COLOMBO: The United National Party (UNP) scored a comfortable victory in Sri Lankan national polls earlier this month, reflecting people’s desire for change amid a flagging economy and a costly war, but human rights activists are not rejoicing. Rights groups are in fact concerned that the same regime which launched a brutal crackdown on left-wing rebels in the 1980s, is back in power. Activists have been pressing demands for compensation for young persons who disappeared during that period.

“The old notorious regime who ruled the country from 1988 to 1994 got a resounding victory at the general elections,” said a worried Chandra Peiris, chairman of the Organization for Parents and Family Members of the Disappeared (OPFMD), in an appeal to international human rights groups including Amnesty International.

“It is important to recall that a highest number of disappearances were recorded during their rule. Fear of death or disappearances had become an inevitable factor with uncertainty during this period of UNP rule,” he noted.

The OPFMD has many reasons to worry. It is leading a group of families of the disappeared to seek justice against the killers of thousands of young people who died at the hands of the military and pro-UNP death squads between 1988 to 1990.

The crackdown was ordered by then President Ranasinghe Premadasa as the Marxist People’s Liberation Front or JVP caused mayhem and terror across the country in a bid to oust the government.

Estimates of missing persons have ranged from 10,000 to 60,000 over the three-year period in the bloody downfall of the JVP, now a respected third political force in the country.

The crackdown and resultant fear psychosis that spread across the country led to the downfall of the then UNP government, which lost both parliamentary and presidential polls in 1994.

The UNP is now back in power and it is interesting to see how it would tackle the issue of justice for suspected perpetrators against whom the Attorney General’s office is preparing indictments. Some cases against army and police officers have already been filed. According to official figures, close to 500 cases have been filed against military and police officers but the process is slow, say rights activists.

Peiris said that he was worried that the new regime might re-impose restrictions and prohibitions earlier imposed by the 1980s UNP government on human rights activists and organizations. “We are appealing to all human rights activists to participate in exposing possible human rights violations,” he said. The OPFMD is keeping its options open and not ruling out the possibility that the new government, responsible for atrocities in the past, might be conciliatory.—Dawn/InterPress Service.