Untitled - International Commission of Jurists

The violence reached a crescendo in the early 1980s when President Jayawardene
won a further term at the presidential elections, and postponed general elections for
six years through the holding of a referendum. The July riots in 1983 marked a
watershed in the country’s political history; widespread international outrage was
evoked when thousands of ordinary Tamils were killed in riots in which frontline
ministers of the Jayawardene government were involved. Thirty-five Tamil prisoners
and later, a further eighteen prisoners were butchered inside the Welikada prisons.
President Jayawardene refrained from condemning this violence and later pushed
through the 6 th Amendment, which outlawed separatism and resulted in the TULF
members forfeiting their seats. The crackdown on legitimate political dissent
increased; leftist parties and opposition papers were banned and presses sealed under
the emergency regulations. The JVP, Nava Sam Samaja Party (NSSP) and the Ceylon
Communist party were proscribed.
Initiatives for ending the conflict, including the Thimpu peace talks, were doomed to
failure. This period witnessed the LTTE’s massacre of one-hundred and fifty pilgrims
and bystanders at Sri Lanka’s holiest Buddhist pilgrimage site in Anuradhapura;
civilian massacres were to become a trademark of the LTTE thereafter.
The advance of the Sri Lankan armed forces towards the North was halted at the
intervention of the Indian Government, which engaged in its infamous ‘parippu’
(dhal) airdrop wherein essential supplies were parachuted by Indian planes to the
Jaffna people. The Indo-Lanka Accord, bringing the Indian Peace Keeping Force
(IPKF) to the North, was signed on July 29,1987, leading to the 13 th Amendment
being passed to Sri Lanka’s Constitution setting up Provincial Councils. Not long
thereafter, the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who signed the accord
under protest, reneged on the agreement and launched a military offensive against the
Indian troops.
The JVP commenced its second insurrection in the South, purportedly in protest
against the Indo-Lanka Accord. Government politicians, public servants and media
persons working in the state sector were killed, intimidated or abducted by the JVP.
Key UNP leaders were among those assassinated. With the PSO and the PTA in force
during this period, government and paramilitary forces responded by engaging in a
systematic practice of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture.
Thousands of ordinary Sinhalese civilians were killed. Regulations were promulgated
under the PSO permitting arbitrary arrest and detention either for preventive or
investigative purposes, as well as to give authorized officers the authority to bury or
cremate dead bodies.
Lawyers such as Wijedasa Liyanaaratchi, Kanchana Abeypala and Charitha
Lankapura were killed because of their direct involvement with the command
structures of the JVP. Other lawyers were killed because they had engaged in the task
of filing writs of habeas corpus in respect of disappeared persons. The extent to
which the police service became militarized was unprecedented. Presidential elections
in late 1988 resulted in a new leader of the UNP, Ranasinghe Premadasa, taking over
from President Jayawardene. The presidency was to be held by the UNP from 1978 to
1994. The subsequent general elections of February 1989 ensured the continuing
parliamentary authority of the UNP, which held the Prime Minister’s position from
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