Sri Lanka's main Marxist party contesting December's general elections admitted for the first time carrying out mass murder and warned it could rearm, a report said on Saturday. The Marxist JVP, or People's Liberation Front, owned up to the killings carried out by its front organisation DJV, or Patriotic People's Front, between 1987 and 1990, the Island newspaper reported.
It quoted the JVP's top leader, Somawansa Amarasinghe, who on Thursday ended a 12-year self-imposed exile abroad, as saying that a future JVP government would compensate the victims of their terror campaign. "The Deshapremis (DJV) did not kill without reason. At a time of war there is killing. Is there a war where you talk over tea?" Amarasinghe, 58, reportedly told a public rally outside the capital on Friday.
The JVP has been accused of killing more than 6,000 supporters of mainstream political parties, members of the security forces and the police in the three-year period. The government was accused of killing nearly 17,000 people while crushing the JVP.
Amarasinghe admitted DJV cadres had attacked Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine in the central town of Kandy and the main airbase located next to the country's only international airport in the late 1980s. Amarasinghe fled Sri Lanka in 1989 amid a ruthless government crack-down which wiped out the entire JVP politburo. He returned to the island Thursday on a passport issued to him by the government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga in October.
The JVP provided a crucial prop to the ruling People's Alliance of President Kumaratunga when it faced near-certain defeat following the defection of a key Muslim ally in June.
Bureau Report