GAMINI SILVA returns from Sri Lanka with a report on a reign of terror in the troubled island.
An Amnesty International report released in January 1992 highlights the continuation of extrajudicial executions, "disappearances" and torture attributed to Sri Lankan government forces during 1991.
Many of these human rights violations have occurred in the eastern region of the island and were carried out by members of the military, police and the Special Task Force, a paramilitary wing of the police.
Plainclothes death squads believed to be armed and trained by the military were also reported to be active in the region. Civilians in the eastern region have reported that members of the local police have led or have operated within these death squads.
During 1991 hundreds of innocent people were killed by these government forces. The death squads in many instances leave bodies, often mutilated, in public places.
Torture is also reported, prisoners being burned with cigarette butts, being buried up to their necks, having boiling water poured over them, being cut with knives or having nails driven through their bodies.
These human rights abuses occur against the background of armed conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) and government forces. The LTTE is one of a number of Tamil groups fighting for the establishment of a separate state (Ealam) for the Tamil-speaking people in the north-east of the country.
The Tamil militant groups emerged in the mid to late '70s, drawing in politically and economically discontented youth, after decades of discrimination and oppression by Sinhala-dominated governments. They took up arms when it proved impossible to gain the rights of the Tamil minority within the framework of the parliamentary system.
Thousands have died in the present war, concentrated in the north, which resumed after a period of negotiations with the government. The right-wing United National Party government has allocated Rs 68 billion (20% of the 1992 budget) for the war in the north.
Blockade
War and a blockade of the north-east, including food, fuel and medicines, have resulted in increased poverty, malnutrition and sickness, particularly in the Jaffna region. Prices of most commodities have skyrocketed in the area, the price of kerosene, for example, going from Rs 8 per litre to Rs 300. Only one-third to one-half of the minimum necessary essential foods are allowed into the northern region. Electricity supplies are also severely restricted because of bombing by government forces.
The LTTE has now begun to concentrate its forces in the Jaffna peninsula to counter threats by the military to capture the LTTE stronghold and eliminate the militants. The LTTE is in a significantly weaker position because assistance provided via south India has decreased sharply after the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Ghandi, allegedly by the LTTE.
The LTTE is now willing to negotiate with the government, but the latter will not go beyond the hollow formula of saying it is willing to talk. Discussions are unlikely to take place because of opposition by more right-wing chauvinist forces within and outside of parliament.
Extrajudicial executions and disappearances also continued in the south of the island during 1991, according to Amnesty. Death threats against people critical of the government or people engaged in legal action against the armed forces were commonly reported.
Well over 5000 people in the south are held under emergency regulations or the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which was introduced by the UNP government shortly after it came to power in 1977. The PTA gives wide powers to the security forces to arrest and hold suspected opponents of the government without being obliged to communicate information to their friends or relatives. The Indemnity Act gives immunity from prosecution to all members of the security forces who act in "good faith".
Emergency regulations passed at various times gave permission to security forces to dispose of bodies without post-mortem or inquest. This regulation was widely used during the 1987-89 JVP (People's Liberation Front) youth uprising to murder anyone even remotely suspected of being associated with the JVP.
During this period an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 mainly young people were killed by government forces. In many instances the bodies were burned with tyres, beheaded or hung upside down in public as warnings against opposition to the government.
Economic crisis
An underlying cause of the JVP uprising was high inflation and rising unemployment, which had reached 20% by 1986 and which especially affected rural youth in the south. These problems remain and are getting worse.
The economy, which is dominated by the polices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is centered on the export of plantation products, including tea, rubber and coconut. After extensive privatisation over the last 14 years, the government is now privatising the state sector, including the management of the plantation estates. This will bring the economy under even tighter foreign control.
In the 1992 budget outlined by minister of finance D.B. Wijetunga, a ncluding the Independent Television Network and the Ceylon Steel Corporation are to be privatised. Private capital, especially foreign multinationals, also benefited from a 5% reduction in company taxes and abolition of the wealth tax.
The budget continues the pro-imperialist policies the UNP has followed since it came to power in 1977. The establishment of a free trade zone, allowing foreign multinationals to operate in certain areas with greatly reduced trade union rights for workers, and the liberalisation of international trade are other elements of the strategy of serving foreign capital.
Left and progressive forces are only now beginning to recover from the disorientation and fragmentation caused by the crushing of the youth uprising of 1987-89.
Anti-Tamil pogroms in 1981 and 1983, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Tamil civilians, were incited by prominent parliamentarians to divide the population along racial lines. Now the Tamils are again being used as scapegoats for the economic crisis.
The war against the secessionists in the north is used to justify the large military presence throughout the country and the clamping down on any political activity which poses a threat to the UNP government.