from Brian Eads in Bangkok, The London Observer, 20 September 1981

This Dispatch should be datelined `Colombo': that it is not is a measure of the sorry state of Sri Lanka after a summer of racial violence marked by killing, arson and rape.

The report I sought to telex a to London on Friday night was seized by Sri Lanka's Commissioner of Police `on the instructions of the Ministry of Defence,' he said. I would not be allowed to send it, or any other material, and the original would not be returned to me. It appears that the decision originated with President J.R. Jayewardene himself.

The police, the army, and the President have much to be ashamed of and much to conceal from the prying eyes of the British press.

It is now established that the orgy of looting and arson in June in the northern city of Jaffna, the 'homeland' of the minority Hindu Tamil community, was planned, orchestrated and carried out by the predominantly Sinhalese Buddhist police force in the area.

Among their targets were Jaffna public library where 97,000 books burned, the offices of a Tamil newspaper, and the home of a Tamil MP.

It is also clear that subsequent violence in July and August, which was directed against Sri Lanka Tamils in the east and south of the country, and Indian Tamil tea estate workers in the central region, was not random. It was stimulated, and in some cases organised, by members of the ruling United National Party, among them intimates of the President.

In all, 25 people died, scores of women were gang raped, and thousands were made homeless, losing all their meagre belongings.

But the summer madness, which served the dual purpose of quietening Tamil calls for Eelam, that is a separate state, and taking the minds of the Sinhalese electorate off a deepening economic crisis, is only one of the blemishes on the face of the island which the tourist brochures characterise as 'paradise.'

Since Jayewardene came to power four years ago, a system of what his critics call 'State terrorism' has brought an Ulster-style situation in the Tamil majority areas of the north and east.

Ostensibly in response to terror tactics by the so-called Tamil Tigers, who have killed 20 policemen, staged daring bank robberies and captured weapons from police posts since 1977, the Government has given carte blanche to police and army units in Tamil areas.

Hundreds have been detained without charge or trial. This year at least 156 Tamil youths have been detained and tortured , then released. Thirty-five are still held at Colombo's Panagoda army camp.

Human rights workers, Sinhalese as well as Tamil, told me that the most favoured tortures are hanging prisoners upside down over heaps of burning chillies, and inserting needles under their finger nails.

As counter-insurgency experts the world over might have told them, the strategy is counter-productive. The Tamil Tigers now number over about 1,000, some 200 of them armed, and overseas Tamil communities are looking to them rather than the mainstream politicians of the Tamil United Liberation Front.

President Jayewardene has abandoned the previous Government's `welfare socialism' in favour of 'what the World Bank calls 'a bold economic experiment.' Colombo now has newcars, television, shops filled with consumer durables, telephone operators who urge you to 'have a nice day,' and call girls in the hotel lobbies. Inflation, however, runs at nearly 30 per cent, and huge shortfalls are in prospect for the budget and balance of payments.

The country is totally dependent on Western aid, Western loans, and Western investment. Some of The debt has been paid in Sri Lanka's drift from genuine non-alignment. Colombo has become the 'Western Voice' in South Asia, used to counter the `Soviet voice' of Delhi.

While human rights runs a distant third to strategic and economic interests, the prospect of civil strife will not delight western bankers and businessmen. It helps explain tentative settlement efforts which continued last week between the Government and Tamils.

The Tamil leader, A. Amirthalingam told me that agreement in principle had been reached on all demands save one - that an international body, such as Amnesty International, be invited to report on the violence. Among other things, the Government agreed to speed the recruitment of Tamil speaking police, look into compensation for the victims of violence and slow down colonisation of Tamil regions by Sinhalese.