With the armed uprising of the youth a new epoch has begun in Ceylon. The parliamentary process which had been accepted as a permanent way of political life by reformist politicians has been seriously challenged.

The almost idyllic picture that bourgeois reformists, including Stalinists, have sought to draw of Ceylon, as a country where no armed struggles to overthrow the state power are possible, because it is a land whose people are predominently Buddhists, where violence is against their tradition and culture ahllowed and nurtured for, 500 years of their proud history, has been shattered with the armed struggle of the youth to seize political power.

This struggle of the youth, mainly from the Sinhalese Buddhist areas, which has continued now for over 40 days, has seen unprecedented mass slaughter of the youth and others by the government claiming to serve, especially the interests of the Sinhalese Buddhists a struggle which has filled the jails to over-flowing, turned universities into concentration camps, and led the government to obtain armaments from seven countries has in any event shaken to its very foundations the present coalition regime and also capitalist society.

Starting from 5th April, the youth - students, unemployed of both sexes, with young workers and school teachers launched armed struggle to seize political power. In the leadership of this uprising is the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front), a Maoist style about movement which has had a clandestine existence for about five years to May 1970, and which, thereafter functioned openly till it was banned on 6th April. Among the known leaders are Rohana Wijeweera, a former student of Lmbumba University, and Mahinda Wijesekera, a student of Vidyodaya University, both incarcerated about two weeks prior to the launching of the armed stuggle.

During its clandestine existence, the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna had attracted to its banner thousands of the radicalised youth spread throughout the country. This youth was composed, in the main, of both sexes in the age group of 16-5 years, drawn from University Technical and secondary school students, Sinhalese educated unemployed youth in rural and urban areas, and young Buddhist monks. Also included in the fold of the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna, were young militant workers drawn mainly from the State industrial Corporations and the State-agricultural sector - e.g. the Land Development Survey Department and the Colonisation schemes. Further, among those who had played an important part in this movement were school teachers including even head teachers and University lecturers belonging to the next age group i.e. over 5 years.