ABSTRACT
In February 2007, posters appeared around the main city of Colombo, targeting specific trade union leaders as traitors and terrorists. Among the unionists identified were two key leaders of the Health Sector Trade Union Alliance (HSTUA). This poster campaign was a response to a protest by HSTUA and others against the abduction of three people working for the railway union’s newspaper, by unidentified armed men in a white van (ITUC 2008). Since the escalation of the war in 2005, these abductions became a new feature of state anti-terrorism tactics, often linked with extrajudicial killings and “disappearances”. These parastate operations were somewhat similar to those under the Premadasa regime (1989-93). At a time when the military was launching a series of attacks against the LTTE in the North and the East, any anti-government protests were labelled as unpatriotic. The HSTUA, an alliance of 54 health sector unions that has engaged in the series of protests for the payment of salary arrears, did not include the main nurses’ union. In contrast, the main nurses’ union was committed to the government war effort, revealing the enduring relationship between militarism and nursing, as well as different politics among the nurses (Enloe 1983).
