mandatory death penalty.
Ever since its massive onslaught on the revolutionary socialist Janata [Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Libcration Front) a year ago, the government of Ceylon has maintained a state of emergency and followed a policy of severe repression. Behind the emergency is Ceylon's deterioratingeconomy, the result of sharply declining terms of trade over more than a decade. With world prices of tea and rubber, Ceylon's main exports, continually decreasing, and with rising costs of imported rice, machinery and industrial products, Ceylon has become more and sote indebted to Britain, West Germany, Tapan, the U.S.A., the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. By early 1971 sable to fulfill its election promises of 1970, the supposedly left-leaning government of Mrs. Bandaranaike faced widespread discontent and the possibility of armed revolt. In March-April 1971 the government responded with pre-emptive terror, killing about 10,000 end jaling 16,000 youthful members and supporters of the JVP. Under attack, the Frost fought back vigorously and in carly Most overthrew the governextraordinary show of counterry solidarity, Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Malaysia, and the United Arab Republic rushed military aid to Colombo, even the government of China suppiled a 5 30 million interest free loan to help put down the insurrection.1 A year after the crackdown, revolutionary armed struggle has virtually ended, but spiralling prices and unemployment produce pervasive corruption, burglaries, pickpocketing. pang-robberies, and rising discontent. Under the State of Emergency since 15 March, 1971, fundamental democratic freedomsof speech, assembly and publication have been suspended and workers have been deprived of the right to strike. -The police and mitary have retained powers of arrest without warrant, and have transgressed safeguards provided under normal laws against arbitrary arrest, torture, the murder of prisoners, and the sectet disposal of dead bodies of persons in custody. The statutory access of Members of Parliament to prisons has been denied, and no means of investigation of complaints of the brutalities against or shootings of prisoners are available to their relatives or legal representatives. Fourteen thousand prisoners are still held without trial in concentration camps, about which sombre reports have been made by rare visitors allowed in these camps or by prisoners fortunate énough to have been released after nine or ten months' imprisonment. According to one such report by a revolutionary partisan: "On a number of occasions the army has shot into these -camps, causing deaths. At the slightest provocation the detainees are baton-charged or shot at. Food is bad; diseases spread quickly due to overcrowding. Prisoners are tortured for information and "difficult' cases are either bumped off or kept in solitary confine. ment; they are allowed to leave their cells only once a day, and that too only for one hour. The government does not know what to do with them. They cannot bring them to trial because they have no real evidence against them."
The brother of Rohan Wijeweera, the leader of the JVP who was arrested before the State of Emergency was declared in March 1971 and was placed in Jaffna prison, has reported that in early August 1971, "Certain CID officers came along with Crown Counsel lan Wickremanayake and... he was removed to a lonely house and there was tortured and thrashed for seven days and threatened with death and was forced to make a statement, which was tape-recorded by them." For at least four months afterwards Wijeweera was kept on such short rations that he developed pains in his limbs and joints and blisters on his tongue. When, in early December, he fell ill with fever and tonsillitis he was left lying for two days in vomit and received no medical treatment (intercontinental Press, 10 April, 1972). Although Ceylon's Maoist Communists opposed the JVP and the insurrection and althe following as among those who have been thirty-five year old "Trotskyist" party and largest left group, which, like the pro-Moscow Communists, had become increasingly entangled in parliamentary and reformist politics. Both the LSSP and the CP are coalition partners in Mrs. Bandaranaike's "left front". Like the parlia mentary Communist Parties in India, their leaderships are therefore now deeply compromised by their repression of revolutionaries. The pay-off for Members of Parliament is that under Ceylon's new constitution the present government, originally elected in 1970 for a five-year period, will be given a fresh six years from the promulgation of the constitution. Government M.P.s have access to special privileges such as automobiles, now rarely obtainable because of the scarcity of foreign exchange. Members of the 157-member House of Representatives have also received Rs. 50 per day extra while sitting in the Constitutional Assembly engaged in drafting the new constitution. In contrast to their erstwhile comrades who now sit in parliament, fifteen members of the LSSPR were arrested in early March while holding a meeting at the home of the party's Assistant Secretary-perhaps a response to the party's attempts to mobilize the population in demands for civil rights.
In February, the government decided to dispense with normal trials of prisoners in a novel and "scientific" manner. It announced that computers had processed data gathered on each prisoner and that about 4,000, who faced charges only of attending revolutionary lectures, would soon be released. The other 10,000 odd will be dealt with later, and "those against whom there is substantial evidence of direct involvement will have to face charges of high treason which carries a mandatory death penalty" (B.H.S. Jayawardene in the Far Eastern Economic Review, 12 February).
In early April the government further facilitated its disposal of prisoners by introducing two new bills in parliament: the Criminal Justice Commissions Bill and the Interpretation (A mendments) Ordinance. Under the former, the practice and procedures of ordinary courts are declared to be inadequate to administer justice in the case of offences relating to rebellion, insurrection, or widespread breakdown of law and order; to large-scale misuse of currency or foreign exchange; and to widespread damage to factories porting to be under the hand of the Government Analyst or Assistant Government Analyst or any other person acting in such capacity in regard to the identity, composition or character of any thing or matter submitted to him for examination," since the report itself "shall be conclusive proof of the statement contained in such report, without such person being called to testify at the enquiry." The jurisdiction of such special criminal courts is final and precludes appeals, and the act is retroactive, thus neatly taking care of the present backlog of prisoners. The second bill, the Interpretation (Amendments) Ordinance, shuts out Habeas Corpus applications or other writs which challenge an act of the government on the grounds of illegality, mala fides, etc.
The second reading of the Criminal Justice Bill passed on 5 April with a two-thirds majority in parliament. The only hopeful sign was that the voting created conflict within the coalition government. Of the six pro-Moscow Communist Members of Parliament, two abstained, three were absent, and one voted for the bill. Moreover, trade unions attached to both the Sri Lanka Freedom Party of Mrs. Bandaranaike and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party have begun to express opposition to the acts. If the Communist Party splits or goes into opposition this could herald the beginning of mass resistance. These changes in the situation make it even more necessary to carry out at least basic solidarity activities in Britain; and to support the efforts of the Ceylon Solidarity Campaign in publicising as widely as possible the recent and current repression in Ceylon and exerting pressure to bring about the release of the political prisoners and an end to the State of Emergency. Details of the CS's activities can be obtained from the Secretary, Ceylon Solidarity Campaign, 9 Dennington Park Mansions, London N.W.6. The C.S.C. also publishes a bulletin which gives a brief analysis of the economic and political background to the situation in Ceylon, with recent information from inside Ceylon; this can be obtained from the same address, price 5 p.
Devi Azad 1. According to a letter from Premier Chou-enLai to Mrs. Bandaranaike printed in the Ceylon Daily News, 27 May, 1971.