Twice, the Sri Lankan state crushed the JVP movement and preoccupied itself with the Tamil war in the north and east. In the south, conditions which gave rise to the JVP and its brand of bloody politics fester.
The worst period of political violence and terror experienced in the Sinhala-dominated southern parts of Sri Lanka unfolded between 1987 and 1989, in the attempted take-over of state power by the Janata Vimukti Peramuna (jvp, the People´s Liberation Front) and the government´s counter-insurgency campaign. That period of terror has now become part of the collective history of violence in South Asia.
Through the early 1980s, there had been a steady institutionalisation of political violence in the Tamil-dominated areas of Sri Lanka, with an escalating confrontation between state security forces and various Tamil guerrilla groups. This was mostly concentrated in the war-ravaged operational zones in the northeast and the largely-shielded Sinhala population was affected only when bodies of dead soldiers were returned to their kin in sealed coffins.
When the JVP-led insurrection exploded in the south in 1988, it took Sinhala society completely by surprise. But were the JVP and its modus operandi, as well as the ruthlessness of the government´s counter-insurgency campaign, all that unexpected?