Indian Peacekeeping Forces Add to Turmoil and Fear in Sri Lanka

Your staff writer Mark Fineman was correct when he wrote that Sri Lanka’s devastating counterinsurgency in the south has been fueled in part by India’s military presence in the north (“Society Crumbling Amid Fear and Bloodshed in Sir Lanka,” Part I, July 27). But what he has failed to point out it that the majority of all ethnic sections in the country are now demanding that the Indian peacekeeping forces should go.

It is misleading to say that President Ranasinghe Premadasa “in a fit of anger and frustration demanded that India withdraw its 50,000 troops from the northern third of the island.” Premadasa in fact fought the presidential elections seven months ago seeking a clear mandate from the people to send back the Indian forces.

The world’s fourth largest army not only failed in its task to disarm nearly 1,000 Tamil insurgents trained under a sinister plan by India’s equivalent of the CIA, the Research and Analysis Wing of the Indian prime minister’s office, but also became the target of human rights organizations for committing some of the worst violations.

Making matters worse, the alien force refused to accept the jurisdiction of Sri Lanka courts when Tamil victims of human rights violations by the marauding troops sought justice. While every elected representative of the Sinhalese and the Muslims cried the Indians should go, the biggest group of the elected members of parliament of the Tamils--13 representatives of Eelam Democratic Front--in no uncertain term stated that the Indian withdrawal is essential for any solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem.

Your correspondent’s contention that Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated security forces will slaughter the island’s Tamils has been borrowed from a slogan two years old and no longer is valid. The former Indian Foreign Secretary A.P. Venketesweren was quoted in the Times of India of July 6 as having said that during the siege of the Sri Lankan Tamil city of Jaffna in October, 1987, alone, 2,400 civilians were killed by military offenses, including air raids by the Indians.

If Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is allowed to play a role in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs, it will be an ominous dawn of an emerging brown imperialism which could only undermine the newly won freedoms of humanity. How could the conscience of the world allow the bloated ego of Gandhi to supersede the sovereign and free will of the people of Sri Lanka?

WALTER JAYAWARDHANA

President, Sinhala Defense League and

American Federation of Sri Lanka Assns.

Los Angeles