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Sri Lanka Other Tamil Groups
Observers in the late 1980s counted at least thirty separate
guerrilla groups of which five, including the LTTE, were the most
important
(see Sri Lanka - The Tamil Insurgency
, ch. 5). The other four major
groups were the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front
(EPRLF), led by K. Padmanabha, the Tamil Eelam Liberation
Organization (TELO), led by Sri Sabaratnam until he was killed by
the LTTE assassins in May 1986, the Eelam Revolutionary
Organization of Students (EROS), led by V. Balakumar, and the
People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), headed
by Uma Maheswaran. These groups differed significantly in terms
of strategies and ideologies. EROS was said to prefer acts of
economic sabotage. In March 1985, the LTTE, EPRLF, TELO, and EROS
formed a united front organization, the Eelam National Liberation
Front (ENLF). PLOTE, probably the most genuinely Marxist-Leninist
of the five major guerrilla groups, remained outside the
coalition. By mid-1986, ENLF had become largely inoperative after
the LTTE quit, although the other groups sought to form a front
without its participation.
The Liberation Tigers proceeded to devour their rivals during
1986 and 1987. TELO was decimated in 1986 by repeated LTTE
attacks. During 1987 the Tigers battled not only Indian troops
but members of PLOTE and the EPRLF.
The year 1983 can be regarded as a psychological turning
point in the ethnic crisis. The brutal anti-Tamil riots of July
in Colombo and other towns, and the government's apparent lack of
concern for Tamil safety and welfare seemed to rule out a
peaceful resolution of differences between Tamils and Sinhalese.
The riots were touched off by the July 23 killing of thirteen
Sinhalese soldiers by LTTE guerrillas on the Jaffna Peninsula.
According to Tambiah, the mutilated corpses were brought to
Colombo by their comrades and displayed at a cemetery as an
example of the Tigers' barbarism. In an explosion of rage, local
Sinhalese began attacks on Tamils and their property that spread
out from Colombo District to other districts and resulted in at
least 400 casualties (the official figure) and perhaps as many as
2,000 (an estimate by Tamil sources). Fifty-three Tamil prisoners
were killed under questionable circumstances at the Welikade
Prison outside Colombo. Damage to property, including Tamil-owned
shops and factories, was initially estimated at the equivalent of
US$150 million, probably a low figure.
The authorities, seemingly paralyzed during the bloody days
of July 24 to July 31, did little or nothing to protect the
victims of mob violence. Curfews were not enforced by security
personnel even though they were required under a nationwide state
of emergency in effect since the May by-elections. Jayewardene
withdrew to his presidential residence, heavily guarded by
government troops, and issued a statement after the riots that
"the time has come to accede to the clamor and the national
respect of the Sinhala People," that expressed little sympathy
for the sufferings of the Tamils.
There was ample evidence, reported in the Indian and Western
media, that the violence was more a carefully planned program
than a totally spontaneous expression of popular indignation.
According to a report in the New Delhi publication, India
Today, "the mobs were armed with voters' lists, and detailed
addresses of every Tamil-owned shop, house, or factory, and their
attacks were very precise." Other sources mentioned the central
role played by Minister of Industry and Scientific Affairs Cyril
Mathew in providing personnel for the violence and the ease with
which the mobs found transportation, including government
vehicles, to move from place to place.
According to political scientist James Manor, the eagerness
of powerful politicians such as Mathew to stir up ethnic trouble
stemmed at least in part from factional struggles within the
ruling UNP. Mathew reportedly used the riots to compromise the
aging and seemingly indecisive Jayewardene and undermine support
for the chief executive's all-but-designated successor, Prime
Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa. According to India Today
reporting in August 1983, five UNP factional groups, including
Mathew's and Premadasa's, competed for influence. With deep
reservoirs of anti-Tamil sentiment among poorer Sinhalese to draw
upon, Mathew could not be ignored in any post-Jayewardene
political arrangement within the UNP. His schemes, however,
ultimately backfired. In December 1984, Mathew was obliged to
resign from the cabinet for opposing negotiations between the
government and the Tamils on regional autonomy, and he
subsequently faced expulsion from the party.
The 1983 violence had a caste as well as ethnic dimension.
Mathew was a leader of the Vahumpura caste. This group has a
lower status than the politically dominant Goyigama caste but
comprises more than one-third of the Sinhalese population.
Traditionally, Vahumpura occupations included the making of
jaggery (brown sugar derived from palm sap) and domestic service
in higher caste households. Nevertheless, they trace their
descent from the attendants of Mahinda, the brother or son of the
Indian emperor Asoka, who came to Sri Lanka as a Buddhist
missionary in the third century B.C. and thus claimed an esteemed
status among Sinhalese Buddhists. The Vahumpura also had been
actively involved in commerce, but in the 1970s and early 1980s
they were forced out of the business by their Sinhalese Karava
and Tamil competitors. The resultant decline in their fortunes
was a source of much resentment toward the other groups.
Some observers speculated that the LTTE had moderated to a
slight degree its attacks against government forces in the north,
because of the presence of Tamil "hostages" in Colombo and other
Sinhalese-majority urban areas, but that the July 1983 riots
removed such inhibitions. The vicious cycle of violence
intensified as attacks by the LTTE and other groups against
troops brought harsh retaliation against Tamil civilians,
especially in the Jaffna Peninsula. Reports issued by Amnesty
International, the London-based human rights group, told of
random seizures, tortures, and executions of hundreds of young
Tamil men by the armed forces in Northern and Eastern provinces.
These actions forced the great majority of Sri Lankan Tamils,
whatever their point of view on the goals or methods of the
guerrillas, into the arms of the extremists. In the words of one
observer, the Tamil population in the north was "visibly afraid
of the Tigers, but they disliked the [Sri Lankan] Army even
more." As the civil war intensified, government troops were
besieged inside the seventeenth-century Jaffna Fort, and most
areas of Jaffna City and the surrounding countryside were under
Tiger control. The government ordered serial bombings of the
city. Thousands of Tamils sought refuge from government attacks
across the Palk Strait in India's Tamil Nadu State. As
indignation among Tamils in India grew over the atrocities,
Colombo was filled with rumors of an impending Indian invasion
that would have resulted in a permanent division of the island.
Data as of October 1988
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