left winged political party in Sri Lanka, which was also the major reason for his murder. And also according to Dr. Rajiva Wijesinghe, his death was a turning point for the death squads carried by the government to suppress the revolts lead by the leftist parties.

Richard was known to be a strict believer in socialism and a brave human who stood with the victims of unfair social treatments. He never missed a chance to criticize the wrongdoings of the so called elites where he himself too was a man who inherited a higher social class by birth, but was a man who shook it away, taking the socialistic path with his colleagues. When talking about this, his poetic work “Birds Beasts and Relatives” can be explicitly named as an excellent piece of criticism which he placed against the same man who kills his own mankind to grasp all those dirty benefits of power. He claims that wild beasts are way better than our own man where beasts never kill their own species. He calls every man to “join the savage heard” who were shamelessly bloodthirsty. This exact work reflected the country’s exact political situation in which people were ruthlessly “preyed” for someone’s gain. This was his last poetic publication which he did in 1989 as he was murdered the next year. So Richard’s only gain for his great critical works was losing his own precious life.

The tragedy

18th February 1990, was a normal day for Richard and his mother Mrs.Saravanamuttu in their house in Welikadawatte. During this time he was the head of the Colombo office of the Inter Press Service (IPS). It was early morning when a group of armed men arrived at their house and abducted Richard in front of the eyes of his beloved mother and one of his associate.

Yes. An entry was filed in the police by Mrs.Saravanamuttu. But it was all in vain. On the next day at Lunawa beach in Moratuwa, his lifeless body was found where he was subjected to severe torture in which his jaw was broken and was shot in the throat and head.

Some of the abductors were identified by Richard’s mother and were produced in front of the court but it was all the same treatment given to the powerful where they were released by the court for the reason of insufficient evidence. So no need to mention, this case too was forgotten or was made to forget like any other crime in Sri Lanka.

However, Richard Manik de Zoysa was thirty two years when he was killed and its twenty eight years since his death now. Who remembers his legacy? Or who even cares to ponder upon the loss of such a talented and a spirited human being; remains a question.

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