Page 1
Tamil
TME
WD| || NOS 1 1 2 1 2
75 pe
MACABRE RITUAL BE
EYE WITNESS ACCOLW7
After the ki | Iings of the Tami|| political detaine es in the Tlaximum Security prison in Colombo or July 25 the ED IOOC S Oaked DOCES WETE poiled Lup) ir frOfTt Of a Statue of thig Buddha in the jail courtyard and, in a Tla Cabre ritual, the assailants offered the blood of the Tani wictim S and the go Lig ed Ey E5 of KLuttimani and Jegan, two leaders of a Tamil Liberation Group, to the statue Of BL ddha, Said K. Deva na Idan, Ole of the escapees froT1 the Batticaloa Priso . Mr. Dewanandan, who along with others hard n nacia Way 1 o freerdtorm, wahs speakirog to sa "T" E! E: 'wys P E por tĘr 5 fra T1 i Luik, 'Wyrm location in So th India when ng gawe an gye Wit ress a:Cr), rit of the det Hits of || E. Iri SCHII ITA SS3:E Tärtti|| || HJ|| || Cal di tail EFG on July 25 drid 27 it which 52 Tilsills GGLLC LLLC C LL LLLCCL LLLL La LaLaaaa Cells.
LLLLLL LLLL LLC LLLC LLLLL S LLLL SLLLLLHH HH sur Wiyet the prison 1355 Hrg anti f|Don 10 the Batti: a la pri som cd Luring the height of the July anti-Tamil violence, LLLLLLLLaa a LCLLLGLLLHS LLLHLLLL LLLL LaHata rade5 E3 Fuk, be (1p]Ber1 t FTB Ba t. tit: la"Jig 1 | I1 Se:For 23 Freihe Talli: rtletHistees, Dr. S.A.Thar rialisigan", ard Mr. Kyai Mati" Esa Ti f the Tari || EE-l artin LitiräHaL LLLL LLL LLLLL LLa a LLLL KKS L they Were IOK) || || 0 || 1 derta ke the long ardi I u LIs jour Tiey to Fra Bl-IT, Mrs.''', ir Tiala LSLLGLLLLLLL LLLHHLL HLLL LLLLL LaLLtLt LLL CT1 fusion Creat El bo'y || 1 2 : s Cafe of firpolitical prisoners if the ail, Thlight her husband, LJ niversity |+Ct Lifer Ni | hiari:Hridam made it to safety. Re'. Fr. Sirgarayer opted to stay hack to a tend of the sick, i ri te ja . Giwig the first eye-witness accout of the Walika de massacres af July 25 amri 27, Mr. Dewalada I said that Elt for a literwention of a Muslim army Commander, Cor. E of the T a Til Dolitica|| pri sarrers would have sur VI werd. The July 25 T1assacre was conducted at 2.30 p., T1, Whe Colomon Wa5 Lider total Crf W. Air force - Copters howered over the |ail when the killings took place inside, under the superision of the deputy jail superintercier, aided and abetted by the army and security
guards, The July 2, Sepoala. Ekaina ike, lurr Tert for hijacking a Flight froT Delhi Ig וחט lBSEהוIחו WEar. S Trier, rap F2 and h) handlicked by the after plying the i Tä T1:id:H1 säild, T'y Cells, 5 F1) It rigu "Ku ! !i !he Tigers. A rather Escapa Feri det Hardly 20, 5a iri the ro ki||i1 S LJTE: 3. ||Tit Ft Tt iron rock. He fo|| ||TCC tl H Is It it.). 111ril l: 11: Hi! II Jit Krıl", 5 LIr', '1', 'e':
FAR
A TaTi i I MME TIT bier li T. Siwasithampa r: | dia fear ing idea th Be Sri La r k r a r" gEr wa 5 earlier b) E Lrt Witi te
Μ : - πς τ π + 1 | 1 : "Η Γτι
『| 1 || 1" Pratt F. E. I.
| "Eiichi Eri Titil OctDEHF: H + 3H || ||13 the Firstly a tacked ti v: elged per T1 polico y B = 5 | 1 | 1 is por away drid took the FсdагаjaП, Елват Нлітті Іс Foy to the farm in regrettari that th per mit eyer th= Ideal hHHtly be fibre lJ LI r I iirig; (I) TF153 sãTTE ria y a y Mohn Was Tax Per ti. "W"l12 r"42 |1B: "/","::HS i" 4: T:II body was burrit hy ' Mr.T.Srasitar para figure in the Tamil Ur Said. "Now here in thi the Hit III ritis att FI:KE ment like this." Though the army ra "der TE Dro S XI C le r*rie "was folurid or hi

Ce
SEPTEMBER. OCTOBER 1983
For E BUDDHA STATUE
OF PRWSOW MMASSACRE
killings were led by largOImg life irripristյrl| ', Italia plane qi I its Bangkok in July last 5 : I.i.e. " Irglary Charges were Hrgies the dick, with liquor, Mr. Dewլ: 11’ Բ Iյլ ! ! if III 11 |l1Բ II ya "" Hrarıda Orta kıl|
area, Mr. S. Yogaraja. III || '''F' } ',' + r' || I || || *' +
Jr li: |1Eid ylit | iiri scialis, Tip Tirai
i:=i | R || || 114,2|| III. I i E 1r: 3 for rod i
The Batticalida fall, Exit was aming na K0mLmLLCCL 0 LLLH CHLLLLH LLL TtLLL SSLLL S SLL LSS HE SHC“yEd E2p} SLars in H 5 BäC ar:1- 3,ali illi, a J" + if the the Fertig: miris Camers || Welikilde, va5 TfL der i Jy I 15 1rise "Er 5 II à CFll, BLIt à J-Iller fragge oir“, Lut and I:llapped (ff lis heiti 'Mr. Yigarala Said 5rılı birçI.
After the killings ceased inside Welikade LLLLaaHS S LLSS LaLaLLLLSSSLELcC uSLL lE E SLLK KK L piled up in front of a statue of the Budi na LLL LL aaLL LHH LLLL LLLLS L HLHHLHHtHLLLL LLLLLL LLL LLGLLLLLLLLKS LLLLLLL LLLL LaaLLLL LLL the Tairil 'w'; citim is aistir the go liger Eyes of Saa SLaLLaL aG LLLCLLLLLSS LSLaLLLaL CCLu Jagan to the statue of the Prince Of Ahmsa.
w MANAGER BURNT TO DEATH
P FES 0 NA
Of Parlia Tent, Mr, T. as fled to that the hards of y, His farm manate i to det i *a ForTiT it:Self .
1 『-1 - 1 - L1 : , 2: , I I ii ii ii i fis "I rig Exoċit I'll i dtI [:( lig! It is : ; thi t is 30th September E Plaid lik. Lula i 11 Firth Ir. TFF y Heat JJ til F g5-II: F. dr. ''E thE IT irri "...a tiger, Mr, Ma| d=all| |right" | E |if= | El LF || L. TIL "M.P. H: Armiıy rdir! imri", III: It's, "," if I I SHH tilla
")Lu T.F1 E', TI1 A: F1:I. FT1 : 41 f I thie A, li r Floria: ie as riħ) to cleath and later his Military personnel. m who is a leading lited Liberatid i Frant a civilised world Have 2d a member of Parlia
ided the MP's farm oking for "terrorists', is far, said the MP,
The C1ự|lam H[]"}" stralon III thị: W,4ụ| || ||ỵo CC aSLLL S LLL CaS CLC ua LLS LLLL S aLLLL LLaaL0S LSCCC CSS L M E S S L S0SSLLLLSSDS S uH t t Was Il Ter Chief Co-ordinating Officer LL L C L SSSLALSS 0S0 KLLL L S S LSSS er1gia gerli li r" torga -, iiig LI LI Ti iiiil willaglia , Hinri | s8+ 1 T l erT1#rits Ir" 'W'ay IIr" ya FIrir| T 4: Iy":ucII1g L GGLS S S LlLLLLaa La SaKS LLtttt S aaSSSSS CCg LS uL uuuLLLLLS S D LLaa aaKK SESELLS SKK L LLaS LL E LL LS Eaaa S SSHH HSHS LLS SSL L LLL La L S0 L S L L S LSSS t t LL LLLLaLSLLaL L LL L tttLL S LLLLL L KK hy the Military, ** g sa "P Hey...|area.
Fr || ','yfirg the Hiti-TaT | Yfirleri: III August 1 9 F F irid luggai I i ii 1 A II g LS, T 1 3 8 1 , Thieusariri, rif THP Tifli il:Hrita tipli nı '.', 'arkers Flaq| - ||14 || 23Estats in the ceritra | high||arris Hiri *he, were rehabitated at great expense Ir, the Wawuriya district by yo Intary organisatoris with the help of foreigr, relief air clarital. MLaaaaSa0S SLLaaLLLK LLLLLL LLLLLL 0aaSLLaKS SLLLLLLLL LCLLaaa LLLSLLLL LL LLaaLaaaL cost and sacrifice, Tiria, the Tail settlers who made this possible are being forcibly Hrld Violenty driven out and replaced with Sinhalese, The Tamil settiers are being loaded into Wehicles like : attle and Taker away to unknown restrations. Whether | they reach their destinations or are being "disposed of" on the way is a genuine fear 'antertained by those concerned,

Page 2
2 TAMIL TIMES
THE ANTI-TAMIL V
The anti-Tam i “war” continues una bated. Even before the wounds inflicted upon the Tamil people in July-August this year have healed, the Sri Lankan Security forces have gone on a rampage in the Batticaloa District following the jail break from the maximum security prison there. People have been killed and properties burnt. Under the pretext of a house to house search for the escaped prisoners', the Tamil people of Batticaloa are being Subjected to violence, intimidation and humiliation by the Security forces.
The Red Cross reported, as late as October 6, that 45,000 Tamil refugees are still languishing in makeshift camps. This number does not include those Tamils who had already been transported to the northern and eastern parts of the country where they are living with relatives or friends in Over-crowded homes.
While the government and its foreign missions are spending millions of rupees in a vain attempt to te the “TRUTH” to the world With “FACTS AND FIGURES’ as to how reasonably the Tamils are treated in Sri Lanka, reports are continually emanating from there about the harassment, threats, indignities and demands for protection-money faced by Tamils returning to the south of the
country. The article by Anne Abayasekera published in the Sri Lankan daily, 'Sun' (see page 9) shows what really happened in the dark days of
AMMINESTITY INTERINATIONA
While Amnesty International recognises that the Government faced serious problems of internal security it is concerned that the Sri Lanka Government had permitted its security forces to commit grave violations of human rights on members of the Tamil minority during the period of the recent Communal violence, Amnesty international (AI) has said in a document titled 'Amnesty International statement updating its human rights concerns in Sri Lanka JulySeptember 1983." The report goes on to say: "It recognises that the Sri Lanka Government is obliged to bring to justice those responsible for those violent criminal acts such as the kiling of soldiers. Amnesty International also recognises that the authorities cannot be held responsible for those killings in the context of Communal violence in which its security forces had no active or facilitating role and it welcomes the Governments stated assurances to the UN Sub- Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities that all persons responsible for the killings and violence during July 1983 will be identified and brought before the courts regardless of
their position. Howev Al is gravely concern of at least 37 unarmed district by the securi which have now bee Government itself- ir for the deaths of the The report says that on four occasions ser cations to the Sri La telex and that these answered. The report says that witness accounts of Army and has receive bodies of civilians kill taken away and pres by the security force: On the matter of th Welikade the Al repc are not available from although internationa expressed doubts as detainees could take complicity of prison since detainees were in conditions which t the prison had desc

SEPT/OCT 1983 SLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Mes
WAR CONTINUES
July-August and also the indignities and dangers faced by the Tamils today. Posters have been put up by the racist Sinhala Bala Mandalaya Warning Sinhalese and Muslim businesses, house-owners and others not to let shops or houses to Tamils. Poison-pen letters have been widely circulated by the Sinhala Maha Sabha warning against Tamils and MUSLIMS being allowed to continue their businesses in the South hereafter. While the Tamils are in this plight, the “invasion' of the Batticaloa District by hordes of Sinhalese, supported by Government Ministers and MPs demonstrates that those who brought about the July-August massacres will not rest until the Tamil nation and its identity are destroyed, and Sri Lanka is a land only for the Sinhala-Buddhists. The presence of Buddhist monks among the invading hordes demonstrates the emerging theocratic character of the Sri Lankan political Scene. If the murder of over 2000 Tamils in cold blood, the destruction of over 5000 of their properties and business enterprises, the confiscation of all their “affected properties' under emergency laws, and the deliberate obstacles placed in the way of their attempt to return to their employment and properties, followed by an “invasion' and forcible occupation of vast tracts of Tamil areas by thousands of Sinhalese transported in state-owned vehicles, are not an attempt to commit genocide of the Tamil people, then what is?
IL CONIDEMMINIS SRI LANIKA
er, at the same time, security" and howkillings could have been ed about the killings repeated after an interval of two days.
iTamils in the Jaffna Referring to the Sri Lanka Government's ty forces - killings - reply to an earlier Al report in July this year in confirmed by the the report says "The Government's reply apparent retaliation failed to indicate that the evidence pre
13 soldiers. Sented in AI's report would be investigated since July 23 Al had or that the Government would consider it detailed communi- implementing the recommendations Al
nka Government by had submitted as a steptowards preventing
had all gone un- further human rights violations."
Some of the recommendations made by Al has obtained eye- Amnesty International are: some killings by the * individuals arrested under the Prevention i reports that several of Terrorism Act be immediately informed ed by the Army were of the reasons for the arrest and of any umably disposed of charges against them. S. * The Government inform relatives immele prison deaths at diately of their arrest and place of detention, rt says "Full details * All detainees under the PTA be granted independent sources immediate and later regular access to ! organisations have lawyers and relatives. to how the killings of * Detainees to be produced before a maplace without the gistrate in 24 hours as done normally and officials especially the magistrate be empowered to release or held in a special wing remand the suspect. e Superintendent of * Specific rules for detention and interibed as 'maximum Contd on page 36

Page 3
SEPT/OCT 1983
SRI LAN KAN GOW CLAMS R
The Sri Lankan Government received its worst shock when the United Nations' Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (U.N.S.C. P. D. P.M.) resolved recently that the U.N. Human Rights Commission should ask the Secretary-General of the U.N. to seek information from the Government of Sri Lanka and other sources on the recent incidents of communal violence and submit a report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission at its fortieth Session. Following the condemnation of Sri Lanka by the International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International of a number of human rights violations, the UNSCPDPM's resolution, which was supported by ten countries, constitutes a severe blow to the already tarnished image of Sri Lanka. Bruised and battered by adverse publicity, particularly following the July massacre of Tamils, the Government, through the StateControlled and servile media, has resorted to smear campaigns against international human rights bodies like A.I. which has been described as a Communist front organisation. The fact that A.I. was the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1976 for its valuable service in its campaign against tyrants and torturers does not impress the Sri Lankan Government or its lackeys. Blind to the atrocities within Sri Lanka. they behave as if they are the victims of an international conspiracy hatched by a few expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils. The counter-propaganda campaign by the Sri Lankan authorities through its foreign missions has been launched with full vigour. As in all such campaigns, the weapons used are fabrications of facts and distortions of the truth.
PRISON KLLINGS
For example, in a document prepared under the title "Background Note - Sri Lanka beyond Conflict", Ernest Corea, the Sri Lankan Ambassador in Washington, referring to the massacre of 52 Tamil detainees in the maximum security prison in Colombo, states:-
“From the Justice Minister downwards there was nothing but Sorrow and remorse for the prison violence which resulted in the deaths of 52 proven or suspected terrorists. Two prison riots, one of them a mass escape attempt, caused the deaths'.
The President and several other Ministers have spoken on a number of occasions on
T.V. and other places from 28th July and
spoken on every subject under the sun. Not once did any one of them condemn the perpetrators of this cowardly brutality.
If there was any pris Tamil detainees. No escaped as a result attempt". Presumab and the Army person the prison foiled the could not prevent
Tamil detainees in til mably they becamer for they told the soduiry that they could of the 500 rioting S
in this artic Sri Lankan Sub-Comm Sri Lankan
STARTING PON' VMr. Tissa Jaya kodd Lanka in Geneva, dur the Sri Lanka Goverr DPM, Said On 22nd “any discussion C Lanka in July mu ing point the e me Sification of the
movement in 19
movement Just eme Nothing about the d ship rights for 1.2 m Only, Pogroms 195 suppression of the Ga graha staged by th incarcerating its leac gation by Sinhala lea entered into with Ta they not the cause: movement to emerg Mr. Jayakoddy.
SPONTANEOUS According to Mr. Jay in which 13 Soldiers v Tamil youth “spark Wave of commun mbo, and in other try....there were S. ups of pent-up em pened to the stories p ment about the inv foreign power with to certain local left partn accused of fomentin July violence? Mr. Jay he knew that such fig would be laughed ot present in Geneva. S Spontaneous far emotions'. What
emotions'? The so-c not gone berserk kill lese, burning their hc women like the Tamils 1956! Over a perioc

TAMIL TIMES 3
/T°S FRADULENT EBUTTED -
n riot, it was to kill the One seems to have of this mass escape ly the prison officers nel who Vvere guarding "escape attempt but he massacre of the leir own Celis! PreS - homentarily blind too, called magisterial ennot identify even one inha lese prisoners
pursuance of their publicised political goal of achieving a separate State for Tamils anc in response to State terrorism inleashed throt igh the Army and Police th; Tamil militants have killect 73 ) rsons - 51 Tamils, 21 Sinhalese and 1 Muslim These statistics given by Mr. Jayakoddy himself demonstrate that the poli fra violet i engaged in by the "terrorists is not racially motivated against the Sinhalese because almost two-thirds of those who si i ff, i red death were Tam is!
e, R. Ganeshan tears apart, point by point, the government’s case presented before the UN ssion on Human Rights on August 22 by the Ambassador in Geneva, Mr. Tissa Jaya koddy.
/, Ambassador of Sri ing his hatchet job for ment at the UNSCP| August 1983 that pf the events in Sri st have as its startrgence and inten
Tam il separatist 76. So the separatist rged from nowhere eprivation of citizenillion famils, Sinhała 6, 1958 and 1961 indhiyam-style Satyase Tamil parties and ders, unilateral abroaders of agreements mil leaders, etc. Are s for the separatist e? Not according to
FLARE-UP1 Okoddy, the ambush vere killed by militant ed off a massive a un rest in Coloparts of the counpontaneous flareDotions”. What haput out by the Governisible hands of 'a :al connections' and 2rs which have been and spreading the akoddy is no fool, for nents of imagination t of court by those he put it all on “a e-up of pent-up are these "pent-up alled terrorists had ng innocent Sinhauses or raping their have suffered since of seven years, in
PENT-UP EMOTIONS2 If Mr. Jaya koddy can attribute the par paric atrocities committed against the Tamil people to the "pent-ip ennotions' of the Sinhalese what about the peint-ti) emotions of the Tamils who have not only suffered overt and covert forms of riscrimination for the last three decades but have also been subjected to frecent and repeated mass violence resulting in thousands of deaths, thousands of properties being burnt, their women being raped and the destruction of their temples? Because of their 'pent-ip emotions' the Tamils have not gone about burning and killing innocent Sinhalese people living in their midst! On the contrary, the Rev. Kadawadduwa Nandarama Nayake Thera, the incumbent of the Naga Vihare locates in the centre of the Tamil community of Jaffn, recently said, 'No damage has been causes to the Naga Vihare, Jaffna. The rumors spread by certain elements that the temple was damaged were intrue. Contarary to rmours, no Sinhalese bakeries had been attacked". (Ceyon Daily News).
Mr. Jayakoddy also said, "The incidents were neither prompted nor orchestrated by the government or its agents'. What about the widespread campaign of posters, leaflets and books published by some Ministers and others connected with the government incidents the July incidents inciting the Sinhala people? What about those Ministers, Depity Ministers, District Ministers, Govt.
MPs and UNP trade union leaders who
were seen mingling with the rioting Sinhala
mobs during the first three days of violence?
Did not the government know that the
repeated announcement made over the
radio and television about the killing of the 13 soldiers in Jaffna (despite the fact that
there was a strict censorship of news) and the subsequent publicity given to the state funeral for the dead soldiers at Kanatte Cont, on page 4

Page 4
4 TAM L TIMES
Contd from page 3 would inflame the feelings of the Sinhalese against the Tamils? Are not the police and the armedforces agents of une government? S it not tre that there S incontrovertible evidence that sections of the Security forces also took part in the violence agains the Tamil ? Not even a thousand Jayako dys can deny the collaboration of the security forces in the anti-Tamil violence in July The government itself, through its President has Confessed that the Navy broke ratiks and went berserk attacking Tamils and ti ir properties in Trincomalee. This is no less true in other parts of the C ) , η trν.
PATENTLY FALSE CLAM Mr. Jayakoddy claimed, "The government did everything to quell the disturbances as quickly as possible to stamp out disorder and restore normacy... The strictest measures were enforced in the process of ending the violence. The Government of Sri Lanka deeply regrets that the events took place. It has vehemently condemned and Condemns the communal violence regardless from where it comes.' Every one of these claims is patently false: (a) The violence erupted during the night of July 24. For four days and nights, during and outside curfew hours, uncontrolled atrocities were Committed before the President, for the first time on July 28, appeared on TV and addressed the nation. Neither the government nor the police and the army do anything to "stamp out disOrder'. Tourists' pictures shown on foreign television conclusively establish the fact that the birnings and killings continued in the very presence of the security forces and they took no action. ( 1 ) The President's first ut terances after for days of terror did not condemn the violence nor its perpetrators. Up to now, rheither he mor his Ministers have condemned the violence. He did not even 'ss sympathy with the victims. On the is , , , asion he appeared on TV, he spoke ti i appease ""the clamour and the natural request of the Sinhala people' ind announced the ban on separatist organisati) is 'to appease the natural desire and request of the Sinhala people' (c) In fact the President made two different speeches one in Sinhala and the other in English. Not that the English one was any better, but the Sinhala speech was worse. Whereas, in the English speech, he made reference to Sinhala and Tamil police and army personnel being killed by "terrorists", in the Sinhala speech, he falsely emphasised that the majority who were killed by 'terrorists' were Sinhalese. (d) Neither the President nor his ministers called upon the security forces to enforce the law and deal with the goons and
arsonists who were unchecked, uncontr causing death and (e) Neither the Presi called upon their pa to help in arresting
LEADERS 8 PRO THE GOVT Mr. Jayakoddy ass ment of Sri La stone unturned t before the Courts sible for the killi truction and de less of who they their ideologies ments, the full fo the courts will will be no excep The police started from July 30. By th damage and destrut leted. Up to now there is a that the government to take any action t before the courts all p in any other count smaller scale would subject of an imp Inquiry. Although the that sections of the Trincomalee, there now that any single court-martialled. The of Prisons, the Supe and other Prison O sence the 52 Tam were killed are still for a few leaders of who have been ta 'scapegoats', the ciers and the perpet destruction and dev about the country and as saviours oft The 'ful force of th will never be applied or at least their le Constitute the inne government itself.
AN ABERRATIO Mr. Jayakoddy woul that what happene and of July 1983 single episode of tragic deviation fros peaceful life". Peop for a mess of potta truth and Mr. Jayal be no exception. “In May and Jur of Ceylon, the p burst into flami world's press. “ Race Riots', 'S Declared', 'Dusk *12,000 Remov

roaming the streets led and unmolested estruction. lent nor his Ministers ty MPs or supporters the violence.
ECTORS WITHN
rts, “The Governka will leave no identify and bring al persons respongs, violence, des'astation. Regardare, their status, and political alignrce of the law and pe applied. There tions’’.
irresting looters only en 98 per cent of the :tion had been comp
bsolutely no evidence has taken or proposes o "identify and bring ersons responsible...". y, incidents of much have been by now the artial Commission of government admitted e navy ran amuck in is no evidence up to one of them has been Acting Commissioner rintendent of Prisons fficers in whose preil political detainees at their posts. Except two small left parties ken into custody as eal organisers, finanrators of the "killings, astation" are striding as paragons of virtue he Sinhala Buddhists e law and the courts' against them for they aders and protectors most echelons of the
\?
have the world believe to the Tamils at the was 'an aberration, a communal conflict, a the normal course of le who Sell their Souls ge have no regard for oddy would appear to
e 1958, the Island aceful tea garden, g headlines in the undreds Killed in ate of Emergency to Dawn Curfew... d to Safety”, pro
claimed the special correspondents who had been forced by the severity of censorship to sneak out of Ceylon and file their stories with a Madras dateline', thus the Editor of Ceylon Observer, Mr. Tarzie Vittachi, began his opening paragraph of his 125-page, 'Story of the Ceylon Race Riots-Emergency 58". His book concluded by raising the question, “What are We left with? A nation in
ruins, some grim lessons which we cannot afford to forget and a momentous question : Have the Sinhalese and the Tamils reached the parting of the ways?' And even the present President, who has presided over five anti-Tamil pogroms irn his six years of office, said of the August 1977 race riots, “I speak more in sorrow than in anger. Recent events throughout the island, north, centre and south, show that religions we profess do not seem to influence for the good some of our people. regret that some members of my party have spoken in Parliament and Outside words that encouraged violence and the murders, rapes and arson that have been committed', (Sept. 4, 1977). Not that Mr.Jayakoddy has not read Tarzie Vittachi in 1958 or his President's speech in 1977. Nor is it that he is unaware of the several racial pogroms committed against the Tamil people. Presumably he has even personally seen quite a few of them. So, why does he call the July 1983 violence 'an aberration"? He is a diplomat and, therefore he is paid to lie on behalf of his government.
HUMAN RIGHTS VOLATIONS On the question of human rights, Mr. Jayakoddy has really made the proverbial attempt of trying to conceal a whole pumpkin in a plate of rice. He said, 'Sri Lanka has never shown a consistent pattern of violations of human rights over a period of time.... But in the last six years we have preserved and strengthened the democratic institutions, enshrined all fundamental rights in the Consititution, created a network of judicial procedures for the protection of the lives and rights of citizens within a democratic framework. We have committed ourselves to the scrupulous observance of a large number of international instruments relating to human rights'. Mr.Jayakoddy must be endowed with an unusually strong nerve to make this speech at Geneva from where the International Commission of Jurists, only last year, published an eighty page report and another smaller report recently documenting in detail the several violations of human rights by the Sri Lankan Government. In Conto on page 5

Page 5
SEPT/OCT 1983
42 TAMIL DE N DARING COMMA
Forty two Tamil political detainees held
in the maximum security prison at Batti
caloa were rescued on the night of Sep|tember 23 in a daring commando-type
operation, which presumably was conceived in total Secrecy and carried out with
military precision with no casualties on “either.side.
Government sources conceded that this
was the biggest and the most daring
jailbreak in the history of the country.
Benefiting from the confusion that resulted. from this raid, over 200 ordinary criminal
prisoners also escaped, some of whom
have since been recaptured. None of the
political detainees has been found. The detainees held under the most draco
nian provisions of the Prevention of Terro- | rism Act were transferred to the Batticaloa prison from Colombo following the brutal
murder of 52 Tamil detainees on 25th and
27th July.
According to reports in the Indian and Sri Lankan press, the operation was carried out by a Tamil Liberation Organisation.
The raid on the Batticaloa jail would appear to have been a well-planned operation in which about 30 to 40 men in camouflaged military uniform stormed the maximum
'Cont, frrim paqe 4
particular, rather than commending the government on the 'scrupulous observance... of international instruments', the ICJ found it guilty of violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In respect of the use of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act by the Lankan govt., the ICJ report said, “The South African Terrorism Act has been called a piece of legislation Which must Shock the Conscience of any lawyer”. Many of the provisions of the Sri Lankans Act are equally contrary to accepted principles of law. While a substantial number of the provisions of the Terrorism Act are clearly contrary to internationally accepted minimum standards for criminal procedure, they also appear to be contrary to the provisions of the Sri Lan kan Constitution....”. What the recently published 72 page Report of an Amnesty International Mission to Sri Lanka documents is not about the 'network of judicial procedures for the protection of lives and rights of all citizens' as Mr.Jayakoddy claims, but concerning: the widespread use of: (a) detention incommunicado for prolonged periods of 18 months at a time; (b) torture and degrading and inhuman treatment of detainees; (c) confessions extracted under torture;
Security prison at trussed up the g jail. Within a few with 42 Tamil pol the guards were harmed. It is learnt that refused to join th included Rev. Fr.
malingam (78), F Mahesan, Editor hanthiran, and M a Tamil writer.
Dr. Nithianandan, escaped along wit Sam Jeyatillekara
The large anno and the conse has innade if nie tenber/Octo Tires be corr rexf issure w November 198
(d) solitary confir * Out access to lav The A also has disappearances taken into custoc The recent mas detainees in pris dulent nature of koddy. DRFTTO DC How has the gov strengthened de |tions"? By deprivi their civic rights Parliament electe for a further peri opposition newsp out any charge bearers; by per break up opposi the President obt resignation from ensure that they the repeated use censorship of the While the Presic
with in Sri Lank
and Ernest Core engage in platitt ring about 'hum rights' democrac government's co citizens' etc, the Country S steadily drifting t
 
 
 
 
 

TAML TiMES bo
TANEES FREED NDO-TYPE OPERATION
9 pm on 23rd September, uards and broke into the minutes they were out itical detainees. Although tied up, they were not
Some of the detainees e escaping party. These Singarayer, Dr.S.A.Tharresident of TELF, Kowai of the Tamil weekly “Sutrs. Nirmala Nithianandan, However, her husband
a University Lecturer, h Rev. Fr. Sinnarasah, Rev. ah and Dr.Jeyakularajah.
Infof naffer received Fuent delay in printing cessary that the Seper issues of Tarn i
bined info one. The ill be published in 33.
lement of detainees withwyers or relatives. catalogued a number of and killings of persons ly by the security forces. Sacre of the 52 Tamil On eschlishes the frauthe claims of Mr.Jaya
TATORSHIP fernment preserved and mocratic political institu|ng opposition leaders of ; extending the life of d for a period of six years od of six years, banning apers; by detaining withopposition party officemitting street thugs to tion party meetings; by aining undated letters of all government MPs to ido not fall out of line; by
of emergency rule and press etc.
lent and his Ministers a, and the Jaya koddys
as outside fradulently Jdinous phrase mongean right, fundamental y judicial procedures mmitment to protect all : sad truth is that the slovley but owards dictatorship.
TAMIL DETANEES FREED FROM BATTICALOA JAIL
Varatharaja Perumal Maheswara Rajah S. Perinbarajah S. Sivalingam S. Sriskantharajah S. Premamanthan S. Koneswaran V. Suntharalinga m G. Pathmanathan T.Vijayakumar V. Shanmuganathsiva m K. Theva na nthan T.Thad chanamoorthy V. MaheSWaran P. Bhavananthan S.Yoga rajah T. Maheswaran V. Sivasu bramaniam Manikkam Rajan Shanmugam Chanthrapalan S. Ganeshalingam S. Sritharan Gnanasekaram Antonippilai Alakiri Augustine Paul Rev. Fr. SinnaraSah S.Jeyaprakash S. Rajaji T. Nithiananthan Rev. Fr. Jeyatilaka rajah Dr. Jeyaku la rajah Aranantham David Ramanathan Thanga Mahenthiran
Wannatheran Jeya koddy
G na navel
Para matheva T. Mariyanayagam S. Nakuleswaran S. Maheswaran T.Jegatheesan
By kind courtesy of" EELA MULAKKAM”, Sept-Oct. 1983
ARMY RAMPAGE FOLLOW/WG JA/L-BFREAK
IFollowing the Batticaloa jail-break, the government clamped down a curfew covering the entire Batticaloa District and virtually sealed it off from the rest of the island as the security forces began a house to house search on a massive hunt for the escaped Tamil detainees. None of the escaped detainees nor those who freed them have yet been caught
True to their record of indiscipline and
2Cont, on page 12

Page 6
bi | AMIL TIMES
CASPER WEINEERGER'S MY
“NDA PE
OUESTION RAISED IN
The US Defence Secretary, Casper Weinberger's unannounced two hour stopover in Colombo on September 30 has perplexed India and disturbed political circles in Sri Lanka. It also has raised Serious questions as to the military dimenSion of the US-Sri Lankan relationship and whether Sri Lanka is being drawn into playing a part in the US Pakistan-China axis. It is no secret that the US, for several years, has had negotiations with President Jayawardene's government for the leasing of the eastern port of Ttincomalee for siting fuel storage tanks. Both in Sri Lanka and India, there is always the fear that TrinComalee will eventually become a US base.
The visit of the US Defence Secretary and
subsequent developments were raised in the Sri Lankan Parliamenton October 6 byl an Opposition MP, Mr.Sarath Muttetuwagama. He asked the Prime Minister whether the request from the US Embassy for a US Air Force aircraft to land in Colombo on the way from Bombay to the Maldivian capital, Male, on October 24 was in any way connected with Mr. Wr berger's visit. The MP also wanted to know why the aircraft needed refuellingon' so short a flight and why a stopover for two whole days was necessary with the Sri Lankan Air Force providing security for the aircraft on an round-the-clock basis. What military equipment was the aircraft carrying, asked the MP? He had in his possession a note from the US Embassy addressed to the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister. India, which wants the Indian ocean decared a Zone of Peace, has always been suspicious about US intentions in Sri Lanka, particularly in respect of the port of Trincomalee, one of the best natural harbours in the East. The mystery and the secrecy: surrounding Mr. Weinberger's visit to Colo-. mbo have further strengthened Indian concern and suspicion. No advance information was given about Mr. Weinberger's visit to Colombo. The surprising part of it is that not only has the visit itself been kept secret until the last day, although it had been worked out well in advance, but also Mr. Weinberger has chosen to avoid Indian territory altogether while flying from Colombo to Karachi en route to Islamabad for talks with the Pakistan Government. The U.S. Defence Secretary was initially scheduled to go to Pakistan after visiting China, which meant that he would probably take the much shorter direct route from Beijing to Islamabad across Tibet. But as it so happened he flew to Hong Kong for a
refuelling stop and t and Karachi before a making a detour of se metres.
Permission not as
At no stage was the asked for permissio
which meant making
the Arabian Sea inst over the sub-contin concerned in Delhi a of departure of his a and its arrival in Kar Mr. Weinberger had
to pay a brief visit to before going to Paki Obviously, reflecting ment's concern, the strongly reacted to secrecy surrounding retary's stop-over in
FOR
A largely attended ga others paid homag those who lost the holocaust in Sri Lat Concert Hall, Catfo Saturday Septembe This meeting was or British Fund for the Refugees and was p Sathianathan, the Ch minute's silence was mencement of ther
Dr.Sathianathan in
gave a brief resume had occurred in Sri terrible atrocities and of the Tamils abro purposeful and tan human suffering tha by the Tamils at this
Referring to the exis organisations among nathan said that alth best situation, them organisations can al pose. He likened the to tributaries and it
these tributaries that
He therefore exhorte nise themselves in another and contrib the form of financia
help or both so tha efforts may accrue

STERIOUS VISIT TO COLOMEBO
RPLEXED”
LANKAN PARLIAMENT
hen on to Colombo rriving in Islamabad veral thousand Kilo
sked
Indian Government n to overfly territory a circuitous trip over ead of flying straight ent. The authorities re checking the time ircraft from Colombo achi to find whether utilised the occasion he Diego Garcia base Stan.
the Indian Governe Indian press have the rather unusual the US Defence SecColombo. The State
controlled media of Sri Lanka have reacted with its characteristic anti-Indian venom by accusing the Indian press for its 'blantantly hegemonistictone' and of "paranoia".
There is no doubt that since 1977, Mr. Jayawardene, the President, has oriented Sri Lankan foreign and domestic policy towards the US on which he heavily depends for aid and loans for the Government's rather extravagant expenditure on grandiose schemes which hardly bring any relief to the ordinary people.
Political observers in Colombo note that it was not without substance that Mr. Jayawardene was nicknamed Yankie Dickie from the early 1950's. What is more worrying is whether he will take Sri Lanka into the lap of Uncle Sam thus raising the prospect of the Indian ocean and the countries around it becoming embroiled in the vortex of super-power confrontation.
MEMORAL MEETING
MASSACRED MARTYRS
thering of Tamils and e to the memory of ir lives in the recent hka at the Lewisham rd, London SE6 on r 1 7. ganised by the Central Rehabilitaion of Tamil resided over by Dr. P. airman of the Fund. A ; observed at the commeeting.
mis opening address of the events which ..anka resulting in the emphasised the need ad to do something
gible to alleviate the
t was being endured
time.
:ence of several small the Tamils, Dr. SathiaDugh that was not the ere existence of such so serve a good pur:e small organisations Nas the confluence of created a mighty river. all the Tamils to orgaone organisation or te their mite either in support or physical
t the results of their to the benefit of the
disadvantaged and suffering people way back at home. Mr. K.Vaikunthavasan of the Tamil Co-ordinating Committee in the course of his Speech urged that in the present situation four essential steps will have to be taken, one of which was that a case against the Sri Lanka government to be filed in the international Court of Justice, even though there appears to be no jurisdiction to do so. Among the other speakers were Dr.Subramaniam, i Messrs Kanagasundaram, S. Maharasingam, A.R.Aseerwatham and Rajah. It was also announced that the Tamil United Liberation Front (England Branch) was invited but was not represented.
IMAGE OF
SRILANKAN CIVLISATION
A poster, 17' by 22', illustrating the recent atrocities in Sri Lanka has been published by the General Union of Eelam Students.
Those wishing to obtain a copy, please Send £1.20 (including postage) to: G.U.E.S. B.M. Box 268O London WC1 V6XX

Page 7
SEPT/OCT 1983
THE COMMUNAL VOLENCE 1983
THE OTHER SID
You have heard the
The communal holocaust of July 1983 will go down in the History of Sri Lanka as its blackest hour. Overnight, men turned worse than beasts and descended to the level that they could burn and loot and kill fellow human beings and even cremate Some of them on the roadside on the sole ground that they belonged to a different race and spoke a different language. Obviously, the lofty preachings of Buddhism for over 2500 years have had no effect:
The destruction was both systematic and
well planned. The death toll reached up to nearly 2000. Even Plantation workers of Indian Tamil origin were attacked and line rooms destroyed. The value of property damaged has to be calculated in billions of rupees. Many Tamils stood with only the clothes they wore while their life's labour and savings had gone up in flames. The worst atrocity was the killing in cold blood of 53 Tamil prisoners inside Jail. It is a crime which Sri Lanka will never live down.
Why did this happen? To suggest that the killing of the 13 soldiers in Jaffna was the cause is to beg the question. That was not
the cause. That, itself, was a result of the
failure to solve the problem of the Tamil minorities. It was just an excuse just as the killing of an Israeli diplomat in June 1982 was merely an excuse for the Israeli invaSion of Lebanon which had been well
planned in advance for the purpose of
driving the Palestinians from Lebanon.
It is time for people to understand that .
when men, Sinhala or Tamil, put on a uniform and acquire the licence to kill, they, themselves, stood the risk of being killed. This has nothing particularly to do with their race. The armed forces are the main form of the repressive state machinery which the government maintains to repress both the Sinhalese and the Tamil people. The same Sinhala soldier who is today killing a Tamil in the north and getting shot at in return, will, tomorrow, when ordered, gun down a Sinhalese - as, indeed, he did in 1971. A soldier, therefore, cannot be looked upon as a Sinhala or a Tamil. He is a killer in uniform and must, at any time, face death. The Tigers only killed those State security forces who came to repress and kill them. They have not killed innocent or unarmed civilians Sinhalese.
Besides the northern Tigers have not killed only Sinhalese. According to government's own propaganda, they have up to date killed 11 politicians, 13 informants and 16 civilians - making a total of 40 - all of whom are Tamils. Another 50 police and army officers have been killed. Of these,
NOW listen W. Sanrm,
several are Tamil pol Bastiampillai. There lese are killed in the are virtually no Tam Further, no civilian S was attacked in th period. This is some be proud of. What was the nece retaliation? in Britair the Irish Republical Guerilla war of liberat Recently, the I.R.A. kil batten, the uncle of th even a single Irishm retaliation? I am not Christanity has a bett than Buddhism. Bu things in their correc Some argue that the Tamils was a natural a separate state of E why were the poor Indian Tamil origin at leaders have never a state. On the other ha majority of them had presidential election vote that saved the U.N. P. Then, why att In 1956 and 1958, separatism. But there lence in both years- O that of 1983. No, we reason else where. Running like a threa fabric of Sri Lankan consistent campaign which has been orc duarters. It is true t noughmore era, Sinh fike Sir Ponna mbala Ponnambalam Rama etc, worked togethe reforms from the Brit: colonialists granted n leaderships failed to divide the spoils. The apple of discord Seat for the Western by the Tamil leaders Sinhala Leaders on amounted to comm That led to the parting Ponna mbalam brothe Ceylon National Cor duit active politics. The Donoughmore C troduced adult franc representation paved majority rule or what w of the majority. Tha
SSSSSSSSSLSSSSSL

TAM L TIMES 7
OF THE STORY
overnment’s version.
O the truth
jathasan
emen, like inspector son why more Sinhamy is because there s in the army. thala life or property North during this hing that Tamils can
sity for any form of for nearly a century, Army is waging a on against the British. ed Lord Louis Mounte British Oueen. Was in in England hurt in trying to argue that rinfluence on people it is time we saw t perspective. violence against the eaction to the cry for lam. If that were SO, lantation workers of tacked? They or their sked for a separate nd, the over helming voted for J. R. at the s while it was their referendum for the ack them? there was no cry for was communal vionly less frenzied than have to look for the
i through the entire politics has been a against the Tamils estrated from high at prior to the Dola and Tamil leaders In Arunachalam, Sir hathan, E.W. Perera,
in pursuit of more h. But as the British Dre reforms, the two gree about how to
roved to be a Tamil Province demanded nd opposed by the he ground that it nal representation. of the ways and the s resigned from the ress and virtually
nstitution which inise and territorial 9 way for Sinhalese s called the tyranny
was one of the
reasons why Ramanathan opposed adult franchise because he correctly foresaw what would happen. In a homogeneous society, adult frachise and territorial representation are ideal. But, when the picture is complicated by the presence of racial and religious minorities, adult franchise and territorial representation would ultimately bring about the subjection of the minority to the majority. The only alternative would have been a healthy left movement which would have cut across racial, linguistic or caste barriers and concentrated on economic issues which were common to al. But this development did not take place although an attempt was made in this direction by the left parties. The formation of the Pan-Sinhala Board of Ministers, excluding any representatives of the minority, by D.S.Senanayake in 1935; the rejection of the Tamil demands by the Soulbury Commission; the 1948 Citizenship Acts which deprived the Indian Tamils of Citizenship and the right to vote; the passing of the Sinhala only Act in 1957; further acts such as standardisation of marks and job appointments through chits from government M.P.s; the more recent sending of a virtual army of occupation to the North and East and the harassment and repression of the Tamil people - all these have combined to convince the minorities that they would be submerged by the majority. That was why they thought that their demands could not be realised inside a unitary state and therefore put forward the extreme demand for a separate state. It was a cry born out of frustration and despair. There is talk of ethnic imbalance in government service, professions, trade, business, etc. It is true that in the 19th century the Tamils had a head start as far as education was concerned because of the excellent educational facilities provided by the American Missionaries who landed in Vaddukoddai as early as 1816. But the Tamils did not invite them. If they used the opportunity, studied hard and advanced, it was on merit. But that is past history. If there was in fact an ethnic imbalance in Trade and Business, what prevented the Sinhala bourgeoisie which has dominated every government since 1948 to set right this imbalance by legal and constitutional methods? Did they need a pogrom to do this? The in-built anti-Tamil trend in Sri Lanka politics has of late been developed by Cont. On page 8

Page 8
8 TAMIL TIMES
JUDGES DISGRACED A(
Strange things happen in Sri Lanka, but stranger things happen under President J.R. Jayewardene's Government. The i Country was without a Supreme Court or a Court of Appeal for a week in September. All judges had "ceased to hold office" beginning September 8 Reason? They had failed to take the oath under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution before the President. The amendment required them, within one month of the passing of the amendment, to take the oath against 'separation' of the country. The news that the country was without a
Supreme Court sent out the island as S never arisen before outraged because th the judiciary had ne' humiliated in this n the country's histor Following tradition, Supreme Court anc had taken their oat But the governmen from the Attorney
they should have ta the President. By
Conto from page 7
Sinhala extreme chauvinists to demand the eradication of the economic base of the Tamils in the South. That was what sought to be achieved by the recent communal violence. They have almost sucCeeded. Who were responsible for this holocaust? There can be no question but that the forces behind the government were responsible for it. In every area, eyewitnesses indentified the looters and arsonists and murderers as supporters of the government no matter who else may have joined in later. K- A The active participation of the armed forces or at best their indifference or inaction during the communal violence has been commented upon by a- including foreign correspondents who were eye witnesses; and have been accepted both by the President and Minister Thondaman. Nobody is likely to forget the spectacle of lorry loads of armed troops gaily waving to the looters who waved greetings back. In fact, there is no doubt that if stern action had been taken by the armed forces on the first day, the violence could have been halted and Contained. The army was clearly on the side of the looters and the arsonists and the government was either unwilling or 1 inable to Orderstern action. It took a Week efore a looter was shot. The government stands charged with inaction and inability to provide for the security of its Tamil citizens. Its inability to protect its Tamil prisoners inside Jail was unworthy of any government. it was precisely to distract public attention from these obvious facts tha the government proscribed three left parties on the ground that they were party to the violence and arrested several of their leaders. It also came out with the lie that a foreign hand was behind the disturbances. But it had to disown this nonsense soon. Fortunately for the people of Sri Lanka, the super powers, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., seem to have come to a tacit understanding not to interfere in Sri Lanka and leave it to India to mediate. This was what trimmed the sails of the government and
brought them dow they would have b malee for U.S. and A lot of talk has correspondents att fair name of Sri Lank did the tarnishing? chauvinistic goon v property and killed pondent who repot humane way of rep cold blood of 53 T Can highly paid put move the blood and The irony is that p fault with the perp horrors in our hist about the way it wat But the communal Solved. The T.U.L.F. reasonable alternat offered, they could and obtain a freshm insist that the T.U demand of Eelam bi The government sh Prevention of Terr( those arrested und amnesty and withd North and East. It should grant citi Tamils who are stat those who have de North and East. In wish to return to no the country of thei pected. Sri Lanka is slidin racism and fascism tening to the theorie preached by Hitler. our own version of The unofficial goon made official and g that is the meaning Service and the pe the Home Guard. silenced. Fascism w us even before we progressive movem toms aright and ta time.

SEPT/OCT 1983
SLLSLS SCSCS
GAN
shock waves throughuch a situation had . Legal circles were e highest members of ver been disgraced or hanner at any time in
y.
all the judges of the the Court of Appeal hs before each other. t backed with a ruling General insisted that ken the oaths before failing to do so, the
n to earth. Otherwise, artered away Trincowestern armed help. peen going on about empts to tarnish the a: But, who was it who Was it the Sinhala who set fire to Tamil Tamils or the corrested them? Is there a porting the murder in amil prisoners in Jail? olic relations firms regore in Welikada Jail? eople are not finding etrators of the worst pry but picking holes is reported. | problem has to be leader has said that if a ive like federalism is go back to the people handate. It is mulish to J. L. F. must drop the efore talks could start. ould also withdraw the prism Act, release all ler it, offer a general aw the army from the
Izenship to all Indian eless and give land to cided to settle in the
he case of those who' dia, their right to go to. ' choice must be res
g down the road to n. We are already liss of the master-race as We are even to have itler's storm troopers. squads are soon to be iven military training. of the talk of National "manent institution of All opposition will be would have crept in on know it unless the ent reads the sympkes counter-action in
government declared that the judges had 'ceased to hold office'. The judges were to be subjected to more, ignominy and humiliation. They were locked out and police were posted to prevent them from entering their chambers. They, including the Chief Justice, were even denied the right to remove their own papers from their chambers. Their official cars were withdrawn and the police protection given to guard their residences was also promptly withdrawn.
The farcical impasse continued until the judges were compelled to go before their Lord 8 Master, Mr.J. R. Jayewardene, the Executive President of Sri Lanka, and humbly take their oaths. All the judges were promptly "re-appointed' after the President had taught them a lesson by making it clear to them as to who the real boss of the country was and what their fate would have been Before re-appointing them, the President presumably told them not to be foolish as to give any judgements which would embarrass him or his govern
ment. Although the judges were re-appointed,
according to a government decision, they were not to be paid for the period during which they were "deemed to have ceased to hold their posts". While the President and his government would appear to have enjoyed the sadistic pleasure of humiliating the judges, the contention that they had 'ceased to hold office" during the interim period has raised a hornet's nest. What happens to the cases they had heard before and which were pending at the time they ceased to be judges? What is the position of any case which any one of them had heard during the period after they had "ceased' to hold office and before they were re-appointed? Have all these cases got to be heard afresh is the question that is being currently debated in legal circles.
AMIR TO LOSE CIVIC RIGHTS?
An orchestrated campaign against the TULF leader, Mr.A.Amirthalingam, is being carried on by sections of the ruling United National Party. The statements and interviews given by Mr.Amirthalingam during his recent visits abroad would appear to have irked a few of the government party MPs. By denying him his civic rights, they expect to shut him up and also prevent him from going abroad by seizing his passport. The Deputy Minister of Education, Mr.A. M.R.B.Attanayake, recently urged in Parliament that Mr.Amirthalingam be stripped of his civic rights, as others had been (a reference to the deprivation of civic rights of the former Prime Minister, Mrs.S. Bandaranaike), since he "only wanted to destroy the majority race and appear a hero in the eyes of the world'.
LSSSSSSSSSLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Page 9
SEPT/OCT 1983
TELLING T LIKE
By Anne Abavas ekara
Wrong impressions can be created, for instance, by the omission of facts and the refusal to call a spade a spade. There has been constant reference to race riots and to 'ethnic violence' which suggests that there was inter-communal strife. We had two telephone calls, one from Canada and one from America, from relatives who thought the Sinhalese were being attacked by the Tamils. We had some difficulty in convincing them that we were in no danger, that it was Tamils in the south who were under attack. There was no need for exaggeration. What actually happened here was horrendous enough. Yet there has been a noticeable reluctance on the part of some to admit that the refugee camps were filled with Tamil people because it was their homes that had been so deliberately destroyed. To walk down some lanes in Wellawatte and other places gives one the feeling.
went to see a friend in Ratnakara Place, Dehiwela, and felt a crushing weight on my heart as I saw the devastation there. So must people feel after an air raid which leaves only blackened ruins and rubble where human homes had once been. The sense of desolation is overwhelming, particularly if one knew the people who had occupied those homes. I wonder whether any politicians have even walked down these devastated residential areas. And what about the toll of human lives? We are ready enough to lament the death of the 269 passengers on that ill-fated Korean plane. It is some consolation that at least their end was mercifully swift, over in one stroke. Do we shed any tears for our own dead, the Tamil people in our midst who were battered to death or burnt alive? came face to face last week with a young friend whose elderly father, caught alone and defenceless on his property in Kalutara, was beaten to death. I met a man whose 21-year-old nephew was dragged out of his father's home in Deraniyagala by a mob, beaten up and set fire to. I've spoken with the relatives of an elderly couple in Bandarawela who were killed. listened to an eye-witness's account of how two teen-age boys were pulled out of a factory opposite his house in Ratmalana and beaten to death with iron rods. Many people on the road saw the two victims dragged out of the church of the open door in Dehiwela where they were hiding, beaten and then thrown still halfalive into a burning car. These are not statistics - they were human beings of flesh and blood like ours, dear to their families and friends. And what of the present? We are being asked to believe that everything is now under control and back to normal. An
attempt is being mai of this being "Paradis daily meet enought who now feel fear
homes and are nerv stranger seems to SC As one person expre that there is no safe not the hospitals, in certainly not our hol What has been done fears of the Tamils reassure them that permitted of the ho Let's not try to prete they were before Ju intern of our acquai his hospital 30 miles the first day he retur his resignation. The minor staff was mor Another young man ward at a 5 - Star h returned to work to of here Comes the mother is in despair go to work any more and her daughter fle returned at the girl's hours of their ent Bambalapitiya, men protection money a vacated their home Another middle-age their home in Wellav Could resume duties left the house, a thug the wife: "So you ha back, eh? Let me brought? " All the suitcase containing money. He walked c Why aren't people re to the police? Becau and also because the fidence in the Police Has anyone given a matic experiences C were confronted by who came to destroy away their toys? I me "Wicked men took n Her elder brother c won't come out of the which they now are strangers. There was happy, cor 7. She attended sch an aunt's house. The and they fled to anc where she was told Within half an hourth lives from there and v Sinhala people, but frantic for news of h home back in Kuliyap

TAMIL TIMES 9
TIS
le to sell the old story e Isle once more. Yet on-famil Sri Lankans fu inside their ovvn ous when a passing rutinise their houses. issed it, 'We learned place-not the prisons, ot the churches and nes!' to alleviate the natural in our midst, or to no repetition will be rors of July? ind that things are as ly 25. A young Tamil ntance went back to ; from Colombo. After ned home and sent in open animosity of the e than he could take. we know was a steotel in Colombo. He be greeted with cries cottiya'. His widowed because he refused to 2. A widowed mother 2d to Jaffna and then insistence. Within 24 aring their home in appeared to demand Ind they have again in terror. d couple returned to Watte so that the man On the 15th. After he walked in and said to ve shamelessly come see what you have y had was a single some clothes and off with that.
porting these crimes se they are too afraid, ey have too little con
any more. thought to the trauif little children who the fiendish mobs their homes and take 2t a tiny tot who Said: ny Jennie-doll away'. of seven won't talk, e room in the house in e, and is terrified of
fident Suhaniya aged Ool in Colombo from e mob came at night other relative's home
she would be safe. ey had to run for their vere taken in by good
Suhaniya was now her parents and their itiya. Her parents and
little brother were safe, but their home and everything it contained had been reduced to ashes. Today Suhaniya is a frightened, insecure little girl who clings to her parents. There are many, many more children all over the country who now have nightmares, who have begun to wet their beds and who shrink back in terror at the approach of a stranger. Do we in Sri Lanka have the courage and the honesty to tell it like it is? Terrorism in the North must be stamped out and one presumes that is what the army is deployed there for. By all means let us give the full facts about the situation there and about terrorist outrages but let's not confuse that issue with the barbarism of the mobs who had a field day in Colombo and in several other parts of the Island. The most moving article I read in all the weeks since July 25 was written by Prof. Mahinda Palihawadana and published in the "Weekend'. I cannot but quote from his concluding paragraphs : "Let us honestly face the facts. The horrors of July will be an eternal reminder of our failure to listen to the Buddha. We failed to protect our citizens when hooligans attacked. Institutions vital at such a time failed to function properly. Events have revealed for all to see, how thin is the veneer of our piousness. Not only the murders, but the sheer nature and extent of the attendant cruelties, permit no "white-washing". Instead of trying to project a false image, let us see ourselves in our true image". By courtesy of "THE SUN" 24/9/83
GUARD OF INDIAN MISSION IN COLOMBO ASSAULTED
A security guard going for duty at the Indian High Commissioners residence in Sri Lanka was waylaid by unknown assailants here on the evening of September 25. Mr.A. K. Suin, who was assaulted, ran to the safety of India House, a short distance away. Dishevelled, visibly shaken and writhing in obvious pain, he was rushed to the hospital for first aid. In what appeared to be a pre-meditated move, four men waited for Mr.Suin, two on bicycles and the others under a tree, near the High Commisioner's home. Growing suspicious, the Indian employee tried to dodge but was overpowered by the daggerwielding men. "I have taken up the matter with the Sri Lankan Foreign office," said Mr.S.J.S. Chhatwal, the High Commissioner, without Comment. This is the third case of assault involving officials of the High Commission in the past five weeks, long after the July-August violence in Sri Lanka. The other incidents involved a driver of the mission, Mr. R.Viswambharan and an official, Mr. P. K.Ravindran.

Page 10
1 O TAM TIMES
CONFISCATION O.
UNDE ME| A MOVE TO DESTROY
Rehabilitation of Property and industries Authority ( REPIA), set up under the Emergency (Rehabilitation of Property, Business or Industries) Regulation of 1983, has the Stated aim of carrying out "repair, restoration and rehabilitation" of "affected property which includes residential buildings, Commercial houses, wholesale premises, stores, retail shops, restaurants and industral establishments of all kinds. REPA is vested with powers to "acquire in any manner and hold, take or give, lease or hire, mortagage, pledge, sellor otherwise dispose of any movable or immovable property....clear and redevelop.... possess, Control.....affected property vested in the State...". A significant ommission is that affected property is not defined. Affected property is not defined in the Regulations either as damaged property or as those affected by the Sinhalese riots of May, June and July 1983. REPA's jurisdiction is not restricted to any geographical area. It is, therefore, open to the Government to treat any kind of property belonging to any Tamilor other person or institution associated with Tamils or others showing sympathy to the Tamils as affected property. This law is abominable and deliberately pernicious. The role of REPA should be looked at in the light of the sinister intentions evident from the statements of the Government's Ministers of Finance, industries, Trade and Plantations and other Ministers and the Sinhalese chauvinists in the United National Party whose declared aim is "dislodging the Tamils from their disproportionate influence over large sectors of Sri Lanka's economy". The feelings of the Sinhalese Ministers are also evident from their statements - sometimes subtle, Sometimes explicit - such as coming from Mr. Ronnie de Mel (Minister of Finance), who sees the "only solution" to the Tamil problem to be
"to restore the rights of the Sinhalese,
majority, and from Mr. Athulathmudali (Minister of Trade), who is in the process of 'reorganising foodstuff wholesale business centred in the Pettah commercial district of Colombo' - and who insists that it is no longer in my interest to allow one community (Tamils) to dominate the wholesale trade in any commodity". Then there is Mr. Cyril Mathew (Minister of Industries), with his oft-quoted theory of "Diabolical Conspiracy of the Tamils', who is now generally believed to have engineered the systematic destruction of all industrial buildings and assets belonging to the Tamils and having the "operation comp"lete”, executed by hired goons and his followers in the U.N.P Trade Unions.
S.T.A.
The Sinhalese Chau' the country have suc lical plot: the destru base of the Tamils
from re-establishing bases if and when th shock of the disaste maurading mobs ar
THE SINHALA P. In understanding til weaken the Tamil priation of business a to Tamils, the last S scrutiny. There is a rence between thes to 1977 and those U.N.P. captured po pre-1977 era vitne Tamil politicians, pi officers, but damag minimal. Arson wa throwing of petrol b dues and looting ge hoodlums and urch table to Sinhalese m no visible threat dur economic base of Government law anc generally available the magnitude of out damage and to help Since 1977, howev Government's Sinh police personnel wer the attacks, witnes destruction of prope effective steps to r actually engineerin arson, looting, etc. they were in their se Other times in their daring deeds and d out during nights a the Tamils people their homes and the for-all. There have been se the army and police serious arson and d other times when it ledge thatarmed se for the misdeeds; Cabinet would adm ses" but yet take against the perpetr; occurrence. So muc not clear to the inn these riots' endors Sinhalese armed for out at their discret according to a ma the President and h

SEPT/OCT 1983
* TAMIL PROPERTY
RGENCY LAW AMLS ECONOMICALLY
ASAN
inists in the South of ceeded in their diabotion of the economic ind preventing them even their shattered by recovered from the inflicted on them by d murderers.
AN 1e Sinhalese plan to conomy and exprond property belonging ix-year period merits very significant diffeaveral racial riots prior organised since the ver in that year. The ssed rioters attacking ocessions and Tamil |e to properties was s limited to the odd ombs at street boutinerally carried out by ns, not always attribuhiscreants. There was ing those riots to the the Tamils. Also, the order machinery was and active to contain Dursts, prevent wanton
the victims. ter, in every "riot the alese army, navy and e either present during sing the killings and rty without taking any educe the impact, or and executing the And this, often when rvice uniforms, and at civil dress. The more estruction are carried d Curfew times when dare not come Out of attackers have a free
veral occasions when pleaded ignorance of struction. There were became public knowfices were responsible he President and his | army/police excesto meaningful action tors or prevent future n so, since 1979, it is }cent people whether ld or executed by the es were battles carried n or were engineered ter plan approved by Sinhalese ministers
an undeclared war with deliberate and cowardly attacks on the Tamils economic base.
THOUSANDS KILLED
Thousands of Tamils have been killed since 1977 by the Sinhalese police, army, navy, air force and thugs. But more important, from the Sinhalese vantage point, economic resources belonging to the Tamils have been plundered and destroyed. Even here the value of the losses cannot be measured in terms of replacement cost of the physical infrastructure and resources subjected to destruction. The Tamil owners of the institutions destroyed have been deprived of their economic activities and livelihood for years to come. By repetitive destruction Tamil entrepeneurs are also prevented from re-establishing their economic base.
It is in this light one should look at the most
recent riots of May/July 1983. In the pogrom of August 1977 the line rooms (residences) of Tamil plantation workers were burnt, their possessions looted, and the Vavuniya town was burnt by Police personnel during curfew hours. Nearly 100 Hindu temples all over the island were destroyed. Several million rupees worth of business, residential and personal properties were lost. In the June/August 1981 attacks, the largest markets in the North and Eastern Provinces were burnt and so were parts of the town of Jaffna and shops in Chunnakam, the second largest market in the Northern Province. On June 1st 1982, Police personnel set fire to the Jaffna Public Library with 100,000 volumes of rare books, and desecrated temples and revered statues.
BURNING OR KANTHARMADAM The May/July 1983 attacks started on May 18 with the burning down of almost the entire hamlet in Kantharmadam - more than 60 houses were destroyed, and setting fire to the Jaffna bazaar for the second time within two years. Again, on 1st June, Army/Police burnt down the New Bazaar in Vavuniya and destroyed property belonging to the Gandhiam Society. June 1983 witnessed the worst attacks in Trincomalee, the natural harbour town in the Eastern Province. Hundreds of houses (214), shops (24), temples (8) and a Christian ashram were burnt and destroyed, mostly during curfew hours, allegedly with active participation by Police/Army/Navy personnel. The July 1983 attacks on property were carried out systematically and completely Contdon page 11

Page 11
SEPT/OCT 1983
Contd from page 10
so as to make it economically difficult for the Tamil owners to re-establish themselves and impossible to return to their homes and businesses because the physical facilities and resources had been totally destroyed. Here lies the crux of the master plan-destruction of the economic base and infrastructure so that Tamils will find no possibility of returning to re-establish in any part of the country, particularly Outside the Northern Province, In this context it should also be recalled that when the President announced the banning of separatist political parties he confirmed that by legislation property
i
would be confiscated and persons would...
be debarred from practising their trade or profession. The Tamil cry for separation has been strong for more than ten years' and J. R. had made several deals with the T.U.L.F. during and after the 1977 parliamentary election. Even if one could find the not so easy justification for coming down so hard on separatism so late in the day, there is no reason to think in terms of confiscation of property except to undermine the economic power of Tamils. Taking over the economic assets of Tamils had always been in the minds of the U.N.P. Sinhalese ministers as the sure way of weakening the Tamils. Whatever wealth was not destroyed it was planned to have it confiscated under the guise of punishment for anybody sympathising with the Tamil clamour for separation as the only solution against Sinhalese hatred, dehumanization, mayhem and murder. REPA legislation is the final effort to close any let-out for Tamils who yet have the will and confidence to re-establish themselves. Every affected property, industry or business shal with immediate effect vestabsolutely in the State...and REPA has the power to decide what is an "affected property' - not necessarily damaged or des'troyed or had been subject to attack during the riots. 'Where any question arises as to whether any property, industry or business is an affected property, such duestion shall be decided by REPIA by a declaration in writing and such declaration shall be final and Conclusive and shall not be Called in duestion in any court in any proceedings whatoever".
SNISTER MOVE
The initial reaction of the public was to accept the Government's stated intention that the legistation was to protect the interests of Tamil victims of the riots, against unscrupulous Sinhalese who would be out to illegally occupy the damaged and' deserted properties or to conclude distress, sales to the disadvantage of the victims. Subsequently, the legislation was interpreted as a sinister move to prevent the victims from making claims against the Government for compensation - a kind of
blackmail where any pensation will be exp property being decl property', and take repairs, restoration and for dealing with The most intriguing a the owner of a pro entrepreneur has r whether this proper to be damaged or cc property for whatev has no freedom to himself by using h funds. Neither has determine how the tation are to be car which legally belong REPIA might not har or even in the near fu or restore riot damag of rupees. The bu precarious that it is Government to alloc amount of, say, Rs. 1 ( activities. Mr. Ronnie Minister, is on recor to the local banks fo the reconstruction of which were damage the riots'. When ad the Minister had stat short-term need to re and houses totallec billion to Rs.4 billion pledges were made most unlikely that Commercial, Hatton and Chartered wou than RS.2 milion ea available for its rehal exceed Rs. 125 mili 4% of the short-term the Minister. This wo cannot undertake ri damaged or destroy assuming that only are salvageable indus houses, and the rem: funds put in by RE would not cover ever , Government's intent in exchange for REP reparation of damage the equity and appoi
FOLLOWING MAI EXAMPLE. In theory, and in resp foreign governments business community his ministers state th be free to buy back G time. But some mini their redistributive i talking about followin of writing preferenc community into comr Trade Minister's eff the rice wholesaling

TAMILTIMES 11
DOdy who seeks comosed to the risk of the ared as an 'affected n over by REPA for and rehabilitation', it as deemed fit. spect of all this is that perty or a business o voice in deciding y should be deemed Insidered an affected er reason. The Owner repair the premises is own or borrowed he the freedom to repairs and rehabiliried out on property S to him. fe the resources now ture to properly repair e estimated in billions dget situation is so not feasible for the ate more than a token }0 million for REPAS de MeI, the Finance d as having appealed r 'donations towards ousinesses and homes d or destroyed during dressing the bankers ed that 'the country's build factories, shops an estimated Rs.3 '. It is not known what by the banks but is the private banks - National, Grindlays ld Contribute more ch. Thus, the money bilitation work cannot on, which is only 3need as estimated by uld mean that REPIA estoration of all the
led properties. Even
50% of the affected tries, businesses and aining 50% divested, PIA for rehabilitation n 1 O% in most cases. ion, however, is that A injecting funds for : it will take a share in nt directors.
LAYSIAN
onse to queries from and the international y, the President and at former owners will overnment shares in sters do not disguise ntentions. They are g Malaysia's example es for the majority mercial law. Thus, the orts at reorganising | trade to break the
Tamil grip, and declared objective of redeveloping ravaged city centres, such as the Pettah commercial complex for reallocation not necessarily to the former occupants but to make room for new Sinhalese entrants are all of a piece with the cherished goal of 'Sinhalising trade and industry. Using REPA to inject a small proportion of the repair cost and insisting on a Government share in the equity and control of Tamil-owned businesses is being supported naively by Mr. Rasaputram whose logic flows as follows: "Companies in Tamil hands might otherwise be hostage to another wave of communal attacks. So it is better to make Tamil family firms to go public" (Sinhala public? State public?). From these manoeuvres it will become clear to all thinking people that REPA is the ingenious device engineered by the Sinhala chauvinists to take over successful Tamil-owned industries and businesses, to be eventually passed on to yet-to-befound Sinhalese 'entrepreneurs, or for the Government to continue as unsolicited new partners in Tamil enterprises. The Government's stake is stated to be temporary, but if the alternative is returning control to the Tamils, the Government might decide to hold on to the businesses they ruined by making them inefficient State enterprises. Whatever might become of these industries and businesses, the main policy objective of the President and his ministers would have been achieved - destroying the economic base of the Tamils, clipping their economic power and starving them out. Will REPA be the last vehicle for the delegitimisation of the Tamils, Greater Bhumiliation and annihilation must follow. But how soon?
The author gratefully acknowledges the use of the following articles.
The Economist 20-26 August 1983 (i) /n Gandhi vive trust (ii) The Wages of Envy
Financial Times 10 August 1983 Sri Lanka appeals to Banks for Reconstruction Aid
TAMIL TIMES
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
UK/India/Sri Lanka. E6 OO All other countries........................ £1O.OO
Tamil Times Ltd, P.O. Box 304, London W139CN.
LSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLS

Page 12
1 2 TAM IL TIMES
SRI LA
ABUSE OF HU
While world attention has focused on violent conflict in Sri Lanka between the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and largely Hindu Tamil minority, insufficient attention has been paid to the Government's civil rights record. Yet it is precisely at a time when the Government has sought a return to the rule of law and a reduction in ethnic conflict, in a country often cited as a model of third-world democratic development, that a demonstration of its respect for rights would take on heightened importance.
Much news coverage has focused on violence used by small Tamil extremist separatist groups, which have carried out several attacks in the past. One ciaimed responsibility for the ambush of 13 soldiers in July that triggered the recent indiscri
minate, widespread reprisals against the
Tamils and led to violence that resulted in more than 300 deaths. Such Tamil killings, and those by the Sinhalese, have been widely and rightly condemned.
The Government has repeatedly denied
that its security forces violate fundamental rights. However, as head of an Amnesty
nternational fact-finding mission in January 1982, i received first-hand evidence that incommunicado detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act was widespread, and that the army and police regularly tortured political suspects and carried out political killings in June 1981, similar to those recently confirmed by President J. R. Jayawardene. I believe that recent killings by security authorities follow a pattern previously set. President Jayawardene confirmed on Aug. 7 that the armed forces had killed at least 20 innocent Tamils in the north, saying that the army had withheld information from him about these excesses. The Tamils, including an 83-year-old teacher, apparently were slain in retaliation by the army, immediately after the killing of the 13 soldiers. The authorities are understood to have waived the usual requirement of holding an inquest. The Government must bear full responsibility for these breaches of the right to life and other violations of human rights, especially in light of the wide powers that in recent years it has given to the security forces, which apparently have interpreted them as a licence to act with impunity. The 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act, for example, allows people to be held incommunicado for up to 18 months without trial, thus creating classical conditions for torture. Most recently, emergency regulation 15A permits the army and police to bury or cremate dead bodies without inquest procedures or a post-mortem. When Amnesty International visited, it
BY ORVILLE
learned that prisone municado for long p cases in Solitary CO than eight months. period was said to inc upside down from with metal bars and C toenails and fingerna Amnesty also invest Tamils apparently sh by security forces in shooting of two polici Tamils rounded up at were taken to lonelys officer and left todie. handicapped, both Before being shot, on the officer: "You peo halese so we are sh regrettable that the institute an indepen establish responsibil and take measures a sible. Instead, one p( was promoted and el was introduced, fac lings. Clearly, the Governm
UK BLACK T UNONISTS ( LAN KAN ATI
The Black Trade Unio ment (BTUSM) in a s to President Jayewa has condemned the ment for the Continui der, looting and rape C quoting eye-witness burnings and lootings Government Ministe an active part in thes personally led and t armed thugs. The B the Sri Lankan Presi 1. Issue a declarati against Tamils would 2. Set up a Human ducted by Internatio 3. Pay compensatio lost homes and pos: 4. Give equal oppo Education and Gove 5. Teach the Tamilla all schools and respe making them Nation The BTUSM has als make representation ment to stop the req equipment that has Lankan Government

SEPT/OCT 1983
NKA’S
MAN RIGHTS
H. SCHELL
S were held incomeriods and in some finement for more Torture during this ude hanging victims ooks, beating them riving needles under ils.
igated the death of
bt or beaten to death
June 1981 after the officers. Two young the time told us they pots, shot by a police Although one is now somehow survived. e said, he was told by ple are shooting Sinooting Tamils." It is Government did not lent investigation to ity for these killings gainst those responolice official involved mergency legislation silitating further kil
ent faces serious in
ternal security problems. It has a responsibility to bring to trial those responsible for violent acts. In addition, it has a responsibility under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sri Lanka is a party, to make sure that torture and political killings are never used - even in a national emergency. There is still hope that the Government of Sri Lanka will respect the tradition of upholding the rule of law. Unless it upholds it own laws, and international human rights commitments as well, it is highly unlikely that there can be any real solution to Sri Lanka's problems. Now, with calm apparently restored, the Government could conduct a full review of past events and take steps to protect human rights such as ending incommunicado detention and creating independent machinery to investigate reports of torture and political killings, with published findings and proceedings against those held responsible. Those who care about democracy in Sri Lanka should urge the Government to do so. Orville H. Schell, former president of the Wew York City Bar Association, is chairman of the Americas Watch Committee. By kind courtesy of THE WEW YORK TIMES WED/VESDAY AUGUST24, 1983.
RADE CON DEM N ROCTES
nists Solidarity Move
trongly worded letter rdene of Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Governng campaign of murf Tamils. The BTUSM, accounts of rape, states that Sri Lankan rs have been taking e atrocities and have ransported gangs of
TUSM has called on.
dent to: on that all atrocities be severely punished. Rights inquiry conal persons of repute. to Tamils who have essions. tunities to Tamils in nment employment. guage and culture in ct Tamil feast days by al Holidays. ) stated that it would to the British Govern1est for arms and riot been made by the Sri
In a letter to the Foreign Secretary the BTUSM urged him to use his influence to get the Sri Lankan Government to set up an International Inquiry into the situation facing Tamils.
SRI LANKARE LEF FUND
A 'Sri Lanka Relief Fund' has been set up in accordance with the Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi's announcement in Parliament on 12 August 1983. At the time of the announcement the Prime Minister had appealed to all Indian citizens, including those living abroad, to contribute. generously to the fund. Those wishing to contribute to this fund can send payments directly to any Branch of the State of Bank of India in U.K. (whose receipt will be valid for claiming exemption from income-tax, contributions to the fund being exempt from Income-tax under Section 80 G of the Income-tax Act, 1961) or through India House, Aldwych, London.
Contd from page 5
brutality, the Sri Lankan security forces unleashed a reign of terror in Batticaloa. Several houses were burnt down and many were killed or injured. The government reluctantly admitted killing in error an innocent Tamil man.

Page 13
SEPT/OCT 1983
AMNESTY INTERNATIO LABELLED COMMUNI
The state-controlled Sri Lankan media have, of late, been full of malicious propaganda against Amnesty International. Banner headlines accuse All of being a 'communist front organisation.
This propaganda campaign follows a detailed report recently released by AI concerning the gross violations of human rights in Sri Lanka and the widespread prevalence of detention incommunicado, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, killings and disappearance of persons taken into custody by the security forces. Al also had protested to the overnforces. Al also had protested to the Government of Sri Lanka about the role of the security forces in the July-August violence and the killing of political detainees in prison.
Ouoting from a little lication, Approache alleges that "Amne
fact every evidenci most effective, i.e., ( munist front organi. Ignoring the record leading civil rights world and the fac campaigned for obs political rights of all
reports concerning v in all parts of the Soviet Union and ot ries, the Sri Lankan
the malevolent alle 'claims to be an ir fence of human r effective means of strategic purposes."
UWC/V/L/SED
A certain amount of boorishness must be expected from any government that makes allies of racialists and religious fanatics. But the Sri Lankan government must take the cake for a display of bad temper over the coverage of Sri Lankan events by the Indian media. It has threatened not only to deport Indian correspondents reporting on Sri Lanka in an objective manner but not to the taste of the authorities but gone further and said the correspondents whose newspapers take a critical attitude to Sri Lankan activities will be prevented from carrying out their work. If President Jayewardene or any of his colleagues think that this will cow down Indian newspapers, they will soon find out how mistaken they are. The Indian media cannot be easily blackmailed like the Sri Lankan press which is governmentowned. The panicky manner in which the Sri Lankan government reacted to the attack on Tam il-speaking Sri Lankans by the army and para-military forces is revealed by the report filed by an American journalist that President Jayewardene sought military assistance from the United States and Britain. The Sri Lankan government
promptly expelled an Indian journalist newspaper from D. Lanka was being three cynical racia! ivisa was cancelled.
are made for the fu government, like th regime, thinks it happenings by m South Africa has no will Sri Lanka. President Jayewar lost a sense of bal India may invade St nonsense has pro foreign interventic him to take actior covering political e He should apply hi injuries suffered by people and disco ganda and religiou is what any civilised to do under the circ he seems to be acC for the eruption of cannot divert publi seamy side of his a (By kind courtesy of F. Editorial, 29.9.83).
NALGO PROTESTS AGAINST ATTACK ON TAM || LS.
The Greater London Council and Inner London Education Authority Branch of the National Association of Local Government Officers unanimously passed a resolution at its meeting held on August 4 expressing its indignation at the attacks upon the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. The following is the full text of the resolution: "This meeting of the GLC 8 ILEA Branch of NALGO wishes to express its indignation
at the attacks on thi What concerns uS that the burning and by the State forces wing racist thugs an has permitted the dispose of the dea inquest. These actio the rights of the trad ing people in Sri Lan to give every assist "the right of the Tam i mination and to rai
TUC. A copy of this resolu | Sri Lanka High Com

TAMILTIMES 1 3
NAL
T
heard of Scottish pub", the Sri Lankan press ty International has in of being one of the learly disguised, comations yet to emerge'. of the Al as the most organisation in the that it had stoutly ervance of human and )eoples and published iolations of such rights world including the her communist countmedia give publicity to gation that while Ai Strument for the deghts, it is the most erving communism's
-—ത്ത '
the journalist. When belonging to a sister elhi reported that Sri ruled by a cabal of religious bigots, his And now more threats ture. The Sri Lankan e South African racist can hush up ugly huzzling the press. it succeeded. Neither
dene seems to have ance out of fear that i Lanka. This childish mpted him to seek bn. This has moved against journalists vents in his country. mself to healing the the Tamil-speaking urage racist propa is exclusivism. That I country is expected umstances. Instead, using everybody else ethnic violence. He cattention from the dministration. INDUSTAN TIMES
--—ത്ത | Tamils of Sri Lanka. as trade unionistS is ooting was conducted with the help of right that the Government army and police to d bodies without an is are clearly aimed at 2 unionists and worka. We call on the NEC ince and publicity to people to self deterse the matter in the
on is to be sent to the mission in London."
GUARDIAN ATTACKED
The internationally respected English daily, the GUARDIAN, has suddenly fallen fou of the Sri Lankan authorities and more notably of the chauvinist sections of the Sinhalese living in the UK. The reason is not far to seek. The Guardian gave a reasonable amount of coverage to the atrocities committed against the Tamils of Sri Lanka in July-August this year. To the Sinhalese, or for that matter all Sri Lankans, the liberal-minded Guardian was THE NEWSPAPER unti Such time as it started reporting about the ugly side of the So-called 'sle of Paradise. The fact that all the reports filed by Guardian correspondents from Colombo passed through the government's censor did not matter to them. The Sri Lankan media have given wide publicity to the smear campaign against the Guardian. Although the paper published an apology for publishing a wrong photograph along with one of Dr. David Selbourne's articles which he wrote for it after he was expelled by the Sri Lankan government, the servile Lankan press have gone to town on the Guardian's fabrication'. What is surprising is the reaction of the Sinhalese living in the UK. Did they except that the killing, burning and the maiming of Tamils in their thousands should be covered-up? Hushing up such atrocities is the usual practice of the state-controlled press in Sri Lanka. They should not expect the same conduct from the Guardian which is an independent paper. They should at least be happy that what appeared in the Guardian did not even constitute five per Cent of the horrors the Tamils faced from their compatriots in Sri Lanka.
JOBS... JOBS....
Those under 50 years of age and qualified in the following fields and interested in working in countries in the Caribbean area are requested to write with personal details: (a) Medical Doctors,
(b) Dentists (c) Management Consultants (d) Accountants (e) Applied 8 Pure Scientists (f) Industrial Engineers (g) /rrigation 8 Drainage Engineers (h) Agricultural Engineers (i) Rice/Coconut/Sugar technicians (f) Maths & Science Teachers for O 8t. A Levels. Please enclose stamped self-addressed envelope when writing.
TAMIL RESCUE APPEAL P.O.BOX. 208, LONDON WC1N3ON

Page 14
1 4 TAM L TIMES
mmmmmmmmmmm
was born in Jaffna - That's up North, A quiet, peaceful place,
had three brothers, I was fourth, I'm of the Tamil race.
went to school, and worked hard, I had a thirst for knowledge, My destiny? It was ill-starred, Just a boy at Hindu College.
The school was good, studied well, No effort did shirk, -
had to win, the truth to tell, My old father could not work.
They said to me 'Get your degree Then you can earn some money. | believed them then, but now you see The whole idea seems funny.
had no chance to get a place, Though I had passed the test You see I'm of the Tamil race, And not like all the rest.
was too young to understand, could not face defeat, After all, this was my land, And my family had to eat.
My brothers said 'Let's take up arms Then we can put things right. Give up work and leave our farms, We'll stand and make a fight
I pleaded with them not to go, Said "Force is never good!" One said "But we must strike a blow They had not understood: They'd done no harm, but someone told, They were taken by the police! It killed my mother, she was so old, A merciful release.
THE TAMIL
There was no charg But they'd been bat The eldest died a m All his inside was S
So now see what They'll feel my wild I'll arm myself and And lead a rebel fa
We will fight and w To see justice in th And if we die, that
So a campaign we
We'll put things righ We'll show we are Life will be hard, b This is my true voc
You think it wrong? Maybe it is an erro We listened once,
They'll feel the Tan
So now the Countr And the fields will
The rule of the gur If you don't agree
Let's stop and thin Out of evil can't co lCan we still talk? It Why drench the la
It's wrong to kill. A Forget the things t ls it possible still f To lead a united C.
* This was compo united Ceylon may that time but cert happened in May The author is an En in Sri Lanka.
TALKS POSTPONE
At the request of President Jayawardene, the anticipated visit to Sri Lanka in midSeptember of Mr.G. Parthasarathy, the ndian Prime Minister's special envoy, to resume negotiations with the government on the question of solving the Tamil problem was put off. In a letter sent to Mrs indira Gandhi, the President thanked her for the interest she had taken and the good offices extended to help resolve the Tamil problem and considered the sending of her special envoy as a helpful gesture. The President is said to have hinted that he needed more time to create the right atmosphere for further discussions. Political observers note that the initial acceptance of the 'good offices of the
lndian PMI Was des Now that the hard li and the Buddhist more strident in the the stage is being scuttle the negotia In the meantime, th full of anti-Indian v Trade and Shippin mudali, who is wide the aspirants to Jay his demise, has b about 'Indian inte meeting he said, "W assistance and con poke your finger many cooks can Sp it unfit for consum

e! They let them go, dly thrashed, nonth ago,
mashed.
must do | reaction, others tool Ction.
we will kill, is land, is God's will,
have planned.
tlWe've had enough
one nation, ut we are tough, :ation!
Perhaps you're right, r! but now we'll fight ni Terror!
y's plunged in war run bright red h, is that the law? you're dead?
k, Let's hesitate, me good is not too late, nd in blood?
ind this vow I'll fulfil, hat are done! or men of good will, eylon? *
sed in May 1978; a nave been possible at ainly not after what
981 and thereafter. glishman who taught
D
gned only to buy time. ners like Cyril Mathew clergy are becoming r anti-Indian outbursts, repared to completely ions. le Sri Lankan media is 2nom. The Minister of g, Mr. Lalith Athulathly believed to be one of awardene's mantle on ecome openly critical ference'. At a recent 'e welcome friendship, ern but please do not nto our soup for too if the broth, rendering »tion."
NDIAN TAX CONCESSIONS TO SRI LANKANMIGRANTS
The Government of India has relaxed income-tax regulations to those migrating from Sri Lanka since April this year with imoney not exceeding Rs.200,000. The migrants will be exempted from producing documentary evidence in support of their, claim for the transfer of money from Sri Lanka if they fulfil two conditions. The first condition is that the concerned person should have had sufficient resourCes in Sri Lanka to which the money brought by him to India could be reasonably attributed. Secondly, he should inform the concerned income-tax officer within two months of his arrival in India about the funds brought over by him and all his family members and the date of their introduction in the accounts books. This concessional treatment, however, does not apply to cases where the amount, brought into India exceeds Rs.200,000 or where the person concerned had some sources of income either in India or in any other country other than Sri Lanka prior to migration or where he was assessed as resident in India either for assessment year preceding the year of migration or for earlier years. In such cases the person concerned will be required to produce adequate evidence to reasonably satisfy the income-tax officer that he had sufficient resources in Sri Lanka to cover such amounts. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has issued necessary instructions in this regard. The Sri Lanka Government took a stern step towards an Indian newspaper, the Stateman of New Delhi, by conveying to it. that "as a consequence of the reporting indulged in by its correspondent Mr.Sam Rajappa, he is not welcome in Sri Lanka and will not be issued a visa to enter Sri Lanka in future.
PANKULAM COLONISED
Three hundred Sinhalese brought from: clean outside the Eastern Province have now colonised the village of Pankulam in: the Trincomalee District. This is said to have taken place under the lead given by the Minister of Industries, Mr. Cyril Mathew. Readers will recall that in May this year,
the Sri Lankan security forces burnt down
the huts of Tamil refugees who had settled in this area following the racial violence of 1977 and again of 1981. On this occasion many of the settlers were violently attacked and some even killed. Two hundred unskilled Sinhalese have also been given jobs in the Port Cargo, Corporation which is under the Minister of Trade and Shipping, Mr. Lalith Athulathmudali. These handpicked men will work o in the Port of Trincomalee.

Page 15
SEPT/OCT 1983
мAGA VARE NOT DAMMTA GED” SAYS MONK
Contrary to the false propaganda put out by Sinhala racists in the south of Sri Lanka and those living abroad, no Buddhist Temple or property belonging to the Sinhalese living or trading in the Jaffna district has been attacked. A statement issued by the incumbent priest of Naga Vihare in Jaffna, Ven. Kadawadduwa Nandarama NayakeThera, said: "No damage has been caused to the Naga Vihare, Jaffna. The rumours spread by certain elements that the temple was damaged are untrue. Contrary to rumours, none of the Sinhalese bakeries in Jaffna had been attacked. They were closed. The difference today in Jaffna is that there are not Sinhalese people. They could go there and live without fear". Meanwhile the Sinhalese working in the Jaffna District, who were, rather intriguingly at that time, evacuated before the outbreak of racial violence on July 25, have returned to their posts. The Sinhalese staff comprising 200 workers and several executives of the Cement Factory at Kankesanturai in Jaffna district have already been transported back there by a special train.
REFUGEES L/VE /W APPALL/WG COWD/- T/OWS
The Red Cross announced (6.10.83) that there are still over 45,000 Tamil refugees living in make-shift camps. The fact that there are so many refugees even after twoand-a-half months of the outbreak of violence and that they are living in appalling conditions reveals the callousness of the government of Sri Lanka.
A report from Colombo by Vilma Wimaladasa published in the Daily Telegraph' (UK) states that the Tamil refugees are "still languishing in refugee camps, afflicted by a sense of helplessness and wondering how they can be resettled and live a normal life'.
"Most of the refugees are 'stateless' persons of Indian origin and did not have a place to go to after the violence. Some officials in charge of them are said to be sympathetic and trying to help while others are entangled in red-tape and/ or shockingly callous'.
"Refugees say they have benefited only marginally from relief assistance. Part of the aid sent to them seems to have gone astray, and they live under numerous difficulties. For instance, an Air Force hangar
at Ratmalana, 10 m where refugees are sides, letting in rair POOrest ( At the airport Ratm 1 Olavatories for 2, C Temporary latrines unapproachable du The people in these est of the poor, and want to live in Sri L. fear more racial rio India. In the north, too, th people who have j. have not returned t
SACKED M/ BECOMES SPEAKER
Mr.M.A. Bakeer Mar Lanka's Parliament, from office when he his resignation from has been replaced MP for Kandy. Two reasons are be removal of Mr. Mark represents a surrenc Cyril Mathew's Sinha the Sinhala Bala M policy of both bein positions in the Col. only by Sinhala-Buc
Mr. Cyril Mathew whi not allow him to h; Parliament during de Besides the remova appointment of Mr. E place has raised eyel He was dismissed o Cabinet post of Mi following a scandal C for the import of fer A Cabinet Sub-Comn pable and he was a elevation of such a office of Speaker wh ago he had to quit Mi questionable circum in the extreme.
TULF MPS
SEATS.
Following the decisic Parliament belonging Liberation Front (Tl "oath against separa Amendment to the C. that they will not ret ment and will thereb A Member of Parli attend Parliament fo months without leav Mr. R.Sambandan, M has already vacated rule.

TAMILTIMES 15
es south of Colombo, oused is open on two and cold. f the poor alana camp there are OO or more refugees. installed have been to the stench. camps were the poormany say they do not nka any longer. They s and want to go to
re are about 45,000 bs in the south but ere.'
/W/STER WEW
car, the Speaker of Sri was virtually removed was asked to submit the Speakership. He y Mr.E.L.Senanyake,
ing attributed to the ar. The first is that it der to the demand of la Sangvidhanaya and landalaya, the basic g that all important Intry should be held ddhists. The second
en he, as Speaker, did ave his own way in bbates. | of Mr. Markar, the .L.Senanayake in his prows in the country. nly recently from his hister of Agriculture oncerning a contract ilizer. mittee found him culsked to resign. The person to the high en only a short while
histerial office in such.
tancesis scandalous
TO LOSE
n of the Members of to the Tamil United LF) not to take the ion' under the Sixth institution, it is learnt urn to attend Parliay forfeit their seats.
ment who fails to r three consecutive ceases to be a MP. P for Trincomalee, his seat under this
For the first time in the country's history since representative government was introduced, there will be no representation in Parliament for the substantial Tamil minority.
No LoCAL GOVT IN NORTH & EAST.
Most of the Chairmen, Vice Chairmen and Councillors of local bodies in the Northern and Eastern provinces in Sri Lanka have ceased to hold office following their refusal or failure to take the "oath against separation' under the recently enacted Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.
TAMIL PUBLIC
SERVANTS TO
RETIRE AT 45
The Sri Lankan government has decided to permit public servants displaced by the recent racial violence to retire at 45 years or those who had put in 20 years service. Of the many Tamil public servants who had to find refuge in the northern and eastern provinces, many have not returned to their posts. And those who had returned found it almost impossible to obtain accommodation. Incidentally, posters have been put up ir various parts of the country, allegedly by the Sinhala Sangvidhanaya, calling upor, the Sinhalese, Muslims and other nonTamils not to provide accommodation or rent out rooms to Tamils if and when they returned. The cabinet has announced the following decisions taken in respect of Tamil public servants: O All public servants displaced by recent events will be regarded as having been on leave with pay in August. O Those who still have no accommodation or no prospects of finding accommodation immediately, will be considered to be on leave in September as well. O Heads of departments will be asked to identify persons whom they urgently need and will be asked to find accommodation for them. O Departments will be asked to fill vacancies in the north and east, using the services of displaced officers. O All corporations will be expected to follow government departments and will be asked to fix dates for the compulsory return of displaced officers to work. O The government will take up similar arrangements with the private sector for the return of private sector employees to work. O Arrangements will also be made to enable medical students displaced by the disturbances to sit the final MBBS examination in Jaffna.

Page 16
16 TAM TIMES
TAMIL ARTS RISET
Stylized art forms should not always remain totally detached from contemporary social life. From their exalted position the fine arts are uniquely placed to reach all minds. The challenge presented by the current Tamil situation has been taken up by our artistes. Marrying the traditional art forms of Bharatha Natyam and Carnatic music to contemporary themes, more specifically to the current situation of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, a captivating and thought provoking programme was presented on 29th September 83 at Merton Civic Hall, Wimbledon. Raji Radhakrishnan's narrative in dance "Thanga Thamil Eelam' was embellished with patriotic songs by Prema Ganeshan and Savithri Allirajah expertly accompanied by Rudrani Balakrishnan (violin) and Chatterjee (tabla). The instructive aspect of the fine arts that deepen the emotional involvement and boost the morale, burst through the gloom and despondency brought on by the recent mayhem in Sri Lanka. The proceeds will be used by the Campaign for the Defence of Tamil Rights to publicise and enlighten the policy makers of all Countries about the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The undoubted talents of Raji Radhakrishnan as a Bharatha Natyam dancer made the story of Eelam a touching epic. Her lithe, energetic and faultlessly Competent performance at the young age of 12 augurs well for the future. The pose s! ; ()) ti :( ! to pot tr, y Et it in { the e o ap(, ; ; (c)n (trati () in of the Nirth an ( East ot the island of Ceylon) deserves to be adopted as the logo for Eelam. Mr.T.P. Radhakrishnan, the totally dedicated Tamilian, must be a proud father.
R T P
徽
。
It occurred to me thrice, in '58, 77 and '83, The incidents in each of these years Escalating in intensity, that 1 became A member of the "Boat People" on each occasiот. 1shall soon be applying for a season ticket On Lalith's boats for, twill come in handy When I am dislodged again, and not, killed I'm no prophet of doom but that "twill happen again Is On the cards, assurances and promises notwithstanding
was a refugee in the land of my birth in 1958 - ln Ceylon.
They say we came from India, so what? For the Sinhalese too claim they came from there
LAMENT OF
Tho' at diff'rent tin parts. son proud to be a Ce and So Shall / rem The Sri Lankan" na
/7ገ6ጋ / would find mysel Wo less than a son For We have no Co I have nowhere to house and all -
became a ref. ny birth in 197
My heart bleeds to dies, The harrowing tale loot Also of the Bels massacre of innoc
kn
 
 

SEPT/OCT 1983
O THE CHALLENGE
A REFUGEE
les and from diff'rent
ylonese 1 was born so ዘin ionality was foisted on
f a stranger in India
from the Ruhuna
nnections there go for 1 have lost my
gee in the land of 7 - in Sri Lanka.
hear the stark trage
of violence, arson and
'n' at Welikada and
ՈtS
While in Protective Custody' which woul Shame any Governments O God, all these from the Land of the 7riple Gem. The initials J. R. / had opined Stood for Justice and Righteousness But what a travesty of both we have had In the last week of July
And an a refugee again in the land of ny birth in 1983 - In the 'Paradise' Island of Sri Lanka.
Wow they are all "earning merit" by doling OԱt Relief mostly from friendly countries, While persuading and legislating for us to
O MY GOD, NO/
A TAMIL REFUGEE

Page 17
SEPT/OCT 1983
SSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLS CANADIAN CHURCH MAN ACCUSES SR
Tamil killings are genoC
By DAVID OVED Staff Writer
The government of Sri Lanka is practising genocide on its Tamil minority, former United Church moderator Robert McClure told 100 demonstrators in front of City Hall yesterday. "It's a terrific amount of persecution for such little cause other than racial,' he said. The Tamils are being attacked for who they are rather than anything they've done, he said.
"The Tamils in Sri Lanka did not mount an armed revolt," he noted. "We say to the government of Sri Lanka that your conduct and your attitude towards the Tamils people in Sri Lanka is not acceptable to us Canadians," McClure told the protesters, nearly all from Metro's 600 member Tamil community. McClure, moderator from 1968-71, has
TAM IL NEIGHBOURHOOD GATHERING
On the 4th of September, some Tamils living in North London met at St. Peter's Hall, Lyonsdown Road, New Barnet. At this inaugural meeting forty families were present. Their objective was to build up a close knit social group which would cater to their cultural needs. These first volunteers decided that an all-out effort should be made to contact all the Tamils living in and around North London with a view to foster Tamil consciousness and to teach Tamil to the young and not-soyoung. This is a very commendable project and well worth emulating by Tamils living in other areas. Such a meeting could be a mini-forum where they could exchange views, plan social events, help one another, especially new comers to the locality and last but not least, sponsor and foster projects in Sri Lanka. The next meeting of this group is at the same venue on the 23rd October, at 3.30 p.m. It is proposed to set up similar neighbourhood gatherings in other parts of Greater London in the near future.
TRA & CDTR MERGE
The Tamil Rescue Appeal and the Campaign for the Defence of Tamil Rights have merged following a joint meeting of members of both organisations held at TRA's office in Holborn on October 8. Considering the proliferation of organisations among expatriate Tamils, the merger of these two groups is welcome.
P.O.BOX 208, London WC1N3ON
Telephone: 01-4055978
considerable exper that the Communal majority (75%) Sinh (25%) Tamils is base economic success. During the demonstr 8, a Grade 2 student School, Scarboro, rec Fables about the wol full belly in the wic chains. "When you exchange you will eventually É Anusha said, appari Tamil independence In a unanimous sho monstrators approv Canada raise at the recent massacres of By courtesy of THE TC
KOBBE KADU
Mr. Hector Kobbekat Freedom Party's Pre the October 1982 el following a heart att
SCC OLOTHES FC REFUGEES.
One of the immediate is clothes. We have b requirements of clot a) Shirts
b) Sarees c) Childrens' Summe d) Light Weight Trou If you or your friends items which you can and mark them app them delivered to th lection points which Due to the urgency of to despatch them b Please therefore have before that date:- 1. Mr.V.Selladurai, 3 Clayhall, llford, Essex 2. Mr. R. Mahadevan A New Malden, Surrey. 3. Mr. R.Sivanithy, Harrow, Middx. (Tel. 4. Mr.T. Kulathungan ley, Croydon, Surrey. 5. Mr. R. Rudra, 323 Finchley, London, N 3554) 6. Mr.S.Thambirajah Forest Gate, Londor 253O) 7. Dr.K.Sivakumar, Sidcup, Kent- (Tel. 0

TAMILTIMES 17
LANKA ide”
nce in Asia and said onflict between the lese and the minority i on the latter group's
Ition, Anusha Aruliah, at Oakridge Jr. Public punted one of Aesop's who preferred a halfe to a full bowl and
freedom for security, nd up with neither," ntly alluding to the mOVerՈent. w of hands, the deed a proposa that UN the ISSue of the
at least 3OO Tamils. IRONTOSUN, 10.883
JWA DES
duwa, the Sri Lanka sidential candidate in ections, died recently ack.
от )R TAMIL
needs of the refugees een advised that the hes are as follows:
r Clothes
|SerS nave any of the above spare, please parcel ropriately and have e nearest of the colare detailed below. the need we propose
31 October 1983.. the clothes delivered
5 Chadacre Avenue, (Tel. O1-550 7439) varil, 62 Blakes Lane, (Tel. O1-949 1944) 81 Torbay Road, O1-422 8984)
98 Westway, ShirTel. O1-7775552) Great North Way, W.4. (Tel. 01-203
28 Chester Road, E.7. (Tel. O1-471
6 Langdon Shaw, -3OO 2701)
EELAM SOL/DAR/TY CAMPA/G/V
as This campaign has been formed to:
* Highlight the oppression of the Tamil speaking people in Sri Lanka. * Mobilise the widest possible support for the national liberation struggle for EELAM (an independent state in the traditional homelands of the Tamil people) We demand: O Self determination for the Tamil-speaking people of Sri Lanka O Repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act O Release of all political prisoners O. Withdrawal of troops from the Tamil homelands O The freedom of all political parties and individuals to express and campaign for their political viewpoints without persecution O The dismantling of artificial and stateaided, racist colonisation schemes in the Tamil homelands O The establishment of an independent international induiry into the recent antiTamil pogroms. What you can do to help * Get your organisation to adopta resolution to support the campaign demands * Join our campaign and help our work * Send a donation to our campaign and help us to distribute our literature * Write a letter of protest to The High Commissioner for Sri Lanka. 13 Hyde Park Gardens, London W2 EELAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN, P.O. BOX 3 1 8, LONDON NVV1 8HS. Contcl from page 27 class disappears. From those elements can be created a society, based on the fair and equal distribution of wealth, that can lift its head a foot higher. It must not be based, as at present, on greed and the squandering of wealth by multinational companies and international banks. When the Minister replies, will he deal with my three points? Will he arrange for publication of lists showing the wages that British firms pay to Sri Lankan workers? Will he end the collaboration between British and Sri Lankan security forces? Will he cancel the state visit by J.R. Jayewardene in October?
m
TAM L TIMES
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
UK/India/Sri Lanka....................... Բ6.00 All other countries.......................... E1 O.OO
Tamil Times Ltd, P.O. Box 3O4. London W139CN.

Page 18
18 TAMIL TIMES
ANTI-TAMIL, VOLE
DELIBERATE
O By all accounts, the Tamils in Sri Lanka are facing the grimmest crisis they have faced in the island in modern times. What is your analysis of the overall situation? How does this differ from the earlier riots in which also the Tamils were the target? A. Mr. Amirthalingam: I think, there is one fundamental difference in that the latest riots have been more systematically organised and the armed forces have played a decisive role in the attacks on Tamils and their property. That gives one the impreSSion that it has been planned by somebody in authority who could have combined the action of the armed forces along with that of groups of civilians who were acting in a very organised way. I get the impression that this was a deliberately planned campaign to beat the Tamils down into total submission and drive them out of the Sinhala areas, destroy their economic base by destroying their industries and also Cow down the Tamils in the Tamil majority areas. This was a three-pronged attack. O Many other than leaders of TULF, have pinpointed the army's active participation. This is a very significant new factor in the attack. Would you say that, or vvas this foreshadowed by earlier happenings?
Rampage A. There were earlier incidents where Some individual members of the armed forces had shot down, killed or gone on rampage, but I think, here all the three sections of the armed forces, the army, the navy and the air force, played a part in the latest violence. And, this has happened in all parts of the country. in Jaffna the army personnel shot and killed at least 51 civilians on July 24 and 25. It was a killing of the most brutal type because in certain places students were lined up and shot and killed. In certain places, they were just pumping bullets at passing vehicles crowded with people and people in those vehicles died. In certain places they shot and killed people in their beds - a university lecturer by name Kalaparameswaran and his aged father-in-law were killed while they were sleeping in their house, and even women were shot and killed this way. That happened in Jaffna. in Trincomalee, the navy personnel had gone on a planned rampage and within six hours, from 9.30 in the night to 3.30 in the early hours of the morning. 150 navy personnel destroyed every Tamil-owned business establishment in Trincomalee tOwn.
Thugs in forefront in Colombo, in Badulla and other places whereve ugs had gone and tried to loot and e repulsed by people, the army
//W A WID AM/RTHAL LEADER. A LAWKA AW CA/S/S
intervened and shot who resisted the th Badulla where in o business place call people who resiste his four sons and O' origin, who had d -were shot and burnt beyond recog And, in Colombo al thing in a place cal there was resistanc had gone to the sce the people. So one that they were acting putting the thugs i failed or if they we was to go on the S O. One gets the in malee, if not the fo. of the major focal
single out Trincom
Attacks in T A. think the att Trincomalee starte lence in the rest oft started shortly af elections took plac attacks started on J the army and thé pc were drawn in whe And in certain insta nel acted directly,
had gone for som
ahead of the thug there was no likeli
 

SEPT/OCT 1983
NCE IN SRILANKA
LY PLANNED”
E-RANGING INTERVIEW, MR. APPAPILLA/
IWGAM, TAM/L UNITED LIBERATION FROWT WALYSES THE RECENT HAPPEN/WGS/W SFR/ ID TRACES THE ROOTS OF THE PRESEWT
t and killed everybody ugs. This happened in ne place, in front of a ed Yogam Stores, 14 d - one Sundaram and chers, people of Indian one well in business cilled and tyres were Inition by the army. so, they did the same led Sea Street; where to the thugs the army ne and shot and killed
gets the impression on definite instruction, the forefront; if they re repulsed, the army ene and kill. pression that Trincous of attack, was one points of attack. Why
lee?
incomalee ck on the Tamils in long before the viohe country broke out. It 2r the urban council on May 18 and the une 3. It was started by ice, and the hoodlums ever it was necessary. hces, the navy personIn certain places they sort of investigation, and made sure that ood of any resistance,
arrested any young fellow who could offer resistance. Then immediately, hard on their heels, thugs followed and set fire to houses.
I think this is definitely connected to the attmpt to hand over some interests in Trincomalee to the Americans. Mr. Cyril Mathew is the Minister in-charge of the petroleum corporation and he is the one who is interested in this matter. We have definite evidence that one of his Assistant Secretaries was present and had discussions with the army and police personnel at the height of the troubles in Trincomalee.
Religion as cover There was also an attempt to destroy Hindu temples in Trincomalee because Mr. Cyril Mathew has been trying to make Trincomalee a Sinhala area, using Buddhism as an instrument. Under the pretext that they have discovered Buddhist ruins in various places, using the funds of Government industrial corporations, they have put up Buddhist centres in various parts of Trincomalee district. So this is a multipronged attack using religion, armed forces and racist elements to dislodge Tamil elements and make it a predominantly Sinhala area so that there may be no resistance to their move to enable the Americans to get a foothold there. O. There is a version put out by Mr. Jayewardene to the effect that the riots were really related to a revolutionary conspiracy to destablise the UNPGovernmContdon page 19
LSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLSSLSLS

Page 19
SEPT/OCT 1983
Contd from page 18
ent and its experiment and to install a leftist regime, perhaps a militarist solution.
What kind of credibility would you give
that ?
More right-wing A. I don't think that there could be any truth in this story. I think the forces that organised all this violence and carried it out were sources very close to the Government, and it was more right-wing than leftwing. I think the attempt to ban the Communist Party and the hint at certain dark forces being in the background are only an attempt to please the western countries and win their sympathy at a time when a great deal of public feeling has been created against the atrocities, particularly incidents like the killing of prisoners. So they wanted
to make out that certain left forces were in
the background. But I will not discount the possibility of some contact between these forces of the UN P and Certain Sections Of the JVP (Janata Vimukthi Peramuna) in this matter. But the other left wing parties could not have had any hand in it. O. There has been an attempt initially, to depict Mr.Jayewardene as the 'best bet' of the minority Tamils and those who wanted a negotiated settlement. You have already dealt with the points of difference, if any, between the UNP and the SLFP Would you like to add anything on this particular point, how he could raise himself as somebody who had a soft corner for you?
Promise & performance A. Mr. Jayewardene's record in the past was not that of a man who would do justice to the minorities. In 1957, when Bandaranaike entered into a pact with my late, leader, Chelwanayagam, Mr Jayewardene was the man who led the march to Kandy and created the feeling which ultimately resulted in the abrogation of the pact and also the subsequent riots against the Tamils in 1958. But should say that we all expected that in 1977 when he came to power with such a
large majority and in an unassailable posi
tion, with the SLFP almost totally destroyed and in a shambles, we thought that Mr. Jayewardene will be able to work out a solution to the Tamils problem and it was in that belief that we started negotiations with him even after the riots of 1977. But I should say one thing, on paper he conceded duite a lot of our rights, certain rights of the Tamil language were included in the 1978 Constitution, he gave a promise about granting citizenship rights to the plantation Tamils, the stateless persons, then, he introduced the District Development Councils. Actually, in the implementation of all these things, one has to say that the record is very, very unsatisfactory. Not one syllable of the Tamil language rights embodied in
he Constitution was five years had passe made to register as
persons. And, thol introduced, nothing them function effec
Paper rights That is why we came apart from certain p. safeguards, in fact til ment; On the COntrar ration in the positio under his Governme ters of employment than that of the gov After 1977, in the p sector, there has be number of Tamils challenged the Gove anything more than posts have been giv. the Tamil populatior So his record leav desired in the matte And, with regard t was one of the ma itself accepted as a d of the Tamil people, til the principle that th district, particularly eastern provinces sh Colonisation. In fact trial projects by emp to Sinhalese from ol has been a definite a Sinhala content of th
districts like Trincol the matters affecti helpful.
Tamils in arn ln 1981, We made Ce and he gave us a def in the police and the percentage of Tamils Even the International in their report on indicated that one of police and the arme areas acted in this w predominantly Sinha are 95 per cent Si forces are 99 per ce wardene agreed th; given representation armed forces in propc in the population. Buʻ it for the last two ye C2. Mr. Jayewarden police chief is a Tam Secretary is going number of Deputy In, Tamils. A. That is true; in fac General of Police was his relative. Then, make his nephew th Mr. Seneviratne was a they could not possil charge of the polic
LSSSSLSLSLSLSLS

TAM TIMES 1 9
implemented though d and no attempt was citizens the stateless ugh the DDCs were was done to make tively.
to the conclusion that aper rights and paper nere was no improvey there was a deterion of the Tamil people nt. Particularly in mathis record is worse ernments of the past. ublic and semi-public en a decrease in ti ? employed. We hav
rnment to Show tha
five per cent of th i en to Tamils whereas n is over 2 O per cent. es quite a lot to bi er of action. b colonisation which tters which the UNP leep-seated grievance hough he propounded he ethnic ratio in any in the northern and ould not be altered by under various indusployment being given utside the area, there ttempt to increase the he population in Tamil malee. So in none of ng us has he been
ny & police
ertain representations inite undertaking that armed forces a larger s will be given a place. Commission of Jurists the 1981 riots had
f the reasons why the
d forces in the Tamil ay was that they were ala. In fact, the police
nhala and the armed
int, Sinhala. Mr Jayeat Tamils should be in the police and the ortion to their numbers the did nothing about 3S.
e has said that the lil and the next Chief to be a Tamil and a spectors-General are
it, the first inspectorMr. Ana Seneviratne, when he wanted to |e army commander, sked to retire because ply have both, one in e and the other in
charge of the army. And the next man in the list according to seniority, Mr. Rudra Rajasingam, was made the GP. But the presence of a few Tamils in the higher ranks of the police is actually an accident of history; they were people recruited in the good old days and they have by efflux of time come to this position. But when these people retire which is due very soon, there will be hardly any Tamil to take their place. Actually, some of the DGs themselves were attacked during the recent riots. A DG by the name of Mr. Vamadevan had his house razed to the ground in Colombo; he had to run away to save himself; he has now retired from service and gone away; this is the sort of thing that is happening. So they are ineffective even if they are there because all the people lower down are Sinhalese and they never carry out the Orders of the Tami officers. O Could you trace for us the origin and growth of the Eelam movement in a political sense? What were the efforts made by the TULF or the Tamils as a community before the TULF was formed (in 1976) to have your social political and economic grievances redressed? And what was the response to these efforts from various governments?
Elimination of Tamil
elements
A. The Sinhala leaders have tried to Create an impression that the Tamils have never been cooperative; that they obstructed even the independence struggle. But it is a historical fact that the Ceylon National Congress itself was formed by a Tamil and the first President was Ponnambalam Arunachalam, who was a Tamil and the Tamils were in the forefront of the freedom movement. But once independence was granted the Sinhalese who got power into their hands on the basis that they were the
majority, used that power to almost elimi
nate the Tamil elements altogether. The first target was the weaker section of
the Tamils, the plantation Tamils. They
introduced citizenship laws which made the plantation Tamils stateless persons, deprived them of their franchise and deprived the Tamils of nearly half of the representation that they had in Parliament at the time of independence. Then, they also started another attack by a systematic planned colonisation of the traditional Tamil areas, similar to what Israel is seeking to do in occupied Palestine, in such a way as to make the Tamils a minority in their own homelands, in times of crisis, in times of communal violence, the Tamils become the target of attack in their own traditional homelands and they have been chased out of some of those parts in the eastern provinces.
Sinhala-only Act Then, the third thing that happened was, Contd on page20

Page 20
2 O AMIL TIMES
Contd from page 19.
having weakened the Tamils position politically and having made Sinhala representation in Parliament predominant even beyond the numbers that their population Warranted - the Sinhalese who at that time formed 65 per cent of the population got 85 per cent of the representation in Parliament after the Citizenship Act. So using this majority, they passed the Sinhala-only Act, whereas before independence, in 1944, they had accepted the position that Sinhala and Tamil shall be the official languages of Ceylon. It was also calculated to drive Tamils out of the public services in which they said, they held a predominant position during British rule. So we started an agitation in a non-violent way against this Sinhala-only Act and the deprivation of Tamils of their legitimate place. In response to our agitation, Prime Minister Bandaranaike entered into a pact with the late Chelvanayagam guaranteeing the use of Tamil as a language for correspondence with Government in all parts of the country, to make Tamil the language of administration in the northern and eastern provinces, to establish regional Councils and grant a fair measure of autonomy for the Tamils to look after their own affairs in their territory and to ensure that there was no planned colonisation of Tami areas by Sinhalese. But the moment Bandaranaike did this, Mr. Jayewardene led the march to Kandy and spearheaded the movement to get the pact abrogated. The Buddhist priests also joined in it and Bandaranaike ultimately succumbed to the pressure and abrogated the pact. In the wake of the abrogation, unprecedented communal violence was let loose on Tamils all over the Country which resulted in thousands being dislodged from their homes, taken to refugee CampS and by ships to places in the northern and eastern parts and settled there. Incidentally, may mention, an attempt is being made today to say that the violence now is because we are demanding Tamil Eelam, we are demanding a separate State, but in 1956, 1958 and even in 1961, we were subjected to violence when it was not even dreamt of by anybody that we should ask for a separate State. So this demand for a separate State cannot possibly be said to be the cause of the violence. Then, again, after the 1960 March elections, when neither of the Sinhala parties had an absolute majority they wanted our Support. We said we will support any one of the parties which would grant us the same rights that were granted under the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam pact. The SLFP agreed to do that and we supported them. The UNPGovernment was defeated; in three months we had another election, the SLFP came to power, but they did not honour the promise they gave us, went
back on it.
Non-violent S Actually they went introduced the law language of the Cou tried to make Sinh administration ever Tamil areas like Jaf comalee and Manna violent struggle, W campaign and for two the administration.Tl ill-treated the people leaders and locked t in 1965, the UNP n form the Governmen and Mr. Jayewarden with Chelvanayagan to establish district C of autonomy, to stop of our areas and to Tamil language in th certain regulations to the Tamil language regulations have ren When the UNP tried SLFP opposed it and to do something the all our efforts to c successive Sinhales Then, in 1970, Mrs to power and set up a to draft a new cons constitution. We put forward cer not ask for separatic We asked for a feder and presented a dr Government did not just rejected it off ha least the Tamil langu had been adopted ment earlier be inclu The reply we got wa provision in the CC they said any regulati as part of the Constit saw to it that it wa ambit of the Constit It was in this situat parties got together ALL-Ceylon Tamil ( Workers Congress C various other small formed the Tami U
Six-point pro Even the Tamil Unit for separation at tha forward a six-point p for justiciable fundan for the rights of the asked for decentrali and we asked that
secular State, not
place to Buddhism.
The Government off not even acknowled putting forward the this situation, while

struggle
a step further and to make Sinhala the rts as well and they ala the language of in predominantly fina, Batticaloa, trinIr. So we had a none had a satyagraha months we paralysed ney let loose the army, and arrested all the hem up. eeded our support to t. Dudley Senanayake Ie entered into a pact h, again undertaking councils as a measure Sinhala colonisation grant the use of the ose areas introduced provide for the use of but to date, those mained a dead letter.
to do something, the when the SLFP tried UNP opposed it and come to terms with e governments failed. 1. Bandaranalike came constituentassembly titution, a republican
ain demands, we did on or any such thing. alform of government aft constitution. The even consider it; they and. We asked that at age regulations which by the UN P Governded in the constitution. is there was a specific onstitution by which, on will not be regarded ution. They specifically as excluded from the ution. ion that all the Tamil - the Federal Party the longress, the Ceylon f Mr. Thondaman and ær Tamil groups - and nited Front.
gramme
ed Front never asked it time, we merely put }rogramme. We asked nental rights, we asked 2 Tamil language, we sation and autonomy the State be made a giving the foremost
Mrs. Bandaranaike did ge receipt of our letter se demands. And in we were agitating on
P/OCT 1983
the basis of these demands, in 1974, the police ran amuck at the World Tamil Research Conference without any provocation. At a meeting where 50,000 people assembled and a professor from Tiruchi was speaking on Tamil language, the Sinhala police came on the scene, usedteargas and batons and even fired shots. Nine people were killed at that meeting.
It was after that the Tamil people came to the decision that they no longer could live with the Sinhalese and if they could not have even a cultural meeting without having to pay the price of nine people being killed, then they will have to assert their right to be free and independent which they felt they were historically entitled to demand. Before the Portuguese conquered Sri Lanka, we had three kingdoms - a Tamil kingdom in the northern and eastern provinces and two Sinhala kingdoms. It was the British who unified the country for the first time, Though we made common cause with the Sinhalese we were reduced to the position of a completely subject race without our language rights, rights of our religion, rights of employment and rights of even education. Beginning of youth ViOlen Ce That was another feature that came to the fore in 1971. they introduced standardisation in admission to universities, mediawise standardisation. Thereby they could reduce the percentage of Tamil students who got admission to medical, engineering and such science based courses from about 45-46 in 197O to about 15-16 in 1974-75. This caused atemendous amount of feeling among the Tamil youth. This, coupled with the police violence, was the beginning of youth violence among the Tamil students. Actually the massacre in Jaffna was regarded as a challenge to the manhood of the Tamils by the youth and they started hunting the policemen who were responsible for it. They equated it with the Jalianwalabagh massacre in India which caused a great upsurge of feeling and gave rise to violent movements in Punjab like the one led by Bhagat Singh
and youth movements of that type. Simi
larly a youth movement emerged in Sri Lanka; it started in Jaffna and spread to the other Tamil areas.
Mandate for TULF
It was in this situation that in 1976, at the first Convention of the Tamil United Front we decided that we will have as our objective the setting up of an independent Tamil State and we changed the name of the Tamil United Front to the Tamil United Liberation Front; this is how we came to this decision. And then, in the 1977 election, we asked for a mandate from the Tamil people to work towards that objective aid out of 19 Tamil electorates in the northern and eastern provinces. The Tamil
people returned us in 18 electorates with a Cont, on page 21

Page 21
SEPT/OCT 1983
DEMAND FOR E
Contd from page20 preponderant majority and we got a mandate to work towards that objective. O You have had various rounds of talks With the President and there have been experiments like the Development Councils which have been portrayed as a partial response to your demands... A. Though we got a mandate for an independent State, right from the start we indicated that we cannot go back on the mandate we got, but if a reasonable alternative which will meet the grievances that gave rise to this demand for a separate State could be worked out, we are willing to place this alternative before our people and then try and work it. In fact, in the 1977 election, the UNP itself accepted that it was the grievance that the Tamil people had a but their language reights, colonisation; employment, education and economic development of the Tamil areas, that had driven them to demand a separate State. They gave an undertaking that if they came to power they would have an all-party conference and work out a solution, but the UNPfailed to do that.
DDCS ineffective We tried to press them many a time when ever the Government called us for talks we went and talked to them and tried our best to work out a solution. We were never intransigent and we did not try to say that we will not compromise. Though we had our problems we tried our best to peacefully work out a solution. The Government accepted some of these things and started the District Development Councils but it failed to make them effective and should say, there was so much of resistance on the part of the Government, both at the political and bureaucratic levels to the working of the DDCs that they have proved to be the most ineffective instrument of decentralisation. We have got just the empty shell of an organisation and not the substance of decentralisation. It is in this situation, coupled with repeated violence against Tamils after this Government came to power- we were attacked in 1977, 1979, 1981 and the biggest and the most destuctive attack came in 1983we decided at our convention at Mannar that we will not have any more talks with Mr. Jayewardene, that we will resign our seats in Parliament because we were elected for six years, and will launch a non-violent struggle to get the Prevention of Terrorism Act repealed, to get the army withdrawn from our areas and to get the Government's promises relating to decentralisation of power implemented. That was the decision we took. O Apart from the TULF there are other groups, the most prominent among them
OF YA
being "the Tigers'. T ment invariably refe terrorism. In SOrne Ot regarded as immatu regard them as patri the rise of such gro Sense? Misguided A. As I said in the ci earlier, it started as á among the Tamil stud from the standardisa universities. It was the police violence Research conference of youth attack were were responsible fo Conference. Then, so who were responsibl and tortured by the pc men who tortured b attack, and in this way a vicious circle and it these groups got bel face of continued poli against Tamil people
IR LEHAEILI' AND PRO
I will not regard them agree with their meth of the method of vio think that in certain counter-productive a interest of our people the fact that we app sacrifice of these you down their lives, and We have tried our bes the path they have ch themselves reacted a instances when we peaceful solutions w But in spite of everyt withany branding oft terrorist elements. Th but they are genuine guided way, working believe is in the best people. O. There is an impres, of Tamils of which y leader has been some distant from the pro stream, namely, Indi longstanding attemp vances settled Is th partly valid impressi Unifying Tam A. The Tamils in Sri other parts of the wo differences of caste past politicians usec and even among the

TAM L TIMES 21
ELAMCULMINATION ARS OF OPPRESSIONI
e Sri Lanka Governs to their activity as her quarters they are e, politically, others ots. How do you see Ips in the historical
urse of my remarks result of frustration 2nt population arising tion in admission to |iven an impetus by at the World Tamil and the first targets the policemen who the killings at the me of the young men e for it were arrested lice. Then the policeecame the target of it started working in escalated. Thereafter ter organised in the Ce andarmy violence and Tamil youth.
the Jaffna Tamils and the Batticaloa Tamils, had their differences in the past. I think since our movement led by Chelvanayagam came to the forefront, we have tried our best to get over these differences and unify the Tamil people in Sri Lanka as one nation. At the time the Tamils of Indian origin were politically attacked by the citizenship laws, Chelvanayagam broke away from the Tamil Congress which at that time had joined the Government and opposed that bill and formed the Federal Party. I was a student at that time and that was the beginning of my entry into politics; was a founder member with Chelvanayagam of the Federal Party in 1949 and from that time, even in fighting those citizenship laws in courts right up to the Privy Council and giving full support to the Ceylon Indian Congress which later became the Ceylon Workers Congress, the Federal Party and the leaders of the party fully made common cause with the Tamils of Indian origin.
Understanding with CWC The core of the TULF was the Federal Party
ATION AND GUARANTEED LIFE PERTY ARE THE IMMEDIATE TASKS
as terrorists, I do nol
ods. I do not approve.
lence and in fact we instances they are hd are not in the best 2. But I will not deny reciate the spirit of ng men who had laid
their courage. it to wean them from hosen and they have gainst us in certain tried to work out th the Government. hing. I will not agree hem as anti-Social Or y may be misguided y, in their own mistowards what they interest of the Tamil
ion that the section ou are the political what standoffish or blems of the other in Tamils, and their is to get their gries a valid, or even a on? ils
-anka, as Tamils in rld, have their own and region. In the those differences ndigenous Tamils
and the main leader was Chelvanayagam. When we formed the Tami United Front the main organisation of the plantation Tamils, the CWC was with us, and in 1977, when we fought the elections, our president was Mr. Thondaman of the CWC, so that it is absolutely wrong to say that the TULF had left the plantation Tamils out of the reckoning. Even today, though Mr. Thondaman is with the Government and the CWC is cooperating with the Government, in matters of common interestaffecting the Tamil people we have always worked with an understanding. it is only few businessmen and people of that class even from the Ceylon Tamils community who feel that our political activities caused problems for them. So, Self-interest makes them think that if the TULF or the militants keep quiet they will have peace and they can carry on with their business and make money, and that is all they are interested in. But apart from them I do not think the TULF has ever ceased to voice the grievances and fight to redress the grievances of the plantation Tamils. In fact, after every spate of violence, when Tamils of Indian origin in the plantation areas were dislodged and had to move to the northern and eastern provinces, the TULF and the organisations working in conjunction with the TULF provided for their accommodation, looked after them and rehabilitated them. After the 1977
Contodon page

Page 22
22 TAM TIMES
Contd from page 21
riots and after the 1981 riots we provided for over 50,000 people from the plantation districts who migrated to our areas and no one can say that they have not been looked after in any way. O. What is your current assessment of the approach of the Ceylon Workers Congress, in particular its leader Mr. Thondaman who is in the Government - a rather tricky situation? How has he reacted to this crisis in which both the sections of the people (7amils) have been attacked?
Unhappy position
A. Mr. Thondaman is in a very unhappy position, he is a member of the Government. But he had to look on when the very people whom he represents were being attacked by the armed forces of the Government. This happened ir, 1981 as well as in 1983. But he and his organisation seem to think that because he is in the Government at least certain safeguards could be obtained for these people which he will not be able to get if he threw up the portfolio and got out of the Government. This seems to be their thinking. I may not agree with him but understand and sympathise with their point of view. . . . . . . . .
Their position is slightly different from that of the TULF because we represent people from the northern and eastern provinces
where we are in a majority; though we are
also being attacked by armed forces there are no Sinhala thugs to attack us except in Trincomalee with the connivance of the armed forces. And so, if the armed forces are withdrawn we are masters in our territory. But this is not the situation in the plantation districts. So Mr. Thondaman is anxious to work out certain safeguards for the people living there, We have been working with an understanding of the differences in the problems of each other and the different handling that the two problems needed. But on common matters we have stood together always. When the vote of no-confidence against me was brought in Parliament, Mr. Thondaman refused to vote for it and he made a fairly strong speech. Even on the occasion of the recent Sixth Amendment, though the censored versions that were published here gave a different picture, Mr. Thondaman had not minced his words and had told the Government in a pointed way that the TULF was always prepared to work out a solution with the Government and that it was the Government which failed to Carry out its promise, failed to control its armed forces and failed to safeguard the lives and property of the Tamils.
Common interest
Though I do not agree with his being a member of the Goverment, I think I understand the reasons and we are able to work together in the common interest of the
total Tamil popula any bitterness or a two groups and org Thondaman is also tion within the Gov forward Certain den recent situation, an Mr. Jayewardene h those things; This operandi - if any p Jayewardene, his a any difficulty, we c never done. So Mr. Thondamar matters before Mr. be that if those thir he may reconsider it may be, I feel, in th Tamil people, we understanding and trying to do. O Mr. Amirthalir question of what immediate basis i. current tragedy an that has been gene way of normalising Sinhalese majority period ahead?
Normalisati A. think, immedia Feelings are very ve and particularly an there is avery stron had the worst treat history. So if any immediately think litation have to be u and security of life ensured and along long term solution These three matters in the Order that
say rehabilitation number of people and other places h People who lived co their own have beer and those houses ( them to get back situation in which v is not easy to make and do not get Government is setti way in trying to people who have b The Government Se to rehabilitation of who lost their emp the factories of th having been dama conference and the called upon the T have lost everythin the Sinhala employ gine the heartless about it and the G seeking to take ov rebuild them with t

tion without creating nimosity between the anisations. I think, Mr. reconsidering his posivernment. He has put hands arising from the ld of course, as usual as said that he can do is his normal modus roblem is put to Mr. nswer is: 'I don't see an do that.' But it is
also has put certain
Jayewardene. It may igs are not carried out his decision. Whatever he larger interest of the have to work with an
this is what we are
ngan, regarding the is to be done on an n the context of the 'd the intense feeling rated, do you see any relations between the and the Tamils in the
On difficult tely it may be difficult. 3ry hard on bothsides mong the Tamil peole g feeling that they have ment possible in their thing is to be done measures for rehabindertaken in a big way and property has to be with it measures for a nave to be undertaken. have to be undertaken mentioned. because quite a large who lived in Colombo lave no place to stay. mfortably in houses of completely dehoused annot be repaired for to live. This is the we are placed so that it them forget this scar the feeling that the ng about in the correct ‘ehabilitate the Tamil een affected. ims to be giving priority the Sinhala workers oyment as a result of 5 Tamils and Indians Jed. They have had a Labour Minister has amil proprietors who to pay the wages of 2es. You can just imaway they are setting overnment. I think, is r these factories and le Government having
SEPT/OCT 1983
a hand even in the management in order to ensure that all those employees and all those Sinhala people regained their positions.
Expropriation In fact in quite a number of factories, the employees themselves were the people. who attacked. Some of the Tamil businessmen and proprietors involved have told me that some of their own personal employees attacked. One person who was a trader- he used to distribute biscuits and other things all over- had got them loaded into his vehicle and when he got a report that these were being attacked he locked them up and took the key. The driver of the vehicle had gone there, broken open the vehicle and taken it and gone away, and then was looking for the proprietor to kill him so that his ownership may become absolute. This sort of thing has happened in several places. So, the Government is seeking to ensure that these same elements get back into these factories and business places. The Government should rethink its whole policy; otherwise this rehabilitation will become only expropriation of the property of Tamils and handing it over to the Sinhala elements who were resposible for all the violence. O. In this connection how do you see the law which enables the Government to take over the damaged property?
Hostile moves A. I am not aware of the exact details of the law. But from what I can gather from the interviews given by the competent authority in Colombo over the radio, it seems to be calculated to achieve two or three purposes which are not in the interest of the Tamil people and of the proprietors. In Sri Lanka, insurance is fully a State monopoly. These business houses and factories are insured with the State insurance Corporation. So all that the Government is trying to do is to get the insurance money and rebuild them, thereby the proprietors will not get even the insurance money into their hands. Some of them may want to take the insurance money and invest it in some other ventures because they may not have any faith in their ability to carry on. The Government is seeking effectively to block them from doing this which think is not fair. Some of the proprietors have told me that they do not want to restart the industries in the same place; they want to start them again in places where they are sure there would be security for them, if possible in the Tamil areas. The Government wants to prevent them from doing it by vesting the property in the Government and the Government itself taking a hand in the restoration. These are moves which are actually antagonistic and hostile to the interest of the Tamil people and the Tamil proprietors. O. What is your estimate of the number of
Cont. on page 23

Page 23
SEPT/OCT 1983
Contd from page 22
people who are displaced the number of people who have moved away from their places of work? A. I think it is over a 1,00,000. I think, already about 40,000 people have gone to the north. Smaller numbers have gone to, Trincomalee. Baticaloa and other places. A Certain number of displaced persons have, been sent to the plantation areas which were not affected, where the concentration of Tamil population is such that Sinhala hoodlums would not venture to attack. A certain number had no place to go and they are yet in the refugee camps in Colombo. At one stage the Sri Lanka government said that about 1,35,000 people were in the refugee camps. Apart from this, there were a number of people who did not go to the refugee camps; they went to the houses of some friends there were Sinhala friends. Muslim friends, to whose houses these Tamil people went because of the conditions in the refugee camps. Each camp had about 10,000 people. These camps were mostly
school buildings, so the toilet and other
facilities meant for 1,000 students had to be used by 1 O,OOO people. And men, women and children were crowded like that - people who were used to comforts. Some of them went into big hotels - Oberoi, Holiday Inn and so on. At one stage some of the hotels did not take in Tamils; they said their own employees may give them trouble, so they did lot want to take them. People with means '' int to stay in places like that but even they have no place to go back to because their houses have been destroyed. If you take all these people into consideration it will be in the region of about 1,50,000 people who were dislodged from their residences and their work places.
Complaints about relief O. Apart from this task of rehabilitation there is a question of immediate relief There have been reports here that the relief being made available to Sri Lanka from India and elsewhere is not being properly channeled to the victims. At feast in certain specific instances there have been complaints. Have you had any authoritative information on this?
in fact have not been able to check on the way the large sums of money, items of food, drugs, clothes and various other articles received from all over the World have been used. Some part of it may have been used for feeding the refugees in the camps in Colombo, but once they were shipped to Jaffna and other places the relief did not ever reach those people. In fact told the Government of India that whatever relief India sent the disbursement should be supervised by the High Commissioner for India. It should earmark the financial assistance it is giving for specific purposes. First priority, I said, should be given to
immediate relief to breadwinners have b large number of Tar maybe that whole fa troyed but there are
where the breadwir had been killed and are left in the lurch.
na number of middle the husband, was er he was killed and the of living. People like
immediate relief. Inth was the Government dole - sometimes RS days a family can money. Some subst given to such familie
Rebuilding h
Then there are a num
INDA
IN A SITUA POLICE IN BECOME PA PEOPLE, IN NEGHBOU
O lin relation to sec that in Jaffna if th withdrawn you are c of your own security masters of your ov overall, taking into a streams of Indian specific problem? A. I think the Gover certain courses of act Tamil areas, the nt provinces are concer must be withdrawn number of Tamil p posted in these area: order, and three, if the is not sufficient to m a system of home gua in 1981 and as the should be started i home guards should helpless young men out by the thugs anc to stand against th Some sort of trainin arms to safeguardth people.
think Mr. Thondan gestion that some s youth on each of th given so that they ma estates. understan that information ha that a number of es totally destroyed. came from Colombo a very knowledgeabl that even Mr. Thonda report. It is only two

TAM L TIMES 23
families where the en killed. There area hi families like that; milies have ben desa number of families ners, the husbands he wife and children
: class families where hployed somewhere, family has no means that should be given e past, my experience gave a few rupees as 20 or Rs.30. These never live with that antial relief must be
S.
O 6eS ber of people whose
homes have been destroyed. They may today go and live in Jaffna, Trincomalee and Batticaloa with some relatives or friends How long can they live with them? Somethings has to be done to build their homes for them where they could live in security and without being dependent on somebody else.
In an emergency a relative may be able to house them but if they continue to live there they become unwanted guests and are subjected to humilation. These are matters in which do not think the Government of Sri Lanka is setting about properly, lt seems to be concentrating on the restoration of the factories, reemployment of the Sinhalese who lost their jobs and then only they may be giving a few items of food to the others.
S RIGHTFUL ROLE
ION WHERE THE ARMED FORCES AND THE HARGE OF PRESERVING LAW AND ORDER, ARTIESTOVIOLENCE ANDATTACKS ON THE TERVENTION BY A CLOSE AND FRIENDLY R LIKE INDIA IS INEVITABLE.
urity you mentioned e armed forces are apable of taking care because you are the wn areas there. But 2count also the other Tamils, what is the
nment has to follow tion. One, as far as the orthern and eastern ned, the armed forces, and two, a sufficient olicemen should be s to maintain law and number of policemen aintain law and order, ards, as we suggested Government agreed, mmediately and the not be unarmed. The who may be chased who will not be able em should be given Ig and some sort of elives and property of
han has made a sugort of training to the Ie estates should be ly act as guards of the d that it is only now S reached Colombo tate lines have been met somebody who on Monday- a man in 2 position- he told me man did not get a full days ago that he got
the report that in most of the estate areas, the lines have been destroyed. THE HINDU has also reported that in the conference on assessment of the damage done...they are now saying that extensive damage has been caused in the tea areas also. Till came to India, thought most of the tea areas have not suffered much
ravage.
Training to Tamil youth in these areas effective organisation and training to the Tamil youth should be given so that they may ensure the security of the life and property of the Tamil people in the plantation districts. In these two ways think the security of our people can be ensured both in the northern and easterri provinces and in the plantation districts. Even in the plantation areas there is no necessity for the army to go there. They should see that the armed forces are kept out of the areas. O. What about the Tamils in Colombo” A. There they should make the police and the people in charge of law and order in Colombo representative of all sections of the people. In Colombo it had never happened in the past, they were able to safeguard life and property to a large extent. But this time because of the active role played by the armed force', in the attack and the organised manner in which bands of thugs were let loose with the support of the armed forces. Colombo has suffered. So, they should radically alter the composition of the police and the armed forces. This is one of the things that has
be done.
Contd on page 24

Page 24
24 TAM L TIMES
Contd from page 23
O. What in your opinion is India's focus standi in the present crisis faced by Tamils and other people of Indian origin? We ask this particularly in view of the fact that earlier there have been suggestions of “/Indias interference“ in Sri Lankas internal affairs. Before the current attackstarted there was a statement by Mr. Hameed (Foreign Minister) and others to that effect. How do you see that in the new situation? India's responsibility A. feel that India being the closest neighbour to Sri Lanka with very close ties - cultural, religious, linguistic, racial and in every other way - will have to play a significant part in the present situation, in the restoration of normality in Sri Lanka. Dislocation of conditions in Sri Lanka will endanger peace in the zone and will definitely endanger the security of India itself. There is also another factor that has to be taken into consideration. In the recent happenings, a good section of the affected people are either of Indian origin who have not yet acquired Sri Lanka citizenship or some of them are even citizens of India, and Indian capital has been destroyed so that India has every right to intervene. Apart from all that, on grounds of preservation of human rights and to stop genocide, India has to intervene. do not agree with the argument that India is interfering in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka. I think, Rajaji said at one stage, "when my neighbour and his wife are living happily my interference in their family will be obnoxious and will not be tolerated but if my neighbour is trying to throttle his wife and kill her have a duty to intervene and stop the murder."
think lndia is in the same position as faras conditions in Sri Lanka are concerned. No one who values the right of every individual and every ethnic group to the human rights which are guaranteed by the U.N. Charter will blame India for trying to play a hand in stopping this violence. Particularly in the situation when the armed forces and the police who have to maintain law and order become parties to the attack, Interference of a third party becomes inevitable. It can take the form of a United Naitons peace keeping force or a peace keeping force of a friendly country. In 1971 when Mrs. Bandaranaike was in a similar situation she made an appeal and got India to send forces to safeguard certain strategic points like the airport, the 'harbour and various other places. 'Actually when this trouble started and we knew that the armed forces were playing a part in the whole attack, all of us sent telegrams to President Jayewardene that he should either get a U.N. force or get assistance from a friendly country - the &friendly country we had in mind was the closest neighbour which is just 29 km across the sea. If Mr.Jayewardene hard
made that requesto we asked for it, thin not have gone this f have been restore So, merely becaus Jayewardene was india cannot shirk i O. How do you as people and the Go relation to this res. just highlighted?
Positive resp A. think, the Gover Prime Minister hav least obtrusive way has merely offered bring about a soluti and quite correctly s aspects where actio is the security of lif Tamil people and t solution. Even in t mentioned, rehabilit of India and the offered substantial launched a fund. S matters requiring Government has re. It is now I think, the Government to mae offices of India in b factory state of aff these three aspects this context that we of Mrs. Bandaranail President Jayeward welcoming India's i to Mr. Jayewarder offices, and so Mr. find an excuse and S Sinhala party will against him if he ac of India. Therefore, it is incu on President Jayew the good offices in and see that justice normality is restore
Tamil Nadu
O lin this connectio response, Mr. Jay said in an intervie 7amil Wadu probler pressure from Tam, ment of India, and p nation. How do you A. I do not agree wi have had the advan mentarians, membe men in public life th say right from Kash India has been deel cities perpetrated ag and the Indian peo the last one month. Jayewardene to tr Nadu Government people from the re. 1 met leaders of ever

SEPT/OCT 1983
SLLLLSSSSSSLSSLSLSSLS
n July 25 or 26 when gs in Sri Lanka would ar and normality could d very much earlier. 2 the Government of reluctant to do that ts responsibility.
sess the role of the vernment of India in ponsibility which you
) O.Se hment of India and the e set about it in the possible. Mrs Gandhi her good offices to on to these problems he has pinpointed two n has to be taken. One e and property of the he other a long-term he third matter that ation, the Government Prime Minister have help and they have So on all these three attention, the Indian sponded positively.
duty of the Sri Lanka Ike use of the good ringing about a satisairs in respect of all of the problem. It is in lcomed the statement ke, the counterpart of ene in the opposition, nterest and her advice e to accept its good Jayewardene cannot ay that the Opposition rouse the Sinhalese cepts the good offices
mbent and obligatory ardene to make use of all these three matters is done to Tamils and d in the country.
problem nrm as for the people's awardene has openly w that it is mainly a r, that there is a lot of Il Wadu on the Governerhaps the rest of the
react to this? th that at all because age of meeting parliars of organisations and oughout India should mir to Cape Comorin, ply moved by the atroainst the Tamil people ble in Sri Lanka during So it is wrong for Mr. to divide the Tamil and the Tamil Nadu it of India.
political party ranging
from right to left. They are all of one view that India has to play a part. This in my view, is the unanimous opinion of all sections findia. Tamil Nadu is naturally more concerned because of the closerties they had with the people affected. In fact quite a number of people killed are people affected are from Tamil Nadu or at least have relatives in Tamil Nadu. To that extent their agitation is much greater
which is natural.
A Wedge When Pakistan was trying to ride roughshod over the aspirations of East Bengal, West Bengal was in the forefront of the agitation. That did not mean that the whole of India did not take an interest in the matter. I think the situation is quite similar in Sri Lanka. Mr. Jayewardene is trying to drive a wedge between Tamil Nadu and the rest of the country and he can never succeed. O. We have noted that parallel with the anti-Tamil action there has been an antiIndian campaign. How have your people reacted to that even before the current troubles started? How do the Tamils of both streams see the response from the Sri Lanka government to India's role? A. Whatever the reaction on the part of the Sri Lanka Government may be, the Tamil peole look upon India's taking an interest as the only ray of hope in this otherwise bleak situation and I am confident that all sections of Tamil opinion will respond positively to the Indian initiative and the outcome of the initiative. O. lf enlightened Indian and international pressure prevails with Mr. Jayewardene on the need to negotiate seriously and urgently with the Tamils and their political leaders do you foresee any problem he might face within his Government, within his party or from other political parties or from the armed forces which might block the process?
Chavinistic forces A. My experience so far has been that if Mr. Jayewardene wanted to do something and if he was definitely committed to this something, he could and he would do it. The chavinistic forces in his own party which have surfaced today I think, have deliberately been built up by him and his colleagues for political purposes. If there is a definite change of heart and a desire to work out a solution and particularly in the context of Mrs. Bandaranaike's reported statement. I do not think that he will have any serious problem. O You have expressed the view that India's role has brought about a "qualitative change' in the situation. What exactly do you mean when you refer to a qualitative change? A. As I have said our bitter experience has been not with this Government alone but even with earlier governments starting
Contd on page 25

Page 25
SEPT/OCT 1983
Conto from page 24
from Bandaranaike. Whenever we agitate, and feelings run high they give promises and enter into agreements and then tear them up and forget about them. Mr. Jayewadene during the last six years, has been acting in the same way, never implementing any promise given so that we have got tired of the talks and negotiations.
In fact, our continuing the negotiations has created a rift in our own ranks with the younger sections losing faith in the leadership and adopting extreme actions which they might not have otherwise done if the whole movement has been kept intact. So we decided at our last convention at Mannar that we will have no more negotiations with President Jayewardene and his Government, we will carry on a non violent agitation struggle for our rights which we hoped would first of all unite our people and also bring sufficient pressure on the Government to pay heed to our demands.
Mediation It was in that situation that this holocaust occurred and India took an interest. When India offered its good offices we felt that India's good offices meant not merely bringing us to the negotiating table but playing a mediatory role throughout and also ensuring the implementation of whatever solution was worked out at the negotiating table. And we further felt that India has to have a continuing interest in this problem and if the negotiations at its initiative, failed due to the reluctance or in transigence, of the Sri Lanka Government India had a further duty to safeguard the lives and legitimate rights of the Tamil and Indian people in Sri Lanka. This is the only way of ensuring justice and fair play in Sri Lanka.
Peace keeping force
From his experience in Trincomalee apart from the matters that I have mentioned about Tamil policemen in this area and withdrawal of the armed forces and arming
of our own home guards in our areas. Mr. Sampanthan thinks that in areas like Trin
comalee a peace keeping force, either international or Indian will have to be maintained if the security of life and property of our people is to be ensured.This is his point of view and think it was born out of the bitter experience in Trincomalee and
agree with that. A substantial change in the composition of the security forces or in the quality of the security forces is not something that can be achieved in a short period of time. It all depends on how devoted the Government is towards achieving that. in that situation security of life and property can be assured in many parts of the country only if there is an international peacekeeping force. Even in Colombo, Kandy and in the plantation areas this may be a necessity. O. ln relation to the recent economic experiment or course Mr. Jayewardene
has taken, the IMF have expressed conc C Sri Lanka. How course Mr. Jayewal suing?
Economy in A. We have been ve nomic policy of the J ment though some
made full use of it. It of the impact of it or whether it be Sinhale has not been too ber of the country, in spit Government is in a v. mentioned in the Sri one time, one Indian to 89 Sri Lanka cen rupee is equivalent to I am not one who is v of the role of the MF these matters. But is of the Ministers of t are directly concerne
have had a hand in t violence because the
use Tamil and India made of the opportu
Bu Siness riva I have reports that on at a conference with th Chamber two week caust found fault with major part of the impo the hands of Tamils these elements, the and businessmen, ol Tamil industrialists ar taken a hand in the att ment is to blame.
O There is a feeling people that econom disadvantageous pos the Tamils and the or think that they had a you react to this?
A. Apart from a fe making use of this and making good du prise and their own b may be their interr Contacts the bulk of actually worse off th employment among much greater than a because their emplo and semi public se Government service porations had been re it has been reduced te of the total.
Sinha lese jea Of course, that has m our youth migrate all that has been the Tamils from the dista la people may be jealo as the Government's
 
 
 
 

TAM L TIMES 25
ind the World Bank 'rn over the situation do you assess the ene has been pur
Door Shape y critical of the ecoayewardene Governof the Tamil people hink our assessment the total population se or Tamil, is that it eficial. The economy e of the tall talk of the »ry parlous state.As
Lanka Parliament at upee was equivalent ts, today one Indian 224 Sri Lanak cents. ery muohenamoured or the World Bank in hould say that some he Government who i with this policy also he recent Communal 7 got perturbed at the entrepreneurs had nity offered.
|lry
2 of the key Ministers he Sinhala Merchants „s before the holon them for allowing a ort and export trade in and Indians. Even Sinhala industrialists ut of rivalry with the ld businessmen, have acks and the Govern
among the Sinhala rically they are in a ition compared with dinary Sinhala people bad deal. How would
w Tamil capitalists Government's policy e to their own enterusiness acumen and lational and foreign the Tamil people are in the Sinhalese. Unthe Tamil people is mong the Sinhalese yment in the public ctor, that is in the and in the State corduced to a minimum o almost five per cent
llous
ade a large number of over the world. I think characteristic of the nt past. So the Sinhaius about it. But as far action and policies
are concerned, the vast majority of the Tamil people have suffered and not benefited and even from the point of the benefits given to workers, the Tamil plantation workers have been the hardest hit of the working class. Even in respect of the allowances and salary increases given to other sections of the workers, only a niggardly fraction has been given to the plantation workers. 'O. What is your experience with the free.
dom of expression in Sri Lanka periodically the role of the press in relation to the free dissemination of information and how do you see the trends, maybe a point of comparision with India?
State-owned press A. think, India has almost complete freedom of the press and there are such a large number of newspapers, competing with one another and supporting various points of view that India should be considered a model in this respect. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned the majority of the newspapers are State-owned. The Lake House group and the Times group, that is the Daily Mirror and the Lanka Deepa, are both owned by the State. Then the Gunasena group is fully on he side of the Government. As far as the Tamil problem is concerned their attitude is worse than that of the Government newspapers, they are more rabid and they later to the more chauvinistic tastes among the Sinhalese. In fact they had been the hardest against India in the comments they made. There is a fourth group that has recently come up-the Island group; it is too early to say whether it will survive, and how long it will survive the death of its proprietor. The only independent Tamil newspaper is Veerakesari and when a holocaust like this occurred even the Veerakesari had to close down. They were attacked, their employees lwere attacked. They even went to the extent of robbing money and they damaged their equipment. Even if they had printed, they were unable to distribute them outside Colombo. So, we really have no means of even running a proper newspaper of our own. O. What has been your experience with the censor from time to time, and in the recent attacks? How do the people respond to it? A. Censorship only gives rise to wild rumours and rumours become authentic stories; they never believe the newspapers. That is the situation they have created. The rest of the mass media, the radio and the television, is State-owned. They project only one point of view. Whatever we say is twisted and destroyed. In fact censorship has even been used to i escalate communal violence. I get the impression that the Government wanted Contd on page 35

Page 26
26 TAMIL TIMES
TAMIL ISSUE RAISE N UK PARLAMENT
The problem facing the Tamil people of Sri Lanka was raised for the first time in the history of the UK Parliament by Mr. Dave Nellist, Labour MP for Coventry South-East, on 25th July, 1983. The following are extracts from his speech: Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East): Since submitting this subject for the ballot on 20 July, just a few days ago, the position in Sri Lanka has worsened dramatically for the workers and peasants there. in the early edition of The Times today appears a report from Reuter's correspondent in Colombo which begins: "The Sri Lankan Government imposed a 15hour curfew on Colombo and several other parts of the country yesterday...Witnesses said shops and houses belonging to minority Tamils were the targets of attacks. A pall of black smoke hung over Colombo as several shops went up in flames." According to the UP correspondent - who, with Reuter's correspondent, seems to be the only source of news, and that heavily censored, coming out of Colombo - black clouds of smoke could be seen miles from the centre of the city. Over the weekend we heard of the killing of 13 soldiers outside Jaffna. Owing to censorship, it is not clear what happened, but reports reaching London speak of between 15 and 50 people being killed by troops who got out of control. Given the security forces' previous record, vandalism, and the recent army mutiny, the reports must be considered carefully. Unconfirmed reports that I have received today gave details of events in Jaffna in recent days. On 21 and 22 July, army personnel kidnapped three Tamil girls has Unconfirmed reports that I have received today gave details of events in Jaffna in recent days. On 21 and 22 July, army personnel kidnapped three Tamil girls, whose whereabouts are not known. An unconfirmed report alleges rape and says that one of the girls has committed suicide. On 23 July bombs were thrown into an army truck and 13 soldiers were killed. On 23 and 24 July the army went on a rampage in Jaffna and shot people at random. Seventeen are said to have been shot, including six schoolchildren and a managed 83. In all, there are reports of at least 30 deaths. On 24 July that army section was returned to barracks. Furthermore, it is reported that the Government have advised the Sinhalese to leave the Tamil areas. If that is true, it is a
measure designed not to lower tension, but an invitation to the Sinhalese racists to
begin attacks on the 50 percent of Tamils who live in the southern part of Sri Lanka in the Sinhalese areas.
The curfew that has been imposed in the capital of Colombo from 2 pm to 5 am is a
belated gasture by their supporters hac on the Tamils.
Over the weekend part of last week, indicated a sharp de Sri Lanka. On 21 Jul ted:
"Colombo (censored). emergency powers, y censorship on news of inf matters prejudical servation of public or essential supplies, incit and operations of the p will also be censored. On the 22 July, the
o missioner in New D
Indian Foreign Min
U.S. 'He was told that in Colombos recent eme permitted the dispos quests following actio The report of 23 Ju "The Sri Lankan Presid invoking emergency pc the heads and senior the country's universit down on student un re In at least one univi student population All this has happer reason for a reques request was promp. Daily Telegraph abot Sri Lanka and the July, lan Ward in C "The President indiC, Britain for expertise establishing an effect against local terrorists blems in Belfast as S ones he was facing. Po ment had been in touc|| time on this subject added, "They are ou them. That was confirmed Saturday when an stated: "President Junius Ja told your corresponde has asked Britain for to deal with the growin request to the forme though Britain is a pl minded Mr. Jayawarc terms.This week, wł from Britain, he call parliamentary parties the opposition) to disc Sri Lankan newspape thing more about Tam
The present presic Jayevardene, beg self-appointed defe Buddhists. As earl moved on the State

SEPT/OCT 1983
mul
D
the Government after d began racist attacks
and during the latter
a series of reports cline in democracy in ly The Guardian repor
The Government, using esterday imposed press guerrilla activities. News to national security, preder, the maintenance of ement to civil commotion, police and armed services
2 Sri Lanka high com)elhi was called to the istry. the report conti
dia was unhappy about rgency regulation which all of bodies without inin by security forces." ily tells us: dent, Julius Jayawardene, )wers, yesterday removed administrative officers of ies in an attempt to Crack est." ersity the entire Tamil has now been expelled. ned since the original st for this debate. the oted by reports in the ut official links between British police. On 12 olombo reported: ated he was looking to on, among other things, |ve intellingence network i. He saw the British proomewhat parallel to the inting out that his Governh with Whitehall for some , the Sri Lankan leader r old friends. We trust
by The Economist on article appeared that
yawardene of Sri Lanka 2nt on July 17th that he expertise and assistance' g violence by Tamils...The er colonial power, even ace with which western dene is on the friendliest hilst awaiting a message ed a conference of the (which was boycotted by uss security, and banned ers from publishing anymi violence."
lent of Sri Lanka, JR an his activities as a nder of the Sinhalese ly as May 1944, Council, which existed
as a form of limited self rule, that the Sinhala language be made the medium of instruction in all schools and compulsory i subject in all public examinations. It was after independence in the mid 1950s that the inter communal violence began to develop seriously. JR himself did nothing to lower the tension. On the contrary, the Sri Lankan Tribune of 30 August 1957 reported JR as saying: "the time has come for the whole Sinhalese race... to fight without quarter to save their birthright. I will lead the disobedience campaign". In 1970 a Popular Front Government were elected in Sri Lanka. Despite the popular support that had at first, they were unable to solve the problems facing Sri Lanka because of its hetergeneous class composition and inadequate programme. The disillusionment caused by the Popular Front Government-in particular, the failure of the old workers' parties, the Lanka * Sama Samaja Party and the Communist : party of Sri Lanka - resulted in a Sweeping ivictory for JR and his United National
party in 1977. JR's victory was immediately followed by communal rioting. Vore than 200 died, i and 1 O,OOO Tamils were forced to move away from the predominantly Sinhala areas Ostensibly appealing for calm, JR spoke to the nation on 28th July 1977 saying: "it is our duty to safeguard the Buddha Sasana. We will not spare any effort to protect, and further the cause of Sasana....The UN P Government intends...establishing a just society based on the teachings of Buddha. lf we examine the record of the Sri Lankan authorities in recent years, we see that it is not easy to decide who the real terrorists are. Furthermore, the record raises the question of what control this Parliament has over the international activities of the British security services. If we look at the predominantly Tamil district of Sri Lanka, we can see that the real turning point took place in the period between May and June 1981. the The Financial Times, which is not an anti-UNP journal, after the events, reported: "the police and army personnel- mainly comprising Sinhalese officers- have for the first time abondoned their neutrality. In some cases, they lead attacks on Tamil communities. It is officially admitted that they went on the rampage in the Tamil capital of Jaffna in June." in Jaffna, in May and June 1981, eight Tamils were murdered, including the priwate clerk of one of the Tamil Opposition Members of Parliament, and 11 Tamil Members, including the Leader of the Opposition, were arrested on the day of the district development council elections. The security forces attacked the homes of itwo Tamil Opposition Members and burnt down the Jaffna library- which was one of iAsia's leading libraries with a collection of 97,000 books, many of which were rareand many buildings and homes. Since then, there has been mounting opposition
Contd on page 27

Page 27
Ymum
Contd from page 27
in the Tamil areas to the UNP Government: and growing demands for self-rule. Tragi
cally, due to the defeats that the opponents to the UNP rule have suffered, many Tamil youths have turned to guerrilla activities as a solution to the increasing racist attacks on them by the security forces...-
Last year, JR held an early presidential
election to secure re-election before the economic bubble burst. He secured reelection because some sections of the population were still enjoying the fruits of economic growth, the main Opposition party's lack of credibility and the abstention of many Tamil voters. Having won the election, the President held a referendum on whether general elections should be. postponed until 1989, and he was left with a two thirds majority in Parliament. Amid many accusations of intimidation, a low turnout and impersonation, including even that of JR's main opponent in the presidential election, the UNP won the referendum. With that majority the UNP is moving againstall opposition in all parts of the island. Early in June, after the Supreme Court had given an Opposition leader Compensation for illegal arrest, detention and degrading treatment, thugs attacked the homes of the three Supreme Court judges concerned. No arrests were made, but the thugs arrived and departed in state-owned buses.
That has not been the only example of the semi-official condonement and harassment of the courts. Earlier this year, after a senior Buddhist monk had a police officer convicted of violating his-the monk's - fundamental rights during the referendum campaign, a Cabinet Minister announced that the Government would pay the fine and the policeman was promoted to superintendent. The police officers involved in the later Supreme Court case were also promoted, on the day after the court judg
ment.
At the same time the UNP Government gave new powers to the police to deal with the circumstances. By 4 June the new regulation No. 15a was signed. It gave senior police officers the power to take "all such measures as may be necessary for the taking possession and burial or cremation of any dead body, and to determine, in his discretion the persons who may be permitted to be present at.... any such burial or cremation."
Given the many cases of torture and murder which have been reported by Amnesty International, it is clear that regulation has only increased fear of the police and army in Tamil areas. After the disturbances of the past few days, how many more people "will be buried as a result of that regulation? Will the Government condemn those antidemocratic powers?
How do the Government respond to this statement in The Guardian on 7 July;
"Anemergency regula under the Public Se police to bury or crema or post mortem. Pre: announced that it pro\ announced that it "p more muscle'; it ensu nel vill in novvay be h event of being compell Civil rights lawyers de kill" Tamil suspects"? (How will the Govern new Prevention of "its unconstitutio visions, permits pri communicado - up t explanation, for arre is thus an invitation torture"? Another report in Tl States: 'Sri Lanka has been emergency rule since since the referendum which extended the lif parliament to August dented 12-year sessic powers in the hands o' has created a situatic authority is clearly g safeguards in Parliam press are becoming m Confessions are ad despite being obtai person from a beam with a bagful of burn the head, chilli pow the person, including in the rectum, thin penis and lying on a on back and soles stuck up the nose. election address of from Jayewardene v "An important contribu the enactment of a dem guarantees that the pe live without fear and their affairs in accorda country and their fund What is the future fo peasants in a country are made during an E where the reality is ings, disappearance lootings and a treme decent democratic r Sri Lanka, which is p and on television
tourist resorts, has r raw materials and th
people. For example rate is 87 percent. H Bank explained, "Far from going forwar going backwards." Sri Lanka does not |alone; they face the e
world. lplace beforethe Mir for him to answer. W that the Government British firms which h;

ΤΑΜΙ TIMES 27
on, recently promulgated urity Act, now permits e bodies without inquiry dent Jayewardene has des the forces With inno ovides the forces with es that security personrassed by the law in the 'd to use their fire power. scribe it as a licence to
ment Comment On the errorism Act with
al retroactive prolonged detention in18 months - without st, charge or trial and to physical attack and
e Guardian on 6 July
nder almost continuous the early 1970s. But of December 22, 1982, e of the Sri Lankan' long 4, 1989 - an unprecen - the concentration of President Jayewardene in in which the army's rowing and democratic ent, the courts, and the ore fragile." missible in evidence, ned by suspending a with both hands tied, tchillitubers tied over Jers smeared all over the genitals, iron bar metal rod down the bench being beaten of feet with chillies Contrast that with an 17 September 1982 when he promised: tion we have made was ocratic Constitution that ople of this country can harassment, to conduct hce vith the lavs of the amental rights." r working people and where such promises lection campaign but orture, murder, beat, rampage, burnings, ndous decline in any ghts? romoted in the press is the jewel of the many resources in its e Cultura level Of tS Sri Lanka's leteracy wever, as the World
l, society in Sri Lanka is
face such problems ntire underdeveloped
ister some questions he give a guarantee will publish a list of ve subsidiaries in Sri
Lanka, and what wage rates they pay? Can we see whether the Brooke Bonds or the Unilevers, or any other firm exploits the
plantation workers? How many pence a day in wages are British profits being based on? Will the Minister confirm the reports in the The Economists and in the Daily Telegraph of the spoken words of the President of Sri Lanka, saying to British correspondents I that he is asking the Minister and his Department for close collaboration between the security forces and the police in this country and their counterparts in Sri Lanak? Will the Minister give a guarantee that, given the state of the decline of democratic rights in Sri Lanka- the torture, the murder, the lootings, the beatings, the rampages of the army and of the police - collaboration between British security services and the police and Jayewardene's police will cease? When he replies, will he give a precise answer as to what response he has made to requests from the Sri Lankan Government in the last 10 or 12 days for explicit help from the security and police services of this country? In the light of all the evidence that I have produced, will the Minister guarantee that the official state visit of President J. R. Jayewardene, scheduled for October this year will be cancelled? For Britain to offer the hand of friendship in the form of a state visit to the president of a country where torture and censorship are prevalent, or to offer conditional or unconditional support to Sri Lanka's policies, is not just a slap in the face but a disgraceful insult to the families of the workers and peasants of the country who have lost friends and relatives in the past few days.
reiterate my own implacable opposition to the terrorist tactics, to the oppression to the disgraceful human rights record in Sri Lanka. The way forward is to support the glorious traditions of the Sri Lankan working class in its fight for independence and decent living standards. The working people in that country must be united. li stand four square behind the rights of minorities to self-determination. They must have theat right. I believe that the future lies in co-operation and in bringing together people of all castes, creeds, colours and religions. Only then can the working class and its allies go forward in the development of Socialism. My message to British workers is that we owe a debt and responsibility to working people internationally. We must extend the hand of solidarity in their time of need
and link our organisations with those of the working class in Sri Lanka. We must break the bonds of capitalism and imperia|lism that jointly tie us down and work together for a society throughout the Asian subcontinent, Europe and the world in which the division by caste, poverty and
Contd on page 17

Page 28
مصر
LETTERS
NO LONGER “SRI LANKAN ONLY SINHALESE 8 TAM||
Most papers have referred to clashes between the Sinhalese and Tamils. There were no clashes between the two communities. One community, the Tamils have been attacked. Almost no civilian Sinhalese were killed by Tamils, except perhaps one or two killed in self-defence. The So-Caled terrorists, who wish to describe themselves freedom fighters, have not killed civilian Sinhalese. They have shot at the forces of law and order - the Police and the Army. More Tamil police officers than Sinhalese have been killed. In the case of the army, most of those killed were Sinhalese because the Army is made up of more than 95 per cent Sinhalese. The youth have kiled civilian Tamil politicians who they thought were collaborating with the Government. Most papers have referred to us as Tamils of Indian origin or Tamil immigrants. We are indigenous Tamils, just as indigenous as the Sinhalese, and both are of Indian origin. It is still not conclusively established as to who came first - we may have been there (when Sri Lanka was probably geographically part of India) when their forefathers came from India. It is said by some Sinhalese gentlemen. that we are only 11% of the population and are asking for a separate state. The Tamil speaking people are more than 25% - including Indian Tamils and Muslims (why this community should be referred to by religion and others by race or language, no-one knows). It has not been brought out that at first we did not ask for separation, but only for federation. Two nations which are separate linguistically and culturally, which had separate kingdoms brought together under foreign domination and the majority of whom occupy distinct and contiguous areas can only unite by federating with each other. The Tamils asked for federation for 3O years. In fact, a respected politician who had been a Cabinet Minister and who wanted separation during that period was defeated by the Federal Party candidate very decisively. The Tamils were even prepared to accept something less than federation, evidenced by the fact that separate agreements were signed at different times with the two major political parties who admittedly represented the Sinha ese - the U.N.P. and the S.L.F. P. But. the agreement signed with the S.L.F.P. was torn up due to agitation against it by the U.N.P. and the agreement signed with the U.N.P. was not honoured because of agitation against it by the S.L.F.P. The Sinhalese parties talk of the mandate given to them by the Sinhalese and do not seem to worry about the mandate given to
the Tamil parties by homogeneous society majority must prevail. society the minority vi majority view of eachh must prevail. It was only in desperat eventually asked for si However, agitation by start immediately becau had over 80% of Seat their election manifest there were some gen the Tamils, and promis holding a round table parties. This they faile FRUSTRATION It was only after waiti some years that the you the forces of the Gove only after the youth st the Government star elected representative on paper gave a few col cessions - not equal implemented in the m very little changed. Some articles in news District Councils which of autonomy. These were toothless C no powers. In any case, so long as the District executive head is a Sir ber of the Governmen elected representative by the council. Tamil as a national lang sense is only observe Entrance to universitie purely on merit, 35 yea areas were given specia now a formula is app Tamil student is more than his Sinhalese col
UNCONTROLLABL. LAW & ORDER.
The forces of law and C shoot at and kill 'terr
indulge in the use of vi
weapon should be pre By the same logic, t Army have an occupati killed. Before the mo most of the material da the forces of 'law and ( private property to the dollars - arson, lootin ment has no excuse f behaviour of its force These forces behave occupation; harassing a torturing and killing inn

SEPT/OCT 1983
NS", |LS
the Tamils. In a the views of the In a heterogeneous ew counts and the Omogenous section
tion that the Tamils eparation in 1976.
the youth did not Se the U.N.P. which s, had accepted in o of July 1977 that uine grievances of ed to solve them by conference of all d to do.
ng in frustration for thstarted attacking rnment. And it was arted attacking that ted talking to the S of the Tamils, and ncessions. The Con
rights - were not lain and in practice
oapers talked about gave Some measure
ouncils with almost , these will not work Minister who is the halese and a memit party, and not an of the area Covered
uage in the practical (d in the breach. es is still not based rs after all backward all concessions. Even lied under which a adversely affected unterpart.
E FORCES OF
roder are entitled to Orists'. Those who olence as a political pared to be killed.
nose who join the onal hazard of being »st recent pogrom amage was done by order' to public and tune of millions of g, etc. The Governor the uncontrolled s of law and order. d like an army of nd assaulting, raping, ocent people, arrest
ing them without evidence and incarcerating anyone whom they fancied as potential terrorists, and naturally these actions have swelled the ranks of the "terrorists'. the Government then passed laws to facilitate these activities of the forces of law and order. They could arrest anyone and they could kill anyone and dispose of their bodies without the need of an inquiry or producing the body to relatives. During the recent pogrom it was admitted by the Government that the armed forces looked on, encouraged and did not take action. What was not admitted was that in many instances they were the perpetrators, that quite a lot of the activity took place during the curfew hours, and that despite all that happened, armed forces only shot and killed 15 looters. When the 13 soldiers died why did the Government try to organise a funeral with full military honours? Any sensible Government would have not published the facts. The reaction or action of the Sinhalese was supposed to be a spontaneous one due to the killing of the soldiers. Soldiers were killed not because they were Sinhalese, but because they were agents of the Government. In any case, certain . news reports stated that the soldiers had raped some girls, two of whom committed suicide, and that is why they were attacked. If the attack by the Sinhalese was a spontaneous reaction, how come they had the names and addresses of Tamil houses and businesses - as admitted by the Government - and were sophisticated enough to only loot, but not burn, houses owned by Sinhalese and occupied by Tamils? Why is it that no member of the Government came on T.V. or radio and try to calm the feelings and appeal for peace? When they did come on television, every one of them, including the President, did not talk as Ministers or President of the whole country. They talked only as representatives of the Sinhalese people. An analysis of their speeches will show this. They spoke of what the Sinhalese people wanted, what they would permit and not permit, etc. Not what the whole of Sri Lanka wants or what the Tamils want.
INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTION They talk of federalism as division of the country. This is purely intellectual prostitution. It is the only way diverse societies can be united in one Government. There are probably more federal states than unitary states - India, Pakistan, Australia, Malaysia, Canada, United States, U.S.S.R., China, Germany, Switzerland, Nigeria, Spain, France, United Kingdom, etc. Why should the Government say they would be prepared to talk only if a unitary Government is accepted by the T.U.L.F. ? Are all the countries duoted above divided? The President himself has said that there Contd. On page 34

Page 29
SEPT/OCT 1983
he latest mass attack on the Tamils by the Sinhalese security forces and the Sinhalese mobs on licensed rampage-licensed by politicians who include, most notably, President Jayewardene-was conducted according to the law of Ceylon's political jungle; where, as I wrote in my 1982 articles in The Illustrated Weakly of India, the Sinhalese Lion and the Tamil Tiger *stalk eech other” in Sri Linka's tranquil tropic shade; in the upcountry tea plantations, too, and in the arid scrub of the northern Tamil homelands.
What we have seen-and this time, fortunately, the whole world has seen it, too, though at great cost in Tamil lives and possessions-is first, and at the basest level, the bloodlust of racism.
it is a racism which is deeprooted, exacerbated by British colonial destruction of the political ecology of the island and fomented by
sly Buddhist priests and opportunist.
歌 diat
politicians. Worse, the
local desire for revenge for the July 23 Jaffna Tiger ambush (itself a reprisal for the earlier kidnap and rape of Tamil girls by the "security" forces) was lost in the roars of a volatile Sinhalese populace, always quick to be aroused to violence; particularly when trained to do soas it has been for decades now in Sri Lanka–by disreputable Sinhalese communalists who have proved themselves swift and ready-with public transport, lists of Tamil addresses and cans of kerosene-to
Several of these communalistsPrenadasa, the Prime Minister; Cyril Mathew, the Enoch Powel of Sri Lanka; and others-are well known in Colombo to have their own private armies of hoodlums to do their bidding.
To speak of them as Machiavellians is to do them too great an honour. These are low-level and shallow
DAVD SE
Selbourne proceeding the Colom
"a sympat Group', ar
prohibited
Here is anc tracing the where pro unfulfilled position is
men, as I know versations with dene and other name here, since eventual redem
They are cynic dallying and da with Tamil p without the slig of reaching a presiding over bankrupt regim hit to the IM
list of "prohibit Ministry of Def crooks, the wors veneer of "West My readers v best if I say it is
O SO, Take the cy Richard Jayewa After the recent of Tamils had é засres superviзе the local securi worth noting, th Trincomalee, lo ambush, not in told the Londo Ian Ward that he the lives of the "terrorists'-th Tamil people w
To have been expelled from such a sta great honour. Yet it is blood on my fac your face, too, reader; for we are all
citizens of Jaffna in one way or anothe
 

TYRDOM
|LS
LBOURNE
has threatened defamation gs against the Ministry of Defence in bo courts for being described as hiser of the International Marxist
other reason for his being declared a
person in Sri Lanka.
ther Selbourne exclusive course of events in the emerald isle, mises made to the Tamils remain
and where President Jayewardene's itself now threatened.
from my 1982 conPresident Jayewar, whom I will not even I hope for their ption from evil. all without cunning, bbling for 30 years plitical aspiration, htest real intention settlement with it; an economically 2, mortgaged to the F, as Jayewardene i to me-and, when in The Illustrated , he had me put on a ed persons" by the nce, many of them tofthem with a thin ern" sophistication. vill understand me just like India, only
nicism of Junius dene, for example. round of massacres lready begun, mas
ey began in June in ng before the Tiger uly in Colombo-he Daily Telegraph's "did not care about jafna Tamils". The it is, the sons of the ho, as a last desper
e is a e, and
T.
ate resort, have taken to arms, not merely to advance their claims to political separation, but to defend their own community from the "security forces'-would be "wiped out" to the last man.
Now, for the leader of the nation in a country like Sri Lanka, a volcano of fears and emotions, to announce publicly that he is unconcerned about the physical well-bering of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the minority is an incitagent to violence; and, if he says it to The Daily Telegraph, you can imagine what he
says to his followers and
hirelings. Worse, a man like Jayewardene knew, and knows very well, that it was an incitement; worse again, remained silent while his forces and the mobs whom they lead looted, pillaged, burned and murdered-waiting days before calling on them to desist; and, worse still
ονα επηy oτ and provoking violence, for keeping him uninformed, the very man who sits at the centre of the Sinhalese
mob, who is constitutional head of the armed forces and whose close relative, Maj-Gen Tissa Weeratunge, is chief of the Sri Lankan army.
Could there by anything worse? Oh yes, many things, above all the massacre of innocents, or the beating to death in his cell in Colombo's Welikade prison-where his family naively believed he would be at least safe from mob violence-of the Gandhian leader, Dr S. Rajasundaram. His selfless and brave rehabilitation work among Tamil plantation refugees from earlier upcountry violence in 1979, whom he had helped Conta on page 30

Page 30
30 TAM IL TIMES
Conto from page 29 to settle in the Vavuniya district on state lands, was a great human achievement.
It included the teaching of over 10,000 refugee children in 350 preschools, well-digging, road-building and the provision and the distribution of medical and food suppliessupported by Christian Aid, the World Council of Churches, Novib, Oxfam and Bread for the World-to the village settlements, as they struggled towards self-sufficiency.
A man I am proud to remember as
a friend, Dr Rajasundaram was arrested in April, tortured-uncharged and untried-his orphanage
buildings set on fire by the local
security forces, his offices ransack-, ed, the vehicles which took milkpowder and Triposha to the children
criminalising Tam sentation and to in the eyes of its c and investors (evel selves leeches) is Sinhalese intere Prince was at least with prudence as and at least gain rather than destro stratagans. Instead tioma between Tasma is now governed astrous factors.
First, what has b Tamil Tigers-whi recentipogron, we by the Russians", Tanails the worl levels of commun egy kiad for their in the past, whate
President Jayewardene is well aware tha own policies have helped create the Tige movement; but, having accomplished the murder of its cadres held in custody, he advisers believe, wrongly, that they can eliminate the supposedly demoralised ca
Tamil separation entirely.
of the settlement villages gutted-all this I saw myself in June-and finally, in July, they killed him. ft is today's reward in Sri Lanka for a man who deserved a Nobel Prize for his work for the most needy and downtrodden of the world's works ers, who had fled from the hell of the estate line-rooms. They said he “harboured terrorists"; but, if he did, the whole of Jaffna is guilty SO
However, in President Jayewardene’s case, I will select just one more small item from the infantry of his political conduct. Asked why no inquests had been held after the reprisal massacre of perhaps as many as 100 Jaffna citizens by soldiers on July 23 and 24, President Jayewardene replied: "I didn't know, until a couple of days ago. It's too late now.'
Too late? How too late? Why too late? Can it ever be too late for the truth, for justice? And this is the dharmista Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, neither dhar'- mista, nor democratic, nor socialist, nor really a republic either. More a dictatorial fiefdom, with a violent struggle for the succession already under way, a struggle which has been pushed ahead by the 77-yearold Jayewardene's disastrous misgovernment of the island.
Machiavellianism is the wrong term for it all, as I said earlier, because to wreck the economy further in pursuit of racial vendetta, to delegitimise the whole polity by
strength and nu: which will have in ably in the last w because of the mur of their leaders, lil Jegan-was made vered imaginations as I wrote earlier every striped shad Tiger. In the peria besitter or worse, m shadows will in f Second, there is 8 awesome point fo ture. Every state moral obligation citizan's lives and cannot or does I so-as in the Ca Tamils-then for state's legitimacy, exist.
The mere dema foolishly made amendment to the tion) for a great determination on tion of the citizen the withdrawal ordinary protectic the Constitutionthe overwhelming citizens have not do not intend against that state friend, Lalith. At President of the lawyer and Minis Trade in Jayew may care to consi
 

il political repreiamage Sri Lanka ustomers, bankers n if they are themmot even in the st. Machiavelli’s a man who acted well as cunning: Bd his own ends ying them by his d, the future relais and Sinhalese by new and dis
reelagained by the D, even before the re supported, not but by millions of di over-is new ity support of evaational struggle. ver they lacked in
this
r
ind his
DOW use of
Embers-both of reased considerreeks, despite or ders in detention ce Kuttimani and up for in the feof the Sinhalese; in this journal, ow had become a od to follow, for any more striped act be Tigers.
deeper and more r Sri Lanka's fuhas a legal and to protect its possessions. If it not choose to do e of Sri Lanka’s those citizens the
in effect, ceases to
and in itself (now illegal under an nation's Constituer degree of selfthe part of a secry can never justify from them of the ons of the ław and -particularly when g majority of these taken up arms, and to take up arms, (Perhaps...my old thulathmudali, ex
Oxford Union, a ter of Shipping and ardene's Cabinet, der where the ship
SEPT/OCT 1983
of state he is helping to pilot will end up-if not at the bottom of the Indian Ocean-unless heed is taken.)
Instead, the misguided proscription of the TULF many of whose leaders had forfeited public influence among the Tamils and lost it to the Tigers, precisely because they were seeking a political compromise with the Sinhalese-together with continuous physical attack on the Tamil population has undermined what little political obligation to the Sri Lankan state remained among them. Moreover, to make Tamil fears and Tamil aspirations illegal furthel guarantees the development of the separatist movement and puts a premium on violence; while ensuring the ultimate replacement of TULF moderates, like Amirthalingan, by much more extreme Tamil nationalists, some of them deeply chauvinist themselves, with whom political settlement will be much more difficult for the Sinhalese to achieve in the future.
But these are not really, or not yet, arguments which can persuade the Sinhalese, who are still bent on gradual national suicide. It is a kind of Buddhist hara-kiri. Their plans, cynical and even vicious, are quite different. They are, I am afraid, to continue by terrorisation and expropriation to force the Tamils back into their own Northern ghetto and into a showdown of increasingly open violence, which the Sinhalese believe-rightly-that the Tamils could never win.
Open violence, because the Sri Lankan army is not capable, as MajGen Weeratunge himself unwisely told me, of defeating the Tigers' hit-and-run tactics. However undisciplined (despite its officers' clipped accents and bristling Sandhurst moustaches), it is nevertheless well enough organised to sack, loot and assault the unarmed Tamil population-with the full knowledge and connivance of its higher ranks-in the only kind of struggle a mob army is capable of waging.
Second, since the Sinhalese have never been, and are not now, serious about genuine political concessions to the Tamils ("After all, they are only 11 per cent of the population”) and will not countenance separation, partition -or-even federation, the TULF's deeply embarrassing desire for compromise has had to be continuously thwarted by Sinhalese politicians. In consequence, the TULF has first. been undermined and now been banned altogether. (There is nothing inconsistent about Sinhadese realpolitik.)
Indeed, Jayewardene is well aware that his own policies have helped create the Tiger movement; but, having accomplished the murder of its Contd on page 31

Page 31
Contd from page 30 cadres held in custody, he and his advisers believe, wrongly, that they can now eliminate the supposedly demoralised cause of Tamil separation entirely.
Finally, the officially sanctioned punishment of the civilian Tamil population (which will continue indefinitely in outbreaks of racial violence as long as there are Tamils left on the island) is unlikely to lead to India's direct intervention. However tempting to Mrs Gandhi would be the recovery of her battered political fortunes in Andhra and Karnataka by being proclaimed in Madras the triumphant saviour of the Sri Lankan Tamils, India cannot really intervene decisively as long as there are more than a million Indian Tamil hostages in the upcountry plantations. They could, and would, begin to be put to the sword, at whatever cost-and it would be a huge one to the Sri Lankan economy-as soon as the first reports reached Colombo of an Indian landing on the beaches of Jafna.
As it is, there have been brutal attacks and killings in the recent violence, not only in Colombo, Kandy and Trinco, but also in the estate areas-as always. But it is the linerooms, with their cargoes of helpless plantation slaves, which would burn if the Indians invaded; particularly since so many other potential Tamil scapegoats have now been driven out of Colombo.
So that, in the immediate future, the herding of Tamils into an inိုကြိုး'ဇွိုမှီ isolated and vulnerable Jaffna, Sinhalese physical attack and Tiger reprisal, the Sinhalese colonisation of Tamil lands in the east and the expulsion of earlier plantation refugees settled on the borders of the Northern region in Vavuniya will continue. They will continue, even though wiser Sinhalese are now deeply anxious in private about how to come to terms with legitimate Tamil demands for their own means of self-government and self-defence. Indeed, a few hours before my own expulsion from Sri Lanka on June 24 for "violation of journalistic ethics”, Sirimavo Bandaranaike made plain to me in a long Cunversation, her own recognition of the seriousness of the Tamil struggle and of the need to find a political solution to it.
Moreover, despite seeming Sinhalese unity of purpose in the denial of Tamil demands, the ruling UNP is itself a battlefield. With deep factional divisiопsin its ranks пnade sharper under the pressure of the separatist novement and - with obvious dissarray in the army-where Mrs Bandaranaike's SLFP still has strong support-the anxiety of the Buddhist establishment to find an adequate successor to Jayewardene
Asked w reprisal 100 Jaff Preside until a c
who can guars and cultural heg is growing.
Indeed, the si cession has throughout this OW Chosen Wijewardene, appeared' in a
The only ligh be the continue the "red scare' 'Russians', 'M Sveh parangpi hands” is famili Indian subcont rest, the marty will continue,
T
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* The SATUF heavily relied Today, there speak on the
* The Sri Lan coverage of
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why no inquests had been held after the massacre of perhaps as many as
na citizens by soldiers on July 23 and 24, ht Jayewardene replied: "I didn't know ouple of days ago. It's too late now.'
ntee their political emony in the island
ruggle over the sucbeen intensifying year; Jayewardene’s
has 'displane crash.
t relief to come will i use, and misuse, ot
about "Naxalites', arxists' and so on; a about "foreign ar to students of the inent. But, for the rdom of the Tamils
ings, hitting out at passers-by; who
search for a "final solution' to the "Tamil problem'; and the corruption of the whole discredited Sri Lankan political system will continue with it.
In Jaffna-r was told by a highly placed source in June-soldiers can sometimes be seen standing at the roadside, especiālý ät töusy cross
wipe the blood from their faces and walk or cycle on without murmur, "as if they had become normal".
To have been expelled from such a state is a great honour. Yet it is blood on my face, and your face, too, reader; for we are all, come to think of it, citizens of Jaffna in one way or
as the Sinhalese another.
AMIL TIMES - AN APPEAL
and readers of TAMIL TIMES are well aware of the the Tamil speaking people of Sri Lanka, particularlyafter ave of violence that swept the country like a tornado.
RDAY REVIEW and SUTHAWTHIRAN, the papers we have 'upon for information have been banned by the government. is no other paper to highlight the plight of the Tamils and air behalf except for the Tamil Times.
'kan state-controlled press is biased and anti-Tamil in its news and information.
text, the regular and if finances permit, more frequent f TAMIL 77/MES is of crucial importance. For this purpose, 'e arrangements in regard to printing, news gathering, nod editorial work have to be made.
SADDITIOWAL MONEY WILL BE AREOU/RED.
AL TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS READERS AWD ELL - MV/SIA/EARS FOR THE/A? SUPPORT:
GENEROUS DONATIONS. TO ENROL MORE SUBSCRIBERS. (OUR SUBSCRIPTIONS PROMPTLY. S ADDRESSES OF THOSE WHO MGHT BE TED IN TAML TMES.
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Page 32
32 TAMIL TIMES
TESTING TIME FOR TA
''A HOUSE DIVIDED
SVA SNGHAM The recent events have had a profound effect on every Tamil who traces his roots to that unhappy country wherever he may be at this moment. Wherever he may be, he is certainly more secure than any Tamil now in Sri Lanka. But, it is a time to suppress one's emotions, a time to reflect. Reflection must lead to reSolution: resolution to action. Successive Sri Lankan Governments have shown themselves incapable or unwilling to secure the livelihood, property and lives of the Tamil speaking peoples. Elements within these Governments have been actively involved with the mobs which have sought, at periodic intervals, to terrorise the Tamil population in the South: more recently these elements have set up the security forces to carry out the same objective in the Tamil homelands of the North. The Sinhala politicians have consistently used the Tamils as whipping boys in their power Struggles: it is a depressing but ineScapable fact that their Governments cannot be relied upon to guarantee the fundamental rights of the Tamils or indeed any other minority in Sri Lanka. By using the security forces to extends the terrorism upon the Tamils the present Government has only succeeded in creating a new Frankenstein force in Sri Lanka, the threat of military dictatorship. The forces have tasted power without accountability, they will not forget its sweetness. The Tamil-Speaking Peoples are not a nation of terrorists. The Sinhala politicians are seeking, with all the resources of the State at their command, to spread abroad a picture of the Tamils as latter day invaders, greedy for more than theit share of the land and of the economy, and willing to indulge in mindless killing and destruction to achieve their ends. This false propaganda exploits emotive arguments aimed to strike a sympathetic response in a country to which terrorism and separation are anathema. We must counter this false propaganda with the truth: we must expose the true terrorists in the South who parade around with cans of petrol setting alight innocent Civilians; we must expose the true separatists who would drive the Tamils into the North and East and would create a slave state in reality whilst denying to these peoples their right to self-determination. This is a testing time for the Tamil Speaking Peoples of Sri Lanka. This is a moment to draw breath and to think clearly.and rationally: an opportunity to broaden our horizons, to eliminate once and for all the narrow vision which has afflicted a community riven by selfish
ness, jealousy and eg have we cynically acc bility and permanence our society.
Our suffering is a cleaf must be used to cau ignoble in our though for too long have t shackled us to the g should be soaring abc tis incomprehensible under siege, its prope under physical threa should be so divided makes the spectacle C organisations in this CC
sible to the Tamils bewildering to an outs
to question the creder claim for justice when by group after group, other and each claimin fight a cause which is in its native land. A house divided will r So, my first request, moderate without an Service in the Tamil c amongst the Tamil-Sp this country. We have muscle of that othere munity undersiege, th we have proved to mental strength; wer days to come that W indomitable courage, mination not to yield i | call upon the numer now working in this together and pledge til their identities and body, a Conference C Peoples which will ex tive energy to overcor and hardship of ou Lanka; to ensuring, fi peoples, security and years to come. Several of these grou against heavy odds build viable structures be loath to lose the identities. I would ask their objectives and th Would they say, in all have achieved all they they not have a better under one umbrellaw the finger of calumny neighbour but all work mise the utilisation « sources? Aloose federation oft is not enough. We mu nisation which speaks
 

SEPT/OCT 1983
MLS OF SRI LANKA
WILL NO STAND''
pism. Fortoo long epted the inevitaof these factors in
nsing flame which uterise all that is hts and attitudes: nese deficiencies ground when we ove the clouds.
that a community rty destroyed and t of a final kind, : perhaps history f so many minute untry comprehen
themselves; it is ider who is forced
htials of the Tamil he is confronted denigrating each g a unique right to rapidly being lost
not stand. as a non-political y track record of ause, is for unity peaking People in not the financial xample of a come Jews; but I hope have some of its must prove in the se Can match its its dogged detern adversity. ous organisations country to come hemselves to sink form one united if Tamil-Speaking ert all their collecning the suffering brethren in Sri or these suffering prosperity in the
os have struggled over the years to they will naturally ir carefully built them to reflect on eir achievements. honesty, that they aimed for? Would hance of doing so here no one points or derision at his together to maxif our limited re
he splinter groups st have one orgawith one voice. It
must command the respect of world opinion, international organisations and national governments. The Ruling Council will be representative of respected and mature Tamil opinion, of our womenfolk, and of our youth. The elected representatives of our people in Sri Lanka must be members of the Conference. Democratic consultation at the grass roots must be a prerequisite for major decisions: few stray individuals should not be allowed to sway the Council into actions which do not reflect the majority view. Some of the present groups have been set up with specific objectives; the identity of these objectives need not be lost in the unified Conference. I envisage a Secretariat with divisions for planning, information, construction, rehabilitation, and so on. The present groups will form the nuclei for these divisions. Consonant with this unification we should work towards organising this same unity in the US, India, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Africa and all the places where Sri Lankan Tamils have sought to build new homes away from the approaching holocaust in their homeland. The National Conferences in the various countries will be integrated in a World Conference of Tamil-Speaking Peoples which will eventually have a Secretariat and a structure reflecting the structure of the national bodies. The frail individual reeds must be bound into a cohesive strong ark to set afloat the highest aspirations of the Tamil-Speaking People. Unity must be the first objective and its importance cannot be over stressed. We must have the enthusiasm and strength to set aside cynicism, to transform our individuality from a weakness into ou strength, to combine the rich diversity of talents amongst our people into a powerful tool for the furtherance of our aspirations. A word of warning is necessary. We should not think in terms of grandiose Conference Centres and other exhibitions of conspicuous consumption: they will be costly monuments to our egoism: they will represent the waste of valuable and scarce resources which could have been better used where they are sorely needed. The organisation should be simple and informal, at least until such time as it develops significantly: the need for using paid full-time workers Will come later. Having set unity as our first goal, we identify the next. This is clearly a definition of our objectives in a charter which will polarise our struggle and will serve Contd on page 33

Page 33
SEPT/OCT 1983
Contcl from page 32
as a touchstone to revive the flagging of our enthusiasm in the years to come (for, let there be no doubt about this, the struggle will be long, hard and often dispiriting). The Charter must be all embracing. It should provide for: Freedom from tyranny and repression: the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, caste and the other divisive elements in our society. This is the first of the fundamental rights which will draw and keep us together; we should not only protect these freedoms from outside attacks but also eliminate threats to them from within our own society. The scavenger is as precious as the Jaffna Tamil descended from the ancient kings, the "Indian' Tamil is the equal of the indigenous Tamil: the Tamil-speaking Muslim is our brother in adversity, we want him to remain so in prosperity. No one is a traitor because he chooses to earn his livelihood within the Sinhalese community. - A Master Plan to develop the traditional homelands of the Tamils in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka: this will Cover the construction of a proper infra-structure, the provision of centres of industry and agriculture, the provision of opportunities for investment and employment, and the establishment of self-contained communities sustained by and sustaining the centres of productivity. Those of us with expertise in the appropriate fields will assist in designing the Plan. - Educational opportunities for our able young people at secondary school, university and research levels: these will cover the total spectrum of our community's needs under the Master Plan and will provide for scholarships abroad as well as centres of professional and technical education in the Tamil area. - A commitment on the part of all Tamils abroad as well as in Sri Lanka to channel a fixed proportion, say5% of all earnings, into a massive Central Fund to generate the income necessary to further the objectives of the Conference. The investment and management of these funds will be entrusted to a board of trustees of proven ability and probity. - A commitment on the part of all Tamils abroad as wel as in Sri Lanka to devote cune holiday in every Cycle of say four years to voluntary community and development work in the homelands. - A world-wide compaign to obtain a commitment and a guarantee that the property and lives of the Tamil-Speaking Peoples in Sri Lanka will be held inviolate and that the persecution of the last 35 years will cease: alternatively, or in addition, a commitmenton the part of friendly Governments and/or international organisations that they will intervene positively if there is a recurrence of mob
violence. This co to the success ( must be emphasi Such a commitml Our threatened CC option but to reso for self-protectio Cuences this wol There would bes - to assist toward. development of th ture and way of - tO meet the socia nity by providing f entertainment, th the special needs should be met; - to publicise wor and adequate way the set objective assistance: the exi well be part of t communication S I have deliberately political objective SSary to attain th paper for a numb - time is not with u will take time to means employed: diate, the machine be set up now; - world opinion is must channel thi fades away; we n survival and its gr We need funds on a local and individu reach these now: \ readily forthcomin not until the next - the objectives do are basic and acce in Sri Lanka anc objective is not nece ment, nOr Will their such an objective. This is not the
discuss the detai World Conferefice
However, would matters which are plea for future act
Our community is history as a targetf that a serious stud other groups and C about solving pro should be carried Armenians, the ris tion a few, have va so too have religio within relatively st wel organised anc We must identifyth will guarantee our
would like to ref which many mayfi
present time. I refel

mmitment is essential if the Master Plan: it sed to the world that if nt is not forthcoming immunity will have no rt to its own measures with all the conseild entail. econdary objectives: ; the maintenance and e Tamil language, culfe;
needs of the commuacilities for gatherings, 2 arts, travel and so on: of younger members
ld-wide in an effective purprogress in meeting S, and our needs for sting newspaper could he machinery of this ystem.
avoided references to s and the means neceese objectives in this er of reasons: s: any political solution achieve, whatever the our needs are immery outlined above must
now on our side: we s sympathy before it must not prejudice its owth by hasty action: ninternational, national, ual level and we can we may not find aid so g in the future, at least pogrom; balt with in this letter ptable to every Tamil outside: a political assary for their achievepursuit interfere with
appropriate place to
led structure of the and its National Units.
like to refer to some 2 of relevance to any ion.
not unique in world pr repression. believe y of the way in which :ommunities have Set oblems akin to ours
out. The Kurds, the
sh, the Jews, to menluable lessons for us: ius sects which have nort periods become
financially viable. ose ingredients which
OW SUCC8SS.
er to another matter nd unpalatable at the rto the majority of the
TAMIL TË MES 33
Sinhalese other than the politicians and the mobs: many of these have worked without thought of personal danger to seek out and Succour the Tamils who suffered at the hands of the mobs. Many of them have expressed their shame that the persecution has happened. Let us say to all these friends: we appreciate your help; we value your friendship. Your politicians will never permit our peaceful coexistence in the South: we will continue to be subjected to mob fury in ever shortening cycles; this is no way to live. Please help us to develop our traditional areas and to create security and prosperity for our peoples. Please ask your politicians to withdraw the
marauding army terror from the North
and to permit the people in that Zone to live without fear of looting, rape, assault and arson. If licences are required to develop the Northern and Eastern areas please assist us to obtain these. We are citizens of one country: please ask your Government to match investment whether by a Sinhalese or a Tamil rupee for rupee: we will build a secure and prosperous Sri Lanka together. The enrichment of any part of Sri Lanka must enrich the whole: the destruction of any part will likewise diminish that whole. Let us work together: the alternative is mutual destruction where we will be easy prey to one or other of the power blocs.
The plan of action proposed above calls for a considerable commitment of time, effort and money from all Tamils in Sri Lanka as well as abroad. Are we capable of rising to this challenge? If we do not, the alternative is certain oblivion for the Tamil-Speaking People in Sri Lanka; the destruction of all those special facets which make up the distinctive Tamil society, culture and community in that country. Those of us who have made homes outside Sri Lanka will no longer have a focus of identity: our Tamil identity will certainly be lost in a few generations. We must look to the lessons of history: advanced civilizations and cultures have succumbed to those less developed but which have been more aggressive: they die through war or simply through social and cultural disintegration. We must not let this happen to us.
We must mobilise the support of all Tamils, the cultured and compassionate Sinhalese and the rest of the world. We must inform and convince. Each of us is an advocate of the common cause. If each Tamil in this country is able to enlighten 50 people comprising his circle of friends and acquaintances, whether at his work-place, place of worship, his local pub or elsewhere, the number of people aware of the true facts and sympathetic to our cause will form a multitude.
Contdon page 34

Page 34
54 AMIL TIMES
Contd from page 28 is much enmity between the two communities. There is no one in the country on either side who talks of Sri Lankans. They only talk about Sinhalese and Tamils - from the highest in the land to the lowest. The fact that during times of communal troubles the Government itself sends Tamils from the South to the Tamil areas and Sinhalese from the North to Sinhalese areas is a tacit admission that there are these two separate areas where the two communities feel safe - except that the Tamils no longer feel safe in their areas because of the acts of the 'army of occupation'.
R. Myudganah
of hundreds of home There must be sor heard that some oft been the victims of not surprising that r has come from one Does not their sile Condone such viole their sense of brot Where has the me the National Anth mean, "we shall liv mother gone now words in the first fl
S. CROYDON, SUR
NOTA WORD OF SYMPATHY
May I use the columns of your newspaper to draw readers' attention to one significant omission on the part of the Sinhalese to the violence in Sri Lanka seems to be one of condoning the atrocities perpetrated on the Tamils. Not one letter of sympathy or condolence has appeared in any of the daily newspapers. Surely there must be some at least who realise the untold sufferings of the Tamils and the destruction
Contd from page 33 Lobbying may be a nasty word but necessary now: we must pay particular attention to persons who can contribute significantly to our objectives; if they are friends that will be all the more helpful. The International organisations, the legislatures of the East and the West, of Japan and Africa, must all be alerted to the threat now hanging over the TamilSpeaking Peoples of Sri Lanka.
will conclude with a personal view. I believe that the steps formulated in this paper can and must be taken irrespective of the shape of any political struggle. A planned programme for development of the traditional homelands in the North and East of Sri Lanka, using our own international organisation, should be carried out together with a campaign to obtain international guarantees of our fundamental rights which should include the protection of property and people from the security forces as well as the mobs.
believe that an extreme political struggle will sacrifice at least a generation without a guarantee of success: we have only to Consider the struggles for feedom around the world to realize this truth.
have a dream of our homelands transformed from virgin jungle and arid plains to flourishing farmlands and industrial belt by the turn of this century. Have we the courage and determination to translate this dream into reality? I do not wish to visit a Vietnam or Lebanon on our motherland. I wish for dignity with prosperity and security: not for dignity in a wasteland
WHY NOT WILLAGE?
Dear Editor,
With the recent outh Tamils, especially th a sole breadwinner either by the death destruction of the have all heard of the red by many living hamlets of the nort vinces. The Tamils abroad better standard of riots back home. It is us outside Sri Lank groups, like those in don, for example, ar district back home. groups like these in and of the USA : helped to build sch We could help in a paying for childrer outbreaks of viole education, if necess libraries or medical and crafts centres, It would be good if r could respond posit
Bromley, Kent.
SNHALA BF
BUDDHST W.
Some Sinhalese cl violence was due Soldiers in the nori enough. But didn't stopa bus load of ol women and kill then lsn't that revenge en they took off their south, called on thi who can unfortunate penny in that part of hunting. Innocent c old people were killec in true Sinhala bravel attack one Tamil fam

sand business houses. ne who have seen or heir Tamil friends have this massacre; yet is it lot one voice of protest Sinhalese living abroad? nce indicate that they nce? Have they all lost herly love? aning of the words in em, which translated fe as children of one Were they only mere ush of lndependence? S.MANIAM (MISS) REY.
sponsor A
burst of violence, many ose who depended on have lost everything of the provider or by ittle they owned. We massive losses incurin the villages and hern and eastern pro
lead a comparatively ife than their compat; worthwhile if those of a can join together in Harrow or in Wimblehd sponsor a village or In the missionary era, various parts of the UK adopted villages and ools, hospitals, etc.
variety of ways, e.g. orphaned by these nce to obtain higher sary in India, building centres, starting arts etC. eaders of Tam Times tively to these ideas.
Mrs. R.Aru
RAVERY OR AY OF JUSTICE
aim that the recent to the killing of 13 th by the tigers. Fair the army soon after, Jd people, children and hat point blank range. ough? Oh Nol instead uniforms, went down eir lliterate brothers, ely be found two for a the lsland, and went ;hildren, women and land properties burnt. ashion 200 Sinhalese hily. Recently in Ams
SEPT/OCT 1983
terdam 200 Sinhalese burnt down a Dutch family's house because they had two Tamil boarders. My God! Do you Sinhalese need 200 of your kind to sort out 2 Tamils? Is this Sinhala bravery or is it the Buddhist way of justice.
Some of the Sinhalese soliders were trained by the crack British SAS and some by the Israeli army. Both are well known for their efficiency and competence. Yet these people cannot catch a small band of tigers. in English they have a saying 'you can take a donkey to the water hole but you cannot make it drink.
The Tigers neve laida hand on the innocent Sinhalese who lived up in the North. If
were a Sinhalese I will crawl into a shoe box and stay there for the rest of my life. in the late 19th century, when Saudi Arabia was a poverty stricken desert peninsula and when the tribes used to raid each other's tents, they would never lay a hand on women and children. To touch or harm them would be haram, a shameful thing. I don't know the solution to the problem in that beautiful Island of ours but I say one thing to my Tamil brothers, don't walk in front of a Sinhalese if you can help it, or else you may end up dead. To you Muslim friends a word of warning. they got us today and they will come for you tomorrow.
A Reader. London SW9.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Dear Sir, This is an hour of disaster for the Tamils; but also an hour of opportunity. Three decades of political violence, one decade of military violence, and now unprecedented mob violence supported by the politicos and security forces Enough is enough! The silver lining on this cloud is that Tamils will return to the North and East (and those able will go abroad) to build up the future state - whether within a federal set-up or independently. The Tamils in Colombo in a sense were holding the North and East hostage. Now the North and East will feel more free, and gladly welcome all who return from their southern captivity. They went there, partly because all the opportunities were in the South, due to the official neglect of the North and East, and the political appropriations for the South of all resources, foreign aid, jobs, educational opportunities, etc. Sri Lanka as we knew it is no more, just as Ceylon as the British knew it is no more. The expatriate Tamils have to organise themselves to build up the North and East. if a future state is to be viable. Eelam, when it appears, will be bigger than 20 to 30 naions which are already in the United Nations, and it will have a more literate Cont. On page 35

Page 35
LSLSLSLSLSLSL LLLLL CSLSLSLSLSLSL
IN REMEMBRANCE T.J. RAJARATNAM (JAYAM)
17
Retired High Court Judge, born 23.1.1919. Called to rest 15.9.1981. Not a day do we forget you, in our hearts you are always there as we loved you so, we miss you. Sadly missed and lovingly remembered always by daughter Renuka, Son-law Sriharn, grand-daughter Jayanthy, 50, Coningsby Road, London W.5.
Contd from page 34
population than more than half the nations in the UN. Some people, including religious dignitatries, still speak of the priveleges enjoyed by the Tamils' They do not see the political violence of the majority during the last three decades, a political violence which has now become military violence, both of which tranforming into mob violence. The counter-violence from the North is a feeble cry from the heart of the youth who cannot stand such combined exploitation of Tamil resources, labour and know-how.
C. Arulanantham
London SE6
ANT-T
It is essenti atrocities co, It is importal the people c number and security forc other relevan There are a fa the atrocitie subjected
All those W. requested to Will be treate will it be us permission o Al communi
Wanamunumo Cont. Tom page 25 this violence beca Story about the shc in Jaffna. On the V. 5O people were shi the soldiers, no sto in the newspapers television so that t goaded on to furth death of these sold kept in the dark ab O. Would you like |long-term political
mind?
Dear Sir,
In the wake of the recent pogrom directed against the Tamils of Sri Lanka, Tamils in every walk of life all over the world have made attempts to organise assistance to their sticken brethren. More than ever the Tamils have begun to rally behind their youth who have over the years made enormous sacrifice to resist oppression and maintain our honour. There is unprecendented unity among the Tamils on that one score. That unity has to be harnessed towards the achievement of our objectives. A resistance movement is nothing without mass support from the people. This support, the youth will acknowledge, has been enormous in recent times. The greatest danger to that support would come from factional fighting among the youth. Worse still is killing each other to the delight of our oppressor.
and apathy would soon return.
It is not necessary that all Tamils should operate as one group or one party. This Would be un realistic and unWorkable. But so long as their perceived objective is that of emancipating their people from tyranny they should concentrate all their efforts
The people would lose heart; indifference.
STOP FACTIONAL FIGHTIN.
and resources on fighting each other rences. Sivar irunth yafaan. It is foolis content and backg not have the canva It is imperative th different factions in this. Let them wo have to. Let them c ties at an accepta It is foolish to talk at background when canvas nor the pair It is imperative th different factions in this. Let them work to. Let them co-ord an acceptable level nal purposes. Yaar aakavernum' is the people. If they fail te the goal of emanci goal incidentally ov equally committed) much further away.
G. Muthuthambi Wimbledon, London
 

AMIL VIOLENCE, JULY 1983
l, for several reasons, to collect data concerning the mmitted against the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. it that every detail, including the nature of the incident r property affected the place where it occurred the type of people who perpetrated the crime, whether the as were involved any deaths or infuries caused and all t circumstances surrounding the incidents are recorded rge number of expatriate Tamils who possess details of s to which their kith and kin or their friends were
ho are in possession of such information are kindly sent it to the address given below. All information given d in the strictest confidence. Under no circumstances ed for any purpose whatsoever without the express f the person who supplied the information.
cations to."
TAMIL DOCUMENTATION CENTRE P.O.BOX 208, LONDON WC1 N3ON.
use they published the loting of the 13 soldiers ery next day when over ptand killed in Jaffna by Dry was ever published or put Out Over radio or he Sinhala people were er action to avenge the iers because they were }out this.
2 to elaborate on the solution you have in
G
that goal and not in
• over ideological diffeaalthaan Sithiram varah to talk about colour, round when one does is nor the paints. at the leaders of the 'the movement realise rk separately if they 0-Ordinate theiractivible level required for but colour, content and one does not have the
htSat the leaders of the the movement realise separately if they have inate their activities at required for operatiokuthiyanaalum arisee aspiration of the Tamil o grasp that basic fact, pating the Tamils (the ter which they are all would be pushed that
| SW 2O.
A. As I have said, we have got a mandate and we have put that forward and, as explained earlier, we arrived at that abjective through a long process of broken promises, humiliation and attacks and being treated as a subject race. It is not open to us to go back on that mandate and unilaterally give it up and ask for something else. President Jayawardene's statement that if we want to get another mandate he will hold by-elections is absolute nonse, se because we have placed a definite policy |and the people had supported that. If we are to give that up and go before the people we should be able to place something before them.
Acceptable Solution lf at the negotiating table, through India's good offices, we arrive at a solution which is acceptable to us and which we can recommend to our people as capable of removing the grievances under which they have been suffering, we will certainly go back to our people. As an honest political party we will not go back on the mandate they gave but ask the people to accept it and thereby get their democratic ratification of the action we have taken. This is what have been saying. I think reasonable people can see that we cannot do anything else short of political chicanery. lf an alternative that is acceptable to us and which is acceptable to our people and, as said which is capable of removing the grievances which gave rise to all these and which is capable of meeting the aspirations of our people is worked out, they will certainly accept it. I think the Tamil people are reasonable, and particularly with the Indian interest coming in, they will be assured that there will be a continuing certainty of that being carried out; therefore, we can persuade them to accept it.

Page 36
36 TAM L TIMES
NO LOCAL GOVT IN TAMIL AR
All Municipal and Urban Councils in which the TULF obtained a majority at the local authority elections are now facing a serious crisis. These councils have become defunct because of recent political developrmentS. A series of amendments to the Local Authorities Elections Ordinance, Local Authorities Special Provisions Law and Consequential amendments to the Municipal Councils Ordinance and Urban Councils Ordinance are being contemplated by the Local Government Department to remedy the situation. The present state of affairs ensued as a result of the TULF members refusing to take the oath disavowing separatism under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. The Jaffna, Batticaloa Municipal Councils and the Chavakachcheri, Valvettithurai, Point Pedro, Vavuniya and Trincomalee Urban Councils are those facing the crisis at present. Matters are also complicated in the cases of Jaffna, Valvettithurai, Point Pedro and Chavakachcherias these councils were defunct on 31.8.1983 following a prolonged absence of three months by the elected members. All elected members refused to assume office because ofth reats, |by militant groups.
Although rate-payers in these local authorites are yet to feel the pinch as the basic amenities are being provided, these councils,
are facing a problem in and maintaining servic Since tender formalitic any purchases or pri than Rs. 1 , 5OO approva tenders have come to a works are being initiat drawing up of budgets year are paralysed as require a large period approval. The dissolution of the appointment of Spec and Special Officers a these councils are now fore cannot be dissolv The problem is more a Urban Councils than the as the present laws pro tive powers of the Ma the Commissioner in while it is not possible Councils.
Contd from page 2 rogation be introduce rence of torture. * Regular medical ex ducted on suspects. * Government review medies to protect Sri L tOrture. * Government estab
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APPADURA - NAVAM -
Mr. J.N.Appadurai-Navam passed away in Colombo on 9th July.
Educated at Jaffna College, Navam graduated privately and joined the Social Services Department where he became an Assistant Director. He retired early and joined International Voluntary Service where his interest and devotion to the social services were perhaps even better recognised than in his native country. He travelled a good deal with the I.V.S. and continued to help that institution from Colombo even after giving up full-time work. He also found the time and energy to work for the Church in Ceylon. in fact, he continued doing all this to his dying day. He leaves behind his wife, Rubina nee Hensman, and four daughters.
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Page 37
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Page 40
SEPT/OCl 1983
DISTRICTM/W/STER
SINHALA “NVASIO
A mass Sinhala "invasion" of Tamil villages in the Batticaloa District is under way under the direct supervision of Mr. Nelson,
MP for Polonnaruwa and District Minister
for Trincomalee, with active support from government agencies. The indigenous Tamil villagers have been driven out oand over 20,000 Sinhalese have been 'settled' in these areas within a matter of weeks.
invaders are increasing daily. Sinhalese from Polonnaruwa, Kotmale and other parts of the island have been transported in lorries belonging to the Mahavel Development Authority. Food provisions, vegetables and other necessities for the invaders' are also being transported in state-owned vehicles. Mr. Abdul Majeed, District Minister for Batticaloa and MP for Muthur has resigned in protest following his failure to halt the
Pathmanathan, MP for Pottuvil (sister ot the late M.P., Mr. Kanagaratnam) has been
The "Invasion" began in earnest led by Mr. Nelson on September 4. First 750 Sinhalese invaded the village of Vadamunai, and chased away the villagers with the full support of the security forces. The attempt by the Assistant Government Agent of the area to persuade them to heave was a total failure. During the following days, more and more intruders arrived and occupied the villages of Vadamunai, Madavanai, Kallichchi, Kiran and other nearby areas after forcibly driving away the Tamil inhabitants. Fearing violence, thousands of Tamils from adjoining villages also have evacuated their homes and area now living as refugees in BattiCaloa. Efforts are being made by some government ministers and state institutions to make this illegal occupation permanent. The tents supplied by some foreign countres and international relief agencies to help the Tamil refugees, the victims of the July violence, are now used to provide shelter for the "invading" Sinhalese. Over 3000 tents have been set up and it is learnt arrangements are being made to build more permanent accommodation. Temporary police stations, a number of retail shops and other facilities are being set up to serve the "invaders'. Food provisions and other necessary items are being transported in bulk in vehicles belonging to the Mahaveli Development Authority. Buddhist vihares headed by monks ar springing up like mushrooms. It is reported that the pieas of Mr. K.W. Devanayagam, Minister of Home Affairs and MP for Kalkudah, requesting that the "invaders" be removed, have been ignored. The invasion' countinues with more and
more arriving daily ir Much in evidence a hordes are Buddhist Cyril Mathews Sinh
The fact that facilit Development Authc rously made availab suggests that it enjo
Published Printed by Mod
 

sEPT/OC 1983
RES/G/VS/W PROTEST
N OF BATTCALOA
coaches and lorries. Mr.Gamini Dissanayake, the Minister in,
mong the "invading" charge of the Mahaveli project.
monks belonging to Besides the prospect of losing their own ala Sangvidanaya. lands, the Tamil people in the affected
areas in particular and the Batticaloa Disties of the Mahaveli trict as a whole are fearful of the danger the rity are being gene- invading force', with the assistance of the le for this `invasion” security forces, will mount a violent attack ys the fullbacking of upon defenceless Tamils in the area.
/HA FUAY OA
Á '/') (X, ) { f/A 1 AÆ ()
State-owned buses filled with petrol were to burn down the Muthu Mariamman
1u Temple at Matale, Sri Lanka, on 28th July
1983 by Sinhalese mobs. Kr
y Tamil Times Ltd. P.O. Box 304, London W139 O. N. 2rn Offset Litho Ltd. Unit A6 426 Long Drive Greenford
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