A HUNDRED picketed the Centre on 28 July in protest at recent repression directed against Tamil-speaking minority island.
Northern Sri Lanka main concentration of Tamil people is centred - has been under a state of emergency and curfew, backed up by a full-scale military occupation, for several weeks. There widespread arrests of militants and a of suspicious deaths which bear the mark of the security forces.
A special anti-terrorist law has been rushed through Parliament to deal with dissenters, and there is every reason to believe that these attacks on democratic rights will extend beyond the Tamil regions.
Sri The Tamil
Ceylon Tea on the political United where the UNP government.
have been their national parliamentary the Sinhala autiorities have long people have historic grievances against the state dominated by the majority Sinhalaspeaking population. The main Tamil and organisation the Tamil official opposition to the right-wing But many younger militants who support the cause of an independent Tamil state (Eelam) are looking for more effective ways of fighting for rights than the of the TULF. Some of them have begun a campaign of armed actions against While the Tamil people in the north been settled in Ceylon, those in the east were brought into the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to run the British-owned tea plantations. They are among the most dispossessed people in Sri today, stripped of most civil rights working conditions. Current governmeo policy aims to 'repatriate' a third of them to India.
The Tea House picket was mounted by a committee of Tamil, Sri Lanka, and British anmed itself TheS. which has now The Committee Against Repression Tamil Speaking People in Sri Lanka'. demands include: the ending of the state of emergency, an end to the killings and torture of Tamils, troops out of the Tamil areas, and an end to incitement of racial hatred in the island.
The committee is planning a major action for next month's Britain of President Jayawardena of