posted November 05, 2000 03:30 PM            

COLOMBO
BARELY two weeks after cobbling up a coalition government, Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga finds trouble brewing in a new quarter — among the Tamils working on tea plantations.

Police arrested P Chandrasekharan, an opposition politician representing Tamils of Indian origin, this morning in connection with yesterday’s rioting in the central Nuwara Eliya district. Chandrasekharan, leader of the Upcountry People’s Front, was in the forefront of the protests against Wednesday’s massacre of 26 Tamil detainees at a rehabilitation camp by Sinhalese mobs.

Work on the numerous tea plantations and factories in the region ground to a halt today as police clamped a local curfew for the second day running as shops and railway carriages, which had been set alight, lay smouldering.

"Almost all the tea estates are not working. Some workers reported for the morning muster but they have gone home because no one else is around," said Lal Basnayake, a manager at the Great Western Tea Factory in Nuwara Eliya.

Basnayake said the tea-growing towns of Nuwara Eliya, Talawakele, Nanu-oya and Kotagala, the worst-hit in Sunday’s communal riots, were still tense and under heavy police and security forces guard.

Hundreds of soldiers were rushed to the area on last afternoon after president Kumaratunga ordered prime minister Ratnasiri Wickemanayake to meet the security chiefs in an emergency session to defuse the growing tension.

The government expressed sadness over the incidents and said it had taken steps to protect people and property and promised action against the people involved in the incidents.

One person died when police opened fire at unruly crowds of Tamils who attacked buses and trains and burnt shops belonging to members of the majority Sinhalese community. The Tamils were protesting against the killing of 26 inmates at a rehabilitation camp for separatist suspects in the central Bandarawela town by a mob of Sinhalese thugs.

Emotions ran high as the funeral of one of the detainees got under way in the town of Kotagala yesterday. The unarmed detainees, aged between 17 and 35, were bludgeoned and knifed by hooligans, leaving 14 seriously wounded. The apparently unprovoked carnage has stirred up a hornets’ nest with ethnic rioting, largely led by the Indian Tamils, erupting in the area.

The state-owned newspaper, Daily News, said on Monday that 14 policemen and two civilians had been taken into custody by a special police team sent by Kumaratunga to investigate the murders. The newspaper reported that the investigators have concluded that a "hardcore LTTE member," Anthony James, who was recently transferred to the camp was responsible for whipping up the inmates to agitate for their release.

The camp’s residents were suspected of being members of the northern Jaffnabased LTTE. They were detained without being charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act after having surrendered to the forces and were to be released shortly at the end of various job-oriented training programmes.