Sri Lanka

By Jill Smolowe

The shopkeeper cowers behind his counter, paralyzed by indecision and fear. Sri Lanka's presidential campaign is at its height, but in the southern town of Ambalangoda the streets are nearly deserted, save for police and army troops on patrol. Under orders to open the shops of Ambalangoda, the uniformed men move up and down the streets, using the butts of their automatic rifles to knock the locks off the shuttered storefronts. The shopkeeper would gladly comply, but that could cost him his life. A general strike has been ordered by the People's Liberation Front (J.V.P.), Sinhalese extremists who do not hesitate to signal their displeasure with bullets. "People are afraid of the army and even more afraid of the J.V.P.," whispers the terrified shopkeeper. "I am in the middle. I can't think; I can't even speak, I am so afraid." A moment later, he tells his visitor, "Please don't mention my name, or this shop. I'll be a dead man if you do."

In the northern city of Jaffna, 300 miles away, Jayamani Marianayagam ricochets between grief and anxiety as she recounts the fate of her son Jude Chandrakumar. Three weeks ago, the 17-year-old boy was practicing You Are My Rock, O Jesus on the organ in St. Mary's Cathedral when a street battle between two militant Tamil factions spilled through the doors and into the sanctuary. Mistaking young Chandrakumar for a wounded rival, guerrillas grabbed him. The boy's body was found that night outside the church, his legs broken, his fingernails missing, his head half blown away. "No mother should ever have to face the tragedy of seeing her son like that," Jayamani sobs. The tears turn to a hiss. "Somehow, I must go away. I am so afraid to live here."

Violence is not new to Sri Lanka, torn by civil conflict since 1983. In the past 16 months some 4,000 civilians and combatants have died in the violence. Over the past few weeks, however, the tide of blood has risen. The toll in the south has mounted to at least a dozen lives daily. With the presidential vote set for next week, the country and its 16 million people are on the verge of anarchy, the ethnic and factional strife having unleashed a savagery evocative of El Salvador in the early 1980s. Many Sri Lankans stake the last hope for their island country on a democratic transfer of power that will end the protracted eleven-year rule of President Junius Jayewardene. That faith, a narrow one, rests on the prospect that a new administration in the capital city of Colombo may slow the insurgents' momentum. But "even if all the guns are put away," warns Education Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, "this country will never be the same again."

When civil war erupted five years ago, the lines of discord were drawn between the separatist Tamils of the north and the majority Sinhalese, who dominate the south. But that precise if gory equation was complicated 16 months ago by the signing of a peace accord between India and Sri Lanka that guaranteed the Tamils a measure of autonomy. Since then, 70,000 Indian troops have been deployed throughout Sri Lanka's north and east to enforce the peace.

The effort has weakened, if not declawed, the main rebel outfit, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But the Indian army has been brutal in its attempt to ferret out Tiger collaborators, and has been joined in the zealous quest by another trigger-happy Tamil faction, the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (E.P.R.L.F.). In the south, Sinhalese rebels who oppose the peace accord and the presence of Indian troops on Sri Lankan soil have mounted / a vicious campaign that is being countered by the Sri Lankan security forces and bands of vigilantes in league with the government.

It is against this bloody backdrop that Sri Lanka is trying to stage its first presidential vote since 1982, to be followed possibly in February by the first parliamentary elections in more than a decade. Skeptics warn that the Sinhalese or Tamil militants will try to keep voters from the polls. Even if the turnout is large, the new President may regret his victory. "I wonder if we aren't going to see a real bloodbath after elections," says a Western diplomat in Colombo. Hoping to avoid such carnage, both the ruling United National Party and the main opposition party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, have tried to woo the Sinhalese rebels.

But the rebels remain unimpressed. Their demands for participation include a renunciation of last year's peace pact with New Delhi and the immediate and unconditional removal of all Indian troops. The campaign of Sinhalese nationalism strikes a sympathetic chord in the south, where ancient suspicions of India run deep. The guerrillas' Marxist message also holds appeal in an area where unemployment runs high. Up to 60% of the young people in some areas support the J.V.P. The price of disloyalty is steep. Since the rebels renewed their violent campaign in the summer of 1987, after a dormancy of 16 years, they have killed 600 people. In the village of Thihagoda, a woman and her son, rumored to be government sympathizers, were found murdered, their heads grotesquely battered by fatal hammer blows.

Such savagery has made a mockery of the presidential campaign. At some ruling-party rallies, security officers outnumber the crowds, with as few as 25 people turning out to hear the speeches. The opposition party is not even campaigning in the south. For most citizens, the more pressing reality is the guerrillas' general strike, which has caused electrical blackouts and halted most bus and train traffic. In the ports, trade has slowed to the point where food shortages are becoming a problem.

Local strongmen, backed by government security forces, are beginning to take matters into their own hands. Dead bodies have begun to appear in the streets bearing signs that read THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO SO-CALLED REVOLUTIONARIES. Not all the killings are traceable, but at least some have been carried out by local potentates. A plantation owner told TIME that he had reached an agreement with the security forces to mount his own . counterterrorism campaign. In little more than a week, his men killed 25 members of the J.V.P. "We eliminated the worst of the buggers," he boasted.

Northerners are also under siege, caught in the cross fire of Tamil gangs. The undisciplined E.P.R.L.F., armed and assisted by Indian troops, tortures and kills any civilians it suspects of sympathizing with the rival Tigers. "These boys panic or get angry at the slightest provocation and pull the trigger," says a cart driver in Nallur.

Far from curbing the indiscriminate violence, the patrolling Indian soldiers sometimes add to it. After every attack on the peacekeeping troops -- and there have been 40 published incidents in the past three months around Jaffna alone -- surrounding areas are cordoned off and large numbers of civilians hauled in for brutal interrogation.

Caught between the insurgent and counterinsurgent campaigns, terrified citizens can hardly remember the gentle ways that characterized Sri Lanka for decades. "Today I am afraid to smile at anyone on the street," says Vallipuram Pararajasingham, a doctor in northern Vavuniya. In the south, people are too frightened even to venture into the streets. "You find television newscasters afraid to work, lawyers afraid to attend bar meetings, and M.P.s who resign after threats," says Wickremasinghe. "Everyone is living in a psychosis of fear."

With reporting by Edward W. Desmond/ Matara and Anita Pratap/Jaffna