Monday, Aug. 08, 1983
Boiling Point
Simmering tensions erupt
In some places the city resembled a ghost town, in others a smoldering battlefield. Throughout Sri Lanka's palm-fringed, seaside capital, Colombo (pop. 586,000), shops were shuttered and restaurants were closed. Small groups of helmeted troops patrolled the empty streets, with instructions to shoot curfew violators on sight. But those tough measures may have come too late. During the previous five days, bands of Buddhist Sinhalese, 50 to 100 strong, had smashed, burned and plundered thousands of houses and shops belonging to predominantly Hindu Tamils. In Colombo's jail, 52 Tamils had been bludgeoned to death. As the worst riots in the history of the island republic subsided, 50,000 Tamils were left homeless and at least 140 people were dead.
The bloodshed was triggered by the incendiary actions of a small group of Tamil extremists who contend that their race, which accounts for 11% of the nation's 15 million people, should be granted a separate homeland in northern Sri Lanka. Over the past six years the secessionists have planted bombs, set government buildings ablaze and, according to the government, killed 73 Sinhalese in and around the Tamil-dominated northern city of Jaffna. Only two weeks ago, Tamil terrorists ambushed and slaughtered 13 Sinhalese soldiers.
President Junius R. ("J.R.") Jayawardene, 76, has tried to mollify moderate Tamils by offering them jobs, encouraging them to use their own language and delegating some local responsibility to them. But Jayawardene had also ordered his troops to stamp out the separatists by force and, according to an Amnesty International report, had sent Tamils to prisons in which they have been brutally tortured. Forced in May to invoke the fifth state of emergency since Jayawardene took office in 1977, the Sri Lankan government last Saturday proposed a constitutional amendment that would ban the secessionist party, as well as all separatist activity.
Although Sri Lanka's 12,000-man army is too weak to maintain order, Jayawardene has so far refused to request assistance from Indian troops. But necessity may prove the mother of intervention. Almost a third of the industries and trading establishments in Jayawardene's free-enterprise system are run by hard-working Tamils; many of those buildings now he in ashes. Unless the government acts decisively, still more of Sri Lanka's economy may go up in flames.
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