Comrade Bala Tampoe is General Secretary of the LSSP (Revolutionary ), Ceylonese Section of the Fourth International, and Secretary of the Ceylon Mercantile Union.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST REPRESSION On 3 April 1972, the General Council of the Ceylon Mercantile Union met and unanimously re-iterated its opposition to the continuance of the State of Emergency. The meeting denounced the Criminal Justice Commission Bill and the Interpretation Amendment Bill, 'for their clearly reactionary purposes of carrying forward the destruction of all remnants of democracy or justice in Ceylon and the enthronement of a totalitarian dictatorship under cover of parliamentary legality'. The General Council called on all Trades Unions and other associations to oppose the reactionary legislation, and on 15 May issued a call to them to join together to protest against the Criminal Justice Commissions law and the abandonment by the Government of all recognised principles of justice in dealing with the thousands of persons now held in custody under colour of the Emergency...' A nation-wide hunger strike and other forms of protest are now being organised as the trials begin. The Ceylon Bank Employees" Union General Council (3 May) has also denounced the laws, in that they strike at the roots of the liberties and the fundamental human and democratic rights of the citizens of this country and their mass organisations, such as trade unions', and resolved to initiate distussions with other trade unions in order to organise united action against these laws.
Comrade Bala Tampoe and 53 other lawyers presented a resolution to the General Council of Advocates, that members of the Council should advise persons charged under the Criminal Justice Commission Act that they can expect no justice under this law, and urge its repeal. CP members opposed the organisation of a Special Meeting to discuss this.
50 detainees suspected of having taken part in last year's insurrection' are reported to have escaped from Anuradhapura prison on 13 June. The previous week 28 prisoners escaped from a 'rehabilitation' camp on the outskirts of Colombo, by tunnelling their The following extracts are from an interview obtained by our South Asia correspondent earlier this year, just before the Criminal Justice Commissions Act became law.
Q. Comrade Bala, I believe that Ceylon has been facing an acute economic crisis for some time now, and we are of the opinion that the events of last March and April are directly connected with this crisis. What is your view?
A. The declaration of the State of Emergency on 16th March 1971 was directly connected with the economic crisis in Ceylon. The present Government had been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a loan for quite some time before the declaration of a State of Emergency. In fact it appears to have begun negotiating for a loan almost immediately after it took office in June 1970. It is significant that the Directorate of the IMF granted the loan of 24.6 million dollars the day after the declaration of the State of Emergency. At a later stage, when the Budget was introduced in October 1971, a number of measures were sought to be introduced which would seriously cut down the consumption of the masses of the people, including particularly sugar and flour. These measures were opposed by the members of the Government party after the Cabinet had approved them and they were temporarily withdrawn. Apart from that, there has been a suppression by Essential Service Orders under the Emergency Regulations of the right to strike of all categories of workers in Government and private establishments, as well as State corporations, so that with the rising cost of living the standard of living of the workers has been arbitrarily forced down and their capacity to strike and secure wage gains freely by collective bargaining has been suppressed.
A team of economic experts came here to Ceylon and was present in the Island during the April events. They were got down from the Overseas Development Institute in Sussex and the team was headed by Prof. Dudley Seers. They have since furnished their report which recommends a whole series of austerity measures. Before they left the Island, at the end of July last year, the head of the team invited me for an informal discussion together with two of his colleagues, and he sounded me as to the possible reactions of the working class to temporary limitation by Emergency Regulations of the grant of annual increments to salaried employees or other employees who had incremental wage scales. He also asked me what would be working class reaction to the stoppage - again temporarily under Emergency Regulations - of automatic increases in wages by what are known as cost of living allowances related to the cost of living index. I told him that the working class of Ceylon had not been used to the conditions of a Police State which now prevail and that it was therefore difficult to predict their immediate reaction. I said that with the aid of machine guns, with which the Government was now armed, they might be able to put through such measures without any. immediate counter-action by the working class. He then asked me whether it was necessary to use machine guns. I said I did not say it was necessary but that the Government had them and that the workers were aware of it. But for the time being at least there were sections of the working class who were confused by the presence within the Government of so-called left leaders of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party and in this confused and politically divided state of things, the working class would not be able to react effectively to such measures. Sooner or later there were bound to be repercussions, and the Ceylon working class having a long tradition of struggle behind it, it was quite capable of explosive reactions on such a question.
Q. Could you tell me why a country which is considered somewhat of a Switzerland in Asia is faced with this economic crisis at the present moment?
A. Ceylon did have a higher standard of living than most Asian countries, apart from Malaya and, of course, Japan ; but that was only a temporary phase following World War 11. Since then there has been a steadily declining standard of living for the masses of the people and we have now reached the stage where capitalism in Ceylon can no longer keep up the pretence of maintaining a welfare state by Asian standards. The present political crisis really arises from the desperate need of the ruling class in Ceylon in conjunction with their Imperialist masters, to switch over from pretended welfarism to complete regimentation of the living conditions and living standards of the people; and for that reason to completely remove all their normal democratic means of protest and of improvement of their conditions by one or other forms of mass activity. We are also thus faced with the complete regimentation of the people by law, not merely Emergency Law but also by changes in the substantive law.
Q. Following the repression last year, the Government did take some measures, as you said, to resolve the economic crisis by imposing certain economic burdens on the masses of the people. How far did this go to resolve the economic crisis?
A. I am sure that there are: going to be further burdens imposed on the masses. Far from relaxing the repression, there are signs that it is going to be increased. The repressive apparatus of the state is being strengthened, the police force has been considerably increased and so has the army. Of late there has been a so-called alert, and once more the atmosphere of April 1971 is being evoked, and this all points to further repression of tne masses, and an onslaught upon tneir living standards. The crisis of Ceylon capitalism is insoluble by such measures. democracy. I am sure that the Imperialists, particularly the Unit States and Britain, are turning the screws on the government ecc ically, the foreign exchange position is worsening, there is not el raw material for the factories, even though the government talks of industrialising, and in the meantime the population continues increase. All measures will be of a purely temporary nature, the crisis will go on increasing, and I believe that if there are any fur outbursts of mass dissatisfaction of any effect, they will be met bloody repression. In short, just as in Vietnam, just as in Bangla capitalism in Ceylon under Imperialist domination and within th work of Imperialism, can only survive by bloodshed and repressi mass movement at all stages.
Q. Comrade Bala, what do you think of the much publicised nev Constitution What difference does it make to the masses of the A. It is really not a new Constitution. It purports to be one in th context of the fiction of the so-called Constituent Assembly, wl no more than the present members of Parliament elected under present constitution, functioning under another name. The Ceyl Mercantile Union's General Council has pointed out in a resoluti which has been circulated to all Members of Parliament that wh mandate they may be deemed to have had under the Soulbury ( ution in the first place, has been completely forfeited by the fac they have openly violated the pledge given even under the electi ifesto and re-iterated in the throne speech of the government to democratic rights, repeal reactionary laws and guarantee freedo association, freedom of the press, and other fundamental freedo law and in practice. So that the members of the House of Repr ives who constitute the Government majority can be said to hav obtained their seat even under the present constituion, by del deceiving and cheating the people, and have no mandate from th to introduce any Constitution. What they appear to be doing is to constitutionalise the true relationship between the present re Ceylon and Imperialism, particularly British Imperialism. The B Crown no longer has any real relevance in Ceylon, and calling C a republic is merely a de jure recognition of a de facto situation Beyond that, most of the reactionary features of the old Consti will remain. There is an important change in the powers of the judiciary: not only is the Supreme Court virtually deprived of t right to grant a writ of habeas corpus to a person illegally detair but the Supreme Court and District Courts will have no power t examine executive acts from the point of view of their validity law. So that we are going to have in Ceylon a legalised, constitu alised totalitarian dictatorship, and the new Constituion merely what had already become a fact under the emergency - that is, c and arbitrary power vested in the Executive with a subservient ature to support it.
Q. Comrade Bala, the Government has already tabled two bills enacted - see Red Mole 42 - Ed), the Criminal Justice Commiss and the Interpretation Amendment. Could you say something a two bills, and what effect they will have on the masses of the p A. The Criminal Justice Commissions Bill is merely intended to g cover to what has already been done and to carry out the legal ion of probably several of the people who are now in custody the allegation of having been involved in what was described as insurgency last April. What has to be emphasised is that the Go is most anxious to cover up what took place before the so-calle insurgency in April 1971. As I said, the Emergency was declare 16th of March and regulations brought in for abritrary arrest by Police and detention for 15 days in Police custody without a pe being produced before a magistrate, as well as burning or buria dead bodies without compliance with the provisions of any oth written law, on the authority of the officer in charge of a polic all this three full weeks before a single police station was attack anybody anywhere in Ceylon, even with a stone! Three weeks continuous Police witth-hunting, in which hundreds and hundr youth, particularly in the rural areas of Ceylon, where the mov known as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna had gained strength carried away. and what happened to those youths while they in police custody will probably never be known officially. One that the Government will never answer is how many of the hun of youths arrested before a single police station was attacked w injured to one degree or another and how many of them are ali It is only when these facts are known that a true opinion of wh took place in April can properly be formed. Under the new bill judges of the Supreme Court may be appointed, they are ham-s as to the inquiry into what actually took place. Then there is-t provision to use 'confessions' of persons in custody of Army or police as proof against others as well as themselves. This is a me which the frame-up of innocent people can take place without difficulty. It is also a means by which the Police and the Milita whoever is given power to question people under the prevailing be encouraged to submit them to torture. This is supposed to b try in which Buddhism is upheld, a religion which is noted for principle of 'Maithriya" or compassion.
Tat i caced will in the long run hel