The Common Market: What it is and how to to fight it Friday Sep. 17th, 1971 Conway Hall 7.30 p.m. The repression in Ceylon is by no means over, despite the lack of publicity in the unfree press. The Ceylonese press itself has been totally silenced by the tight press censorship; the opposition parties, the UNP and the Federal Party! are in full aggreement with government policy which is today decided by Madame "Butcher" Bandaranaike, her nephew? and the heads of the Armed Forces. In fact the situation today is even more dangerous than the first wave of repression that was unleashed in the first week of March and which led the JVP to launch a counteroffensive. Today the repression is slow, systematic and coldly brutal. Efforts are made to widen the net. Not only JVP members and sympathisers, but also all political and trade union militants are being arrested and intimated. It was not very long ago that a leading revolutionary from the plantation sector was arrested and tortured; the police unsuccessfully tried to obtain a false confession from him?. The emergency regulations preclude any form of trade-union or political activity. Any working class struggle has to be extremely carefully organised because it is iflegal from the very beginning.
REPRESSION HAS BEEN COUNTERPRODUCTIVE The repression has been extremely counter-productive. The atrocities committed by the Army and the police -murder of JVP suspects, rape and other sexual attacks on hundreds of women JVP members, burning of houses, indiscrimiriate assault on villagers, etc - has been on a scale unknown and unheard of in Ceylon since the brutal massacre in Kandy in 1848 by the British, The government is well aware of the fact that today the masses hate Mrs Bandaranaike and her government. That is why the June elections have been postponed.
Our analyses of events in Ceylon The Red Mole, Vol 2 No 8, 24 April 8 May '71) except for a few details*, has been confirmed. It is unlikely that the bourgeoisie would restore democratic rights in the foreseeable future. There are today in 14,500 political prisoners in specially con structed concentration camps. When this correspondent interviewed those who had been released, all of them referred to the appalling conditions — bad sanitation, over crowding, bed food, police terror, etc. The government continues to refuse to release the names of the prisoners and thus the danger of many of them being executed is a real one. And yet all 14,500 cannot be liquidated. Their morale has not : • broken. Confirmation of this came in a recent hunger strike at one of the camps and the heckling of a visiting Minister. The government knows full well that these militants cannot be "rehabiliated" li.e. bought out). If emergency regulations are revoked the regime will be forced to release them. But "But cher" Bandaranaike also knows that any let-up in the emergency would inevitably lead to a movement that will ultimately topple her government. But in any case the bourgeoisie has not achieved its goal. The repression of the JVP was a means to an end, the end being the imposition of certain economic burdens of the working class. This has not yet ration or remove subsidies on one measure of rice etc. This is why the bourgeoisie cannot afford to restore democratic rights.
THE ARMY/POLICE AMBITIONS There it emother very significentThere is another very significant development. The police and the Army have tasted unbridled power; they have enjoyed special privilages. The Chiefs of the Armed Forces know that at least for four weeks the political leaders were solely dependent on the Army. As the mass discontent begins to express itself a further rightward drift cannot be ruled out, particularly when the atrocities and bestial behaviour of the Army and police comes to light and legsl officers come under pressure to institute legal proceedings. One incident will suffice to explain this.
One of the leading JVP comrades, a woman in her twenties, was raped by an Army colonel, paraded naked in the main street and subsequently shot. This incident created unrest even amongst the army and the Colonel was arrested. Other such incidents have led to a conflict between sections of the state bureaucracy and judiciary and the heads of the Armed Forces, who wish to get rid of the inconvenient legal regulations which make the armed forces liable to prosecution. The possibility of some sort of military take-over cannot totally be ruled out in the future.
RESTORE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS In These conditions the demand for the restoration of democratic rights becomes an important transitional demand because the bourgeoisie cannot accede to it without endangering its own stability. The only means of ensuring the restoration of democratic rights and forestalling a further rightward drift would be the deve lopment of the mass movement, although it remain an extremely difficult task given the present conditions.
In our previous article we did not raise many criti. cisims of the JVP because the main emphasis at that stage beun achieved. They are debating whether to cut the rice NOTES specific issues in parliament was a total solidarity with the JVP comrades under attack. Today, however, it is necessary to draw attention to some serious political errors. In the first place their failure to mobilise the masses, When they were under attack they resisted militarily without any political campaign directed at the masses. This was suicidal as it gave the bourgeoisie the initiative, They had no concept of mass mobilisation. Secondly a considerable number were influenced by Maoism and were misled by Maoist rhetoric into visualising sociai transformations purely as a military question. [A crude interpretation of "Power grows out of the barrel of a Gun" led them to underestimate the role of the massesi. Of course the support given to the Bandaranaike regime by the Chinese bureaucracy has made many JVP militants understand its counter-revolutionary nature and the process of differentiation continues to take place. Will later make a more detailed critique and balance sheet of the JVP, but no one should underestimate the tremendous impact of their heroic resistance. By their bravery they have demonstrated to the masses the hypocrisy of the Stalinists and the reformists, they have unmasked the mystifying force of bourgeois democracy and above all, they have demonstrated that the struggle for socialism is a struggle for state power.
As internationalists we must call for the release of political prisoners, publicise the plight of the JVP comrades, call for the immediate restoration of democratic rights and a public enquiry into Army and police atrocities. We should also keep open an eye for any representatives of the Ceylon regime visiting Western Europe. 1. Federal party is the party of the Tamil bourgeoisie. 2. The nephew is Felix "Hangman" Bandaranaike who is personally directing the repression. 3. The police wanted the comrade to confess that the LSSP (R), the Ceylon Section of the Fourth International and his organisation was involved in the uprising 4. The Red Mole article referred to the United Front between the JVP, LSSP (R) and YSF. There was no permanent United Front. They corne together on 5. The number of prisoners was confirmed by Bandaranaike 6. The government has so far raised bus fares, but the major proposals for cutting the nice subsidy, pruning social service experiditure has not yet been implemented! 7. One measure is equivalent to 2 ibs
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PUBLIC MEETING SPEAKER Emest Mandel