ANKA
POLICE
OPEN FIRE
On
The president responded to the strike by ordering the campus closed, the third such order in two months. The students opposed the closure, which in addition to disrupting their studies also places financial burders on students who come from far away places and are forced to go home when the university closes. On November
ROHAN WIJEWEERA
Imprisoned JVP leader
SRI LANKA
CEYLON MERCANTILE UNION COLD GUST EPI 11 a delegation of students went to discuss the question with the president, who refused to make any concession, even opposing the students' remaining in the residence halls of their own expense. The students then decided to stage a non-violent protest, holding a sit-down in front of the Senate building on campus. The police came and surrounded the students, who refused to be provoked and carried on their peaceful protest. The following morning, November 12, those students who had chosen to go home began arriving at the Senate building to collect the 10 rupees customarily advanced them to allow them to go home. About a thousand students had arrived by 7:00 in the morning and were peacefully lining up when the police suddenly launched a tear-gas attack against them. The tear gas was followed by bullets. The police chased the students into the halls of residence and continued the attack, killing one student. Of the sixty-two wounded, twenty-seven were women and several were Buddhist monks. The response to the unprovoked police attack began on November 12 itself, when the workers of Thulhiriya Textile Factory went on strike in solidarity with the students. Policemen patrolling the streets near the university were chased away by angry residents. The government dispatched two top ministers — Communist party member Pieter Keunaman and Sri Lanka Freedom party member Hector Kobbekaduwa - on a "fact finding" mission. The climate of hostility toward the police was so intense that even Anura Bandaranaike, the prime minister's son, issued a statement expressing sympathy with the students. Finally, on November 16 the cabinet announced the removal of the president of Peradeniya campus from his post. The government also promised to appoint a commission of inquiry into the killing. But the students are not safisfied. The student union of Ceylon University called a meeting of all trade unions and student organizations for 38
November 15. Many unions attended - including the Coylon Mercantile Union, the Bank Employees' Union, various unions controlled by the Communist party, and other unions controlled by the Lanka Sama Samaja party (LSSP) - and decided to organize a day of action including a general strike. The students have demanded the resignation of the minister and junior minister (a CP member) from their posts, the revocation of the "state of emergency" that has been in effect since 1971, and the punishment of all those responsible for the assault on the university. The CP-dominated unions tried to assign responsibility for the shootings to the CiA but were met with criticism from the students. The students also read out a letter sent by Rohanna Wijeweera, one of the major leaders of the /VP, and other political prisoners who had organized the hunger strike. The letter demanded the resignation of the government and called upon all socialists and left-minded people to launch a struggle against the brutal copitalist regime. The movement against the government has begun to spread far and wide. A number of unions have issued statements of support and pledged to come out for the day of action. Students have gone on strike at Nalanda College and Dharmasoka College as well as other universities, the Jaffno and Vidyodaya campuses have also walked out. On November 16 a mass rally was organized by ten unions" calling for the abrogation of the state of emergency. The meeting was also addressed by a representative of the students' union and adopted o resolution in support of the day of action. The government is clearly in trouble, facing very deep resentment at the cavalier manner in which it uses armed police to suppress even the smallest protest. This resentment is an expression of the accumulated anger of the workers, who themselves have been the victims of armed government intimidation at the Wellowatte Spinning and Weaving Mills, the Thulhiriya Textile Mills, and other places. (See INPRECOR, No. 49, April 15, 1976.) On each occasion the government has attempted to see how far it could go before provoking too great a response. This time it has clearly gone too far and may have helped to spark off a campaign that could ultimately sweep it out of office. There are already signs that the mass movement is reaching levels unattained in years. On November 26 half a million workers (according to a Reuters dispatch) went on strike for twenty-four hours in the tea and rubber plantations and the banks to demand an end to the state of emergency. The government has since closed down the country's six universities. *The organizations sponsoring the meeting were: Ceylon Bank Employees' Union, Ceylon Estate Staffs' Union, Central Council of Ceylon Trade Unions, Federation of Tamil Trade Unions, Public Service Technical Officers Trade Union Federation, Ceylon Mecantile Union, Ceylon Trade Union Federation, Ceylon Workers' Congress, Union of Post and Telecommunications Officers, Independent Harbour Workers' Union.
THAILAND contd. from pg.40 "The So-Ngat Chaloryu fascist warlord clique looks big and powerful from the outside, but it is weak inside. ...Unsolvable conflicts within the clique still exist... and finally they will meet a shameful end like the defeated reactionary power-holding class in the neighboring countries who served the imperialists, feudalists, and bureaucratic capitalists.... "The Thai youths, schoolchildren, and students had been peacefully struggling for independence and democracy and for the welfare of our poor fraternal people within the framework of the constitution and the country's laws, despite the foct that our friends who share the same destiny with us had been barbarously terrorized, detained, and killed one after another. But we patiently continued to resort to peaceful means to carry out our struggle in the hope that our honesty, sincerity, and good intentions toward the country and people would make the reactionary ruling class aware of its crimes and would make them turn to solving the problems of independence, democracy, and the living conditions of the poor. •..But our peaceful means have been rewarded with grenades and hails of bullets. • We raised our empty hands to call for Justice, but what we received caused Tosses of blood and lives.... The lessons we learned with much blood and many lives clearly point out to us that national independence and democracy cannot be gained by reform methods under this decadent and unjust society... "Our people have no other option but to consolidate their forces to uproot this reactionary state power and establish the new revolutionary state power of the people. ...State power is the target of every revolutionary struggle. ...Past experience teaches us that we cannot defeat the enemy with our bare hands, nor can we solve the problems of independence, democracy, and social justice. We have unequivocally drawn the conclusion that because the enemy has guns we must also have guns... The conflict between our people and the reactionary ruling class - the big landlords, capitalists, and U.S. Imperialish - can be really settled only by people's war.... "Since Thailand, judging from its social characteristics, is a semicolonial and semifeudalist country, the sellout landlords and capitalists have gathered the odministrative power only in the capital, where they happily reside. They have robbed and left the masses of people in the rural areas in poverty, hardship, and backwardness. Their reactionary state power has cities as its fortresses, but it is weak in the rural areas. Therefore, in order to launch the armed struggle against the enemy, the people must use the rural areas as the places to build up and expand our forces, based on millions of farmers, to build a worker-farmer alliance, extensively consolidate forces, follow the path of using the rural areas fo encircle and finally seize the cities and resort to armed struggle as the main struggle to coordinate with the other forms of struggle, while the struggle in the cities must coordinate with the struggle in the rural arecs....
"We are willing to join with the people of various strata, groups, and those who cherish the nation and democrocy, whether or not they are members of any political party, to struggle to drive the U.S. imperialists out of Thailand, overthrow the fascist warlord clique and its puppet government, and to establish the government of the people.... *.* ..* * * * * = ** On November 10, 1976, a statement was issued by two workers who had disappeared more than a year ago after one had been the victim of an attempted ossassination. They are Therd Pom Jaidit (of the hotel workers union) and Prasit Chaiyoo (of the textile workers). The statement was broadcast by Voice of the Thai People on November 20 and again on November 21. "To the workers, employees, and lower-level functionaries, and to all those struggling for democracy and justice, *... The junta has destroyed the spirit of October 14, 1973 (date of the student uprising). Our three- year struggle in the factories has been threatened, crushed, and betrayed by the watchdogs of nationa! and foreign monopoly capital. ... Our brother workers... represent the creative force of the economy and society... (but) we are condemned to a miserable life of poverty and hunger... The only means we have of defending ourselves is the strike. We have used this means in respect for the law, their law... But the workers who have gone on strike peacefully have faced the gangster aftacks of the Wild Buffaloes' and the Nawapon (two far-right paramilitary groups)... Armed police and special antiriot forces have brutally assaulted the workers.... Today the only weapon we had to demand justice, the strike, has been declared illegal by the junta. *Workers, employees, and lower-level functionaries, unite resolutely in each factory, in each branch of industry, and fight in each factory and branch to resist the attacks of the right. Seek out and denounce the spies and traitors who have infiltrated the workers movement. . . .Do not let yourselves be divided ....There is no way out except political struggle to overthrow the fascist goverment of the far right, which is prepared to sell out the country. There is no other way except to unite... with the peasants ... The victory of the people will never be won through trickery or through peaceful struggle according to the rules laid down by the enemy. • We must follow the road to the seizure of power with arms.... "Revolutionary people's war has now broken out throughout the country... We, the working class, have a central role to play in the revolution. History has placed on the shoulders of our class the glorious task of liberating humanity. We must carry on until victory...