Sri Lanka--Missing Flags Signal a Deadly Separatist Conflict

The prime minister of this Indian Ocean island nation had urged all Sri Lankans to fly the nation’s flag, for it was independence day.

Here in the south, the home of the majority Sinhalese population, the crimson, green and saffron flag emblazoned with a fierce yellow lion was seen virtually everywhere snapping in the Indian Ocean breeze.

However, in areas of the north and east, where Tamils are dominant, there were few flags to be seen. Some Tamils dared to fly black banners instead, and ceremonies to raise the national flag at government buildings were tense and somber.

A Divided Nation

This recent display of separatism showed how divided the nearly 16 million people of Sri Lanka--a country once known as Ceylon--have become.

Here in Colombo, the capital, several thousand flag-waving schoolchildren paraded before President Junius R. Jayewardene and Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa, who had asked for the flag display as a demonstration of national harmony.

In the Tamil city of Batticaloa, 140 miles away, private citizens were barred as a nervous civil servant, M. Anthonimuthi, hoisted the flag in an empty soccer stadium while 25 other government officials looked on and security forces armed with shotguns and M-16 rifles patrolled the area in jeeps.

Only two days earlier, four Tamil youths, members of one of the separatist guerrilla organizations active on the island, had walked into the office of a government official in Batticaloa, pointed handguns at his head and demanded the supply of flags that the official had stored in his office.

Saw Himself as Target

Thus, Anthonimuthi--a Tamil who felt compelled by duty to raise the flag at the stadium--feared that he would be the target of a separatist attack. Tamils who cooperate with government forces are often tied to lampposts and killed by the separatists.

“These are difficult times,” Anthonimuthi said in a brief, brave speech at the flag-raising. “But a year or two, or even a decade, is a short time in human history. So even these things may pass away in the course of time. Public servants must stand together now so the people do not lose confidence.”

The last few months have been difficult on this once-tranquil tropical island. Terrorist guerrillas and government troops have been involved in mass killings. Conservative estimates by the government put the total number of deaths on both sides at more than 500.

The violence springs from longstanding animosities between the Buddhist Sinhalese, who account for 74% of the population, and the Hindu Tamils, who make up 18%. The Tamils are descended from Indians who invaded in the 14th Century and set up an independent kingdom in the northern part of the island, as well as from Indian immigrants who came to work more recently on the tea plantations.

Different religions, languages and life styles have kept the animosities alive, and they have been further aggravated by Tamil demands for a separate state, which the Tamils would call Eelam.

Deadly Guerrilla Attack

On Nov. 30, Tamil guerrillas swept down on unarmed Sinhalese farmers in northeastern Sri Lanka, killing 72 men, women and children. The Sinhalese, many of them former convicts, had been moved to the location as part of a controversial government resettlement program aimed at increasing integration in the northern half of the island and weakening the Tamil domination there.

Eleven Sinhalese fishermen were killed in two nearby villages three days later.

Early in December, after a Sinhalese soldier was killed by a land mine planted by the separatists, Sinhalese soldiers went on a rampage, killing at least 102 civilians, according to local groups in the Mannar area on the western coast.

Later that month, a senior government official confirmed, 39 separatists were shot dead in their jail cells at a special staff operations headquarters near Vavuniya.

“Killed while escaping” was the official explanation given at the time. However, the senior government official, in confirming reports from Tamil groups based in India, said the killings occurred when a single Sinhalese soldier “ran amok” in the jail.

Political Effort Fails

Meanwhile, an attempt by Jayewardene to find a political solution to the Tamil separatist movement fell apart as opposition parties walked out of an all-party conference. The meeting had been called by Jayewardene, a Sinhalese, to come up with a program to offer the Tamils more political autonomy--in part by creating a second chamber in the national Parliament.

The all-party conference was disrupted by a boycott by the Buddhist clergy and by influential leaders in the Sinhalese community, and then by a walkout by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, headed by former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Jayewardene’s political rival.

The failure of the all-party conference seemed to tilt the generally moderate Jayewardene government in a hard-line direction. The president proclaimed that he would never again hold negotiations with the main Tamil party, the Tamil United Liberation Front.

“I do not intend to invite or have discussions with any party that advocates separatism in the future,” he said. “I will not talk to them even if I am dragged to them by an elephant.”

This is strong language in Sri Lanka, where the elephant is so revered that 10% of the land is devoted to national parks where elephants roam freely.

Resettlement Program

After 22 Sinhalese soldiers were killed Jan. 19 on a train traveling from Jaffna to Colombo, the government began to put forward a huge resettlement program for the Tamil-dominated north. The project might eventually involve as many as 200,000 Sinhalese moving north in an effort to radically change the demographic balance in the Tamil region. Sinhalese settlers, Jayewardene said, would be issued arms for “self-protection.”

The resettlement program, likened by Tamil leaders to the Israeli settlement on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, has outraged even moderate Tamils--including the minister of small industries and rural development, one of three Tamils in the Jayewardene Cabinet.

A few Tamil leaders, notably Home Minister K.W. Devanayagam, have remained loyal to the government and to Jayewardene’s United National Party.

But the government’s recent hard-line stance, reflected particularly in statements by Prime Minister Premadasa and the national security minister, Lalith Athulathmudali, has saddened many leaders, both Tamils and Sinhalese.

“There has been a denial of human rights and democratic rights to people who fought hand in hand with the Sinhalese for freedom,” said K. Balasubramaniam, Tamil leader of the Jaffna Citizens Committee. “We fought against the British for freedom, not just for a change in masters.”

Long Conflict Predicted

“We will go on like this for probably the rest of the century,” predicted a senior government official, who is now resigned to continued conflicts between security forces and the Tamil insurgents. Many of these rebels are based in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, across the 18-mile chain of shoals known as Adam’s Bridge (or Rama’s Bridge).

There is widespread resignation in Sri Lanka to violence as almost a permanent part of daily life.

In Batticaloa, on the island’s east coast, the number of violent episodes has been increasing. Last week, four people were killed and nine were injured when separatists set off a land mine under an ambulance moving along the main coastal road. They apparently mistook it for a police vehicle, normally the only kind of vehicle on the road during the 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

Yet officers of the special Israeli-trained police task force that patrols the area, as well as local Tamil leaders, praised last week’s decision to lift the curfew, which had been in effect since November.

Police Are Less Happy

The police officials complained that the curfew made their vehicles easy targets.

“It was a halfway proposition at best,” said an officer who supported the lifting of the curfew. “The terrorists were in control for 12 hours, and we were in control for 12 hours.”

Tamil leaders, meanwhile, had complained that the curfew prohibited rice paddy workers from getting to and from their fields.

“Threshing had to be done at night,” said government agent Anthonimuthi, the man who hoisted the flag at the tense independence day ceremony. “I thought having the curfew was doing the government more harm than it was good. So I said, lift the curfew and let us live with our violence.”