Crackdown in Sri Lanka

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Britain out of Ireland; self-determination for the Irish people. Demonstration sponsored by Labour Committee on Ireland and others, Saturday May 7, 1pm from Hyde DEATH sentences hang over two Tamil youths in Sri Lanka, while the indiscriminate arrest of a number of people including Christian priests by the army and the police at the end of last year, coupled with sensational reports in the government and pro-government news media, designed to whip up anti-Tamil hysteria, have thrown the spotlight on President Jaywardene's reactionary regime.

The new wave of repression began with a raid on the residence of the Catholic clergy in Jaffna by a large contingent of soldiers and policemen on November 13. They were looking for Father Singarayar, who was at the time in Colombo.

The police searched and ransacked the residence until 3.30am, and arrested Fr Paul Jeeva and Fr Paul Natchethiram, who were taken to the army camp at Guru Nagar and detained. Five more Anglican and Catholic priests were also detained for up to four days before being released without charge.

In the next few days the army and the police rounded up and arrested several others, detaining them under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act.

All these persons were held in custody and even lawyers were not permitted to see them.

This callous disregard for NOT wanting to be left out when communists are being killed, the Reagan government has found the time in the midst of all its other warmongering activities to rush supplies of arms and ammunition to the bloodthirsty military regime in Thailand.

They will be used to supplement the artillery and aircraft already being used across the border into Kampuchea in savage strikes against forces of the Vietnamese army.

The Vietnamese are sekking to flush out the motley and reactionary gangs of guerilla fighters that have been brought together with the backing of the Pentagon and the Peking Stalinists.

They are grouped around Prince Sihanouk and Pol Pot -Park (Speakers' Corner].

Jayawarden human rights, and particularly the harassment of the clergy, sparked off a massive movement of protests. The Bishop o1 Jaffna has written to President Jayawardene condemning these arrests and the subjection of the priests to 'mental pressure, intimidation, and other questionable methods to extract confessions from them' A number of trade unions, political parties and religious organisations have also condemned this latest violation of human rights. the former butcher of Kampuchea, whom the imperialists find preferable to the Heng Samrin regime installed after the Vietnamese invasion in 1978.

The clashes between Thai and Vietnamese troops are a consequence of the tactics of the renegade Kampuchean guerThe mass response wa . unprecedented. Christians, H findus and Muslims have joined these actions and expressed solidarity.

Over 15 organisations, including the Movement for Inter-racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) branch in Jaffna set up a campaign committee to coordinate these protest actions.

TWO Tamil youths, Kuttimani and Jegan, have been sentenced to death. This is the latest in a series of attacks upon the Tamil-speaking people by successive governments of Sri Lanka.

The oppression of the Tamilspeaking people over several decades resulted in the gradual development of a campaign calling for a separate sovereign Tamil state of elam in their traditional homelands.

Kuttimani and Jegan have become the victims of a regime which is determined to crush the Tamil nation The Campaign for the Release of Eelam Political Prisoners in Sri Lanka is appealing for support.

• Send telegrams or write to the President of Sri Lanka at the Janadhipathi Mandiraya, Colombo 1, calling upon him to stop the execution of Kuttimani and Jegan.

enera to, or on the Thai side of, the border, and whose response to the vast strength of the Vietnamese advance is to retreat behind the protection of the Thai army.

Apparently 'hot pursuit' raids by Vietnamese across the border have led to sharp exchanges and to retaliatory Thai air strikes - some using napalm - against Vietnamese positions.

The latest shipments of heavy artillery, missiles and ammunition will equip the Thai forces to further escalate these attacks wn thus applying military pressure on Vietnam and indirectly on Moscow.

Once again the US determination to inflict setbacks on the power and influence of the Kremlin — and its supporters in Hanoi, who dealt such a humiliating defeat to US imperialism in 1975 — has lined them up with some of the dregs of the earth.

The Thai regime of Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanouda holds power in the face of opposition from civilian politicians and even a group of nationalist and populist army officers known as the 'Young Turks' He is bolstered up by the fascist and extreme right wing, by the monarchy, and by massive US aid. In addition his successful cementing of relations with the Chinese bureaucracy has effectively split and . confused the Peking-influenced Communist Party and the 10,000 armed antı-government Thai guerillas.

Now he is using the 'border emergency' with the vietnamese as a pretext to retain and extend the power of the military high command inside Thailand, while, demonstrating to American sponsors in the Pentagon that he is worthy of his hire.

From leaflets published t Campaign for the Release Eelam Political Prisoners

On November 30 there was a mass demonstration in Jaffna attended by over 10,000 people.

This is not by any means the only violation of human rights by the right wing Jayawardene government. Repression has been particularly heavy-handed against the Tamil minority, who are concentrated in the north and east of the island.

• Get your trade union or Labour Party to adopt a resolution calling for the release of all political prisoners in Sri Lanka, the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and the halting of the execution of •Kuttimani and Jegan.

• Join the campaign or send a donation - to 87 Gower St, London WC1.

WHAT I'M about is trying to get a fairer, more equitable, juster society within which everyone, irrespective of their socio-economic origin, is going to have the opportunity to develop talents, capacities that lie wtihin that person"

That's Bob Hawke's goal as Prime Minister. And who could argue with such noble sentiments?

The problem is that his cross-class appeal for 'national reconciliation' to "all Australians' provides no solution to the 746,000 registered unemployed lor the additional half million or so hidden jobless).

Hawke's pro-business Inner Cabinet has added its voice to the bosses' refrain that wage rises cause unemployment. Yet even the doctored figures show that real wages have risen by less than 20% since 1972 - yet the worth of the produce has grown vastly more.

Not content with supporting Fraser's pay freeze till after the :stralian workers demand shorter working week Yet the Australian Labour Party and Australian Congress of Trade Unions tops are bleating all the way to the Summit that working people will have to exercise restraint, and have absolutely no plans to avert the 5,000 jobs due to disappear shortly at GM-H or the latest six hundred odd jobs to go at BHP:

The course plotted for us by our leaders means disaster. We have every right to expect the ALP to govern in the interests of the working class. But for that to happen, a movement must coalesce from within the ranks of both the trade unions and the Labour Party, demanding Hawke abandon the dangerFrom From Fight Fight ous folly of 'national reconciliation' , and break with the bankers and the bosses.

The ALP and ACTU leaders must be made to support the immediate resumption of the aborted ACTU wages campaign. And we must not allow our class to once again be forced to foot the bill of the capitalists' return to profitability.

The millions of working class people who voted Labour, with the expectation that the attacks on their conditions and basic rights would cease under an ALP government, have a right to see the real culprits of this economic crisis dealt with. It's time we made the rich pay!

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illas, whose camps are sited next WAY

THE LINEMPLOY HAvE SuFF ENOUGH