POP/ROCK - Oct. 16, 1989

Forty of Sri Lanka’s top singers have pooled their talents to record a song that pleads for peace on the ethnically torn Indian Ocean island. Titled “Give Peace a Chance,” and sung in the Tamil, Sinhalese and English languages, the song was played this weekend on state-run radio and television. “Our song, the first sung jointly by 40 top vocalists, is to achieve peace in our country, where everybody cries for just that,” said composer Sunil Perera. Tamils, who are mostly Hindus, make up 18% of the island’s 16 million people. Militant Tamils have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland in the northeast. They allege they are denied jobs and education by the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese, who make up 75% of the population. More than 11,000 people have died in the Tamil rebellion.