JVP insurrection of 1987–89

01Against the Accord

Banned in 1983, the JVP went underground and rebuilt itself as a Sinhala nationalist movement. The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987, and the Indian Peace Keeping Force that came with it, gave it a cause. Its armed wing attacked army camps for weapons, killed politicians and officials who backed the Accord, and enforced strikes and curfews on the south by threat. For a time in 1988–89 large parts of the island answered more to JVP orders than to the government’s.

02The end of the rising

President Premadasa, in office from January 1989, first sought talks and then turned the army and police loose on the movement. Death squads operated alongside the security forces, and the killing on both sides was very heavy; the exact toll has never been settled. Wijeweera was captured in the hill country in November 1989 and killed in custody, and most of the leadership followed. The JVP later returned to open politics and contested elections.