Defend Sri Lankan Left!

Sri Lankan leftists are currently the victims of a vicious wave of political killings initiated by the Sinhala-chauvinist JVP (Peoples Liberation Front). Over 200 leftists have been killed to date.This includes three members of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) affiliated with David North’s U.S.-based Workers League. On 6 September the RCL’s offices were raided and several of its leaders arrested. Protests from trade unions and a couple of larger political organizations (including the Lanka Sama Samaja Party) led to their release.

On 27 August, G.K.R. Perera, a leader of the Workers Marxist League (WML), a group which describes itself as Trotskyist, was shot and killed. The WML’s secretary, cde. Andrade, has also been threatened by the JVP. He is therefore in immediate danger of being murdered by these communalists thugs. Despite our political differences with the WML, as well as the other groupings in the Lankan “far-left” (the RCL, RWP, MWT and Spartacists), the Bolshevik Tendency stands in solidarity with these comrades as well as others in the workers movement who face the twin threat of official state repression and contimuing JVP terrorism. It is urgently necessary for the socialist and labor movement internationally to act to defend the Lankan left.