SRI LANKA : NATIONAL RECONCILIATION IS NOT POSSIBLE
(Updated and expanded)
BRIAN SENEWIRATNE
MA (Cantab), MD(Lond), FRCP (Lond), FRACP
Brisbane, Australia
The expansion
This paper was published a month ago (July 2010). The international reaction was immediate. There was much appreciation and encouragement, but also (justifiable) criticisms that the article ended in 'mid air' with no suggestions as to what could be done about this disastrous situation.
There were more than 1,000 requests that the article be expanded. I too noted some significant omissions - the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the Sinhalese South, and the Plantation ('Indian') Tamils in the Central Hills, both of whom must be considered in any 'national reconciliation'. I have addressed these in this 'expansion'. I did not do so earlier because the paper was already too long. However, I accept the view that if as serious a problem as this is to be dealt with, it has to be comprehensive.
WHY NATIONAL RECONCILIATION IN SRI LANKA IS NOT POSSIBLE
There is much talk of National Reconciliation in Sri Lanka essentially between the Sinhalese-dominated Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Tamil people. As a Sinhalese who has supported the struggle of the Tamil people to live with equality, dignity and without discrimination, and now, to live at all, in the country of their birth, I simply do not think that National Reconciliation is possible.
I have been closely involved with the problems faced by the Tamil people since 1948. This was when a million Plantation 'Indian' Tamils, (one seventh of the total population of Ceylon at that time), were disenfranchised and decitizenised in one of the most outrageous acts of political barbarism anywhere in the world.
It was followed (since 1956) by a series of highly discriminatory measures against the indigenous Sri Lankan Tamils, in the use of their language (Tamil), admission to Universities (the bar being set higher for Tamils), discrimination in employment, the developmental neglect of the area they lived in (the North and the East), and Government attempts to alter the demography of the Tamil areas in favour of the Sinhalese. This blatant discrimination was coupled with a succession of Government organized pogroms of the Tamils and an escalating violation of their basic human rights.
The most serious recent slaughter of Tamils (June 2006 May 2009), with features of Genocide , and done under the guise of “wiping out Tamil terrorism” has made national reconciliation impossible.
With a wealth of information on all this (some of which I have recorded and distributed in a dozen dvds ), I am convinced that national reconciliation is totally unrealistic.
On a different front, I have been increasingly concerned at the increasing divide between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' irrespective of ethnicity. Having watched all this since Independence in 1948, I am convinced that what occurred in 1948 was not independence from colonial Britain but a sham independence where British capitalists were replaced by Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) capitalists - Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim. The colonial capitalist horse kept going in the same direction, only the rider had changed. The marginalisation, exploitation and neglect of the poor, in particular the rural poor, has, in fact, increased. This has more to do with the curse of global capitalism of which Sri Lanka is a peripheral outpost, than the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic problem.
Of serious concern is the plight of the Plantation ('Indian') Tamils indentured labour brought by the British from their colonial recruiting ground (the British Madras Presidency) in the mid 1850s, to work on their tea estates. There is no group in Sri Lanka whose basic human rights have been violated for as long as theirs have been (for 150 years), first by the colonial British and then by a succession of Sri Lankan governments since Independence. Yet there has been no talk of 'reconciliation' with them. It is astounding hypocrisy and an indictment of Sri Lanka (and Britain).
These crucially important problems will not be dealt with in this paper in any detail, although they are very much a part of the problem of 'national reconciliation'. In that sense, this paper is incomplete. The focus will only be on the current burning problem a 'national reconciliation' between the Sri Lankan Tamils (12.5% of the population) and the numerically greater Sinhalese (74%).
The necessary conditions
For national reconciliation to occur there are some fundamental requirements.
1. There must be a genuine intention to do so.
2. There must be regret for all that has happened to make national reconciliation necessary.
3. The fundamental problems that caused the rift must be addressed.
4. There must be a determination to wipe out all the obstructions to this process.
Since none of these are present in Sri Lanka, national reconciliation is not possible. It is as simple as that.
The pretence of national reconciliation is nothing but a myth propagated by the GoSL with the sole intention of obtaining international support to keep a totalitarian regime going.
Before these fundamental requirements are discussed in detail, six crucial points must be appreciated.
There has been:-
1 A collapse of governance. There is a breakdown of law and order, with political hoodlums and criminals becoming part of governance. The Police and Armed Forces unleash indiscriminate violence, terror, and intimidation on anyone, often Tamils. Increasingly, it has been the Sinhalese, especially the poor. To compound the problem, there is a complete lack of accountability.
2 A dismantling of Democracy with its replacement by a Totalitarian regime.
3 A clearly stated aim to make Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.
4 An absolute failure of a British colonial construct (which is what Sri Lanka is). Until this is reversed, there will be no prosperity, peace or reconciliation.
5 An international dimension with foreign governments getting involved for their own geopolitical and economic gains for their capitalist agenda that has nothing to do with the future of the country or its people.
6 Sri Lankan politicians and government representatives abroad are inveterate liars.
In such a setting, it is difficult to see how 'national reconciliation' can occur. Indeed, it is the opposite – a ‘national breakdown’ - a Failed State.
It is also completely unacceptable to assume that what GoSL claims is true. The overwhelming probability is that it is untrue. Such is the lack of credibility of the Sri Lankan government for which there is now incontrovertible evidence from reputable sources, including former UN workers (see below).
1.The collapse of governance
The escalating breakdown of law and order is serious. Criminals and hoodlums with links to the government, and some even in Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Cabinet, are part of governance. Police and Armed Force unleash violence on, and intimidation of, civilians, many of them Tamils who have done nothing wrong except to be born Tamil. Despite international concerns, the extensive violation of their basic human rights is widespread. There is a complete lack of accountability for actions by the 'Security Forces', the ruling cabal, and their supporters. Let alone criticising, even questioning what is going on in Sri Lanka is labelled as ‘supporting terrorism' or 'treason' and dealt with as such.
Of serious concern is the inability of a succession of Sri Lankan governments to settle genuine political problems except by unleashing State violence. Disturbingly, this is now being copied by other countries, and Sri Lanka held as a role-model for ‘settling political problems’.
In this 'Crisis of Governance' to talk of national reconciliation is totally unrealistic.
2. A dismantling of Democracy
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka as it likes to call itself, is neither democratic nor socialist. It is a ruthless fascist dictatorship which has resulted in a ‘Crisis in Democracy’.
It is arguable whether Democracy ever existed in Sri Lanka (Ceylon, prior to 1972). What existed in pre-colonial Ceylon (before 1505) was Feudalism. This was replaced by 450 years of Colonialism, which was replaced (1948) by Sinhalese Majoritarianism, and then (1978) by a Presidential Dictatorship. This drifted into Politico-Military Fascism (in 2005), and now (2010) Totalitarianism under one family - essentially a return to Feudalism - under President Rajapaksa, his brothers, relatives and stooges.
Whatever vestige of Democracy that existed was constitutionally dismantled in 1978 by the then President, J.R.Jayawardene who established an Executive Presidency - with sweeping powers, above the Law and Parliament, and not answerable to Parliament or even the people.
Here is an example of what Jayawardene thought of Parliament. At a press conference on 29 July 1987 he was asked how he proposed to get a particularly unpopular legislation through Parliament:
“Well, when I bring legislation to Parliament and Parliament does not pass it, I'll dissolve Parliament. I don't need a fresh mandate, Parliament may need it.”
This attitude has not changed over the past two decades, nor is this likely to in the foreseeable future.
This Presidential dictatorship has drifted (in 2005) into a politico-military fascist state, run by President Rajapaksa, his brothers and the military. In 2010, it has now become a Rajapaksa Autocracy.
Mahinda Rajapaksa is (erroneously) referred to as the “President”. He has gone well beyond this. He is a ‘King’ appointed by himself and his brothers. He certainly sees himself as a King. The brown scarf worn by him (and his family) is the equivalent of a crown worn by the king and the Royal family. Some months ago, Colombo was plastered with cardboard cut-outs of an ancient Sinhalese worrier, Dutugemunu, who, like Rajapaksa, came from the deep South. Dutugemunu fought the aging and just Tamil king, Ellala, and killed him. Rajapaksa fancies himself as the reincarnation of Dutugemunu, who fought the Tamils and won.
When the ruler is a king, there are no citizens; only subjects. Subjects are bound to obey the king unquestionably since monarchical infallibility was a belief that premised absolute monarchies.
The clear intention of this megalomaniac family is to rule Sri Lanka for decades. This will be achieved by manipulating the Constitution, eliminating any opposition, silencing criticism, and unleashing whatever State violence is necessary on the populace, irrespective of ethnicity. National reconciliation is not even in the distant horizon of this smiling assassin of the Tamil people, his meaningless rhetoric notwithstanding. The rhetoric is only for foreign consumption. The reality is utter contempt for the Tamil people, which can sometimes break loose and be on public display (as it was when he lost his cool in Jaffna at a recent Presidential campaign because too few Tamils were present to bow before him).
This contempt for the Tamil people has now drifted to contempt for the Sinhalese people, in particular the poor (as was recently shown when the shanty dwellers in Colombo had their homes bulldozed). The victims were Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, who had lived there for years.
Let alone ‘national reconciliation’ with the Tamils, it is now questionable whether there can be reconciliation with the Sinhalese.
3.Making Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-Buddhist country
Sri Lanka is a multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious, multilingual country. It was on the understanding that that it remained so, that in 1948 Britain granted Independence to what was then colonial Ceylon. The country was handed over to Sinhalese politicians from the majority community on the assurance given by them that the minorities will be treated fairly without discrimination. The only Constitutional safeguard that protected the Tamils and other minorities from discrimination was Section 29(2). This critically important clause was dropped in the 1972 Constitution. Sinhala was made the Official Language and Buddhism given pride of place, which clearly discriminated against 30% of the population who were non-Sinhalese and non-Buddhists.
In a famous case Bribery Commissioner v Ranasinghe which was taken to the (British) Privy Council in 1964, the Privy Council declared that Section 29(2), (a),(b),(c) and (d), which prohibited the making of any law discriminatory against any community or religion was an unalterable and entrenched provision in the Constitution i.e. it could not be altered. Dropping Section 29(2) was therefore unconstitutional and hence illegal.
The name of the country was changed (illegally because the Constitution itself was illegal), from Ceylon to the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka. Democratic it was not; ‘Sri’ a term of respect, it certainly did not deserve.
The process of making Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-Buddhist country started in 1956 with the change of the Official Language from English to Sinhala Only, to the exclusion of Tamil.
Amidst protests at this obvious anti-Tamil discrimination, the 6th Amendment to the Constitution was passed making Sinhala and Tamil the Official Languages of Sri Lanka. In reality, this is a farce. Sinhala remains the only Official language of Sri Lanka, whatever is stated in the Constitution or its Amendments.
Examples are just too numerous to recount. A couple will suffice. In a recent Court case in Colombo where some Tamils were tried, the entire proceedings were conducted in Sinhala, a language which none of the accused understood.
A Tamil friend of mine in Colombo was recently the attesting witness at a wedding where the bride and bridegroom were also Tamils. The official document to be signed and attested was in Sinhala. When my friend pointed out that the bride, the groom and the attesting witness could not understand what they were signing, he was told that the document was not available in Tamil. So much for the 6th Amendment.
The Constitution is viewed by Sri Lankan politicians as a useful exhibit to be shown to the outside world as something that makes Sri Lanka a democracy. In reality it is a play-thing for majoritarian politicians to ignore, bend, or break at will, to suit the political or ethnoreligious chauvinism of those in power. Tamils politicians not being majoritarian politicians have no say. They can take it or leave it. The Government (which has been, is, and will for ever be, Sinhalese), could not care less.
Constitutions can only achieve so much. They can specify a system of checks and balances, and what Governments can and cannot do. Constitutions cannot do these things. That is left to the decency, integrity, sincerity and commitment of those who wield power. If those who wield power are tyrants, tyranny will be the result, Constitution or no Constitution.
The most compelling evidence that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist nation came from Sarath Fonseka, then the Army Commander. In an interview to the National Post newspaper in Canada on 23rd September 2008, he said:-
“I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities We being the majority of the country, 75%, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country. They (the minorities) can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things.”
If the country “belongs” to the Sinhalese to talk of national reconciliation is a joke. Incidentally, the Tamils do not need to be a minority as a pretext. They are a minority.
When Fonseka was running for the Presidency, and trying to woo Tamil votes in the Tamil areas (North and East), he was asked about this interview. He said he had been ‘misunderstood’. There was no misunderstanding. It was in straightforward English.
It can be argued that this was Fonseka speaking, and not President Rajapaksa. However, Fonseka was Rajapaksa's military commander. If Rajapaksa did not agree with this he should have ordered his army commander to withdraw the statement.
Moreover, Fonseka’s immediate boss was Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary and the President’s brother, and above him, the President himself, who is also the Minister of Defence and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Neither can now try to distance themselves from the statements clearly and emphatically made by Fonseka.
The only conclusion that can be drawn is that all of them agreed with what was said i.e. that Sri Lanka “belongs” to the Sinhalese. If this is the belief of those who run the country, to talk of ‘national reconciliation’ is nonsense.
Much has been made of the fact that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been destroyed. The LTTE was not the problem but the result of the problem. The problem was Sinhala-Buddhist ethno-religious chauvinism to make multiethnic, multireligious, multilingual, multicultural Sri Lanka, into a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.
What has been destroyed is not only the LTTE but the possibility of Peace with Justice. Some 40,000 Tamils in the North and East were slaughtered by the Sri Lankan (99%Sinhalese) Armed Forces, international aid groups and observers having first been expelled from the area (genocide without witnesses). 280,000 Tamils who escaped the slaughter were locked up in concentration camps, in absolute contravention of several Human Rights Conventions, signed by Sri Lanka.
Under immense international pressure, some 200,000 were released, most of them to a land that was totally destroyed and heavily mined, making them internally Displaced People (IDPs ie refugees). 60,000 remain in the camps in July 2010, more than a year after they were put there. Thousands have been driven out of the country as asylum-seekers. So much for ‘national reconciliation’.
If Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist country (which it is, whatever the rhetoric), I cannot see how there can be national reconciliation given the fact that some 30% of the people are not Sinhala-Buddhists. To talk of national reconciliation in this setting is patently absurd.
4. Centralisation of power in Colombo
There is no doubt that the centralisation of administrative and developmental power in Colombo (by the British the 1933 Colebrooke-Cameron ‘Reforms’) is by far the most serious and destructive act committed by the colonial British. It was done only for administrative ease, which is what colonialism is all about. The result has been a developmental neglect of the entire periphery, which includes the Tamil North and East, and the ‘deep’ Sinhalese South. It is not a coincidence that the two major uprisings that have occurred in Sri Lanka, that of the Sinhalese youths in 1971 and again in 1988, and that of the Tamil youths in 1972, were the direct result of the developmental neglect of these areas. If Sri Lanka is ever to have peace and prosperity, there must be a dismantling of this failed and highly destructive colonial construct (as was done, with spectacular results, in Malaya which split into Malaysia and Singapore shortly after the British left).
5 International games
It is not possible to make sense of the mess in Sri Lanka and the absolute impossibility of Peace and Reconciliation or of Peace with Justice, without an appreciation of the international games being played to keep a corrupt, incompetent, and ruthless regime in power.
Just as oil is the problem in the Middle East, the geographical position astride the Indian Ocean is the problem in Sri Lanka. Just 36 km (20 miles) from India, it is in India’s backyard. The Indian Ocean is not the largest ocean in the world but by far the busiest. 40% of the world’s oil production occurs in countries which share India’s Ocean. It carries 70% of the world’s oil shipments and 50% of the container cargo. US Admiral Alfred Mahan said a hundred years ago, “Whoever controls the Indian Ocean, dominates Asia”
Trincomalee, in the Tamil North East, is the world’s 4th largest natural harbour, and has attracted foreign powers for centuries. It continues to do so.
Sri Lanka is one of China’s ‘String of Pearls’, the chain of military bases to guard its oil supply from the Middle East and its exports to Europe. Rather than fight (India) to get a foothold in Trincomalee, China chose a small fishing port in Hambantota (in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s home area) in the deep South, to set up a major harbour (for China’s use) and an international airport.
A delighted Rajapaksa used this as a bargaining chip to build his massive military machine to crush the Tamils. The violation of human rights has never been a problem for China which supplied all the military hardware requested by the ruthless Sinhala military.
America concerned with China’s involvement, tried to woo Rajapaksa back to the western camp. The IMF is not just in America, it is America. Sri Lanka is a peripheral but integral part of the global capitalist network, which now includes even supposedly ‘Communist’ China. This is why members of the US Foreign Policy Relations Committee warned that Washington “could not loose” Sri Lanka, which is strategically located in the Indian Ocean.
India, concerned with Chinese and American involvement in its backyard, got into the act. Its agenda is, and has always been, to make Sri Lanka into a colony of the Indian empire, keep China and the US out, and exploit the considerable resources in the country as all colonial powers have done over the years. What happens to the Tamils in Sri Lanka is of little concern except to South Indians in Tamil Nadu with some 75 million ethnic Tamils. However, India is not run from Tamil Nadu. It is run by big business in Delhi in close collaboration with international capitalists. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is just a figurehead a pretence leader. That is why he told a visiting delegation of Tamil MPs from Sri Lanka who took their concern to him on July 8, 2010, that they should “continue to hold talks with the Lankan government in a constructive way”. If the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils are looking to India for help in getting justice for the Tamil people, they are not in the real world.
It is this international meddling in Sri Lanka that makes the outlook for the Tamils so poor, and national reconciliation so impossible. I firmly believe that without this international meddling, the IMF included, left to the Sri Lankans, there might well have been a negotiated settlement and national reconciliation. The fact that this international powerplay and meddling will go on, and support for a brutal murderous chauvinistic regime in Colombo will continue, makes any hope of a Just Peace or National Reconciliation most unlikely.
6 Inveterate pathological liars
One of the disturbing feature of Sri Lankan politicians and their cronies, is that they are inveterate liars, Politicians all over the world lie, but Sri Lankan politicians and Sri Lankan government representatives abroad have taken this to an absurd extent. They have perfected the ‘Big Lie’ of Hitler and set out by his Minister of Propaganda, Alfred Goebbels:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
The lies of the GoSL are so blatant, that not even a minimal effort to make them believable. The two consequences of this is that not a word that is uttered by Sri Lankan politicians, their spokesmen or Ambassadors abroad should be believed and promises made are there to be broken. If a claim is made, the opposite is likely to be true. Examples are too numerous, just a few will suffice.
At the first anniversary (May 2010) of the end of the war, President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared before a public gathering in Colombo which included diplomats,
“Our armed forces comprise those who went to battle carrying a gun in one hand, the Declaration of Human Rights in the other, as well as taking food for the liberated people in the North and East and full of human kindness in their hearts. Our guns were not fired at a single civilian.
His Defence spokesman, Keheliya Rambuwella, an Australian, confirmed that not a single Tamil civilian was killed in the North and East by the Armed Forces – “it was all done by the Tigers”.
Referring to the final months of the war, when the military mercilessly bombed a small pocket of land in which there were more than 300,000 Tamil civilians crammed, Rajapaksa said that it was “a great humanitarian operation only to eliminate terrorism” .
His recently appointed Ambassador to the United Nations can only be described a pathological liar. In a recent interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation I was unable to find a single sentence (in the half-hour interview) that was actually true.
Rajapaksa’s predecessor, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, interviewed in November 2001 on the BBC Hard Talk by Tim Sebastian, claimed that the US State Department’s 2001 Report on human rights was a lie. Sebastian, “Why would they lie? Kumaratunga, “Well, there are all sorts of people who want to lie”.
She then went on to make the hilarious claim that only one Tamil girl had been raped in Jaffna. I wanted the name of this unfortunate girl so that the hundreds of mothers of Tamil girls who have been raped, could be reassured that it was only a ‘pretence-rape’, and if they got pregnant, it was a ‘pseudo-pregnancy’.
It is important to appreciate this since when the Sri Lankan government claims that national reconciliation and rehabilitation of the Tamils is in progress, the opposite is likely to be true. It simply cannot be accepted without independent assessment (which is almost never permitted by the GoSL for obvious reasons.)
It is now possible to set out in detail the essential requirements I listed for national reconciliation to be possible.
1. THERE MUST BE A GENUINE INTENTION TO DO SO.
Across the entire political spectrum, be it the Governing party or the Opposition, there is not the slightest intention, let alone a genuine intention, to include the Tamil people. In November 2005 I published an article, The Political Ideology in Sri Lanka: Anti-Tamil , in which I pointed out that the entire Sinhala polity was anti-Tamil. It is far more politically rewarding to marginalize, exclude, and discriminate against the Tamils than to adopt an inclusive policy. There are simply too many votes to be lost if an inclusive policy is adopted. To embrace Sinhala-Buddhist ethnoreligious chauvinism is the vote-getter, in a country where 74% are Sinhalese and 70% are Buddhist. This has been the policy, admitted to or denied, by every Sinhalese government since 1956. This is not about to change.
The only, and I stress only, exception is the genuine Left, which I have detailed below. However, the negligible support they got at the 2010 Presidential and General Elections is clear evidence that ethnic tolerance to be fair to the Tamils has no place in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka is a virulently polarized country “we the Sinhalese, they the Tamils The Tamils are the ‘enemy’ even worse, Tamils are ‘terrorists’ or people bent on dividing and destroying Sri Lanka. If this is the Sinhala mind-set, to talk of national reconciliation is nonsense.
I will cite two examples. In April 1986, Lalith Athulathmudali, the Minister of National Security, in President J.R.Jayawardene’s government, addressing new (Sinhalese) recruits to the National Auxiliary Force said:-
“By joining the Security Forces to defend the nation in its biggest crisis in history, each one of you have secured a place in your country’ history, like your forefathers, who have shed their blood on this very soil, fighting against the foreign invaders”
If the Minister for National Security sees the Tamils as foreign invaders we should not have any illusions about a negotiated settlement coming from this group of politicians in Colombo. President Jayawardene’s statements were similar. In an interview with the Canadian Globe and Mail, when presented with Canada as a model of devolution of power, he said:-
“It is easy for Canada to settle its problems because all your people are Canadians”
If the President of Sri Lanka does not see the Tamils as Sri Lankans, what chance is there of a negotiated settlement or reconciliation with the Tamils. That was in 1986. The situation now is worse, much worse.
Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the Sri Lankan scene, can recognize these statements as the authentic voice of Sinhala chauvinism which is the single factor that has prevented any meaningful offer being made to the Tamils. Statements such as this are evidence of a very strong current of ethnic chauvinism which is destroying Sri Lanka. In such a context, we cannot have any illusions of a negotiated settlement which makes a genuine accommodation of Tamil problems, or reconciliation with the Tamils, taking place in the next year, ten years or fifty years.
This was back in the mid 1980s. Today the situation is far worse, the Sinhala rhetoric not withstanding. The evidence is presented below.
2. THERE MUST BE GENUINE REGRET FOR WHAT HAS HAPPENED
It has been erroneously claimed that there has been an ‘ethnic conflict’ in Sri Lanka. There has been no ethnic conflict in post-independence Sri Lanka. What there has been for five decades, are a series of increasingly virulent pogroms against the Tamil people by a succession of Sinhalese-dominated government, assisted by Sinhalese political opportunists and ethno-religious chauvinists, and conducted by the Sinhalese Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese), with a degeneracy of Sinhala society and its rapid descent to barbarism. These anti-Tamil pogroms have been to crush the Tamil people into submission to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.
I have maintained that unless/until the Sinhalese apologise to the Tamils for what has been done to them, there can neither be peace nor normalcy, and certainly no reconciliation
Bishop Lakshman Wickremasinghe, a Sinhalese like me, and with the same view, put this better than I can. In his final Pastoral Letter (15 November 1983), deeply disturbed by the 1983 massacre of Tamils he wrote:-
“Shame and apology
The massive retaliation mainly by Sinhalese against defenceless Tamils in July 1983 cannot be justified on moral grounds. We must admit this and acknowledge our shame. We must be ashamed because what took place was a moral crime. We are ashamed as Sinhalese for the moral crime which other Sinhalese committed. We must not only acknowledge our shame, we must also make our apology to those Tamils who were unjustified victims of this massive retaliation.”
He goes on to state why this should be done.
“when a section of the Sinhalese does what is morally wrong or bad, we share in it. As members of the whole group we share in the evil they have done it is a mark of moral maturity to acknowledge a moral crime on behalf of those closely knit to us (he was a kinsman of President Jayawardene whose thugs committed this crime, as I am a kinsman of President Chandrika Kumaratunga who bombed Jaffna with half a million Tamils) who do not realize that they have done this and an apology on their behalf.
It is only by an apology of this kind that we shall recover our proper moral and religious values. Then we can begin the process of what went wrong with our relationship with the Tamils. The true basis of reconciliation is admission of wrong and an appeal for forgiveness”
That was written after the murder of some 3,000 Tamils just before his untimely death. I am not sure what he would have written today after the murder of some 40,000 Tamils.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu whom I met in Cape Town two years ago, should know all about reconciliation. He chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa, at a time when there was an absolute need for reconciliation. He will testify that it is mandatory to have an open, honest and transparent process to deal with the past if there is to be national reconciliation. Not to have such a process is to throw away any possibility of moving forward. Unfortunately, the Sinhalese people, much less their politicians, are unable or unwilling to appreciate this. As such, the window of opportunity will close, if it has not done so already.
I, a Sinhalese, did not slit any Tamil throats, but I have a sense of collective responsibility for the insensitive and barbaric behaviour of my people the Sinhalese, in military uniform and not in uniform.
That is why I protested when the Tamil people in Colombo were slaughtered in July 1983 and wrote an apology “The 1983 Holocaust of Tamils: Unanswered questions holding President Jayawardene’s government responsible. That is why, as a 16 year old kid, I protested in my school when the Plantation Tamil people were made non-citizens my people who, by their sweat and toil put Sri Lanka on the map and continue to do so. That is why in 1972, when they were thrown out of their miserable ‘coolie lines’ by the thugs of my aunt, the Prime Minister, and were dying on the streets of Kandy, I took them into my ward so that they could die with dignity and love.
That is why when 400 Tamil children in the Sencholai orphanage were bombed I protested. That is why I have recorded and distributed a dozen dvds and given hundreds of talks to draw the world’s attention to the dreadful things that are being done to the Tamil people in the North and East. When someone asked me whether I knew any in the concentration camps, I said I knew them all since they were my people.
That is why when the Sinhalese people in the Colombo slums are having their shanties bulldozed, protest I must and will.
If to be critical of what is going on in Sri Lanka, makes me a traitor, so be it. I will not let my patriotism to Sri Lanka to be defined by how close I stand to the Sri Lankan flag, stained with the blood and tears of hundreds of thousands of Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims - all of them my people. That is where I stand, and will continue to do so. Whether I succeed or not is irrelevant. What matters to me is not what you achieve but where you stand and why.
The same holds for my adopted home Australia. If Australia’s handling of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka or Afghanistan or wherever, is outrageous (as it is), protest I must, and will. That is why I have just published an extensive account of what is going on in Australia – Sri Lankan and Afghan Asylum Seekers. Australia's Political Football. It is on the net.
At one of the anniversaries of the 1983 Tamil massacre in Colombo, Kumaratunga, then the President was asked about an apology to the Tamils. She said, “We should all apologise to each other I could not figure this out. Why should the Tamils apologise to the Sinhalese for what? For the crime they have committed being born Tamil so that the Sinhalese could murder them?
As for the Rajapaksa regime that followed Kumaratunga’s bogus apology let alone an apology, there was obscene rejoicing at the dreadful mass slaughter of people whose only crime was that they were born Tamil, and had a right to be were they were, the North and East of the island. The Rajapaksa regime demanded that the people in the South, Sinhalese, and even Tamils and Muslims, celebrate with them or be labelled ‘terrorists’ and be treated as such.
If this was not bad enough, the attitude and stance of President Rajapaksa a year later was worse. The first anniversary of the slaughter was declared a public holiday and the national ‘victory’ celebrated with greater fanfare than the day the country got its Independence from Britain. The triumphalistic tone and tenor of Rajapaksa's speech made no allowance for the collective human and material losses of the Tamil people, their present abysmal existence and their future uncertainties and fears.
Rajapaksa presided over the celebrations. His speech was a combination of militarist triumphalism, a whitewash of his government’s war crimes, and a call to working people to ‘sacrifice’ to build the nation. On show on Galle Face Green (opposite the old Parliament) was a huge array of artillery, tanks and multi-barrel rocket launchers; helicopter gunships and war planes flew overhead; warships were roaming off the coast. The invitees were foreign diplomats, MPs, Ministers and government officials.
Ordinary people facing deepening attacks on living standards and democratic rights, showed little interest. Nor were they impressed with Rajapaksa's demand from working people, already groaning with an astronomical cost of living, for a sacrifice to build the nation. Public servants were specifically targeted. Here is what he said:-
“More than 200,000 in our armed forces have given Sri Lanka a victory through their commitment through day and night in good weather and bad. If our public servants make a commitment for four years similar to that by our heroic forces, we will make this country the Wonder of Asia.
Far from being a new Asian wonder, the country is heavily in debt, with more problems to follow. I will deal with the escalating economic problems later in this article, since it has the potential to do just the opposite of reconciliation
As I have already quoted earlier, getting into comedy mode Rajapaksa absurdly declared:-
“Our armed forces comprise those who went to battle carrying a gun in one hand, the Declaration of Human Rights in the other, as well as taking food for the liberated people in the North and East and full of human kindness in their hearts. Our guns were not fired at a single civilian
As for his claim that not a single civilian was shot, the International Crisis Group had a different view. In a report published in May 2010, it stated that between 30,000 and 75,000 civilians had been killed, and accused the Sri Lankan military of deliberately targeting hospitals and aid supplies. I have recorded all this (and more) on a dvd which I will be glad to send disbelievers.
Gordon Weiss, an Australian, has been in the UN for 14 years, and was the UN Spokesman in Sri Lanka. In early 2010, he resigned and returned to Australia. Interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on 9 February 2010 he said, “The Sri Lankan government said may things which were either intentionally misleading or were lies”
The important point is that the GoSL has absolutely no regret at what its Armed Forces did to the Tamils. Indeed, it boasts about it. As such, I cannot see how there can be national reconciliation
A bogus Commission
Under international pressure, the GoSL announced a “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission”. Like all previous human rights investigations, it is certain to be a whitewash. Rajapaksa has bitterly opposed any international inquiry, no matter how limited, despite a call from the UN Secretary General, and the Head of the UN Human Rights Council.
With the White House welcoming this phony inquiry, two senior Obama officials - Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President on Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, and David Pressman, National Security Council Director for War Crimes and Atrocities, visited Colombo. It was mainly to advise Rajapaksa how to make this phony Commission appear more credible, and more importantly, to cement closer ties between Washington and Colombo, and sideline rival China, which provided substantial financial and military support for Rajapaksa's genocidal war.
One thing is certain; there is absolutely no regret in the Sinhala South at what has been done to the Tamil people. The question is even being asked, “Why was this not done earlier?
Worryingly, other tyrannical regimes are using Sri Lanka as a role model to settle political problems by unleashing State terrorism, the mass slaughter of civilians being just an “unavoidable feature”.
The United States should know all about this. Madeline Albright, then the US Ambassador to the UN, when asked by Leslie Stahl , "We have heard that half a million children have died (as a result of sanctions). I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think the price is worth it."
Albright did not lose her job indeed the opposite. She went on to Co-Chair the "Genocide Prevention Task Force" created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute for Peace! God forbid.
3. THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS MUST BE ADDRESSED
There is absolutely no evidence that the fundamental problems that resulted in the conflict are being addressed or will be. Indeed there is a lot of evidence to the contrary i.e. very definite steps are being taken to increase the problem and create new and irreversible ones.
The initial problems are too well known to need expansion. A brief mention will suffice, except the important problem of a centralisation of power in Colombo which must be dealt with in detail.
1. Centralisation of power in Colombo
The serious problem of a centralisation of power in Colombo initiated by the colonial British that has done so much damage by way of a developmental neglect the periphery must be reversed, as has been dealt with earlier. The Colebrooke-Cameron ‘Reforms’ of 1833, which has been such a disaster in Sri Lanka, must be reversed. I cannot over-emphasise the absolute need for this if Sri Lanka is to have any future, let alone national reconciliation
It is the overdevelopment of the South, especially the area around Colombo, and the developmental neglect of the North, in particular the Jaffna Peninsula, where the people have put such a high price on education, employment and the professions, that has created so many problems. It is this and the systematic discrimination against the Tamil people (referred to above and documented in my dvds), that compelled the Tamils to ask for a Federal Tamil State, and later a Separate State. In the 1977 General Elections, the Tamils in the North and East voted overwhelmingly (85%) for a Separate State, Eelam.
Few realise that the first and most case for a Federal State came, not from the Tamils, but from the Kandyan Sinhalese. In its memorandum to the British Donoughmore Commission that looked at the administrative set-up in Colonial Ceylon, the Kandyan National Assembly demanded:-
“Ours is a claim of a nation to live its own life and realize its own destiny. We suggest the creation of a Federal State as in the United States of America. A Federal system will enable the respective nationals of the several states to prevent further inroads into their territory and to build up their own nationality”
It applies in no small measure to the Tamils.
The Tamil demand for a separate Tamil state has been (unsurprisingly) rejected by the Sinhalese government, and by the rest of the world. The completely false claim is that Sri Lanka is too small to be divided. Interestingly, Barack Obama, in his well-known address in Cairo in 2009, said that the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was two separate states. It is interesting because the divisions in Sri Lanka are far larger than the division suggested in Israel-Palestine by Obama.
Here are the comparisons:-
Israel-Palestine 10,343 sq miles Sri Lanka 25,300 sq miles
Israel 8,019 sq miles Sinhala State 18,000 sq miles. Larger than 63 UN Nations
Palestine 2,324 sq miles Tamil State 7,300 sq miles. Larger than 38 UN Nations
It is therefore nonsense to say that Sri Lanka is too small to be divided, and arrant nonsense to say that the only solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict is two separate states, but that such a solution is unacceptable in Sri Lanka. The real 'problem' with the division of Sri Lanka is that post-division the crucial Trincomalee harbour will fall into Tamil hands. It is in the interests of international capitalists to have it in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and chaotic regime in Colombo than in the hands of the Tamils. That is the ‘problem’.
Let alone a Two-State division (into a Tamil State and a Sinhalese State), there is a case for a five-State division (the North, East, Centre, South and West) with regional capitals in each of these areas, with a full power to develop the particular area.
It is arrant nonsense to claim that Sri Lanka is too small to be divided in such a manner. On the contrary, it is this very fact that demands that every part of the country be developed, which is most unlikely to occur if developmental power remains in the hands of those in Colombo.
Australia is an excellent example. Sri Lanka has almost the same number of people as Australia (21 million). If 21 million Australians can have six near-separate States (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and Northern Territory), each with a parliament and a Premier or Chief Minister, so can Sri Lanka. The fact that Australia is several times larger than Sri Lanka is invalid. Most of this large country, Australia, is desert, and there is no great need to govern a desert. It is people who need to be governed. If Australia had a centralised administration in Canberra, there would have been a serious neglect of most of this country.
It is on the absolute need for such a major devolution of power that as far back as 1984, I suggested a 5-State administrative set-up for Sri Lanka. This is not an absurd idea. Those who are familiar with history will know that in the mid 1800s, the entire island was divided into the 5 divisions (Northern, Eastern, Central, Western and Southern) each under a powerful “G.A” (Government Agent) who was effectively a Premier of the Province (State).
The greatest advantage of such a 5-state division is that it cannot be struck down by ethnoreligious chauvinists and bigots as a “sell-out of a Sinhala-Buddhist nation to the Tamils”, something they have done with monotonous regularity whenever a 2-state solution (a Tamil State in the North & East, and a Sinhalese State in the rest of the country) has been suggested. With three Sinhala States(South, Centre and West), any attempt to sabotage this will have no credibility or backing.
If Sri Lanka must have a Parliament there is no difficulty in having a central talk-shop with representatives from each of the States. They can talk till they are hoarse, shout as loud as they like, behave in as outrageous a manner as they want (in a recent malee in the Sri Lankan Parliament, one MP squeezed the testicles of another (who happened to be a Buddhist monk, not that it mattered), in the ‘well’ of the House (the victim had to be admitted to hospital), and pass whatever bills they chose to (which would be largely ignored by the States). Chairing this body will be a President with even less power. He can sit in his regalia in President’s House as many British Governors did (in this same building which was called ‘Queens House’ in colonial times), with no power whatsoever, except to dole out knighthoods to the stooges who stood around him. He/she will be the equivalent of the Chancellor of a University whose only function is to dress up in his robes once a year, present the degree certificates, smile, and be photographed.
2. Anti-Tamil Discrimination against the Tamils in the status of their language (Tamil).
It has been claimed that the 1956 Sinhala Only Act (which clearly discriminated against the Tamils) has been reversed and that Sinhala and Tamil are the Official Languages of the country.
As I have gone into earlier, in practical terms, this is simply untrue. Whatever the legislation, official government business, for one, is in Sinhala.
3. Anti-Tamil discrimination in education.
Educational discrimination of the Tamils, introduced in 1972, is still very much there, despite claims to the contrary by the GoSL.
In 1972, the bar was set higher for Tamil students to enter the University clear anti-Tamil discrimination. This might not be so now, but the damage done to education in the Tamil areas is worse.
For a start, the entire educational structure in the Tamil North and East has been destroyed by bombing schools, preventing children from going to school and a range of other measures. To claim that this is being corrected is not true. That is why as many Tamil parents who can afford to leave the country are taking their children abroad for their education. The vast majority who cannot afford to do so, can do nothing to give their children a proper education in the Tamil areas.
Major educational institutes which the Tamils have built up over decades, have not only been damaged, but have been partly occupied by the Armed Forces. The Sinhalese government knows full well that for the Tamils, education is the top priority in life. As such, if there was a genuine intention at national reconciliation, to restore the shattered education system in the Tamil areas, the Jaffna Peninsula, in particular, should have been the top priority. Let alone a priority, there is no evidence that there is even an intention to do so. Nor will it be, given the long held paranoia among the Sinhalese that the Tamil educational system was ‘too good’ and was the result of favored treatment given to the Tamils by the colonial British however false this is.
In short, no meaningful steps are being taken to repair the extensive damage that has been done and restore what is so precious to the Tamils.
A recent absurdity was that with much fanfare, Rajapaksa announced a project to build a swimming pool in Jaffna Central College. He handed over the project to his son, Namal, a student, who had no idea of what he was doing. The result is that instead of a swimming pool, the students have been left with a huge mosquito breeding hole.
An even more absurd situation arose as recently as 23 August 2010. Major General G.A.Chandrasiri, the Northern Province Governor, met with officials of the Northern Province Ministry of Education and the Vanni Education authorities. He issued an order to stop all educational activities in the schools in Vanni that were damaged or destroyed in the war until they were rebuilt or renovated (which, at the rate things are moving or rather not moving might take years). The education of children is given top priority by the resettled uprooted Tamils. Teachers have held classes under trees (for lack of a better place) with the children sitting on the ground (because there are neither tables nor chairs). Chandrasiri’s orders will bring even this to a halt. So much for ‘national reconciliation’.
3. Discrimination in job opportunities and employment in the government sector.
Employment in the government sector has been the forte of the Tamils for decades. They have been denied this for years. Merely claiming that this is not so now is not good enough. There has to be evidence, which is simply not there because it does not exist.
99% of the Armed Forces and 95% of the Police are Sinhalese. Has that changed a year after the end of the conflict? No it has not. Tamils are not being appointed to the Police force even in the Tamil areas. Is this ‘reconciliation’?
4. Tamils as 2nd Class citizens (or non-citizens) in the North and East
The GoSL claims that rehabilitation and resettlement of the Tamils in the North and East are proceeding apace. There is overwhelming evidence from several sources, including from Sinhalese who have visited the area, that this is a downright lie.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) put this bluntly:-
“the resettlement process has failed to meet international standards for safe and dignified returns. There has been little or no consultation with the displaced and no independent monitoring; many returns have been to areas not cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance; inadequate financial resources have been provided for those returning home; and the military continues to control people’s movements.
Sri Lanka has made little progress in reconstructing its battered democratic institutions or establishing conditions for a stable peace. Eight months later, the post-war policies of President Mahinda Rajapaksa have deepened rather than resolved the grievances that generated and sustained LTTE militancy.”
More concerns were expressed by the United States about land seizures by the government:-
“in the north and east. Significant amounts of land were seized during the war by the military to create security buffer zones around military bases and other high-value targets which the government called HSZ . The declaration of HSZs resulted in a number of displaced persons, particularly in the Jaffna Peninsula, and rendered inactive approximately 40 square kilometers of agricultural lands. While the government discussed reducing the size of these HSZs towards the end of the year, there was no action taken by year's end.
Paramilitary actors were often cited as being responsible for other land seizures. While a legal process exists for private landowners to contest such seizures, in practice it proved very slow, and many victims did not take advantage of it for fear of violent reprisals by those who had seized the property in question.”
In one of the most irresponsible reports ever published by an important international organisation, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), has recently published an extensive report that the human rights situation in the Tamil areas had improved markedly. The Report, UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs for Asylum Seekers from Sri Lanka. 5 July 2010. HRC/EG/SLK/10/03 is an outrageous document that is at variance with several reports from internationally credible human rights organisations across the world e.g. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch etc all of whom have been denied access to Sri Lanka.
The UNHCR states that the Report was “intended for the use of UNHCR and State adjudicators in the assessment of claims by Sri Lankan asylum-seekers.”
It is a thoroughly irresponsible document which will do immense damage to already brutalised people. It is, in fact, a collection of half-truths, untruths and frank lies based on hearsay not from direct observation by visiting the Tamil areas and collecting reliable data. Almost every claim made can be challenged. This I will do when time permits.
The actual situation on the ground recently published by a group of journalists from the South, almost all of them Sinhalese, The findings of Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) 2 June 2010 who took the trouble and the considerable risks to visit the North stated:-
“One year after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government claims that life is returning to normal in the war-ravaged Vanni region. But as our reporting team found during their recent visit to Kilinochchi, that is far from the case. Tens of thousands of civilians who lost everything during the fighting have been resettled in the area with little government assistance
Many of the resettled people live in 10-by-10 feet huts with tin sheets provided by some non-government organisations. Other people are living in tents that are the same size. There are no separate rooms for sleeping or getting dressed. The floors have been levelled with mud. As there are no toilet facilities, people are using open spaces. Some families have used tin sheets to make roofs for their damaged houses.
The large Iranaimadu tank (artificial lake) mainly supplied irrigation for several thousand acres of agricultural land. The tank is now under the military’s control. Water has not yet been fully released for farmers. A few farmers have begun cultivation but they do not have tractors or other basic equipment. Many do not have even a mammoty (a type of spade). Fishermen are not allowed to fish in the tank.”
A summary of their findings was that the Sri Lankan government was lying. This crucially important report is reproduced in full in Appendix 1. What is abundantly clear from this and other reports is that no national reconciliation or reconstruction in the Tamil areas is happening and what the government claims it is doing, is a diabolical lie to avoid international criticism. It confirms what I have said earlier, that the GoSL consists of inveterate liars.
5. Rehabilitation of the Tamil Tigers
The handling of the (former) LTTE cadre, fighters and non-fighters, is one of the most important problems in national reconciliation The GoSL is simply too stupid to realize this.
There are two crucial points. First, the parents, relatives and friends of these people are in the Tamil community in the North and East. Any ill-treatment of them will result in serious hostility against the government and make reconciliation impossible.
Secondly, these are the people who were prepared to lay down their lives (as thousands did), for a cause. Whether one accepts this cause as legitimate or not, is irrelevant. Their absolute commitment is beyond doubt. If they are now mistreated (as they are being), it is from this group and their sympathizers that will arise the next group of Tamil militants, even more determined to pursue their ‘cause’.
The GoSL has learnt nothing from the militant Sinhala youth uprising in 1971 the JVP uprising of rural youths. They had a cause, an entirely justifiable reason, that they were being disadvantaged because they came from the rural poor. Instead of addressing the underlying problem, the Sinhala State unleashed massive violence on the Sinhala youths, slaughtering some 15,000, many in their teens.
Repression never makes a problem go away. The evidence for this is that in 1988 there was another uprising of the same group of Sinhala youths, which was even more serious than the one in 1971. This was crushed with even greater State violence. An estimate is that some 60,000 people, many Sinhalese civilians not involved in the uprising, were slaughtered.
Despite this, they are back again, now in parliament (and the streets), stirring the pot again. It is more a question of when rather than if another revolt will take place. The Sinhala poor, facing grinding poverty, are a fertile breeding ground for a disaster waiting to happen.
The same could happen with the Tamil youths. I repeat, suppression and repression never make a problem go away. Those who do not know history (the GoSL), are destined to repeat it.
I will now deal with this critical problem of the way the (former) LTTE are being treated - an abject lesson in stupidity.
Alleged Tamil Tiger (LTTE) terrorists in a special camp
The government is currently detaining some 11,000 young Tamils, without trial as LTTE suspects at unknown locations. Here are the observations of Human Rights Watch :-
“The government detained more than 10,000 displaced persons at checkpoints and from the camps on suspicion of LTTE involvement, in many cases citing vague and overbroad emergency laws still in force after the end of the war. Many arrests were carried out in violation of domestic and international law. The authorities failed to inform families of their fate and whereabouts”.
Some of them are as young as 8 years. When a visiting (Sinhalese) MP asked the army officer why someone as young as that should be in detention, he was told that those were his orders. Sri Lanka has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child!
Slave labour under the guise of rehabilitation”
The GoSL has now announced plans to use these detainees as a cheap labour force under a program initiated by the Justice Minister to rehabilitate alleged Tamil Tiger cadres. A government-sanctioned newspaper reported on March 13, 2010, that more than 10,000 LTTE suspects will be settled in various prison labour camps including in the districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Jaffna. According to the Justice Ministry, the spouses and children of the cadres will be free to move in and out of the camps, but the detainees will be subject to strict security measures to ensure the smooth functioning of the facilities.”
The government has already announced the establishment of a dairy farm at Suriyawewa near Trincomalee, involving about 500 former LTTE cadres. Ceylon Cold Stores, a large company manufacturing beverages and milk products, will invest in the project, but the army will be in charge.
The involvement of the army and air force in these projects points to the further militarisation of all aspects of life in Sri Lanka, including the economy. Far from there being any demobilisation, the country’s huge military - one of the largest per capita in the world - is being kept in place and entrenched as a permanent feature, particularly in the North and East.
6. Sinhalisation of the Tamil areas
This is more serious that it has ever been. The agenda of a series of Sinhalese governments since Independence has been to translocate Sinhalese from the South to the Tamil areas to make the Tamils a minority even in the areas where they are a majority. The electoral consequences are obvious.
The agenda and actions of the Rajapaksa regime are far more serious. Large areas of land belonging to the Tamil people have been taken away from them and given to the Sinhalese. This is being done on a massive scale. Using all sorts of excuses, “High Security Zones”, “Special Economic Zones”, Tamils have been denied access to the land they owned, depriving them of their homes and income.
Disturbingly, the Army commander has stated clearly and unequivocally that the (Sinhalese) army will be entrenched in the North and East permanently:- “army personnel arriving in those areas for duty will be provided permanent houses and allowed to engage in cultivation work”. Unlike earlier, the Tamil North and East will be colonized, not by Sinhalese civilians but by Sinhalese soldiers.
This is not ‘reconciliation’ but the creation of intense Tamil resentment (which is entirely justifiable).
7. Tamils in the Sinhala South
There are some half-million Tamils in the Sinhala South who have been there for several generations. Many of the original migrants from the North are there because of the centralisation of power in Colombo and the developmental neglect of the North. The Tamils had no other option but to come to Colombo for education and employment. As such, they have a right to be where they are, besides the fact that they have made a major contribution in every sphere of activity, in particular the professions, industry and commerce.
Some 3,000 of them were slaughtered in 1983 for no reason other than that they were Tamils. They are now a frightened insecure people who are unsure what is in store for them. They have done nothing to deserve what they have been through and what they are being subjected to right now. That is certainly not 'national reconciliation, far from it. To say that they are 2nd class citizens would be an understatement.
In May-June 2007, the Rajapaksa regime got into ethnic cleansing. On 31 May 2007, Tamil owners of 68 lodges in Pettah, the commercial hub of Colombo, were ordered to expel all tenants from the North&East and from the Central hills in 24 hours or the military will do so and take them “to their native place”. 5,000 Tamils were affected. Incidentally, it was a tacit admission that the North and East is the “Tamil homeland” – something that the Rajapaksa regime has completely rejected.
A week later (7 June 2007), 373 Tamil men, women and children “who had no business to be there” were forced into busses and dumped in the North and East from which they did not even come. The eviction paper read, “You are going home. Get into the waiting bus in half an hour”.
Keheliya Rambukwella, an Australian citizen and Sri Lanka's Defence spokesman, 'explained' the eviction – “It was voluntary. They wanted to go home. We provided transport FREE”. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary and the President's brother, an American citizen, who issued the order, had a different 'explanation' to the BBC:-
“We can't arrest 300 people and detain them. So we tell them “you don't have any legitimte business in Colombo. You are a security problem in Colombo. You are the people who are suspected. We don't want to detain you, so go back to your home”. The unstated alternative was to murder the lot or make them 'disappear' as has happened to hundreds of Tamils.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former military officer, clearly does not appreciate that his order was a violation of Sri Lanka's Constitution:- “All citizens of Sri Lanka have the right to free movement and choose the area of residence”. It is not the first time that this man, who in the not too distant past worked in a 7-11 store in Los Angeles, has violated national laws and international conventions, which included issuing orders (which I have reproduced in the dvds I have recorded and distributed), that it was acceptable to bomb hospitals.
This is the regime that now talks of 'national reconciliation'. It is a joke.
The Tamil people are his problem claims Rajapakse
President Rajapaksa boasts that world does not need to be concerned about the Tamils because they are his problem. However, he did not show this concern when is Tamil people were massacred, starved and denied medical help, or when those who survived (some 280,000 Tamil men, women and children) were illegally incarcerated in outrageous concentration camps which he laughably calls “welfare villages”.
The world does need to worry when data from a Demographic and Health Survey by Sri Lanka’s Health Ministry, published in the state-owned Daily News on 29 May 2010, revealed that acute malnutrition is rife among Sri Lanka children and women. Child malnutrition is more than 50% in the North and East, with a national figure at 29% (which itself is staggering). In Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Amparai in the Tamil East, child malnutrition was 53%, 45% and 44%, in Vavuniya and Jaffna in the Tamil North, 51% and 43%.
There are not only media reports but, what is more important, a well documented and thoroughly reliable report (which I have referred to Appendix 1) from Sinhalese journalists from the South who visited the North and interviewed the ‘Liberated’ Tamil people. They confirmed that food and assistance was being provided, not by the Rajapaksa government, but from WFP (World Food Program). I have other reports that housing and agriculture and other necessities are supplied by International NGOs such as Caritas.
To deny these people, citizens of the country, essential help for them to survive, is bad enough. To lie about it is even more damaging to ethnic relations. Those who talk of national reconciliation have no idea of the ground realities.
War mentality
What is going on right now is more serious than it has ever been. The war is over but the war mentality dominates the Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) rulers. The Tamil Tigers (“the enemy”) has been crushed, but the search for new enemies continues apace. These include those of us who are critical of what this dreadful regime is doing, the European Union and even the UNHCR that has asked for an independent inquiry into the serious human rights violations that have occurred.
The Sea Tigers have been wiped but the Sri Lankan Navy is to be expanded. So is the Army that has dramatically increased from 170,000 during the war, to 230,000 after the war was over, with a demand to push it up to 300,000. The question is “where is the enemy to justify the largest army, per capita, of any country in the world?”
This being the reality, to talk of national reconciliation is absurd.
4. A DETERMINATION TO WIPEOUT (OR EVEN CONTROL) OBSTRUCTIONS TO NATIONAL RECONCILIATION
The major obstruction, indeed the most virulent ones are the politically active Buddhist clergy and Sinhalese ethnoreligious chauvinists. There has been no action to control these disruptive elements that are now more vocal and virulent than they have ever been.
If the Buddhist clergy are told clearly and unequivocally that their place is in Buddhist temples and not on the streets stirring up Sinhala supremacy and demanding the establishment of a Sinhala Buddhist country, then there might be some optimism of a national reconciliation. There has been no such move and these bigots are doing what they have done since Independence in 1948, destroying any possibility of a united country.
No government in the past, present or the foreseeable future, will have the courage to confront these dreadful people who are not only doing irreparable damage to the country and its future, but bringing disrepute to one of the greatest teachers of peace and nonviolence the world has ever known, Gautama Buddha. (My mother was a Buddhist, not that this matters). It is in a country with these rabidly intolerant ethno-religious bigots that one is expecting a 'national reconciliation'.
So also the Sinhalese extremists and political opportunists, not only at large but even in government. Do those who talk of national reconciliation know all this? I doubt it.
THE PLANTATION 'INDIAN' TAMILS
They were essentially slaves and have continued to be slaves, underpaid, overworked, ill treated, disenfranchised and decitizenised, and even murdered, by those who replaced the British in 'independent' Ceylon, as it then was. With ingratitude that beggars belief, this was the group who by their toil, sweat, tears and even their blood, put Sri Lanka on the map and have continued to do so. During the past 50 years with hypocrisy that is astounding, there has been no talk of 'national reconciliation' with these marginalised people who have made such an important contribution to the economy of Sri Lanka and continue to do so, so that the high-life in Colombo can go on. Presumably they are too poor, uneducated (intentionally by the British, and the Sri Lankan who replaced them) and helpless, to warrant 'reconciliation'. It is a staggering indictment of Sri Lankans (and the British who brought these people from South India).
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE
If Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist country, there is no place for non-Sinhalese and non-Buddhists. The same violence that has been unleashed on the Tamils, is being unleashed on Christians and Hindus.
Scores, if not hundreds, of Christian Churches have been attacked and destroyed by Sinhalese hooligans led by the Buddhist clergy. In their place, Buddhist temples are being constructed. My dvds document a small, indeed a very small, amount of this. The Madhu Church, one of the holiest Roman Catholic churches in Sri Lanka, which is home to the priceless statue of the Virgin Mary, “Our Lady of Madhu”, was shelled by Rajapaksa’s Army. Had the Tamil Tigers not rescued the statue in time, this national treasure would have been gone.
Just a month ago, a 25 year old Christian Church in Rajagiriya, Colombo, was declared an unauthorised structure and destroyed on Poson Poya Day a sacred day in the Buddhist calendar!
More than a dozen Christian clergy, mainly Tamils in the North and East, but also Sinhalese in the South, have been murdered, and many more beaten up. This being reality, I need hardly stress the absurdity of national reconciliation.
Hundreds of Hindu temples (Kovils) have been destroyed in the North and East, some right in the middle of Colombo. Last year (2009), three Buddhist monks climbed on to the roof of a newly refurbished kovil in Colombo and destroyed every statue. They were arrested but nothing more has, or will, happen. They will, almost certainly be released.
It is in a country with these violent ethnic bigots that one is expecting a 'national reconciliation'.
THE SINHALESE DIVIDE
This article deals, as it should, with Sinhala-Tamil ethnic reconciliation. Unknown to many, there is an increasing divide among the Sinhalese, the ‘have everything’ and the ‘have nothing’. This division has already seen two armed uprisings (1971 and 1988) of disadvantaged rural Sinhalese youths which I have referred to. It is now not just in the rural areas, but across the entire South, including and especially, Colombo.
The divisions between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in the Sinhala South is increasing. It is set to increase exponentially, once the IMF demands, conditional to the IMF loan, are implemented.
The GoSL that prosecuted the war using the young lives of the Sinhala poor, is now asking them to tighten their belts even tighter, “to rebuild the nation”.
The rich are most certainly getting richer; the poor are spiralling down to grinding poverty. I am talking of the Sinhalese, not just the Tamils.
Let alone national reconciliation between the Sinhalese and the Tamils being impossible, reconciliation between Rajapaksa’s dynastic (Sinhalese) government and the Sinhalese poor is equally impossible.
The responsibility for this must rest, not just with the ruling cabal, but with the IMF, India, China, the US and others that demand neither transparency nor good governance.
It is this that makes the long term (or even medium term) outlook for Sri Lanka so poor and what makes any suggestion of national reconciliation a joke.
ASSAULT ON THE POOR (IN COLOMBO) IN THE SINHALA SOUTH
President Rajapaksa put the Urban Development Authority (UDA) and the Reclamation of Land Development Corporation (RLDC) under the Defence Ministry(!) as part of the City of Colombo Development Plan to attract investors and tourists. On 28 June 2010, an order was issued for a survey of all shanties and huts on government land, reservations and waterways.
In an unbelievable violation of basic human rights, on 10 July 2010, the Sri Lankan military and police attacked thousands of slum dwellers the poorest of the poor in Colombo. More than 1,000 Security personnel, including soldiers and police riot squads, attacked, and later rounded up, thousands of residents in Mattakkuliya in northern Colombo. Next morning, some 8,000 residents were marched to an open field where hooded men pointed out more than 200 people, who were taken into police custody.
They had done nothing, except to be born poor, just as the Tamils in the North and East who were locked up in concentration camps had done nothing except to be born Tamil.
This and other military-police operations mark a new and very worrying stage of repressive measures against ordinary people, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, by Rajapaksa’s government evidence of an emerging police-state in Sri Lanka. The capitalists, both local and foreign, will now move in to buy this dreadfully acquired land.
Homes for the bulldozer (Colombo) Filthy canal Apple Watte slums Colombo
To free up land for investors (I have been there, it is home to many)
THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
The economic crisis and its flow through have a critical effect on national reconciliation be it reconciliation between the Sinhalese and Tamils, or the reconciliation between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ among the Sinhala people. It therefore merits careful scrutiny.
The country has been heavily in debt for years, with more problems to follow.
The Rajapaksa government (elected November 2005) went on a spending spree to finance the war on the LTTE, crushing it, and also slaughtering upward of 40,000 Tamil and Muslim civilians a massacre that ended in May 2009, with the President announcing victory and the end of the war.
Despite this, a year later, (June 2010), as has been mentioned, the Armed Forces have gone from 175,000, to 230,000 with a declared intention of getting this up to 300,000. The question is why the military should be substantially increased when there is no war. The answer is that it is necessary to crush Sinhalese if they protest at the escalating cost of living. That is what fascist dictatorships and totalitarian regimes have done over the ages. The Rajapaksa regime is no exception.
The Defence budget in 2010, a year after the end of the armed conflict, to defend the country from a non-existent enemy, is Rs 202 billion ($US 1.8 billion), 21 % of the total expenditure of Rs 974 billion to government ministries.
Last year (2009), government debt reached an incredible Rs 4.1 trillion, of which Rs 1.8 trillion was foreign debt, a 22% rise. Sri Lanka? Central Bank annual report stated: The ratio of debt service to government revenue increased further to 117.5% from 90.5%. Total debt servicing rose by 39% to Rs 825.7 billion in 2009, including a massive interest payment of Rs 309.7 billon which comprised 26% of total expenditure.
There has been a marked increase in public debt with repayments in 2010 of Rs 767 billion, 44 % of the total budget expenditure of Rs 1,780 billion.
In July 2009, with the government facing bankruptcy, Sri Lanka was forced to beg for an IMF loan of $US 2.6 billion, to ward off a balance of payments crisis, having earlier boasted that it never will! The IMF released two instalments but withheld the third in February 2010 because the government failed to indicate how it would rein in the budget deficit, which reached 9.7% of GDP in 2009. The IMF demanded a reduction to 7% in 2009, 6% in 2010, and 5% in 2011.
Recently, (June 2010), Ernesto May, the World Bank Director of South Asia launching the Economic Update 2010 in Colombo said that Sri Lanka’s debt was the second highest in South Asia, increasing from 81% of GDP in 2008 to 86% in 2009.
The country’s public debt rose to 86% of GDP last year the second highest in any Asian country . Debt repayments are 44% of overall expenditure. The largest budget allocation is, and has been for years, for debt service repayments. In 2010, interest payments alone account for Rs 337 billion, 26% of total expenditure. In addition, the government has to find Rs 565 billion for debt repayments this year, raising its gross borrowings to Rs 980 billion ($US 8.5 billion).
Unable to implement the IMF austerity measures without facing a massive anti-government backlash from voters, Rajapaksa repeatedly delayed the budget for 2010 (due in November 2009) till he was safely re-installed as President (January 2010), and his government re-elected (April 2010).
In May 2010, Sri Lanka gave an undertaking to the IMF that it would considerably reduce recurrent spending by cutting government subsidies to the Ceylon Electricity Board, Petroleum Corporation, Central Transport Board, Railways, and Postal services. This can be achieved only by axing jobs, cutting wage and increasing prices.
Finally in early June 2010, the government presented to Parliament the expenditure estimates as part of an Appropriation Bill for 2010. The two largest budget items were Defence and Debt repayment. The necessary cuts will be made elsewhere, in particular, a freeze on wages, cuts in pensions and welfare benefits, and a slashing of funds for health and education.
The budget was finally brought down on 29 June, 2010. The day before, a copy of the budget was sent to the IMF to show the massive assault on the working people that the government was going to unleash. The IMF was impressed and released the third (suspended) instalment of the $US 2.6 billion loan.
The allocation for the Rehabilitation Ministry was slashed from Rs 4 billion to Rs 2 billion. The result will be that thousands of refugees in the North and East will continue to lack homes and essential services. As is obvious, national reconciliation with the Tamils in the North and East is simply impossible if they lack homes and essential services.
Allocations for Health and Education were Rs 52 and 46 billion respectively, a total of Rs 10 billion less than for 2009. (The allocation for 2009 was itself Rs 12 billion less than for 2008).
Well aware that such measures will provoke massive opposition and even strikes by working people, Rajapaksa has retained the huge Police State apparatus to crush any form of opposition. This is what a Police State does to its people irrespective of ethnicity.
In addition to the Government’s fiscal profligacy, there is rampant corruption all the way to the very top, waste and absolute incompetence in governance.
Facing a massive debt servicing bill and economic collapse, large areas of Sri Lanka are up for sale to foreign investors, especially from China and India. Most of these areas are in the Tamil North and East, whose rightful owners are in detention centres or are refugees, who are, as a consequence, unable to return home.
All of this is public knowledge. To talk of national reconciliation in this setting is arrant nonsense.
SRI LANKA, IN PARTICULAR THE TAMIL NORTH AND EAST, IS BEING DIVIDED UP AND
SOLD
Unknown to many, there is a fire-sale in Sri Lanka, particularly the Tamil lands in the North and East which international economists have stated, has the highest developmental potential. This is exactly what is happening in India which the Indian activist Arundhati Roy, says in her outstanding book The Ordinary Person? Guide to Empire:-
“The two arms of the Indian government have developed the perfect pincer action. While one arm is busy selling India off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of Hindu nationalism and religious fascism
So also in Sri Lanka. While one arm is selling off the country or borrowing heavily from international lenders i.e. the IMF and China, getting the country deeper and deeper into debt, the other is cheering the victory over the Tamil militants and how the country has at last been freed from ‘Tamil terrorism’.
Arundhati Roy goes on:-
“The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of corporate globalization rips through people’s lives in India, massive privatization and labour reforms are pushing people off their land and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation deaths are coming in from all over the country.
While the elite journeys to their imaginary destination somewhere near the top of the world, the dispossessed are spiralling downwards into crime and chaos. This climate of frustration and national disillusionment is the perfect breeding ground, history tell us, for fascism”
That is precisely what is happening in Sri Lanka. Democracy is most certainly being dismantled at an alarming rate. What is left is barely recognizable. (Tamil) people are being pushed off their lands into concentration camps or just into the jungle, and out of their jobs (fishing and agriculture).
Hundreds (of Tamils) are committing suicide (I gather Sri Lanka has the 2nd highest rate of suicide in the world. Starvation (of Tamils in the North, and now the Sinhalese poor in the South) is being increasingly reported.
This is not ‘national reconciliation’ but a national sale of (mainly) Tamil civilian property with no compensation.
As I have shown, shanties and slums in Colombo are being bulldozed so that the land can be sold to capitalists. The poor, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, are being evicted to nowhere.
The elite (in particular the Rajapaksa family) are journeying to the top of the world (it is not an imaginary destination), the rest are in grinding poverty with an inflation rate of nearly 30%, and fascism has already been established, proving that history repeats itself.
The less fortunate are certainly “spiralling downwards into crime and chaos”. Unfortunately, they do not have a powerful vocal expatriate community to jump up and down for them. That is the problem of being poor which I have seen, and sympathized with, for years.
DESTRUCTIVE CAPITALISM, LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY, RAMPANT CORRUPTION AND ABSOLUTE POWER
It is the combination of destructive capitalism, a complete lack of accountability, thuggery, rampant corruption, and absolute power in the hands of one family, (Rajapaksas today, preceded by members of my family, the Bandaranaikes, preceded by Jayawardene, and all the way back to the Senanayakes who took over from the British). This nepotism has now reached epidemic proportions and unprecedented barbarism.
These irresponsible and increasingly ruthless ‘leaders’ (for want of a better word), have been backed by foreign powers for their own geopolitical and economic gains, with money supplied by them and the IMF.
The role of the IMF
The IMF has never had a problem supporting and propping up some of the most ruthless dictators and those who have been guilty of extensive human rights violations. When the GoSL asked for a US$ 1.8 billion loan to finance, among other things, a country with the largest army per capita in the world to murder and crush its people, the IMF gave more than what was requested 'generously' lending US $ 2.6 billion. No questions were asked about the massive expenditure on ‘defence’ to defend the country against a non-existent enemy.
No IMF loan has ever been given without crippling conditions which have a disastrous impact on the living conditions of the people. It is those at the bottom of the pile who are crushed by the IMF conditions which include reducing budget deficits, overhauling the tax system and cuts in social spending and essentials such as food, oil prices and electricity.
To be specific, in Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, the IMF had no problems financing a regime which maintained defence expenditure at astronomical levels at the expense of social development and development projects. As would be expected of any capitalist set-up, the IMF had no objections to Rajapaksa having the world’s largest Cabinet of Ministers, tax breaks for luxury vehicles, and wasteful extravaganza such as the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) celebration as long as there was a freeze on wages, and cuts on subsidies and essential commodities.
The IMF has never interfered with regime’s sovereign right to violate democratic and human rights. In fact, the IMF knows full well that implementation of these loan conditions will result in just that.
All of the IMF conditions have been implemented by the GoSL, and more will be, depending on how ruthless the IMF decides to be. Any protests by those who are affected will be crushed by the government with the same ruthlessness with which the Tamils were crushed.
The media
The media are heavily censored or self-censored through fear. They merely regurgitate government propaganda. Those who dare to defy this are quickly silenced. The founder-editor of the Sunday Leader who dared to question the government using military force to settle a political problem, Lasantha Wickrematunga, a Sinhalese, was quickly silenced murdered in broad daylight in a suburb of Colombo on 8 January 2009 .
So have been nearly two dozen media people, Sinhalese and Tamils. Scores have fled the country. Sri Lanka was ranked 165 out of 173 countries in the Reporters without Borders 2008 Press Freedom Index. This was the lowest ranking of any democratic country. It is one of the most dangerous places in the world for independent journalists.
A DREADFUL COUNTRY
Sri Lanka has become a dreadful intolerant and murderous country run by a Totalitarian cabal. Some think that it has always been so.
Victor Ivan, one of Sri Lanka’s most respected journalists, a Sinhalese like me, has this to say in his must-read book . The first sentence in the Sinhalese version of the book reads:-
“I have never considered Sri Lanka to be particularly civilized country. It has instead appeared to me to be a particularly immoral country, whose leaders embodied iniquity and baseness
It is these ‘iniquitous and base’ people holding political power in Sri Lanka that Australia and the rest of the world support. In the earlier edition of the same book, published in Sinhala in 2006, Ivan wrote:-
“From now on, the People’s Alliance (the Party led by President Rajapaksa) can no longer speak of democracy. It cannot speak of transparency, or claim to be a regime as pure as a white lotus (The previous President did). It has lost the right to speak of creating a society governed by benevolence and humanity.”
Just four days before the 2010 General Election, the editorial in a leading Sri Lankan newspaper , set out the options facing Sri Lankan voters. In one of the most accurate descriptions of the vast majority of Sri Lankan politicians, the editorial was blunt:-
“None of the individual contenders, political parties or opportunistic coalitions are worthy of our respect or our vote. Together they comprise the most mind-boggling array of crooks, thugs, conmen, hypocrites, unprincipled racists, rapists, drug dealers, money launderers, and general all-round scum that is without parallel elsewhere in the world. Other nations have their share of such undesirables, no doubt, but among them are a handful of honest, sincere, principled folk who have distanced themselves from the corrupt majority. Not so in miserable Sri Lanka.”
One of them, ‘Colonel’ Karuna a former Tamil militant commander, who had assassinated 133 Sinhala policemen who had surrendered to him in the East, was appointed a Cabinet Minister in Rajapaksa’s government. Amnesty International in a press release Sri Lanka: Karuna’s presence in Parliament is a travesty of justice” wrote:-
“Karuna should stand trial, The fact that a suspected war criminal should be entering Parliament sends an appalling message that war crimes, rather than being investigated and punished, are actually rewarded
Referring to President Rajapaksa, the editorial said:-
“To vote for a man who is in the process of establishing a dynasty is to vote for the replacement of democracy with monarchy
These are the people who are expected to deliver national reconciliation in Sri Lanka.
The only politicians of integrity in Sri Lanka, all of them Sinhalese, who have campaigned for justice for the Tamils are those from the Left. They are the outstanding Wije Dias (Socialist Equality Party), Siritunga Jayasuriya (United Socialist Party), and Dr Vickremabahu Karunaratne (Left Front). All three were Presidential candidates at the Presidential election (26.1 2010). The fact that they got 0.04%, 0.08% and 0.07% of the votes cast, while two mass murderers, knee-deep in Tamil blood, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Executive President, Minister of Defence and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and Gen Sarath Fonseka, Army Commander who carried out the genocide, got 57.8% and 40.1% of the votes speaks volumes.
The General Election (8 April 2010) showed the same, with those who stood for justice for the Tamils getting less than 0.2% of the votes.
What this means is that the vast majority of Sri Lankans are in favour of the continuing injustice to the Tamils some 18% of the population. In a country such as that, to talk of national reconciliation is nonsense.
To clarify the Left in Sri Lanka, I have said that the JVP were Sinhalese Marxist youths (in 1971). The JVP has long since abandoned any trace of Marxism and decided to go down the well-worn path of Sinhala ethnoreligious chauvinism, with the current leader even declaring that Marx got it all wrong! Hypocritically, they still run around wearing a red cap with a hammer and a sickle in what can be best described as pretence Marxism. One of their leaders, a Minister in Rajapaksa’s government, has just gone on a fast demanding that the UN abandons any attempt to have an investigation into war crimes committed during the closing stages of the war.
The documented ability of these hoodlums and thugs, with their leaders in the Rajapaksa government, to block any concessions offered to the Tamils, and to disrupt the country if necessary, makes any talk of national reconciliation completely unrealistic.
“RETURNING TO NORMAL”
If Sri Lanka is returning to normal(as the GoSL, and even some international groups such as the UN Human Rights Commission, have claimed), then it is mandatory to ask why internationally renown human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, are not allowed free access to all parts of the country.
To focus on the here and now the GoSL has just (7July 2010) deported two members of a well-known NGO (non-government organization) , Nonviolent Peaceforce that has been working in Sri Lanka since 2003. On 24 June 2010, the Sri Lankan Department of Immigration and Emigration informed Nonviolent Peaceforce Sri Lanka (NPSL), that visas for Ms. Tiffany Easthom (Country Director, NPSL) and Mr. Ali Palh (Coordinator Human Rights Defenders Project, NPSL) were being cancelled and that they would have to leave the country on or before 7 July 2010.
Nonviolent Peaceforce is an international organisation that tries to improve security for civilians at risk of harm and to prevent attacks and other human rights violations. Their focus is on prevention and change rather than on investigation and the attribution of blame. There is only one conclusion that can be drawn that the GoSL feels threatened by such activity.
The facts
Let us face some stark facts and not smudge them over with fiction and imagination. Sri Lanka is a pathetically polarized country. The problems are Sinhala majoritarianism, Sinhala-Buddhist ethnoreligious chauvinism, and after the end of the war, Sinhala triumphalism with no consideration of the (Tamil) civilian cost of achieving this ‘victory’. This is not going to change, indeed there is every indication that it will get worse, despite international concerns. The arrogant GoSL could not care less.
The divisions between the Sinhala majority and the brutalized Tamil minority is deepening. So are the divisions between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in the Sinhala South. This division is set to get worse as a totally corrupt, ruthless and despotic regime implements the inhuman conditions demanded by the IMF. Any protests by the helpless Sinhala poor with be crushed by the military and police in what is a Police State. There is neither any international pressure or any incentive to change its policies, its extravagant and limitless expenditure maintaining a massive and increasing Army and Police, abysmal governance by the Rajapaksas, of the Rajapaksas, for the Rajapaksas, for the foreseeable future, manipulating or ignoring the Constitution of the country and trampling on human rights of all its people Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. Anyone who dares to challenge this can be prosecuted and persecuted as an enemy of the nation.
The future for Sri Lankans, irrespective of ethnicity, is bleak. The Sinhala poor will be second-class citizens, the Tamils in the North and East, non-citizens, as were the Plantation (Indian Tamils in 1948, disenfranchised and decitizenised by the first Government of the newly independent country. History is certainly repeating itself.
The role of the expatriate Tamil community, now more than a million, is to get the facts across to the international community that the Sri Lankan government is lying and has no intention of national reconciliation. To do this, the facts must be known, which is why I have put these together in this publication.
WHAT CAN BE DONE - IF ANYTHING?
There must be short and long term goals which I will list out. This is not exhaustive, far from it. It was put together in an hour because of the urgency of publishing this paper. In the space available I can do no more than list them, and leave discussing them for a later paper.
Short term goals
1. Return the lands in the Tamil areas to their owners.
2. Compensation for those whose property has been destroyed or damaged. Simply throwing them out of the detention centres is not acceptable.
3. Withdraw military 'supervision'(intimidation) from the Tamil areas and restore police work to the Police.
4. Allow the people in the North and East to elect people to run the area as they think fit.
5. Restore Media freedom and Free speech, monitored by internationally credible organistions.
6. Free those being held in detention centres and jails without charge or trial.
7. Close the secret prisons and detention centres.
8. Dismantle the paramilitary groups.
9. Stop the arbitrary detention and release of citizens.
10. Restore the Rule of Law and the independency of the Judiciary.
11. Stop labelling criticism of the regime as ‘anti-patriotic’, and dissent as ‘treason’.
Long term goals
1. Reversal of the Colebrooke-Cameron 'Reforms'
2. Dismantle the Executive Presidency and return political power to Parliament.
3. Establish a Truth Commission chaired by someone who has international credibility.
4. Establish an International inquiry into war crimes, and ‘involuntary disappearances’ by people with the necessary expertise eg Geoffrey Robertson, Louise Arbour, Justice Michael Kirby.
5. Make corruption a criminal offence.
6. Guarantee religious freedom.
7. Insist on accountability – monitored by people with international credibility
8. Dispel the idea that Tamils are the ‘enemy’ or ‘terrorists. Stop creating internal and external threats.
9. Declare that to advocate ethnic hatred and violence is a criminal act which could carry a life sentence in jail, without parole.
10. Declare that Buddhist monks return to Buddhist temples, and if found inciting ethnic hatred or violence, will be disrobed and charged under a ‘Racial hatred Act’ which will be incorporated in the Constitution.
11. Implement the policy of non-alignment in a meaningful way.
I am too familiar with Sri Lankan politics to believe that any of these, short or long term goals, are
even remotely possible. This is why the short and long term outlook for Sri Lanka is so poor.
It is also important to realise that some of the biggest liars in the world are in the Sri Lankan government, both present and past, and that whatever is claimed as true is very likely to be untrue. This is not an opinion to be debated but a fact to be faced. In such a setting, terms such as “National Reconciliation”, “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” are meaningless terms for foreign consumption with the sole purpose of getting aid. It is as simple as that.
Let me move from a ‘wish list’ to reality, some essential practical requirements.
A change in the mind-set
Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim people have too much to lose fighting and killing each other. This is precisely what dictatorships and totalitarian regimes want, and to do so is to play right into their hands. This is what has been happening over the past three decades, with disastrous results, for both the Tamil people and the Sinhalese, and, the future of the country.
It is time that the Sinhalese and the Tamils said, “No, we will not pick up arms, we will not fight”. The combined 'force' of millions of people opposing that which is plainly wrong is so much more powerful than the narrow hatred of a few – be they Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim 'leaders'.
To claim that the Tamils have not been discriminated against, and have not been subjected to an extensive violation of their human rights, is deeply wrong and hurtful. It will be a prescription for a fractured nation.
Whatever the Tamil Tigers have done or not done, to be trapped by the past will not allow the country to move forward. The Tamil people cannot be confused with an armed uprising of the Tamil youths, any more than the Sinhalese people can be confused with the armed uprising of the Sinhala youths. They are both symptoms of a single problem – the centralisation of power in Colombo and the developmental neglect of the periphery. To label on as ‘terrorism’ and the other as an ‘insurgency’ is a flawed and biased use of tems.
The Sinhalese will have to leave behind the dreadfully chauvinistic “Mahavamsa mindset' that Sri Lanka 'belongs' to the Sinhalese (Buddhists). Based on a chronicle, The Mahavamsa, written a blatantly anti-Tamil Buddhist monk in the 6th century, glorifies the Sinhalese as protectors of Buddhism and derides the Tamils invaders, vandals, marauders and heathens. To be fair by the monk, he said he wrote it “for the serene joy of the pious” such as my mother, and was not a textbook of history. Sinhalese believe it is. As Voltaire said, “If you believe in absurdities, you commit atrocities”, which is what has happened.
It is this nonsense that Sinhalese children learn as 'history'. One cannot blame them for their chauvinism, it is 'hard-wired' into their brains at a young age. The Sinhalese have moved even further down the 'Mahavamsa mind-set' and believe that the Tamils are the 'enemy', even 'terrorists'.
The ruling regime has embellished this and have brainwashed its citizenry to believe that to fight the Tamils is “fighting to save the nation” and to kill them is ‘patriotism’.
It is time that people refused to allow their patriotism to be measured by how close they stand to the Sinhalese (or Tamil flag), drenched by the blood and tears of thousands of innocent men, women and children, of all ethnic groups.
Arundhati Roy put this well in her “Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire”:
Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.....When independent thinking people ….begin to rally under flags.....it's time for all of us to sit up and worry.”
There will have to be a complete change in mind-set, and of policy if Sri Lanka is to move forward. Is this likely? Not for the moment, especially given the support this dreadful regime has from China, Russia, India and many other countries, including the United States of America, despite the muted concerns about human rights violations.
The first step is to accept that the Sri Lankan regime is a murderous, corrupt and evil regime that has no intention of changing unless forced to do so. At the moment, I cannot see that even this first step can be reached, let alone progress beyond it.
The two most important changes that have to be made are:-
1) That a British colonial construct has failed and that a major administrative change is long overdue.
2) That a totalitarian regime has to be dismantled. It is never easy to dismantle a fascist dictatorship, a totalitarian state, especially one that is armed to the hilt and supported by some if the most ruthless regimes on the planet. That said, to do nothing is to allow the triumph of evil.
There is not the slightest doubt that it is well beyond the ability of those in Sri Lanka to address these monumental problems. It has to be a 'joint venture' between those in Sri Lanka and those outside (as it was with apartheid South Africa) .
1. Administrative restructuring
It is clear that the British colonial administrative structure will have to be reversed so that all parts of the country can develop and the right of self-determination be an option, not only for the Tamils but for the Sinhalese. I have already drawn attention to the fact that the first 'demand' for a Federal set-up came, not from the Tamils, but from the (Kandyan) Sinhalese.
While I have been a long-time supporter of the division of the country into a Tamil State and a Sinhala State, and unapologetically continue to be one, it is, at the moment, not a possibility. Politics is the art of the possible, and a Separate Tamil State is not a possibility for the foreseeable future. There are simply too many Sinhalese ethno-religious chauvinists who can, and most certainly will, derail this.
It cannot also be forgotten that Sri Lanka has already had two uprisings on Sinhalese youths -one in 1971 and another in 1988. The basic problems that generated these uprisings are still very much there - rural poverty and administrative neglect from the regime in Colombo.
If similar problems are present in the Sinhala South and the Tamil North and East, it makes sense to address both. As such an administrative division, not on ethnic lines but on a regional basis into five divisions as I have set out earlier ie a North, East, Central. South and West divisions- 'quasi States' makes sense.
Is this a possibility? Probably not in the triumphalistic frame of mind of the current junta.
2 Dismantling a fascist dictatorship a totalitarian regime
Taking on a brutal murderous fully armed regime that has retained its immense fire-power, indeed increased it after the end of the war with the Tamils, is not a walk in the park, especially when this murderous regime has had no qualms about murdering some 40,000 completely innocent Tamil men, women and children, in just five months, with witnesses, both national and international, withdrawn. There will not be a second thought given to turning the guns on the Sinhalese who dare to protest. It is not a possibility, but a probability. The risks are much larger than what the East Timorese took in confronting a murderous Indonesian army.
A return to an armed conflict, either in the Tamil North or the Sinhalese South, is not an option. It will simply be crushed irrespective of the civilian casualties. Those who think otherwise simply do not appreciate the brutality of the Sri Lankan regime. I am aware that there is talk of another Tamil uprising. Albert Einstein (1879-1955), one of the most influential thinkers of all times, said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
All that this veiled threat will do is to give the necessary excuse for the Sri Lankan government to justify maintaining and even expanding the Sri Lankan military.
In Sri Lanka
The resistance will have to cut across the ethnic divide. There must be a 'linking of hands' across the ethnic divide. This will have to be led, but not confined to, the working people (Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims). It must not only be in the North and East, and the South, but crucially, in the Plantation sector in the Central hills. I find it astounding that the Tamils have been unable to cross the caste and class divide and link up with the Plantation Tamils. If the Plantation Tamils down their tools, the Sri Lankan regime will grind down to a halt before the sun goes down. It is something that cannot be crushed by armed force. The Sri Lankan regime will have no answers.
If this is combined with similar action in Colombo and the South to shut down Colombo and bring this Totalitarian regime to its senses, negotiations will follow to make Sri Lanka into a fairer and better place for all.
Outside Sri Lanka – the expatriate community
For practical purposes this means the expatriate Tamils. The Sinhalese, with few exceptions, seem to be too 'patriotic' to challenge the dreadful things that the GoSL is doing, not only to the Tamils, but even to the Sinhalese or the country.
There is not the slightest doubt that for the current pathetic plight of the Tamil people in the North and East, the expatriate Tamils must take a major share of blame. They simply have been content to dole out what money was requested or demanded, sit back and think they have made their contribution. That they have, and have always had, a critical role to play in mobilising international support for the cause of the Tamil people, and the basic problems that underlie this conflict, have been ignored. They have been content to form innumerable groups which have fought with each other than the real enemy – a murderous, brutal, chauvinistic Sinhala regime in Sri Lanka. The reasons for this are complex and it would serve no purpose in going into them. What is important is that it is time for change. Getting into bed with the dreadful regime in Colombo, as some have suggested, is not an answer. It is, in fact, to become part of the problem than the solution.
Sri Lanka has to be isolated – as was done to apartheid South Africa. It was this isolation that brought that dreadful regime to its knees.
Sceptics will claim that to boycott goods and services going in and out of Sri Lanka will achieve nothing, given the limitless supply of money from the IMF, China and other international players. I disagree. In the current critical state of the Sri Lankan economy and its total dependence on foreign trade, a well-organised and conducted boycott will have a major effect to bring this dreadful regime to its senses.
It has been argued that trade sanctions will only hurt the struggling people, not the regime. We have been down this road with apartheid South Africa. I discussed this at length with those in South Africa when I visited that country two years ago to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Every politician I met who had been there during the apartheid regime and who had the necessary experience, assured me that the boycott hurt the rulers and not the ruled. The latter had already lost almost everything and had nothing more to lose.
I am therefore suggesting:
1. An information blitz to get the problems facing the Tamil and Muslim people, and now the Sinhalese poor, living as they are, under a brutal, fascist dictatorship. The most serious problem today is international unawareness of what is going on behind the closed and censored doors of Sri Lanka. If ordinary decent people across the world were apprised of the situation, they would be horrified. What has to be targetted is the disinformation campaign of the GoSL. It is to address this, that I have recorded and distributed more than a dozen dvds to explain how Sri Lanka got to this situation.
2. A well-planned and executed boycott of goods and services going in and out of Sri Lanka.
3. Exposing the geopolitical and economic agenda of China, India, the US, Australia, and others, for the control of the Indian Ocean, and the price that Sri Lankans of all ethnic groups have had to pay.
4. The thoroughly irresponsible act of withdrawing the (United Nations) humanitarian organisations prior to the slaughter of Tamils in the North and East in 2009, so that genocide could proceed without witnesses. The UN is the worlds top talk-shop, a bed-fellow with NATO (No Action Talk Only)
5. The outrageous congratulatory motion passed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2009, applauding Sri Lanka for what was essentially Genocide of the Tamil people.
6. The need to expel Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth, if this group is to have any meaning.
7. The massive IMF loan given to get the country deeper and deeper into debt to satisfy a capitalist agenda, with conditions that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
It is critical to appreciate that the deeper Sri Lanka gets into the mire (including an escalating debt), the more difficult it will be to rescue the country. The more entrenched the dictatorship becomes, the more difficult it will be to dismantle it. Zimbabwe is the glaring example. Simply hallucinating about 'National Reconciliation' and accepting the blatant untruths of the GoSL, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is to become part of the problem than the solution.
No group, in or outside Sri Lanka, can address these problems. It will have to be a joint effort of many players, in many places. If this is done, I have not the slightest doubt that Sri Lanka will be a more humane and just country. A better Sri Lanka is possible.
My Thanks.
It is with deep gratitude and admiration that I acknowledge the outstanding work done by my people, the Sinhala people in the South, who are reporters for the World Socialist Web Site. Without their invaluable work, done under the most dangerous and difficult conditions, much of the critical information in this paper would simply not have been there. It is with profound sadness that I am unable to stand with them or to shake their hand. For the first time in my life, I am proud to say that I am a Sinhalese and that it is my people who have made, and continue to make, this invaluable contribution.
As long as there are people like this in Sri Lanka, there is still some hope for a country fast becoming one with no hope or vision. I am sure they are aware of the risks they are taking with a regime that tolerates no criticism and to which truth is synonymous with treason
Brian Senewiratne Brisbane, Australia 3 September 2010
WSWS reporters visit the devastated Sri Lankan town of Kilinochchi
By our correspondents
2 June 2010
One year after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government claims that life is returning to normal in the war-ravaged Vanni region. But as our reporting team found during their recent visit to Kilinochchi, that is far from the case. Tens of thousands of civilians who lost everything during the fighting have been resettled in the area with little government assistance.
Kilinochchi was the LTTE’s administrative headquarters when its forces controlled most of the Vanni. It was the scene of months of bitter fighting in the final months of 2008 as the LTTE put up stiff resistance to repeated army offensives and sustained aerial and artillery bombardment. The entire civilian population had fled well before Sri Lankan troops finally entered what was a ghost town in early January 2009.
After the fall of Kilinochchi, the LTTE’s resistance rapidly collapsed. The army tightened its noose around the LTTE and confined it to a small pocket of land on the northeast coast, which was pounded relentlessly killing thousands of civilians. When the area was finally overrun in May 2009, the army rounded up more than a quarter of a million civilians, many of whom were injured, sick and famished, and herded them into detention camps.
The internees were only released from last December onwards in response to international and domestic pressure. In the meantime, the military had turned Kilinochchi into an army town with plans for a permanent occupation and the construction of major permanent bases. Former residents found the town devastated and have been forced to eke out an existence as best they can.
Our reporters visited Kilinochchi town and the villages of Poonahari, 26 kilometres to the west, and Vattakachchi, 15 kilometres to the east. They conducted their work under difficult circumstances, as the media generally cannot operate freely in the town. The photos are taken from a bus, but give an indication of the makeshift conditions under which people are living in the Vanni.
The first thing that strikes you about the situation in Kilinochchi is that you find more soldiers than civilians in the town. They are in uniform and civvies, carrying weapons or just moving here and there. People can only travel to Kilinochchi, either from Jaffna to the north or from Vavuniya to the south, by passing through military camps, checkpoints and patrolling soldiers.
Soldiers might not question you as they would have six months ago but they keep a close eye on everyone’s movements. Just after one of our correspondents went to a relative’s house in a village, soldiers arrived at the house and asked why he was there. When he said he was visiting a relative, they went away. But the same thing happens whenever a new person comes to a house.
The buildings in Kilinochchi town were destroyed last year. Heaps of debris have since been removed about 50 metres from the main road. The traders who have returned are renovating or rebuilding their shops, which were damaged during the war, at their own expense. These are small shops and there are only a few customers. Most of the eating houses are run by the army, catering for people travelling through the town.
Makeshift dwellings
People’s land and buildings that were previously occupied by the LTTE are now occupied by the military. A vast area in the southern section of the town has been fenced with barbed wire.
Residents think it will be used to erect a military complex. Meanwhile, the Kilinochchi bus stand still has no any shelter. Passengers must wait for buses, sometimes for hours, under trees in the hot sun or rain. No buses are running to some places still.
Former detainees have been sent here almost without any assistance. The government’s attitude is one expression of its communal discrimination. Displaced people spoke angrily about the government policy. One person explained: “We are living here abandoned by all. The government said it would provide us with houses, employment and other facilities. It has not even given us clean drinking water, apart from what the relief agencies have supplied. Nobody has come to see our plight. There is no difference between staying in the detention camps and living here. The conditions are the same in both places”.
Many of the resettled people live in 10-by-10 feet huts with tin sheets provided by some non-government organisations. Other people are living in tents that are the same size. There are no separate rooms for sleeping or getting dressed. The floors have been levelled with mud. As there are no toilet facilities, people are using open spaces. Some families have used tin sheets to make roofs for their damaged houses.
People have been able to survive without going hungry only because the World Food Program (WFP) is providing food. Many people don’t have even instruments like knives, equipment to clean their hands, or lamps for daily use. They have to look for bottles to make kerosene oil lamps, and search for water because the wells are not cleaned.
The Kilinochchi district was famous for agriculture and fishing. The large Iranaimadu tank (artificial lake) mainly supplied irrigation for several thousand acres of agricultural land. The tank is now under the military’s control. Water has not yet been fully released for farmers. A few farmers have begun cultivation but they do not have tractors or other basic equipment. Many do not have even a mammoty (a type of spade). Fishermen are not allowed to fish in the tank.
Poonahari village has been devastated, like other areas in the Vanni. The debris from destroyed houses, such as bricks and wood, has been used to erect military checkpoints that monitor the local coastline. One resident commented: “The military checkpoints are made out of the wood and sheets from our homes.”
Small tents house some resettled families
Students are generally attending schools but there is a serious lack of teachers and equipment. Teachers have to travel a long distance from Jaffna or Vavuniya. At Poonahari, the Vikneswara School, which previously conducted classes up to the advanced level, is now occupied by the military, so students must walk to another school five kilometres away.
The military has also occupied Poonahari’s government hospital. As there are no longer any hospital facilities, people have to beg someone in the army camps to take any seriously ill patients to Kilinochchi in a military vehicle for treatment. Patients with minor illnesses simply have to suffer.
In Vattakachchi village there is no hospital and no school, and the people live in tents. The houses were destroyed during the war. The local Vattakachchi and Ramanathapuram schools remain occupied by the military.
Many women have lost their husbands. They are struggling to survive, facing numerous difficulties, without proper clothes and education for their children. One woman explained: “The government did not give us any help. I don’t have the money to search for my disappeared husband. Others like me face the same problems.”
Billions of rupees are urgently needed to rebuild the Kilinochchi district for proper human habitation. But the Colombo government is not interested in rebuilding the conditions of ordinary people. Its treatment of war-devastated people is a continuation of decades of discrimination against Tamils.
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