A teenage girl, Chitra Rajendran, deported by the Danish authorities, was arrested in Colombo. This created a furor in Denmark, with newspapers and human rights groups protesting strongly against Denmark’s decision to deport her.

The students and teachers, at the school where Chitra studied, launched a campaign on her behalf, and nine journalists from Denmark flew to Sri Lanka to report on her case. She was interviewed by Troels Aagaard of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s foreign desk.

Chitra was taken into custody at her uncle’s residence in Dehiwela soon after this, and later her uncle and his son, with whom she was staying were also arrested. The media, including the foreign journalists, were barred from any contact with Chitra on the orders of the IGP.

The police then interrogated and searched four of the Danish journalists at their hotel rooms. Later they were taken into custody, and detained at the Beach Way Hotel, Mt. Lavinia, under heavy police guard. The Danish Consul-General tried to contact them at the hotel and was told that they were sleeping. The wife of one of the journalists became frantic, and the Consul-General contacted a lawyer, who too was unable to make contact with the detained journalists.

In the evening the lawyer was notified by the Defense Department, that these journalists would be deported. No reason was provided for the deportation. The same night the journalists were packed off in a British Airways flight.

JR DEAD

Junius Richard Jayewardene, former President of Sri Lanka, died on Nov. 1, at age 90.

He was elected Prime Minister in 1977, quickly changed his office to that of a Executive President, and ruled the country for 11 years. While in office, he proclaimed himself the 204th ruler of Sri Lanka in an "unbroken line" that included King George III and Queen Victoria!

He ruled the island like a dictator. He stripped the leader of the opposition, Mrs. Bandaranayake of her civil rights, and extracted undated resignation letters from his own party parliamentarians, so that none of them could act against him.

It was during his regime that a low level insurgency by a few disaffected Tamil youths metamorphosed into a full scale war that is raging today. This was highlighted in every obituary written about him outside Sri Lanka.London based, The Independent said, "Junius Jayewardene began his career at a time when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, was often referred to as the ‘Switzerland of the East’ and finished it when that same island had become a byword of terror, abuse of human rights and many other things distinctly undemocratic." The New York Times said, "He seemed oblivious to the violence and instability around him."

Throughout his career JR worked towards an ethnically and religiously pure island nation of Sinhala Buddhists. He was the first to propose Sinhala to be the only official language in the State Council but failed at that time to muster enough support. When SWRD proposed it again in 1956 JR supported it wholeheartedly. But when SWRD wanted to grant some "concessions" to the Tamils he spearheaded the Kelaniya-to-Kandy protest march. In the 1977 constitution, that he authored, he not only entrenched Sinhala to be the only official language, but made Buddhism the only state protected religion as well.

He deceived the Tamils at every turn. His 1977 election manifesto proclaimed that Tamils had specific problems and pledged to remedy them, just to garner the Tamil votes. Once returned to power with Tamil support he unleashed his army on Jaffna, got the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act passed, and was responsible for a series of anti-Tamil riots culminating in the pogrom of 1983.

His statement to the Daily Telegraph just prior to the holocaust of 1983 is imbedded indelibly in the Tamil mind. "I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna (Tamil) people... Now we can’t think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us... The more you put pressure on them, the happier the Sinhala people will be... really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy."

What he did after was even worse. As The New York Times put it, when the riots broke out "Mr. Jayewardene, a Sinhalese Buddhist, inexplicably withdrew from sight and did nothing to stop the violence." When he finally reappeared on television he blamed the victims for it. The International Commission of Jurists report on this is also unforgettable. It said, "In the course of that address, the President did not see fit to utter one single word of sympathy for the victims of the violence and destruction which he lamented. If his concern was to reestablish communal harmony in the Island, whose national unity he was so anxious to preserve by law, that was a misjudgment of monumental proportions."

Even the usually anti-Tamil Ceylon Observer had this to say about JR’s methods - "It was this kind of mindless repression which led to the monumental growth of the LTTE and its hold on the Tamil imagination."

Remembrance for A Racist --
Anagarika Dharmapala

A series of meetings were held on Sep. 16 and 17 by the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) of Sri Lanka to commemorate the 132nd birthday of Anagarika Dharmapala.

Dharmapala was a Sinhala Buddhist supremacist who was active during the early 20th century. Dharmapala was an effective and articulate exponent of Sinhala chauvinism based on the "superiority" of the "Aryan" Sinhalese.

In his preachings Dharmapala denigrated the non-Sinhala inhabitants of the Island, and set in motion a vicious pattern which other Sinhala leaders were to follow. The myth of Duttagemunu was used by Dharmapala to celebrate the "Sinhala Aryans of yore uncontaminated by Semitic and savage ideas".

In 1915, he directed his attack against the Muslims by calling them "an alien people (who) by Shylockian methods have become prosperous like the Jews" .

A Presidential Slip

At a recent meeting with officials in Colombo President Kumaratunga said that, if the LTTE attacks Buddhist temples, she will personally go out and attack Tamils in Colombo, and cited Maharajahs as an example of who she would attack.

A Tamil official was present at this meeting, and he was embarrassed by this outburst. The president, however, quickly recovered. Focusing her attention on the Tamil official, she said, "that does not include friends like you.

The Sunday Leader, commenting on this said, "Kumaratunga gave an insight into her true feelings... the statement she made was of such explosive nature and embarrassing [that] it would make all proponents of the peace package, who were singing Kumaratunga’s praises as the angel of peace, squirm in shame!"

A Failed PR Exercise

A government attempt to use Asiaweek for a propaganda exercise failed. Ron Gluckman, an Asiaweek contributor based in Hong Kong, was invited by the Sri Lanka government to spend 20 days with President Kumaratunga, in the hope that the magazine would publish an article in her favor. But the published article painted a ruinous picture of Chandrika and the state of her country.

Chandrika expressed her anger at Asiaweek, at a meeting of leading businessmen in Colombo. At this meeting she complained about the fact that she had spent 20 days with "this chap" and provided all sorts of facilities, but he ended up being so disparaging.

Gluckman’s article, titled "Life under siege" discusses her tardiness, rumors about her indiscretions, her failure to solve the ethnic problem, and the collapse of the country’s economy. He concludes his article with the following –

"I got a glimpse of how much this regime’s appeal is slipping at the president’s own home. Kumaratunga hosted a party for 150 of Sri Lanka’s most influential lawyers and one visiting reporter. The lawyers were among her biggest supporters in elections two years ago, yet I was soon surrounded by a hissing mob. ‘The lady has lost her grip,’ says one visitor. Adds his friend: ‘The president is ineffective. She has become our biggest problem.’ Surely this was not what the president had in mind earlier in the day, when she told me: ‘These are my most loyal supporters. It will be good for you to hear what they say.’ It is one more case of bad judgment for Sri Lanka’s bad-luck president."

Political Violence

Terrorism as a political weapon is not new to the Sinhala people. It started in 1956 with Tamil politicians being mauled by Sinhala thugs under the watchful eye of the then Prime Minister. Having found no mass outcry when the Tamils were beaten up, Sinhala leaders started using it against their own kind. During Premadasa’s regime political killings were endemic.

No Sinhala leader, however, has promoted violence publicly – until, of course, the daughter of the Prime Minister who used it first came along.

At a speech in Veyangoda on Sep 15, President Kumaratunge is reported to have said, "those who attacked PA supporters in Negombo should be sliced up!", referring to an incident where her supporters were shot at 3 weeks previously.

In a bloodletting that followed the President’s speech, six UNP leaders and one bystander were killed in three separate incidents.

Lanka Guardian commenting on these killings said, "The targeting of UNPers is not a local, provincial or regional phenomenon, but a national one. Therefore it cannot but be the outcome of a general policy sanctioned by those at the top of the power heap."

How a Tamil became Lalith’s Assassin

A key witness told the commission probing the assassination of Lalith Athulathmudali that the police forced him to identify the body of Ragunathan found on Mugalan Road as that of the assassin. The witness, A.G. Premadasa, was the DUNF organizer for Kirulapona, and was on the stage with Lalith when the killing took place.

He testified at the hearing that senior police officers forced him to sign the statement. He said, "I identified myself as the person who chaired the DUNF meeting and was therefore given permission to look at the body. I looked at the body for about 5 minutes and senior police officers such as the ASPs and the SPs who were present exerted pressure on me to state that the dead body found at Mugalan Road was that of the assassin."

"I told them that the assassin was not dark and thin, like this body. He had a tan complexion. I further told them that the assassin was wearing a light blue shirt, while the dead person was wearing a T-shirt."

He said he was surrounded by "about 7 - 8 police officers", and one of them, "SSP Ronnie Gunasinghe, forced me to identify the body as that of the assassin."

The autopsy report on Ragunathan’s body, that he died of cyanide poisoning, has also been proved to be lie. The autopsy was conducted by Dr. Lalantha de Alwis, the senior Judicial Medical Officer in Colombo. He reported that pieces of glass were found in Ragunathan’s mouth and that he was able to smell the cyanide (smell of almonds). Ms. Mahesan, a government analyst, testified at the commission’s hearing that there was no trace of cyanide in the tissue and other samples sent to her.

Murders Within the Army

The army created to destroy the Tamil freedom movement is cannibalizing its own kind.

Corporal Yapa Mudiyanselage Vipulasiri Banda, a witness at the Kobbekaduwa Assassination Commission, testified that several of his colleagues were tortured and killed by officers attached to the army’s intelligence division, on different occasions.

He described his own ordeal at the hearing on 20 May 1996.

On July 25, 1989, staff sergeant Nugawela, of the army intelligence and private Samsudeen, took him to a Northern camp, purportedly to record a statement. At that time he was in army custody.

He said, "They then took me to a shed in the Northern camp. I later got to know that, that shed was called the ‘slaughter house’. There I was stripped and Nugawela and privates Nagasena, Tony and Ehelepola, beat me with poles. They asked me whether I had given a T-56 rifle to lance corporal Perera. I denied this allegation. But as they continued to beat me, to save myself from further beating, I said yes."

Mass Arrests

Arrests and detention of Tamils in Colombo continues. Although most arrested are released within a day or two, several hundred are being held without charges, under the emergency regulations. In many instances releases are secured by payment of a bribe to the arresting officers.

Sometimes the arrests are done on a mass scale. In early November, about 150 Tamils living in Negombo were rounded up and driven in army trucks to the local police station, where they are still being detained. According to reports, all were in possession of the relevant government registration papers.

Again in November, all Tamil shops in Bandarawela were raided by the army, and many who worked in these shops were taken away for interrogation. Four of the many Tamils who were arrested are still in custody.

The State of the Economy

The Sri Lankan embassy in Washington DC is busy sending out glossy brochures showing how well the Sri Lankan economy is doing.

The former Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel, however, has a different view on Sri Lanka’s economy. In an interview with Sunday Island, he said, "the economy is in a complete free fall. It will virtually hit rock bottom soon."

Mervyn de Silva, editor of Lanka Guardian wrote, "Hotel groups are relocating. Maldives is a favorite choice. Gherkin cultivation has moved to India. Far from ‘FORTUNE 500’ firms coming here, we will be blessed by ‘the Misfortune’ companies."

The first quarter drop in company profits:

Asian Hotels Coporation - 232%
The Merchant Bank - 172%
Seylan Bank - 185%
Vanik - 84%
Aitken Spence - 70%

The Defense Ministry, however, wants another 10 billion rupees, over and above 38 billion (US$ 700 million) already allocated for defense, which amounts to 2 million dollars a day.

In spite of this tremendous expenditure there is no end in sight to the war. The government estimates that it needs 75,000 more soldiers to fight the war, but a recent drive for 10,000 new recruits produced only 1,800 applications.

LTTE Denies - TRAIN BOMBING

A statement issued from the LTTE headquarters, on July 25, has denied any involvement in the July 24th bombing at the Dehiwala railway station.

The statement added, " We wish to point out that even though the accusing finger is pointed by the government on the LTTE, there are interested parties within the Sinhala ruling establishment who feel the need to raise chauvinist hysteria in order to facilitate the military option; particularly when the Sinhalese people themselves are losing their patience with the government’s war efforts. We also wish to reiterate that it is not the policy of the LTTE to attack civilian targets"

Residents in Colombo contacted by Tamil Voice have stated that most people there believe that the army is responsible for this bombing.

Ajith Rupasinghe, of the National Peace Council, has publicly raised doubts about this, by stating "whomsoever may be responsible for this monstrous act" (see article on Page 10).

Another (who wishes to remain anonymous) said, "You see, in a country where the army murders a popular journalist, carries his body in an army helicopter to be thrown into the ocean — in a country where the army murders its own general — in a country where the police are involved in the cover up of political assassinations – why couldn’t the army have done this, especially when it is so easy to blame the Tigers, and also benefit from it?"

UK Will Permit LTTE to Continue

The British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind ruled out any action against the political activities of the LTTE in the UK. He said this at a dinner, 31 Aug 96, hosted by Foreign Minister Kadirgamar. He said that the LTTE, which is fighting for an independent homeland for the Tamils, has the right to express their political views in the UK, and urged Colombo government to find a negotiated political solution.