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2,000 Sri Lankans Slain in 3 Months : Spiraling Wave of Terror Washes Once-Idyllic Isle

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Times Staff Writer

Every time the police removed the blood-stained blanket from her father’s body, 17-year-old Swarnalatha retched and wept.

She was the only witness, police said, when eight men in military uniform and carrying swords came to this remote village a week ago Monday night and asked politely if her father, a 55-year-old physician known as a gentle healer of snake bites, was at home. She fetched him, and the men escorted him out of the family’s thatch hut, promising to bring him back later.

They never did. They led Swarnalatha’s father and two other men of the village to a clearing in a nearby coconut grove, where they tied their hands behind their backs and beheaded them.

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The following morning, as Swarnalatha sobbed beside her father’s body and the 500 villagers looked on in horror, local police investigators explained that the victims were suspected government informants, believed to be responsible for the army’s abduction and killing of seven village “subversives” the previous week.

Twenty miles to the south, D.B. Sirisena, the vice principal of an elementary school, also wept and pounded his chest as he told visiting journalists about how police took his son away two weeks ago.

The following day, his son, 30, and 13 other suspected subversives were killed with shotguns and dumped in a remote jungle area. The police blame the incident on a pro-government vigilante group known as the Black Cats.

Another son of Sirisena saw his brother’s body the following day among a heap of corpses at the hospital morgue. He did not speak out, though, and no one claimed the bodies, because there is widespread fear that relatives might be the next victims.

These are just two examples of the wave of terror that has made a killing ground of this once-idyllic Indian Ocean island with a population of 16 million. In the past three months, more than 2,000 people have been killed, and hundreds of others are missing.

There seems to be no pattern to the killing, and the spiraling violence has left diplomats, aid workers and Sri Lankans themselves uncertain about the little country’s once-rosy future.

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“True enough, the island has a history of killing,” an Asian diplomat said, “but it was always a periodic eruption, strictly along ethnic lines. . . . Now it’s frightening. It’s grim. It’s no longer ‘trouble in paradise.’ Now it’s simply a story of ‘paradise lost.’ ”

What began in 1983 as a largely racial and linguistic struggle between ethnic Tamils in the island’s northernmost regions and its majority Sinhalese community in the south and central provinces--a conflict that has spawned two armed and violent insurgent forces--has now deteriorated into senseless violence that includes the settling of personal grudges and family feuds, drug-related killings and disputes involving jealous lovers.

Society Collapsing

“What you are seeing in Sri Lanka today is a society collapsing on itself,” a Western diplomat said in Colombo, the capital. “It’s almost as if the whole society is committing mass suicide with some invisible, slow-acting poison.”

A political cartoon published earlier this month in one of the island’s English-language newspapers echoed this theme. In it, a man labeled “Sri Lanka” holds a gun to his own head.

Every day, the three English-language dailies are filled with lamentations by members of the recently elected Parliament.

“The people today live in morbid fear for their lives,” an opposition member declared recently.

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“My own house was attacked,” said another, D.S. Gunawardena, who for 16 years was a police officer. “The bombs lobbed were of the type issued to police.”

And a member of the ruling party and a deputy minister, K. D. M. Chandra Bandara, said: “People are living in mortal fear today. . . . Entire families are being massacred.”

Such words would have been less shocking six months ago, diplomats said. The election of a new government in December and a new Parliament in February were bloody affairs but were widely hailed as landmarks of democracy in this former British colony, previously known as Ceylon. Still, the elections had given Sri Lankans renewed hope for their future.

The new president, Ramasinghe Premadasa, won the election easily and was given a clear mandate to crack down on insurgents--the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who for nearly a decade have been fighting for a separate Tamil state in the north and east, and the People’s Liberation Front, a leftist-oriented Sinhalese nationalist movement.

Premadasa, who cast himself as a devout Buddhist--the religion of 74% of the population--campaigned on a platform of nationalism and law and order. He promised to send home a peacekeeping force of more than 50,000 Indian soldiers brought in to put down the Tamil rebellion under a 1987 agreement. He promised to get tough on terrorists from both communities.

Peace Offering

Earlier this month, Premadasa also appealed to Tamil and Sinhalese rebels to give up arms and join the democratic process. On Monday, Deputy Defense Minister Ranajan Wijeratne followed up on that move by offering a peace package to the rebels, Reuters news agency reported. The minister said security forces would observe a seven-day cease-fire starting Wednesday and that amnesty would be given to rebels who surrendered during that time.

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But since Premadasa took office four months ago, observers say, the killing has increased, and the Indian army remains firmly entrenched in the north.

“But the worst part of it,” the Asian diplomat said, “is that while the government security forces are clearly becoming harsher and cracking down harder, the violence isn’t easing up. It’s getting worse.

“Innocent people are getting killed. Everyone is just doing whatever they want. No one knows who’s killing who anymore. And, of course, the eeriest part is you have this country that is so breathtaking in its physical beauty, a country that is still so safe and gracious for tourists, and such human horrors are taking place with that beauty as the stage drop.”

Nowhere was the contrast more sharply drawn last week than in the northern town of Eppawela, where the vice principal’s son and the 13 other young men were killed.

Ancient Capital

Eppawela, which lies 15 miles from the ancient Buddhist capital of Anuradhapura, and the horrors that have taken place there exemplify the confusion surrounding the escalation of the violence.

The shotgun slayings were only the latest in a series of unexplained and unsolved homicides that have filled the mortuaries. Human rights workers and local residents said this was the work of the vigilante group known as the Black Cats.

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Local police officials refer to the Black Cats as “anti-subversives.” They said the group was formed to combat organizational drives and terror killings such as the beheading of Swarnalatha’s father by the Sinhalese nationalist group, the Peoples Liberation Front, which is known as the JVP.

Police officials deny that they have any connection with the group, but villagers and local Buddhist leaders insist that it is backed by police, if not actually made up of police officers.

What is more, the army and the police have a history of human rights abuse. In its most recent report on human rights violations in Sri Lanka, issued in February, the U.S. State Department observed that “serious human rights violations continue,” “deaths from politically motivated violence remain a serious problem,” and “frequent disappearance of both Tamils and Sinhalese, usually young men, remain a serious concern.”

Disappeared From Hut

D.B. Sirisena’s son disappeared from the family’s mud hut in Eppawela on March 19, five hours before a powerful land mine believed to have been placed by liberation front guerrillas exploded nearby. Three police officers were killed and three others were injured.

Members of the vice principal’s family said they watched a local police constable take the son away, as did the relatives of several of the other 13 men.

The relatives believe that the suspects, although detained for questioning before the blast, were killed by the police out of revenge for the mine incident. Asked whether he believed in the existence of the Black Cats, Sirisena said, “No. No. I don’t believe that. It was the police.”

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There was more revenge. After the 14 bodies were dumped by the police at the local morgue, the liberation front massacred the family of one of the injured local police officers.

Now, the mood in Eppawela is what the high priest of the local Buddhist temple called mara biya --literally, “mortal fear.”

“They are afraid for their lives,” the Rev. Mahamankadawela Piyaratne Thero said through an interpreter, “afraid from both sides. And the most affected people are the neutral people, because they get it from both sides.”

But the priest, like most rural Buddhist priests and monks here, indicated that he sides with the liberation front in the conflict.

“There are two groups in this conflict,” he said. “One is the government terrorists. The other is the people’s terrorists. Personally, I am not in favor of these killings. By killing each other, we are not going to solve these problems. But the killing by the people’s terrorists goes on because the people have no voice, no strength, in the government.

“The people of this village do not want all this violence,” the priest continued. “They want only peace. But the government is not listening to the people. They are continuing the cycle of killing. They are keeping the country in flames. And so the killing will continue.”

KILLING GROUND

In past three months, wave of terror has turned once-idyllic Sri Lanka into killing ground, with more than 2,000 killed, hundreds missing.

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What began as ethnic struggle between minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese has deteriorated into senseless violence involving drugs, feuds.

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