The government of Ceylon has declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew throughout the island; they have suspended all democratic rights, imposed a strict press censorship, and arrested hundreds of militants of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (the People's Liberation Front—JVP). They have proscribed the JVP and have started shooting prisoners without trial.
The leaders of the coalition government have used their monopoly of the communication media to lie about the JVP, misrepresenting them as a "fascist" and rightwing organization. At the same time the government has not dared to inform the public that it has sought and received aid from the imperialist governments of the United States and Britain; that it is using Indian and Pakistani gunboats and helicopters; that it has expelled the North Korean diplomats from Ceylon.
The Bandaranaike popular front government came to power in May 1970 by promising the masses that it would usher in a "new era" and build a socialist Ceylon. One pro-Moscow Stalinist and three renegades of the reformist Lanka Sama Samaja party (LSSP) were included in the cabinet in order to bolster up the "socialist" image. However, despite all the rhetoric, the coalition government has demonstrated that its real role is to maintain capitalist property relations and preserve the imperialist stranglehold on the Ceylonese economy.
During its ten months in power, the coalition government increased the police force by 55 percent and set up an antirevolutionary committee in the army. "Socialism" of the Bandaranaike variety means the denial of such basic democratic rights as joining or forming a trade union, as shown in the cases of the Velona factory, Dawasa Publishing House, and the Norwood Tea Estate. Workers who resort to strike action in struggling for union rights face bullets from the "people's" police.
The first budget of the coalition government submitted by N. M. Perera offered precious little to the masses. The budget demonstrated to the local and foreign capitalists that they need not have any fears or anxieties about the Bandaranaike government or its "Marxist" ministers. Of course they explained that they had not forgotten about socialism, but right now it was not "practical" and socialism had to wait. Neither the "Save the country fund" nor the autumn budget could help the government avert the deep financial crisis it faced. Ceylon already owed the World Bank more than $50,000,000 and has been unable even to pay the interest on it. And yet it desperately needed more hard currency to pay for even the most essential imports. The World Bank would not grant any further loans until the government agreed to follow a course of "austerity." This meant the imposition of further burdens on the masses, such as withdrawal of the rice subsidy, pruning of social services, and the imposition of a wage freeze. The coalition government accepted the strictures. These developments have confirmed the position of the Lanka Sama Samaja party (Revolutionary) [LSSP(R)] that the coalition led by the Sri Lanka Freedom party [SLFP] is a capitalist government dependent on imperialism for its survival.
Under these conditions the government had no alternative but to impose more and more burdens on the masses. The masses rapidly became disillusioned with the coalition government. The government had failed even to project any solutions to the problems of rising prices and constant erosion of the masses' living standards. Unfortunately for the coalition leaders, they now had to contend with another factor: the emergence of a revolutionary united front between the JVP and the LSSP(R), the Ceylon section of the Fourth International, and the newly formed revolutionary nucleus in the tea plantations, the Young Socialist Front. This united front rapidly gathered momentum, and the disillusioned masses were attracted to it. The Bandaranaike regime realized that the movement stood in the way of their "austerity" course.
On February 6, 10,000 people held a rally in Colombo sponsored by the JVP, the LSSP(R), and the Ceylon Mercantile Union [CMU], the most important trade union of the Ceylonese urban working class. The gathering condemned setting up a U.S. imperialist base in the Indian Ocean, called for Ceylon to immediately leave the British Commonwealth, demanded nationalization of the banks, plantations, and foreign trade, and appealed for defense of the masses' standard of living by an all-out war on unemployment and rising prices.
Faced with this situation, the government decided to try to isolate this political movement and to destroy it before the masses mobilized. The immediate aim was to destroy the JVP. After alerting the army and the police, the government staged a provocation on March 6. This provocation was a petrol bomb attack on the U.S. embassy by an unknown organization called the "Mao Youth Front." The government attributed this action to the JVP despite its denial of responsibility, and invoked special powers under the Public Security Act. The government then imposed emergency regulations, and began to arrest all known militants and leaders of the JVP.
The JVP realized that they were faced with a critical situation. Rather than being decimated without a fight, they decided to resist the government repression. The clashes that followed between the JVP and the security forces were thus the direct consequence of the government action. The government miscalculated. They did not expect the JVP to resist. They did not realize that the JVP and its allies would have such solid mass support.
The Fourth International recognizes that the struggle broke out before all the sections of the oppressed masses, particularly the urban and plantation workers and the Tamil minority, had become politically united so that they were in a position to meet the bourgeois government's provocation adequately and settle accounts with the capitalist state and class. The Fourth International calls upon revolutionists everywhere to break the conspiracy of silence covering the repression in Ceylon. It declares its full support to the repressed and persecuted Ceylon revolutionary militants. It calls upon the international working class, all working-class and anti-imperialist organizations to do everything possible to block the shipment of military supplies, and all workers states to immediately stop sending military aid and equipment to the Ceylon government, which is used only to murder and terrorize its own people. It calls upon the international working class not to be taken in by the "left" pretenses of the Bandaranaike government, and to recognize the basic capitalist nature of the regime and proimperialist nature of its repression. The state of emergency proclamation was approved by all parties in parliament, including the reactionary United National party [UNP]. The Bandaranaike government opened Ceylon's airfields to the use of the Pakistani government in transporting troops and supplies to suppress the rising of the peoples of East Bengal. Lieutenant Colonel Ranatunga of the Ceylon army, in a press conference April 18, justified the execution of JVP prisoners without a trial by saying: "We have learnt too many lessons from Vietnam and Malaysia. We must destroy them completely." (The London Times, April 19, 1971.)
Indian workers and anti-imperialist militants: oppose Indira Gandhi's shameful pact with the butcher Yahya Khan and the British and U.S. imperialists in support of the Bandaranaike regime's civil war against the Ceylon working class, peasant, and student youth!
Down with the traitorous Keunemans, N. M. Pereras, Colvin R. de Silvas, and Leslie Goonewardenes, who, like their forerunner Noske, now arm reaction, let a bourgeois army murder revolutionists, support the murders or participate in the suppression of the masses of their country, and help suppress all democratic freedoms for the workers.
Freedom for Rohan Wijeweera and all the other arrested JVP and revolutionary leaders!
Not one dollar, not one gun to the bourgeois army and state of Ceylon!
Long live the Ceylon socialist revolution!