NO POLITICAL SOLUTION ANYMORE.....NO WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS OF TAMILS......???!!!

MAKING THE TAMIL PEOPLE A PART OF THE SOLUTION

JEHAN PERERA ...................NATIONAL PEACE COUNCIL / SRILANKA

The Tamil people in Sri Lanka are today disempowered and silenced as never before. A war is being fought, but it is not for their hearts and minds. More than 60,000 of them are presently in government welfare camps in the north having broken free of the LTTE and fled. Another large number, said to be a similar number or two times as many are trapped in a 20 square kilometer zone that the government has designated as a safety zone, but which is still under LTTE control. In the meantime heavy fighting rages virtually in their very midst. The latest reports are that the LTTE no longer controls any territory other than what the government has designated as the safety zone and has suffered heavy casualties.
Undoubtedly the worst affected of all the Tamil people living in the country are those trapped in the north and unable to get out. Their silence and inability to express their opinion in the north, amidst the terrible fighting, is inevitable. However, the silence of Tamil people elsewhere in the country, even in Colombo, is a notable feature of the present phase of conflict. Their silence is accompanied by the utterances of some Sinhalese nationalists which are not in consonance with life in a plural society. So far there is no answer to such harmful polarisation either from the Tamil people in Sri Lanka or from the rest of Sri Lankan society including the political opposition.

Recently the National Peace Council for which I work organized an in-house seminar on international experiences in conflict transformation through war. There were three case studies that focused on military campaigns that ended in military victories. These were the cases of the Boers of South Africa in the early 20th century, the Sikhs of the Indian Punjab in the 1990s and Chechnya in Russia at the beginning of this century. One notable feature of the seminar was the silence of a section of the Tamil participants at the seminar. While Tamils who were critical of the LTTE were prepared to speak up, those who were critical of the government’s military-centered approach maintained a stoic silence.

There are many reasons for this. The LTTE’s strategy of infiltrating the civilian population and launching terrorist attacks has led to a situation where the government’s security forces tend to view all Tamils with a measure of suspicion. LTTE cadre have launched a variety of terror attacks in Colombo and elsewhere after posing as regular Tamil civilians. The government’s counter terror strategy has been to regularly check identity papers and do search and cordon operations in Colombo and elsewhere. It is inevitable that the target of such investigations will be those of Tamil ethnicity whose first priority will be to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble, even not speaking of the political solution they would like to see take the place of the military solution.

Tamil silence

However, the reluctance to speak up and be critical of the government goes beyond being suspected to be an LTTE cadre. Even those who are suspected to be in opposition to the government’s current military strategy are liable to find themselves at the receiving end of government’s punitive measures. In this context, civil society groups have expressed concern about the recent arrest of Shantha Fernando, a senior official of the National Christian Council and a human rights activist. He was reportedly detained at the international airport where he was about to board a flight to India in order to take part in a seminar on the prevailing humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. It is understood that his detention is sought to be justified by his possession of material that the government considers to be adverse to the country's security interests.

There are two other instances of arrests and detentions that would chill the expression of public opinion. One is the arrest of the editor of the popular Sudar Oli newspaper, N Vithyatharan on the grounds that he had information concerning the most recent suicide attack on Colombo by the air wing of the Black Tigers. While any suicide attack has to be condemned and rejected on account of their morally irreprehensible nature, the media in a democratic country, even one at war, has a right to seek information regarding such incidents in order to disseminate them to the public. Another incident that could have a deterrent impact on expressing views on the issues of war and peace was the arrest and detention for a short period of the owner of Poobalasingam bookstore, a well known books shop that sells publications in the Tamil and English languages. This was on the grounds of selling one of the issues of Ananda Vikadan, a Tamil magazine published in Chennai. The issue in question included a story on the LTTE air attack on Colombo with photographs of LTTE members. Ananda Vikadan magazine is a respected family magazine that has been imported into Sri Lanka from India for over thirty years. Instead of arresting the bookshop owner the government could simply have confiscated this particular edition of the magazine if it had found it objectionable.

The three arrests and detentions outlined above are all indicative of the shrinking democratic space for dissent and alternative perspectives. While emphasizing the need for a political solution, the rule of law must be put in place for the peaceful coexistence of the society. At the seminar on conflict transformation, one of the main arguments was that the present situation in the country is akin to a boiling pot of water; as the water boils steam forms; although a lid may be applied to the pot pressure will build inside the pot. The steam will eventually escape, perhaps even burning the hand that seeks to forcibly hold down the lid in place. The greater the pressure on the lid, the greater will be the pressure of the steam, eventually even bursting the pot.

Fueling grievances

The important point for us to note is that the fire beneath the pot is fuelled by political grievances, the root cause of the conflict. As such a lid will only contain the steam, the symptoms of the conflict, and that too temporarily, but not the cause. The conflict will continue until this heat is extinguished, by meaningful political dialogue that leads to a transformative solution acceptable to all Sri Lankans. The presentation of the Punjab conflict has relevance to Sri Lanka today. The Indian counter insurgency strategy was effective because it succeeded in `winning over the majority of the Sikh population to the political process. Once a solution was found that was acceptable to the majority of Sikhs, the division became one of those who wanted democratic peace and a dwindling minority who advocated violence. The civilian Sikh population rejected the Sikh militants as the opportunities presented by the political process outweighed continued violence. Only through political engagement and involvement of the affected population was the Indian state able to definitively win the counter insurgency campaign. Although the Indian government has not got itself involved politically in pushing a solution in Sri Lanka this time around, its provision of two fully equipped field hospitals for the civilian victims of the fighting in the north is suggestive of a hearts and minds strategy directed at the Tamil people both in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu.

In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, the political process and hearts and minds strategy appears to have got into a state of dormancy again. Although Prof. Tissa Vitarana, the Chairman of the All Party Representatives Committee which has been mandated by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to work out a political solution to the ethnic conflict has affirmed that 95 percent of the job has been done, there are has been a long period in which nothing has been seen to happen. Instead the government’s entire effort seems to be to militarily defeat the LTTE and to win provincial elections in the south of the country. But winning peace means winning the hearts and minds of the Tamil people, even as the Indian government did in the Punjab.

For peace in Sri Lanka, the government needs to win over the majority of Tamil people to the belief in a political solution and that the government is genuinely concerned about their welfare. Even while the Sri Lankan government takes steps to eliminate the LTTE as a military and terrorist power it needs to reaffirm time and time again, and with deeds on the ground, that a just political solution for the Tamil people’s grievances is necessary to resolve the ethnic conflict. The government also needs to make it clear that it stands for a just political solution in which human rights are protected for all, and that it will support the work of those who stand for such a future Sri Lanka.
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