SUMMARY REPORT AT THE END OF THE
ELECTION CAMPAIGN

The following key points can be made to summarise the trends and indicators of violence during the election campaign period from October 27, 2001 to December 2, 2001.

1) The extent and seriousness of the violence experienced thus far have been clearly in excess of the General Election campaign of 2000, the Presidential Election of 1999 and the General Election of 1994. In 2000, CMEV recorded 2044 incidents during the 39 days of the campaign, whereas up to December 1, 2001 (37 days) the cumulative number of violations recorded is already 2205, and together with an estimated 110 incidents recorded on December 2, 2001 brings the total for the campaign to approximately 2315. The comparison between these two most recent elections is detailed in Figures 15 and 16.

2) The escalation of violence during the last stages of the campaign has reached alarming proportions, with the penultimate week recording 603 incidents and the first 3 days of the last week recording 229, which is orders of magnitude higher than in the previous year.

3) The qualitative increase in the seriousness of the offences can be seen by the rapid increase in murders (38 recorded so far, with the last 20 reported during the last 10 days) as well as in the use of firearms which has risen to 21.3% of all incidents and nearly 40% of all major incidents.

4) The Western (389), North Western (379), Southern (345) and North Central (285) Provinces continue to be the worst affected areas, while in terms of Districts, Anuradhapura (214), Puttalam (195), Gampaha (187), Kurunegala (184) and Digamadulla (163) remain the most violent.

5) All the major trends outlined in the first report of CMEV dated November 22, 2001 remain valid, and the indicators of exacerbated violence of an organised nature taking place on polling day are very clear, the districts described above being the chief areas of concern, in addition to which Hambantota, Kegalle, Kandy, Matara, and Jaffna are also volatile areas.

CMEV was formed in 1997 by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), the Free Media Movement (FMM) and the Coalition Against Political Violence as an independent and non- partisan organization to monitor the incidence of election-related violence.

Dr. P. Saravanamuttu Co-Convenor	Sunila Abeysekera Co-Convenor	Sundanda Deshapriya Co-Convenor