
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 19, 1991                   TAG: 9102190223
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: BATTICALOA, SRI LANKA                                LENGTH: Medium

HUNDREDS OF TAMIL YOUTHS DISAPPEARING AS WAR GRINDS ON

Hundreds of ethnic Tamil youths in this isolated, civil war-torn district of northeastern Sri Lanka have disappeared in recent months after being taken into custody by government security forces, according to a registry compiled by Christian missionaries and civic leaders here.

Relatives of the missing Tamils - exactly 2,009, according to the registry - claim that the youths were taken from refugee camps, movie houses and even hospital beds and then executed by security forces or pro-government "death squads" that roam the region in jeeps and trucks.

Relief workers here say they believe some of the youths may have ended up on the piles of burning bodies periodically seen along roadsides here this winter.

Army and government officials have denied executing any Tamil detainees, but at the same time they are unable to account for the 2,009 missing youths. They say some may have been killed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Homeland), a violent guerrilla force fighting to create a separate Tamil state in northeastern Sri Lanka.

But the rash of disappearances in this coastal city of 50,000 represents just one aspect of the brutality and terror in Tamil areas. Since last June, after years of desultory violence and open warfare involving Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority - and radical factions within both - the Sinhalese-dominated government has been trying to crush the Tamil Tigers once and for all. While the offensive has had little apparent success in breaking the Tigers' power in the region, it has left at least 4,000 dead and up to a million refugees.

The guerrillas, who started the latest round of fighting, have been implicated in machine-gun massacres of unarmed noncombatants and mass executions of policemen captured at remote outposts.

The government has been accused of killing dozens of people by dropping gasoline- and rubber-filled "barrel bombs" on civilian areas. Fabricated from oil drums and detonated with dynamite, the barrel bombs explode with horrific effect, spraying burning rubber that sticks to skin.

Government officials say the tiny Sri Lankan air force is under orders to bomb only guerrilla targets but that some noncombatant casualties are inevitable.

Sri Lankan officials say they are attempting to root out and finally smash the Tamil Tigers, a tightly disciplined guerrilla force that from 1987 to 1989 fought off more than 70,000 Indian army troops brought in to impose peace on the island.

The thousands of disappearances in Batticaloa and other Tamil regions suggest that in attempting to destroy the guerrillas, the government may be following the same bloody strategy it used against the Maoist Peoples Liberation Front - known by its Sinhalese initials as JVP - which bid for power in the south in 1988 and 1989.

by CNB