Ranasinghe Premadasa

Killed on 1 May 1993 in Colombo by a LTTE suicide bomber at a May Day rally; the president of Sri Lanka died at the moment of the annual workers march.

Overview

Premadasa, the first head of state from the lower urban castes, had risen from municipal politics through the UNP to the presidency in 1989, crushing the JVP insurrection with extreme violence even as he armed Tamil factions against the LTTE and sent Indian peacekeepers home. At the May Day procession along Armour Street, a bomber on a bicycle approached the presidential segment and detonated; Premadasa and twenty-two others were killed. The LTTE, which had killed his rival Lalith Athulathmudali weeks earlier, pioneered the suicide belt in a decade of political killings including Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the attempt on Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1999. The LTTE campaign of political decapitation continued through the decade, ending only with the war in 2009.