By S. Piyasena
"We left the government when murder became a part of politics." That was the way Lalith Arthulathmudali, a former senior minister in the Sri Lankan government, explained his break with President Premadasa and the latter's United National Party.
Arthulathmudali, leader of the Democratic United National Front (DUNF), was gunned down on April 23 as he addressed a rally in Colombo for May 17 provincial elections.
The conservative DUNF and the left-centre People's Alliance are calling the provincial council elections a referendum on the rule of Premadasa and the country's executive presidency, which they say gives too much power to one person.
Barely 24 hours after the assassination, the government produced the body of a 23-year-old Tamil and claimed that he had been shot by Arthulathmudali's bodyguard and had run 200 metres from the scene before dying.
The government-owned Sunday Observer was the only paper to publicise this story. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen the assassin get into a white vehicle and be whisked away seconds after the shooting.
Contacted by phone, a DUNF leader in another province said, "The government is trying to put the blame on the Tamil separatists in order to create another communal clash, a bloodbath which will help the government to postpone the elections under emergency regulations. We suspect that an innocent Tamil was murdered to find a scapegoat for this criminal attempt."
More than a million came to the city to pay respects to the slain leader. The opposition succeeded in preventing the crowd from attacking Tamils or playing into the hands of the government.
However, there were incidents of stoning the police and burning of police jeeps. Many were injured, and a dusk to dawn curfew was declared.
Over the last four years, massive violations of human rights in Sri Lanka have been brought to the notice of the world not only by local politicians and organisations but also by Amnesty International, Asia Watch and other international bodies.
These violations have been ignored by the aid consortiums, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — without whose aid the present one-
man rule would not have lasted for even three months.
A trade union leader who lost his job after leading a strike called such international assistance "aid to the government to buy arms and power, and 'AIDS' to the people who become targets of their guns".
In addition to the Sunday Observer, which of course defended the government, there are two other English-language Sunday newspapers in Sri Lanka.
The Sunday Times wrote of the assassination, "The gun culture, the bomb culture, the knuckle duster culture: this is Sri Lanka's culture today. This is Sri Lanka's politics today. Such a dirty and murky arena that very few decent people from the towns and villages wish to enter it ..."
The Sunday Island described Arthulathmudali as "one of the many illustrious sons of this country who have been victims of violence". It pointed to a string of "unsolved" assassinations and demanded that the killers be brought to justice.