The New Colonisation...........http://www.thesundayleader.lk

The New Colonisation...........http://www.thesundayleader.lk

One should take great care not to bow down or become enslaved to an object unworthy and base, lest we become sharers of the baseness and unworthiness of the same
— Giodano Bruno (The Heroic Enthusiasts)

By Tisaranee Gunasekara


Protests against lands being occupied

Last week the villagers of Ragamwela in Ampara, engaged in a protest demonstration, accusing the police of occupying their lands. Ragamwela is strategically located close to several tourist hotspots; at midnight, July 17, an armed gang descended on the village, assaulting inhabitants and burning houses. The nearby STF post stayed away, saying that they have no authority to visit the area! Since then the villagers have been banned from their land and the Chief Sanganayake of Wellassa-Digamadulla, has complained to the Human Rights Council that the Pottuvil police is barring him from observing ‘vas’ in the village temple.

Ragamwela villagers are Sinhalese; they can protest against the injustice done to them, still, without being labelled ‘Tiger pawns’. But protests are an unaffordable luxury for the residents of three Tamil villages in Murukkundi, displaced from their homes when the state confiscated 4,000 acres in Kilinochchi to build 12,000 prefabricated houses for military families. According to the Army Commander, “once married quarters of the officers and the other ranks are set up in respective areas, they would be able to live with their families as well while serving in the area.” (The Island – 24.7.2010). The implication is that the soldiers, instead of serving short stints in the North (as is the norm), will become permanent settlers together with their families, ushering in a new wave of state-aided and mandated colonisation.

And as the Tamil North becomes dotted with a network of Sinhala cantonments, other facilities will spring up to cater to the newcomers, from Sinhala shops to Sinhala schools, from Sinhala place names to Buddhist temples. This is similar to the strategy of ‘creating facts on the ground’ used by the Israelis to annex Palestinian lands via state-aided Jewish settlements. That insidious strategy has caused a massive demographic-shift and strengthened extremist forces on both sides of the divide (imagine the harm a JHU-type party can cause by spreading its noxious ideology among the new settlers, who, given their insecurities, will be particularly vulnerable to ‘identity-based politics’).

Panama Mudiyanselage Bandara, a resident of Ragamwela, described the ordeal of the villagers at the hands of a seemingly omnipotent predator: “They took us out and threatened to kill us. They had two T 56 rifles. I managed to flee but by the time I turned back they were setting fire to everywhere” (BBC – 18.7.2010). So far, the regime has maintained a thundering silence while “local media organisations say that the journalists were stopped from visiting Ragamwela by police” (ibid). Is the dispossession of Ragamwela villagers linked to the ongoing campaign by the authorities to confiscate economically strategic land occupied by the have-nots, under the guise of ‘clearing unauthorised structures’?

Is the Rajapaksa ‘nation-building project’ a confluence of a Sinhala supremacist politico-military strategy and an anti-poor economic strategy? Is majoritarian supremacism being used to reconcile Sinhala have-nots to an economic regimen which benefits them only marginally and sporadically?

Multiple Vicious Circles

Post-war, the regime should prioritise resettling the displaced of all communities, including the Jaffna Muslims chased away by the LTTE. Instead, it is unleashing a wave of colonisation which cannot but be a focal point for existing discontents and a breeding ground for new resentments. Set in a deprived North, these ‘privileged’ Sinhala enclaves will act as control centres and as symbols of dominance. They will inspire not friendship and reconciliation but resentment and anger. After all, this massive building programme is taking place in a province teeming with displaced Tamils who lack basic facilities including shelter.

And this officially engineered Sinhala influx into the North cannot be justified by arguing that innumerable Tamils live amongst Sinhalese in the South; that is the result of individual migration, and not of state-planned and funded colonisation.

The new colonisation scheme would not be desirable even from the point of view of the settlers, forced to uproot themselves and live in prefabricated low-quality concrete boxes in an inhospitable environment. If the Rajapaksas really want to assist these soldiers, they should build houses and other facilities for them in their original habitats. Transplanted in an alien territory, their lives will be informed and guided by fear and suspicion. In this context, anything (such as the availability of water) can become a source of ill-will and conflict, between the unarmed ‘natives’ and the armed ‘colonists’, turning the North into a cauldron of phobia and rage.

So a new tragedy of errors is in the making, as Sri Lanka re-opts for a 1956 style nation-building project. We are remaking old mistakes, the hubristic and myopic errors which caused an ethnic problem and a long war. Unfortunately such regression is unavoidable with an administration which denies the existence of an ethnic problem and reduces a complex national crisis to a mere matter of terrorism. This habit of politically infantile reductionism is preventing the Rajapaksas from seeing past mistakes as mistakes and making them embrace retrogression (returning to a ‘happy’ pre-Tiger past) as the ideal way to the future.

The ongoing official attempts to sabotage the final consensus of the APRC (which is not an INGO plant and has the approval of the President’s own SLFP) too stems from this inanely unreal worldview. (Minister Tissa Vitarana’s statement that the APRC consensus cannot be considered ‘final’ until the President has responded to it has placed the ball firmly in the President’s court.)

Displacing and marginalising Northern Tamils to set up Sinhala cantonments will increase disquiet and resentment in the North; the more restive the Tamil gets, the greater will be the need for a large military presence, to maintain stability; this will generate more resentment…. That would be one vicious circle. The strategy of occupation (a huge military presence plus cantonments) in the North will turn exorbitant defence costs into budgetary staples; this will reduce resources available for development and societal welfare in the South, compelling the regime to use force to maintain stability, thereby driving up defence costs still further…. That will be another vicious circle.

In the absence of real and consistent improvements in living conditions, the regime will resort to repressive measures to prevent silent disquiet from burgeoning into violent instability; this in turn will perpetuate the choice of guns over butter…. That will be another vicious circle. Suspicion and resentment among ethnic and religious communities will add to this poisonous brew, undermining developmental hopes still further; “The intelligence takes revenge”, as Camus warns in his ‘Letters To A German Friend’ (Resistance, Rebellion and Death).

These concentric vicious circles will render democracy unaffordable initially in the North and subsequently in the South. Repression will have to become a norm, the only way to maintain a precarious stability (the planed Media Authority fits perfectly into this scenario). Is that the real Rajapaksa plan – to turn Sri Lanka into a land of chronic disunity and fear, where democracy seems unaffordable and the Sinhala majority cling to the Ruling Family, however reluctantly, as the last line of defence against an imaginary jungle?

Related posts:

1.Pro-Ltte Party For ‘Autonomous Rule’ For Tamils In Lanka A pro-LTTE parliamentarian has underlined his party’s resolve for “autonomous rule” for Tamils in Sri Lanka, claiming that TNA’s support for opposition presidential candidate Sarath...
2.IDPs In Need Of Permanent Housing Facilities One year after By Mandana Ismail Abeywickrema One year after the end of the war between the security forces and the LTTE, 73,000 displaced persons...

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Posted by admin on Aug 1 2010. Filed under Lead, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
20 Comments for
“The New Colonisation”Sam Perera
August 1, 2010 - 3:30 am
One little note for TG. Sri Lanka has no area reserved for any ethnic group. Anybody can live anywhere at their free will.

Reply Leela
August 1, 2010 - 11:16 am
Sam: This lady is full of venom against Sinhalese and Rajapakses. She thrives from the dollars she gets for it.

Reply RAJAPAKSHA
August 1, 2010 - 10:10 pm
Colanisation take place when a race from a another country invade another and make settlements .IF THIS IS COLONISATION THEN WE CAN CALL BUILDING APARTMENTS BY TAMILS IN WELLAWATTHA “COLONISATION.
We know thw woman her background her motives SO WOMAN GO TO HELL

Reply Shan Nalliah,Gandhiyist Norway
August 2, 2010 - 5:15 pm
NOT WITH STATE SPONSERED LAND GRABING FROM POOR TAMILS! AND WITH IDP MONEY FROM DONOR COUNTRIES! GOD WILL PUNISH ALL PERPETRATORS SOON!

Reply ellepola
August 1, 2010 - 4:28 am
Members of the Sri Lankan armed forces have the same rights as the rest of the citizens of the cointry and they can live antwhere in the country just like any other person. There are no ghettos for any race in Lanka. We need authorities to do everything possible to maintain security and peace in the country. It is essential that armed forces are stationed in the north and east as in other parts and we cannot expect members of armed forces who are risking their lives for the country to live without their families and loved ones. People who cannot understand this simple reasoning or who refuse to appreciate these facts are stupid dangerous and undesirable.

Reply Sam Perera
August 1, 2010 - 4:44 am
ellepola,

The simple truth you mentioned is not comprehensible to the people like TG with degenerative brain disorders.

Reply Ravi
August 1, 2010 - 6:49 am
TG, you seems to be unaware of the suffering of both communities over the last 30 years and the need to ensure that this type of events do not happen again. To the editor – this article is so bias and short sighted that i am surprised that you saw a need to publish it, this is exactly the type of article that makes me want to avoid your newpaper now.

Reply Ravi
August 1, 2010 - 6:52 am
to the editor – just a quick question ? do you allow anybody to write articles of this nature to your paper ? Judging by this TG does not seems to have any type of relevant qualification to make these comments.. sorry your standards have really dropped..

Reply JVP
August 1, 2010 - 7:40 am
why Govt is building houses for Military instead of Tamils there..

I think the Govt is going to make a blunder with so much costs …….European Countries , UN and USA are waiting for building all witness , proof against srilanka…..

like military men rape tamils kill tamils….

One day North & East will be divided by USA,UN Forces like Timor or Kosova…that time these military sinhalas have to be a minority there and get butchered..

Better make Tamils happy instead of making military sinhala happy…as they are going to suffer later…

Reply Sam Perera
August 1, 2010 - 8:34 am
Really JVP? military men kill and rape Tamils? This is the typical song from stateless LTTE terrorists monkey. However, this kazuthai is smart enough label him as a JVP poof. Nevertheless, there is no serious deference between LTTE terrorists and JVP who want to destabilize Sri Lanka by hook or crook.

Reply brain
August 1, 2010 - 9:02 am
my vote now to mahinda

Reply Kiribathgodaya
August 1, 2010 - 2:00 pm
They voted for this Govt to power, so they deserve what they get. Now don’t complain.

Reply Ruwan
August 1, 2010 - 2:43 pm
this women is crying for comfort of our sildiers families.funny.TG doesnt know anything about prefabricated technology.even three floors houses can be built with better facilities than normal houses.and they will be very safe when their husbonds around.and its government duty to provide quarters for soldiers.so they can live with their families where ever they stay.uprooted civilians can be given separate lands.
she says tamils in south are individual settlers.is it true with estate tamils also?and NE is a traditional sinhala area before ethnic cleansing.there are many buddhist temples there.

Reply James Thenuwera
August 1, 2010 - 3:45 pm
Thisarani is Dayan’s ex. Be careful of her

Reply Gayan
August 1, 2010 - 7:25 pm
Hahaha. What a joker!. Nice comedy article.

Reply Peter
August 1, 2010 - 7:28 pm
Yes! Anybody can live anywhere at their free will. But there is a small print clause for the Tamils. They should register themselves at the nearest Police stations as in Colombo. Because ( not) ‘All the tamils are terrorists and all the terrorists are tamils’. Besides Tamils can be taken in by the forces any time branded as LTTE cadres and endup in Welikada,Boossa and so on, whereas the Sinhalese will have the protection of the Army, NAVY, airforce and the police,as happened to the Doctor who allegedly murdered the female co-worker in Jaffna. He was immediately taken to the Navy base for ‘protection’ and the efforts are being made to push the issue under the carpet to this day. What would have happened if the scenario was in the south and the Doctor was a Tamil,it is anybody’s guess. So just because the somebody has closed his eyes it doesn’t mean the whole world is in darkness. TG you have already become Ex of someone else, so ‘either you are with us or you are against us’, how fitting.

Reply leon
August 2, 2010 - 2:32 am
TG you are perhaps the only sane person in the insane paradise island

Reply Lankawick
August 2, 2010 - 8:07 am
TG – you try to impress us …that you have high intelligence… by various quotes from well known acedemics….

Read about the World history of Colonisation…before writing your usual crap against Sri Lanka !!!!..
.it was State funded Colonisation that populated the USA – Canada – Brazil – Argentina – “White” South Africa – Australia – New Zealand….etc…

Even the transportation of African Slaves to all the nations of the Americas… …
( From Canada in the North to Argentina in the South & add the Caribbean islands ) ….was State Funded Colonisation….

So was the Indented Labourers frm India – China – Indonesia – Japan – Korea…whose descendents are now living in Malaysia – Singapore – South Africa – Peru – Surimane – Guyana – Mauritius – Fiji – USA ( Hawaii & California ) …etc …

TG is well known to “back stab ” SriLanka to earn her $$$ from INGO’s…

.

Reply kumudini
August 2, 2010 - 1:27 pm
How come Tisaranee has not mentioned the colonisation of Wellawatte by Tamils . ?Has she ever heard of the “Thesa Walame law “which operates in Jaffna , where no Sinhalese can buy lamd ? Is her rantings to please someone who she is reponsible to . Open your eyes a litle wider without quoting Shakespaear , Huxley and who ever comes to your mind as they are not really relevant to SL . This is just to show how well read you are .please remeber that anyone can live wherever they want in SL , This is called democracy . Sinhalaes can live any where they wish just like the Tamils ,get over this .

Reply Shan Nalliah,Gandhiyist Norway
August 2, 2010 - 5:22 pm
BUT NOT COLONISE WITH GUN POWER! AND IDP MONEY!!!SHAME!!!

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