Towards a revival of working class activity?
BALA TAMPOE is general secretary of the Ceylon
Mercantile Union (CMU), a major union in Sri Lanka.
The following interview on the current political situation in Sri Lanka was given to Salah Jaber and
Bernard Gibbons in Paris on April 25.
AN YOU describe the circumstances leading up to the recent withdrawal of the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) from Sri Lanka?
There was a presidential election at the end of December 1988, and a general election in February 1989, and this has resulted in a fairly important change in the governmental setup. In the first place, President Jayawardene, the man invited the Indian troops to come into Sri Lanka, had to drop out because he had served two terms.
The former prime minister, Ranasinghe Premadasa, was elected, but with a very small majority, and with a very large section of the electorate not voting, due to terrorist threats. In fact the election itself is now being challenged by his main political rival, Mrs. Bandaranaike of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP — the main bourgeois opposition party, and this is now before the Supreme Court.
Premadasa has taken quite a different line from his predecessor, particularly regarding the situation in the north and the east. He was not in favour of the so-called accord between Jayawardene and the former prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, which brought in Indian troops. So after he became president there was a gen-
0 Miles eral election in which his party, the United National Party (UNP), once again got a majority. But they lost their two thirds majority, which is an important development, because they had to have the election on the basis of proportional representation.
Now there is a fairly substantial representation of the opposition parties in parliament, which was not there in the previous parliament, and they cannot change the constitution without a two thirds majority, so that is an important limitation on the powers of the president and the present government.
But in June 1989, President Premadasa suddenly and unilaterally called on the Indian troops to withdraw by the end of July 1989. That would have been exactly two years since they originally came in
Of course the Indians were not prepared to withdraw just like that - they said that in the first place they had to make sure that the situation in the north and cast was stabilized as far as the security of the Tamil people was concerned, and in any case from a logistical standpoint they couldn't pull out nearly 50,000 Indian troops within a space of two months. There was a bit of a deadlock over that but in December 1989, they agreed to go by the end of March 1990, and they in fact left on time on March 25, one month ago. That's a major change in the whole situa• Why did Premadasa suddenly demand the withdrawal of the IPKF?
Premadasa made the call to the Indian army to withdraw after negotiations with the political representatives terror. • How has the Indian withdrawal affected the balance of forces in the north and east?
The president has entered into some kind of a deal with the leadership of the Tigers, to give them virtually a free hand in the north and east, and firstly to eliminate the other groups, which have now completely withdrawn. In fact, when the Indians left, the head of the provincial administration, who was the leader of another group, the EPRLF (Eclam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front), also went to India. Most of the EPRLF cadre are now refugees in India. They left with the IPKF. So there is in that sense a kind of peace restored because one armed party, the Tigers, is now in
The Sri Lankan armed forces are staying in barracks and avoiding contact with the Tigers on the basis of a cease-fire that Premadasa announced when he started the negotiations in June.
An important factor that contributed to the Indian withdrawal was the change of government in India. The new prime minister Singh had criticized Rajiv Gandhi for sending the Indian forces into Sri Lanka, and after Premadasa's ultimatum, Singh's government decided it was best to withdraw and let Premadasa handle the situation with the Tigers as best he
The Tigers are claiming that they have won a victory with the Indians withdrawing. But until the Indian army withdrew
SRI LANKA the Tigers were in hiding in the jungles. As long as the Indian army was there they were beaten, powerless. Now Pramadasa has got them out of the jungle through the • So the Sri Lankan army is staying out of the north and east?
Yes. The Tigers have been asked to surrender their arms but they have refused on the grounds that they need them to guar antee the security of the Tamil people. So the government is temporizing with them. I would think that in any case the government is not at all anxious to start another war in the north and east. For one thing the Tigers are very well armed, for another it is a very costly business, and the fact is that now the government can really use the Tigers to control the area. This is becoming a very dangerous situation from the point of view of democratic rights for the people of the north and east, because the Tigers don't recognize the right of any other group to function inde-
In fact right now my union is coming face to face with the Tigers in relation to its right to exist in the north, in a big chemical factory where we've had a well established union branch for over 20
The factory had been shut down due to the state of war, and now that the situation has begun to ease our union began to demand that production in the factory be restored. In February this year they organised a public campaign with posters all over Jaffna, the northern capital and open picketing on the streets. The Tigers didn't like this at all because now the other armed groups have disap-
INDIA of the main armed group in the north, the Liberation of Tamil
Eelam
Tigers
TAMIL NADU
(LTTE). They said that they
Bay of Bengal were prepared to consider
• Madurai laying down their arms, if the Indian troops withdrew
Palk Strait
Jaffna peared they want to make it appear to the world that only they exist in Jaffna and no other organization whatsoever. • You had already had problems with their precompletely. So in other words he joined forces politically with the LTTE on the demand that the Indian Trincomalee troops withdraw.
By that time the terrorist situation in the south had become very acute, due mainly to the activities of the so-called People's Liberation Front, or JVP (Janata Vimukthi Peramuna). Having entered into talks with the Tigers in June 1989, Premadasa also invited the JVP to come to the talks, but the JVP rejected this. Stabilizing the situation in the north and east gave Premadasa freer hand to liquidate the JVP through a process of counter
SRI
LANKA
Colombo
50
NORTHERN the decessors,
PROVINCE
EPRLF....
Yes, they tried to get the
CMU members to join a union set up by them which
EASTERN is not a genuine trade union
PROVINCE at all.... which they refused
Batticaloa to do. Now the Tigers have done the same thing, they have set up a political organization, parallel to their military organization.
On January 23 the local
Tiger leader came into the factory and, with the permission of the management, addressed the entire workforce, boasting about the achievements of the
Tigers, ed ellin the 21 that there is no need to
SRI LANKA have any contacts or links with organizations in the south, and that they should leave such organizations and join an organization that the Tigers are
To the eternal credit of the workers — we have 2 branches there, 190 members — they were not at all willing to leave the CMU. Then the president of the branch turned to the Tiger leader and asked him in front of the workers if he was not aware that our union had defended the rights of the Tamils to self-determination. When he said yes, our branch president asked him why he did not respect the right of self-determination of the workers in this factory to decide what union to belong to. The Tiger leader was silenced, and mumbled something and left.
But last week a whole group of Tigers came back to the factory, both political and military leaders, and called all the union representatives together to try
Now the situation is critical because the members of my union are not going to leave. But this will become a critical issue of self-determination, and if the Tigers resort to any kind of violence against our people we have to make the internationally known, because only the CMU today exists as an independent organization. We are planning a trade union demonstration and meeting on May Day, and I think the Tigers want to prevent this.
I don't know what is happening now, the Tigers are pretty ruthless but they are anxious to show they have become peaceful. Whether or not they will resort to direct violence remains to be seen. It is significant that a group of workers from an independent union like ours has up to now been able to withstand this pressure, totally unarmed. This affirms my belief that the working class can be effective in responding to terror like this when it on a mass basis, even if unarmed, as my members are. • Are there any contacts or links between the Tigers and the Singh government in India?
Yes, the Tigers have said that they want to restore relations, and I think Singh decided to withdraw the troops to restore some kind of political relationship with the Tigers. But the situation is very uncertain - in the meantime the opposition parties in Sri Lanka are demanding that the government publish details of its negotiations with the Tigers from June last year until now, because it is very clear that some kind of a political deal has been made. • What is the present state of relations between Colombo and New Delhi?
They are trying to restore good relations. Premadasa thanked the Indian gov22 Premadasa is being praised for finally ernment for withdrawing their army. International Viewpoint #185 • May 21, 1990 persuading them to withdraw but it was really due to a change of government and a change of policy in India as far as I can see. The two governments are now talking of a treaty to replace the former accord on some negotiated basis. • So you think there will be an Indian-sponsored agreement for a settlement of the conflict between Colombo and the LTTE?
No. Premadasa took the initiative in entering into negotiations with the Tigers, and the Tigers, who were in a really tight corner, tied up in the jungles by the Indian army, turned to Premadasa. Now they have become his biggest champions. In fact when representatives of the NSSP (Nava Sama Samaja Party, a Trotskyist group formerly linked to the British Militant Tendency) and the SLFP tried to raise the question of human rights abuses at the UN commission on human rights in Geneva, the Tigers mobilized all their resources to ensure that the complaints were not raised. The Tigers are praising Premadasa as a man to be trusted.
Whether they will actually ultimately turn on each other remains to be seen. So long as the Tigers guarantee political support for Premadasa to be president in the south he will allow them a free hand in the north and the east. Because it is not a separate state, economically the two areas are completely tied up, administratively the main functions of the administration have to be carried on in the north and east where the Tigers are roaming about free-
They have started collecting although the government has now told them to stop, and they are not showing much armed force. In fact even in their showdown with the CMU, they have not up to now made any open threats whatsoever. So it remains to be seen whether they will show their claws. • So the present situation in the north and east is one where the provincial councils do not function
Yes. In fact the Tigers have asked for the councils to be dissolved so there can be elections and Premadasa is considering this. And I think they will be held and the Tigers will win them - for the time being definitely they will have general mass acceptance because the Indian army has gone and the Tigers have virtually eliminated their opponents. What the people were longing for was an end to the killing and there is now some degree of restoration of normal life. • Have the Tigers introduced or agitated for any social measures?
No, nothing of the kind, they have no program. At the moment they are openly collaborating with the repressive Premadasa government, at a time when the cost of living has soared nearly 200 points since Premadasa became president a year
The World Bank and the IMF have pressed for the complete withdrawal of all subsidies, the agricultural subsidy on fertilizers has been completely removed, all subsidies on flour and bread have been removed, as have price controls on bread. It will be a very hard situation for the masses. • What kind of shape is the economy in the north and east in after all these years of conflict?
A large number of young Tamils have left the country. It's estimated that 100,000 Tamil youth have gone abroad, to Europe, Australia, Canada, and so on, so now you have the northern and eastern people receiving substantial assistance from people who have gone abroad. In this way they can sustain themselves even though the economy has broken down. • The same can be said of the whole of Sri Lanka...
Proportionately less so. Historically even in British times quite a number of Tamil youth went abroad, mainly to Malaysia, and many northern Tamils found jobs in the government service in the south. So the northern people were sustained not only by their own local economy but also by the remittances from government servants in the south as well as those who had gone to Malaysia. Now there is a much larger number who have gone to Europe, Australia, Canada and so
A large number have established themselves with jobs and they are sending
Also there is now a lot of international aid being promised for the north and east and this is another factor in the rapprochement between the Tigers and the government. The Tigers are also being offered jobs in the police force, though I don't know if they would fall for that, because if they go in the police force they will be under the direct control of the state forces, and they want to maintain themselves as an independent armed force. • Turning now to the situation in the south of the country, can you describe how the Premadasa government has dealt with the JVP?
After the JVP had rejected Premadasa's proposals for negotiations, the government set about the complete liquidation of the JVP by a process of ruthless counterterror, using specialist squads of mainly paramilitary forces but also including the army and the police, to kill them and burn
By November 1989 they were able to capture and kill the two top JVP leaders, Rohana Wijeweera, the political leader, and Upatissa Gamanayake, who was supposed to be the military leader. They were then able to eliminate nearly all the top members of the JVP politburo as well as
SRI LANKA they want to keep them until they can bring charges and so on, but they are releasing others. So they are holding out the promise of an end to the emergency, this will be the issue that we ourselves are going to focus on in our May Day resolutions and demonstrations. • What kind of political evolution do you foresee in the near future?
The Premadasa government is now going all out to try to restore some kind of appearance of stability in the north and south in order to get more aid and to counter this opposition campaign on the issue of human rights. They want to show that they are ready to withdraw the emergency and things like that. They need forcign aid more than ever before, they cannot sustain the economy under the present conditions without foreign aid. The foreign debt is very large.
I think that the Western countries and others want to sustain the Sri Lankan state
Tamil tigers in training their district leaders and others, and I would say by the beginning of this year, one year after Premadasa had become president, they had virtually eliminated the JVP as an organization.
Now there are only remnants, still hiding out, scattered in certain parts of the country, really reduced to a form of banditry - they no longer function as an organized and national force at all. So conditions have been largely normalized from the point of view of the killings. • Could you say something about the political trajectory of the JVP?
The JVP degenerated into a terrorist organization raising basically nationalist demands for the withdrawal of the Indian army. They denounced the Tigers also as the agents of Indian imperialism. They didn't directly attack the liberation struggle of the Tigers but said that they were agents of India. They have been liquidated, that issue is now over and the Indian army has withdrawn. • What about the populist slogans and leftist phraseology of the JVP?
By 1989 they had virtually dropped all talk of socialism or Marxism or anything. They have used strikes, like the transport strike, as a method to disrupt the government, but it was not for the benefit of the workers. They employ a radical petty bourgeois kind of rhetoric. As an opposition force to the government they won a lot of popular support to begin with, from the disaffected youth, particularly in the rural areas where there is large scale unemployment and so on. • There is a mistaken idea amongst some people that a kind of Lebanese situation exists in Sri Lanka, where the central state has collapsed..
That idea may have gained some degree of support in 1989 when the JVP terror in the south had paralyzed transport and medical services and there was a fear that there would be a general breakdown of the whole state administrative structure. But with the counter terror the JVP was liquidated and that showed the state was quite effective. • What has been the reaction of your union and other progressive forces to the anti-JVP terror in the
Of course we have mobilized a lot of opposition to these emergency tions that permitted the killing and burning or disposal of dead bodies without an inquest, without identification and anything like that. My union, the Ceylon attention particularly on regulation 55PF, which permitted the armed forces to dispose of dead bodies without an inquest.
Significantly enough this regulation has now been revoked. I would say it's not just our intervention because even the opposition parties and Mrs. Bandaranaike have been mounting a national and international campaign, calling upon governments not to give aid to Sri Lanka unless they improve the human rights situation. I think the government is today sensitive to this, so having liquidated the JVP they can definitely relax the more brutal and stringent measures of the emergency.
Just before I left Sri Lanka a week ago the minister for defence announced that now they are ready to relax the emergency itself, after they bring in some legisladetained. There are about 10,000 people currently detained under the Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Ter-
They don't want to release all of them, with aid on their conditions, but those conditions will definitely be adverse from an economic standpoint for the masses. Fortunately there is now a growing demand from European trade unionists that in third world countries there should be protection of working class rights and wage levels and so on, and they are demanding a social clause in the GATT Trade) negotiations in 1991. So we feel that western workers can play a role in protecting the situation of the workers in countries like Sri Lanka if an effective campaign is mounted. We feel our links with these international
La vital factor in the struggle against repression.
Our theme for May Day, which we will celebrate this year with 11 other unions employees union, the Union of Post and Telecommunications Officers, and nurses union - as well as some other smaller unions), is defence of human and democratic rights and defence of mass living standards. • So we are entering a period of a kind of stabilization. Will this present a new opening for class-based politics?
I think so. There are definitely signs of a reawakening of working class consciousness. It has not previously been there with the new generation, I can tell you. I can see this reflected in large numbers of workers in our own union, the younger workers, who are showing, after a long period, some positive response to working class concepts and so on. We will see to what extent this is reflected on May Day.
But of course the failure of the left to even agree on a united May Day demonstration indicates that there is still no general movement that can win the 23 confidence of the working class. * May 21, 1990 • #185 International Viewpoint