Discriminatory and Nepotistic Governance ...!!!

Discriminatory and Nepotistic Governance
Sun, 2009-09-06 01:02 — editor

By Tisaranee Gunasekara
Who can protest an injustice, but does not, is an accomplice to the act”.
The Talmud

The EU, in a confidential report on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, called it, quite rightly, a ‘novel form of unacknowledged detention’. As long as the Rajapakse administration continues to incarcerate more than three quarter of a million of Sri Lankan citizens behind barbed wire fences, without even the lame excuse of an ongoing war, normalcy will not return to the island nation.

This abnormality is also preventing ordinary Sri Lankans from enjoying the economic benefits which would have come their way, as a part of the peace dividend. The hiking of gas prices and the silent price increases which preceded and followed it, are but indicators of the cost Sinhalese will have to bear for the inanely short-sighted Sinhala supremacist policies of their rulers.

If the EU withdraws the GSP plus concession (a near certainty), Sri Lanka is set to lose $150 million, annually. Garment sector is not just Sri Lanka’s highest foreign exchange earner (last year we obtained $3.47 billion by exporting garments to EU markets). It is also a major employment generator; consequently the withdrawal of GSP plus will cause a massive increase in unemployment; particularly in rural areas (the regime’s sole method of employment creation seems to be the expansion of the army, which will exacerbate the pressure on the national finances). The withdrawal of the GSP plus facility will affect many non-garment exports as well, from cut flowers to ornamental fish, thereby dealing a body blow to many a small or medium scale entrepreneur. Since the rulers and their kith and kin will continue to wallow in luxury at public expense, notwithstanding the perilous state of public finances, the real cost of Rajapakse policies will have to be borne by the ordinary people of Sri Lanka, not just Tamil and Muslims but also Sinhalese. This is a bitter truth no amount of exultation about ‘standing up to the West’ can efface.

The Guilty and the Innocent

The EU extended the GSP plus facility to Sri Lanka last year, over the protests of the human rights lobby. Perhaps the extension was based on the belief that these violations were a function of the war, and the consequent expectation that they will cease once the war was over. Unfortunately incidences of human rights violations have not ceased despite the end of the war. Instead the regime is busy transforming such violations from abnormalities into norms by making them an integral part of the post-war reality – the Northern internment camps being the best case in point.

The government’s way of dealing with international protests about the camps is akin to its way of responding to international pressure on devolution – promises and more promises, contradictory statements, deadlines which are not honoured and ‘facts and figures’ which are dubious. The camps are unlikely to be dismantled in the foreseeable future (just as a political solution to the ethnic problem is unlikely to be forthcoming in the foreseeable future). To facilitate this continuation, the government seems to be nursing a plan to balkanise the existing camps into smaller, more controllable ones, scattered all over the North.

“A senior government official told The Island that authorities in charge of camps had been unable to run overcrowded camps effectively. He said that there could be hundreds of LTTE cadres, including members of suicide squads and intelligence wing cadres among the civilian population. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official said the military and the police could not effectively manage camps nor identify the wanted men and women as camps hold far too many people…. Responding to our queries, he asserted that it would be ideal if only a few thousand could be held at one camp. He said that setting up of additional camps would be a heavy burden on the government but it could greatly help their efforts to identify terrorists taking cover among ordinary civilians” (The Island – 31.8.2009; emphasis mine). If this plan bears fruit, it will be harder for human rights groups to even keep tabs of the number of camps and their locations, just as it will be near impossible for Tamils to discover where their incarcerated relatives and friends are held. It will also be easier for the regime to control the inmates, and especially to ensure that they ‘vote’ for the ruling coalition, en bloc, in any future election. Such dismemberment will foster wilful oblivion - a few large camps are eyesores hard to ignore; many mini-camps can make it easy to look the other way.

“Don’t forget Prabhakaran’s parents, too, took refuge among ordinary people”, warns the ‘government official’ quoted in the above report, in his bid to justify the incarceration of civilian Tamils (ibid - emphasis mine). Does this mean that, according to Rajapakse logic, Vellupillai Pirapaharan’s parents are guilty of the crime of terrorism because they are the parents of Vellupillai Pirapaharan?

After all Mr. Pirapaharan’s parents never belonged to the LTTE; they never took up arms and they never fought for Eelam. Consequently, even according to the draconian PTA, they are not guilty of any crime; they are ‘ordinary people’ and thus did no wrong by seeking refuge among other ‘ordinary people’. However, in the eyes of the Rajapakses, Mr. Pirapaharan’s parents are Tigers because they are Mr. Pirapaharan’s parents. By the same token, the parents, siblings, spouses and offspring of Tiger cadres can be considered guilty of the crime of terrorism, simply because they are the parents, siblings, spouses and offspring of Tiger cadres. Such a criterion would make sense of the Northern internment camps, because every civilian incarcerated in these barbed wire enclosures cannot but be closely related to a Tiger cadre and thus ‘guilty’ according to Rajapakse logic.

This approach is identical to that archaic and inhumane law which enabled King Sri Wickrama Rajapasingha to execute the wife, children and sister of Ehalepola Nilame, because they happened to be the wife, children and sister of Ehalepola Nilame – a man accused of betraying his Sovereign by consorting with the British.

One of the reasons the EU deems it impossible to extend the GSP facility is the presence of “complete or virtually complete immunity in Sri Lanka”, a function of ‘widespread police torture, abductions of journalists, politicised courts, and uninvestigated disappearances’ (The Economist – 3.9.2009). In the last month the Sinhala South had a taste of impunity and found it far from palatable. There were protests by the media and the public – and rightly so. But having so protested against the presence of impunity in the South, we are still willing to countenance the presence of impunity in the North, simply because it is directed at Tamils. And every Tamil, according to the prevailing Sinhala supremacist commonsense, are directly or indirectly guilty of some Tiger crime – past, present and future. Therefore we protest against the presence of impunity in the South but ignore or defend it in the North. Therefore we oppose wrongful arrest in the South while maintaining a deafening silence about the internment camps in the North. Therefore we oppose abduction and torture in the South while ignoring abduction and torture in the North. Blinded by Sinhala supremacism we do not see that impunity is a cancer which cannot be localised to the North; it will continue to spill over into the South, until and unless it is tackled and eliminated at its source.

The Favoured and the Unfavoured

Shasheendra Rajapakse is the Basnayake Nilame (Chief Custodian) of the Kataragama Devale; he is also the Chief Minister of the Uva Provincial Council. According to the Buddhist Temporalities Ordnance, a person holding public office is disqualified from serving in those religious institutions coming under the Ordnance and vice versa. Consequently a person serving under such a religious institution cannot hold public simultaneously; to do so, he must either resign from his religious service or obtain permission from the Chief Custodian of the religious institution or from the Public Trustee.

Shasheendra Rajapakse, Basnayake Nilame and Chief Minister, did not have to make such an agonising choice; nor did he have to go in search of the Public Trustee. His uncle, the President, took care of the problem with a simple gazette notification. Through the Gazette Extraordinary No.1614/30, President Mahinda Rajapakse exempted the Ruhunu Maha Kataragama Devalaya from the relevant section of the Buddhist Temporalities Ordnance, thereby enabling nephew Shasheendra Rajapakse to hold both posts simultaneously. In Sri Lanka, Nepotistic Governance is rapidly becoming the rule.

Journalist JS Tissanayagam was sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment under the PTA for the crimes of ‘attempting to cause the commission of acts of violence or racial or communal disharmony with clear intention of causing disrepute to the government, an act of conspiracy; attempting to cause the commission of acts of violence or racial or communal disharmony relating to articles he published in the North Eastern monthly magazine in 2006 and 2007; collecting and obtaining information for the purpose of terrorism through the collection of fund for the said magazine’ (Ministry of Defence website). Mr. Tissanayagam’s conviction would have carried more weight if the governing coalition did not consist of the JHU, which is fostering communal and religious disharmony by advocating an aggressive and intolerant brand of Sinhala Buddhist supremacism. Mr. Tissanayagam’s conviction would have carried more weight if the government did not consist of cabinet ministers (notably GL Peris and Milinda Moragoda) who were at the forefront of the appeasement oriented Third Peace Process. And Mr. Tissanayagam’s conviction would have definitely carried more weight if so many journalists had not been abducted, imprisoned or murdered since 2006, including the editor of The Sunday Leader Lasantha Wickramatunga.

According to international websites, attacks on Christian churches continue, though such incidents are rarely reported in the local media. “Attacks were reported in Puttlam, Gampaha and Kurunegala districts in western Sri Lanka, central Polonnaruwa district, Mannar district in the north and Matara district in the south, according to the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL)” (Christian News Today). The report contains dates, place names and other factual details, and mentions that the attacks have increased since the end of the war. Clearly resurgent Sinhala truimphalism will not limit itself to victimising ethnic minorities; it will seek to use force even against fellow Sinhalese who follow the Christian faith.

When a government which does almost nothing to prevent such attacks or to punish the culprits, accuses a Tamil journalist of inciting racial harmony, it sends a clear, unambiguous message about the character of the regime and the nature of the ‘nation building project’ it is engaged in.

Discrimination and nepotism seem to be the twin pillars of the Rajapakse mode of governance. Sinhala supremacism is cleverly manipulated to win the backing of the Sinhala majority for rampant Rajapakse nepotism. The end result can well be a country where there is very little justice for ordinary Sinhalese and almost none for ordinary Tamils, Muslims and even Christians.

- Asian Tribune -
COURTESY:asiantribune.com