Race tensions rise in Sri Lanka

Press, 14 April 1984, Page 18

Race tensions rise in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is working itself up into a war psychosis. It sees two enemies: the Tamil terrorists, who ambushed some airforce men in Tamil-dominated Jaffna recently and provoked them into running amok, leaving 14 dead; and India, which expressed “regret” over the death of the Tamils and thus caused official outrage in Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister, Mr Premadasa, claimed on television that India was supporting an imminent invasion of its southern island neighbour. The most articulate man in Sri

From ‘The Economist’, London

Lanka’s Cabinet, Mr Lalith Athulathmudali, has been put in charge of a new Ministry of National Security and given sweeping emergency powers in the Tamil north and east of the country. A national defence fund has been established as an exercise in mass mobilisation and to finance the island’s new effort "to defend our shores.” “How long can we tolerate this nonsense?” Mr Premadasa asked, in a Parliamentary debate set off by an Indian report that training camps for Tamil rebels were oper-

ating in southern India. The new Security Minister who doubles as deputy Defence Minister, speaks more coolly about India, making a distinction that others fail to make between the policies of the Tamils of Madras and those of the Government in Delhi. But behind the ritual bows to traditional ties of friendship, relations between Sri Lanka and its big sister to the north are worsening fast. India and Sri Lanka are both members of the Commonwealth. 1 And so are relations between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority and the Tamils, who were the object of Sinhalese communal passions last July. The round-table conference which was convened in January to devise a way of accommodating Tamil grievances has foundered on mutual distrust and a revival of

Sinhalese communalism. When the parties reassemble in May, it will be only to perform the last rites. One result of the failure at the conference table has been to destroy the credibility of the Tamil Parliamentary party, the T.U.L.F., which for 20 years has won more than 75 per cent of the Tamil vote. The T.U.L.F. took the risk of sitting down with the enemy because it believed Presidential promises to bring in an Indianmediated plan for greater local autonomy. In the event, even President Jayewardene dissociated himself from the draft he had worked out with Mrs Gandhi’s envoy, and his party refused to give the Tamils anything at all. So the real winners of the argument are the Tamil Tiger

terrorists who will now appear, to the million Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north and east, as the only politi-'; cal alternative. Mr Athulathmudali is basing plans for - a counter-terrorist struggle on what he believes to be the Tigers’ two-stage strategy. The. first task would be to set off disturbances in the north which ’ then spread southward. The tinder is drier in the south than it was last summer as a result of 22 per cent inflation and mounting urban discontent. The second phase would be to’ provoke Indian intervention by convincing India that Sri Lanka, means to threaten Indian security •by handing over its Trincomalee 'base to the Americans. To listen to Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister this month, India is already provoked.' Copyright — The Economist.