From: vperera@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (vicumpriya perera)
Subject: Miracle ?
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 21:08:50 GMT


 The following article is posted here without permission, as appeared in
 Washington Post. If any of you haven't seen the original article
 " Miracle in Sri Lanka  WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL, 09/15/92  " 
 referred to here, I am more than happy to post a copy of it.

Vicum.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
Horror in Sri Lanka

WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL, 09/26/92
Copyright (c) 1992 The Washington Post Co.

   It is not surprising that the Sept. 15 op-ed article "Miracle in
Sri Lanka" was written by a special representative of the government of
Sri Lanka. It contains many distortions of fact that no one else would
relate with impunity.
    For example, to claim that Sri Lanka with its majority Sinhalese and
minority Tamil and Moor races only is as ethnically diverse as New York
City is ridiculous. Similarly, any economic prosperity in Sri Lanka is
limited to the ruling elite, while most of the citizens languish in
poverty. Also the genocide being committed against the minority Tamils
in the north and the east continues unabated. Why else would human
rights activists still be monitoring the situation in Sri Lanka? What
conflicts has the president resolved through consensus and consultation?
    Our thanks are due to President Bush and Gov. Clinton for drawing
attention to the dismal situation that prevails in Sri Lanka.
   CHARLES DAVID
Bethesda

    Sri Lanka, Milinda Moragoda's ''economic miracle,'' is a human
rights tragedy. Mr. Moragoda's whirlwind tour of Sri Lanka's troubled
past conveniently omits the ugly truths of President Premadasa's brutal
anti-insurgency efforts. The Post's readers deserve to know the real
reason the country's donors have been moved to condition aid on human
rights improvements.
   For the past decade, Sri Lanka has been engulfed in civil war.
Militant insurgents have killed thousands. But Mr. Moragoda's
euphemistic reference to the ''determined measures'' taken by the Sri
Lankan government to maintain security ignores widespread state-
sponsored violence. Successive governments in Sri Lanka deliberately
adopted the tactics of their armed opponents, engaging in disappearances
and extrajudicial executions of suspected militant sympathizers on a
massive scale. Their victims are estimated in the tens of thousands.
   Sri Lankan civilians have been massacred by soldiers in retaliation
for killings of members of the security forces. They have been abducted
and murdered by government-linked death squads. They have been tortured
in police stations and army camps and killed, injured and displaced by
indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilian areas.
   Journalists, human rights lawyers and political opposition members
continue to receive death threats, have been physically assaulted and
even killed for voicing dissent.
    For whom is ''life is back to normal. . . in Sri Lanka''? Not for
the families of the dead and missing, not for the millions whose lives
were disrupted by the war in those ''two small areas of the north and
east'' and not for some 200,000 refugees who still do not dare to return
to Sri Lanka.
    Donor pressure has brought some much-needed reforms over the past
two years, but continued pressure is essential to ensure that these
reforms take root. Only when Sri Lankan citizens can rest assured that
violations by state forces will be punished will, perhaps, something
like normal life finally return to Sri Lanka.
   JEANNINE GUTHRIE
Researcher, Asia Watch
New York 

Newsgroups: soc.culture.sri-lanka