Comrade Wije Dias was the general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) and its forerunner, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), from December 1987 until this past May, when has was elected to the newly-created post of party chairperson.
Wije died in Colombo on July 27, 2022 after suffering a heart attack.
Comrade Wiie’s political life spanned six decades and encompassed virtually the entire period in which the Fourth International has been led by the International Committee. He devoted his entire adult life to the struggle for the liberation of the working class from want, war and all forms of capitalist oppression.
Wije was an implacable protagonist of the socialist internationalist program of permanent revolution and fighter for the political independence of the working class. He was unyielding in his defense of Marxist and Trotskyist principles because he had witnessed the catastrophic consequences—in the form of political disorientation, reaction and tragic loss of life—that result from their abandonment and betrayal.
Comrade Wije Dias is a monumental figure in the fight for Trotskyism in Sri Lanka. His life and legacy now enter into the history of the struggle for socialism. They will serve to inspire, but even more importantly to politically orient workers and young people in what will and must prove to be the decade of world socialist revolution.
The following is the tribute delivered online by David North, chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), at the funeral of Sri Lankan SEP chairman Wije Dias held in Colombo on Saturday July 30. Comrade Dias died at home on July 27 of a heart attack just one month short of his 81st birthday.
In these remarks, delivered on the occasion of Wije’s 75th birthday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North stated, “As your comrades in Sri Lanka gather to celebrate your seventy-fifth birthday, they are joined by your comrades and friends in the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and the sections of the International Committee throughout the world, who are filled with profound appreciation, respect and gratitude for all that you have done for the cause of the Fourth International, world socialism and the liberation of humanity from capitalist exploitation, oppression and violence.”
In this tribute to Wije on his 80th birthday, North wrote, “A vast historical experience is concentrated in your life. The chapters of your political biography encompass the most critical events of the international class struggle and their conscious expression in the history of the Fourth International. Your life is embedded profoundly in these events, but your relation to history has been that of a highly conscious and active participant.”
In this speech given to an online public meeting organised by the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka, Wije Dias reviews the impact of the pandemic on the class struggle throughout South Asia.
In these remarks delivered to an online rally welcoming the relaunch of the World Socialist Web Site, Wije Dias explains the significance of the WSWS to the building of a revolutionary movement in South Asia.
The Revolutionary Communist League, predecessor to the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka), was founded on the program and perspective of socialist internationalism that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which claimed to be a Trotskyist party, had betrayed by entering a bourgeois government 1964.
Keerthi's untimely death on December 18, 1987 cut short a life consciously devoted for more than two decades to the struggle to revive the revolutionary strategy of proletarian internationalism among workers and the oppressed masses in Sri Lanka and throughout the region.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unstoppable erosion of public confidence in the rule of the Sri Lankan capitalist elite. Even before the pandemic began, the deepening crisis of world economy and the developing struggles of working people testify to the worldwide loss of confidence, by the oppressed masses, in capitalist rule.”
This is the speech delivered by Wije to the 2019 International May Day Online Rally.
In this speech, Dias calls on workers around the world to intensify the campaign to win the freedom of the Maruti Suzuki class-war prisoners. The 13 Maruti Suzuki car assembly plant workers were jailed on framed-up murder charges.
“Political, social, and inter-state relations in South Asia are being dramatically reshaped by two interconnected processes,” Wise states. “First, the region is caught up in the whirlpool of geo-political tensions produced by the drive towards another imperialist war. Second, the class struggle is sharpening. The claim that the masses of South Asia would be lifted from poverty and squalor through so-called economic liberalization has proven completely hollow.”
“The workers and toilers of the Indian subcontinent must assume, alongside their class brethren around the world, a frontline role in the struggle against imperialist war.”
“The rising geo-political antagonisms around the world and the dangers of war are taking an acute form in South Asia,” states Wije. “The entire region is being drawn into the maelstrom as US imperialism pursues its ambitions for global domination and its “pivot to Asia” aimed at militarily encircling China.”
“The International Committee of the Fourth International alone has fought to defend Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution against Stalinism and its apologists,” Wise stated. “It is this perspective that must animate the new generation of revolutionaries that is coming forward to fight against war and the deepening attacks on living standards and democratic rights.”
