SRI LANKA : Civil War Imperils Tourism

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka —  In hotels, restaurants, travel agencies and boutiques throughout this lush island formerly known as Ceylon, Sri Lankans are nervously asking if the tourists will be coming again this year.

“We need peace,” said Sarath Jayawardana, deputy director general of the Ceylon Tourist Board.

But peace may not be in the cards.

A 12-year-old civil war pitting ethnic Tamil militants against government forces resumed in April after a 3 1/2-month cease-fire with a series of bloody attacks by the insurgents. Suddenly, the ground regained by the Indian Ocean island’s tourism industry in recent years was threatened.

Sunimal Senanayake, managing director of Walkers Tours Ltd., the country’s biggest tour operator, says his agents haven’t noticed any difference in bookings from overseas. But other Sri Lankans have.

At Beach Wadiya, a popular eatery here in the capital that serves up boiled prawns at outdoor tables less than 100 yards from the crashing surf, patronage is just 30% to 40% of what it was last June, proprietor Olwyn Weerasekara says.

In 1994, a total of 407,111 foreigners, including 10,692 Americans, came to this verdant land off India’s southern tip to sun themselves on the broad beaches, tour the cool hills of the interior and visit ancient sites, many of which are linked to the early history of the Buddhist faith.

That brought a badly needed infusion of $224 million to the economy--enough to provide a livelihood for 75,000 people.

“It was the best year we ever had,” Jayawardana said. The previous banner year for visitors was 1982--one year before armed militants began fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority, and tourists began staying away in droves.

What now sows alarm in the ranks of the travel industry is the possibility that in the renewed fighting, tourists may become a target. On June 5, a Tamil rebel group carried out an abortive attempt to explode a car bomb at the island’s international airport.

Though four bombs exploded at hotels in Colombo in April, 1994, tourists until now have largely escaped the war’s horrors. Some Colombo-based diplomats suggest that the guerrillas’ real motive is to scare off tourists, not to kill them, in a bid to sap the government’s economic resources.

To cope with the threat, police have multiplied the number of checkpoints on the roads. On some days at Kathunayake International Airport, officers do not allow departing passengers to drive up to the terminal. They must disembark 150 yards away and carry their baggage or give it to a porter.

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The government says the airport and major cities “are as safe as they were over the past several years.” The tourism industry has its fingers crossed that holiday-makers believe that.