Operations Against the JVP uprising(1987-89)

 

The JVP uprising was in full swing after the signing of the peace accord.They used the presence of the IPKF to justify their armed action to topple the government.They also forced the service personnel to quit their jobs by issuing death threats.
    There were instances where entire families of the soldiers were slaughtered when instructions of the JVP were not complied with. 
      However the brave soldiers never succumbed to the JVP threats except for a very few.There were instances where the entire government machinery came to a standstill as the essential services were totally crippled.It is worth to mention that it was the loyal soldiers of the srilanka army who stood by the country in the hour of need.By the end of 1989,the situation was totally brought under control as most of the JVP leadership were out of action.At this stage,the government was holding peace talks with the LTTE.

• More people killed Army and JVP members

           The defeat of the 1971 uprising and the death of fellow comrades led to the post-1987 revolt of the JVP when, adroitly exploiting the arrival of the Indian Peace Keeping Force and the widespread nationalist sentiments of large sections of the Sinhala peopele, the JVP began to terrorise both the state machinery and those sections of civil society opposed to its thinking and almost brought the state to its knees.
                   Organised in cells of three people and based around  in the south, the JVP murdered probably thousands of people and crippled the country with violently-enforced hartals (general strikes) for two years. Government forces captured and killed Wijeweera and his deputy in November 1989 in Colombo; by early 1990 they had killed or imprisoned the remaining JVP politburo and detained an estimated 7,000 JVP members. Although the government won a decisive military victory,  there were credible accusations of brutality and extrajudicial methods.
                     The number of deaths during the insurgency is uncertain: the Government was fighting multiple Tamil insurgent groups at the time, using multiple official and unofficial forces, and in the resulting chaos it was said that the uniforms of those responsible for an action denoted only those who were not actually responsible. In addition,
               many people took advantage of the chaos to prosecute deadly local feuds. What is certain is the methods of death, including the "necklace" of a burning tyre, copied on the South African ANC-practice of the time, victims eviscerated and left to die, and even the occasion of a dozen heads arranged around the Alwis pond of the University of Peradeniya.