COLOMBO: Sri Lanka saw so much violence during the year that it lost count of the thousands killed even though new executive President Ranasinghe Premadasa assumed office promising to restore peace through the cardinal policy of “consultation, compromise and consensus.”

Instead of the three C’s the island nation of sixteen million witnesses a fourth “C” confrontation between security forces and the militants (both Sinhalese and Tamil) between the IPKF and the LTTE and among rival Tamil groups.

Sri Lanka was also on a virtual confrontation course for a while with India after an ultimatum by President Premadas to India to take back all IPFK personnel present in the island nation.

Starting with anti-Indian demonstration demanding immediate withdrawal of IPKF and abrogation of the July 1987 accord, a violent JVP campaign turned into an anti-government agitation demanding fresh presidential and parliamentary elections. The agitation snowballed into a transport strike that spread to government departments and hospitals.

Terming the November 1988 presidential and February 1989 parliamentary elections as “a fraud on the public” the JVP went on with its violent campaign to dislodge the government forcing the authorities to reimpose emergency on June 30,

Five and a half years of emergency was enough and “I hope we will never have to reintroduce it again” the President had asserted while withdrawing the emergency immediately after assuming office on January 2.

The emergency has since been extended by parliament on a monthly basis.

Despite offers of general amnesty and several rounds of unilateral ceasefire, President Premadasa failed to get the Sinhala extremist JVP to the negotiating table, the resultant confrontation saw many killings both by the militants and security forces mostly in the Sinhala majority JVP strongholds of central and southern parts of the island.

The emergence of death squads of anti JVP vigilante groups added a new dimension. Bullet ridden bodies of suspected SVP activists and their supporters and sympathizers of used Tyres became a regular gruesome sight,

The average daily death roll of 25 crossed on some days the 100 and occasionally the 200 mark. Most of these retaliatory killings generally followed the murder by JVP of the family members of security force personnel,

‘The security operations succeeded towards the year end in eliminating almost all the top leaders of the militant. ‘Organization, JVP Supremo Rohana Wijewera and his deputy Uptaissa Gamanayake were captured and killed while in custody in early November.

The official account of the circumstances leading to Wijeweera’s death created a lot of doubts, Left opposition and human rights activists said the two were eliminated by the security forces in a pre-planned manner. Most Lankans tend to believe them than the officials.

The sudden spurt of violence in early December in the Sinhala majority areas indicate the JVP militants have been able to regroup and strike with vengeance despite foreign minister Ranjan Wijeratne’s assertion that “the match is over.”

Article extracted from this publication >> January 5, 1990