Spreading communal violence is a government move – Coordinating Committee of Trade Unions

TUESDAY, 09 APRIL 2013 

The wave of thuggery of 'balasena' unleashed in public recently and thuggery of similar gangs of thugs have been let loose on the society with the knowledge and patronage of the government for its political requirement states the Coordinating Committee of Trade Unions.

"The government has reckoned that unleashing gangs of thugs with Buddhist priests to create hatred towards Muslims would get some sort of an acceptance in the Sinhalese community. The inactiveness of the police in incidents that have been manipulated by these gangs so that they could carry on their crimes without any hindrance and spread terror among masses indicate that the government has cramped law and order in the country to suit their agenda. These measures should not be treated lightly," states the Coordinating Committee of Trade Unions.

The Coordinating Committee of Trade Unions consists of National Trade Union Center (NTUC), Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya, Federation of University Teachers' Associations (FUTA), Free Trade Zone General Employees Union, Lanka National Estate Workers Union, Inter Company Employees Union, United Workers' Union, UPTO and several other trade unions.

The announcement further states, "The economic policy of the government is so unsuccessful that it cannot have any room for democracy in the country. Loans for daily expenditure too have to be got for very high interests. The loans requested from the IMF and China have not been granted. Even capitalist system doesn't have any process to maintain an economy when there is no proper management and large scale economic plunders are being carried out. As such, the government will be left with suppressing the working masses that would rise up against the act of burdening them with the economic burden of the government.

The government has understood that the rise up of the working masses against the destruction of the economy would not be stopped by repressing incident by incident. The government has also learnt that traditional methods of repressing by deploying police and Army have defunct. This is why these gangs of thugs with a religious appearance are unleashed on the society. The government may be calculating that through such manipulations the whole society could be benumbed. The attempt is to divide the working masses on religious and communal basis.

Hence, we, as trade unions that represent genuine unity of the working masses, condemn anti-religious and communalist thuggery. Also, we call upon all democratic organizations, Individuals, trade unions and media activists to rally with us to act against Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim communalist moves."

The announcement on behalf of the Coordinating Committee has been released with the signatures of Wasanthe Samarasinghe, Sunil de Silva, Muditha Karunamuni, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, Anton Markus, Mahinda Jayasinghe and K. Velayudan.