POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Radical Left Group Returns to Haunt

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 23 1998 (IPS) - Few people have forgotten the brutal, political violence of the late 1980s unleashed after a supposedly left-leaning Sinhalese opposition group set out to topple the Sri Lankan government.

Thousands of men, women and children were killed by rival sides — on suspicion of supporting the government or backing the revolt. Thousands of others were imprisoned without trial and there were widespread allegations of torture.

It was only when government security forces had crushed the armed opposition group, People’s Liberation Front, better known by its Sinhalese acronym JVP that peace returned to the island’s southern provinces.

That was in 1990. Now the JVP has re-grouped after seven years, but not to launch another armed uprising, says its leaders rebutting government claims. “The JVP will not resort to an armed struggle,” convenor Wimal Weerawansa promises.

Instead it hopes to become the third largest group in Parliament in the next general election, in 1999, after the ruling People’s Alliance and the main opposition United National Party (UNP).

In preparation, it has launched a 15-day door-to-door campaign across this tiny Indian Ocean island this month, on Jan 15, aimed at raising membership, disseminating party literature and reorganising itself.

The JVP’s ambitions have evoked mixed reactions. A former JVP guerrilla, now the editor of a popular tabloid, Victor Ivan is sceptical: “They still don’t have the leadership that matters,” he said.

But Dharmaratnam Sivaram, a well-known political columnist, feels the party could cash in on growing public disgruntlement with the government. “The conditions for its rejuvenation are ripe. The cost of living is becoming unmanageable to most rural as well as urban households and discontent is growing.

” … The UNP cannot mobilise and channel this discontent into militant and general opposition to the ruling party because its leadership is weak, indecisive and worse, unequivocal,” he said.

Sivaram, a Tamil, is a former member of the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), a rebel group with close links with the JVP in the 1980s. PLOTE though was fighting for the rights of Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils.

According to him, “the traditional left parties (most of whom are now coalition partners of the ruling Alliance) do not count any longer in the political equations of the country. The JVP, therefore, remains the only and best organised political force to mobilise the growing discontent in the country.”

Seemingly rattled by the re-emergence of the JVP for the third time, both Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and her deputy defence minister, Anuruddha Ratwatte, have publicly warned of another JVP insurgency. The party was twice crushed after uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s.

Both leaders have indirectly blamed a spate of daring robberies across the country on the JVP, which intelligence sources however believe are the handiwork of some 20,000 army deserters armed with stolen weapons.

The JVP has written to the president, challenging her to prove the accusations, but a reply has not been forthcoming. “We wrote the letter … challenging them to come out with the names of people whom they think are involved in instigating people. We have not received a reply yet,” Weerawansa said in a recent interview in a Sinhalese-language newspaper.

“The delay itself shows that the government does not have proof and the verbal attack was merely to discredit us at a time when we are campaigning against its “precious” peace package,” he added referring to the government’s peace deal for the civil war-torn north and east where Tamil rebels want a separate state.

The Kumaratunga government has its hands full at the moment, trying to keep an election promise to end a 14-year-long uprising that has killed close to 50,000 combatants and civilians, and turned thousands into refugees.

The JVP sees another opportunity for its revival in the majority Sinhalese dissatisfaction with the peace package, which among other things promises greater devolution of power to the provinces including Tamil majority areas.

In the late 1980s, the group had relaunched itself as a political party to oppose peace moves made by then president Junius Jayewardene’s UNP-led government, which was fighting Tamil

guerrillas. But the protest marches and violent confrontations turned the government against the JVP, and for the second time the group of mainly unemployed students was outlawed.

Says analyst Sivaram the JVP will find it hard to dispel suspicions about its intentions. According to him most of its senior members remain underground; it is also believed to have a sizeable haul of illegal weapons.

In addition, “it is also pointed out that the JVP’s structure remains very much like that of a militant revolutionary organisation, than a democratic election-oriented party,” he said. To stake claim to power, the JVP needs a complete image change.