Misguided beliefs in a quick end to war
JEHAN PERERA
Most people in Sri Lanka and internationally seem to take it for granted that the war is soon coming to an end. This is on account of the Sri Lankan military's steady progress into the last remaining LTTE-held areas. Even the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, Sir John Holmes, who recently visited the country advised the government "to take the historic opportunity to swiftly, after the end of fighting, tackle the underlying political issues..." However, the last stretch on the battlefield is turning out to be slower and more difficult to traverse than anticipated.
Civilians and landmines dot the area. The government has said that it is restraining its artillery and air power to reduce the collateral damage to the civilians trapped within the LTTE-held area. Ground fighting without the full utilisation of artillery and aerial power is likely to lead to increased Sri Lankan military casualties. But LTTE casualties will also be high. As the Sri Lankan military has many more personnel to throw into battle any reasonable conclusion would be that the LTTE cannot hold on indefinitely and its last positions will sooner or later be overrun.
The loss of all territory would be a major strategic blow to the LTTE. Without a fixed territorial base, the LTTE will lose all of its big military hardware, including artillery guns and tanks. The lack of a territorial base will also make it harder for the LTTE to maintain its command and control structures which will have to be decentralised. The possibility of coordinated responses to the Sri Lankan military offensives will be lower. The loss of territory under its control will also mean that the LTTE's leadership, which is now well past their physical prime, will have to be constantly on the run.
In these circumstances, it is in the interests of the LTTE to utilise whatever diplomatic and other channels they may have to forestall the government's efforts to capture their last remaining territory. Tragically, this is where the civilians trapped in LTTE-held areas, play an important role. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a group of equally distinguished signatories have issued a statement calling for UN intervention in Sri Lanka, citing the plight of the civilians. According to them, as many as 7000 civilians have become battlefield casualties within the space of a few weeks, with at least 2000 being killed.
UN Visit
The recent visit of the UN's John Holmes to Sri Lanka was an important one in the context of the ongoing fighting and pressures to protect the civilian population. This senior UN official was able to meet with government and opposition leaders and members of humanitarian and civil society groups and was also able to go to the government-controlled areas of the north to obtain a first hand impression of the situation of the displaced persons in the government's welfare centres. The problem with his visit was that he was unable to go into the LTTE-held areas or see the situation of the civilians trapped there.
A recent statement by the UN's media centre has referred to squalid and crowded conditions in that part of the country with civilians trapped there by the LTTE and by the fighting suffering from starvation. In addition, Sir John Holmes reported his findings to the UN's Security Council, which is the body which can order peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions in any part of the world. Those who have been campaigning for international intervention to stop the bloodshed in Sri Lanka have considered this briefing to be a significant breakthrough in getting Sri Lanka's humanitarian crisis onto the top of the agenda of the international community.
On the other hand, the text of the presentation made by Sir John Holmes to the UN's Security Council did not itself contain any such call for international intervention. The statement did raise the issues of civilian casualties in fighting, inadequate relief supplies, unsatisfactory conditions in welfare centres and the need to expedite the return of displaced people to their original homes. But the statement also made the point that the government had given assurances that all these matters would be attended to in due course. It also highlighted the fact that the LTTE was forcibly holding back the civilian population to meet with a cruel fate.
If the LTTE and its supporters have hoped that the international community would act more decisively to enforce a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes that would also give the LTTE a breather, they are likely to be disappointed. Members of the UN's Security Council to which he reported, such as Russia and China, have internal conflicts of their own, where they have dealt with rebellious citizens with even less concern for human rights than Sri Lanka. It is also likely that other members of the Security Council would prefer to have one less terrorist organisation in the world to support and inspire others. The fact that Sri Lanka is a sovereign state and the LTTE is an internationally banned organisation appears to have weighed heavily on the assessment of Sir John Holmes.
Humanist approach
With the international climate continuing to be favourable towards it, the government appears to be of the view that capturing the last remaining LTTE areas will pave the way for the final defeat of the LTTE by the killing or decapitating of its leadership. There is talk of a collective suicide by the LTTE when all else fails. There is also a hope of an LTTE collapse like occurred in 1989 with the JVP insurrection. But it is unlikely that there is going to be such a quick way to end the war. On the contrary it is reported that LTTE cadre have left the LTTE-held territory and infiltrated into government-controlled territory.
A repeat of the JVP phenomenon is not plausible in the case of the LTTE as the two insurrections are fundamentally different. The JVP was class based and its ideology of Marxism was not a popular one, being held by only a tiny fraction of the population. On the other hand, the LTTE is ethnic-based and its ideology of Tamil self-determination evokes a responsive chord with Tamils everywhere, including in Tamil Nadu and the diaspora. The issue of Tamil self-determination pre-dates the LTTE, which is why it has been able to maintain its fierce struggle against the government for over three decades.
Today, many in Tamil society blame the government for the killing of civilians in the north, even though the LTTE is keeping the people trapped. They believe that if the government truly considered the Tamil people to be equal citizens, they would halt the military offensive and talk peace to the LTTE. The tragic plight of thousands of civilians who have been seriously injured in the fighting over the last several weeks, and the tens and hundreds of thousands who are in various states of displacement have created an emotional volcano that rivals if not surpasses the rupture of the July 1983 anti Tamil pogrom.
Although Sri Lankan society is polarised on the issue of the war as never before, the answer to the war has to come from within it. The immediate outcome of the Holmes' visit suggests that the international community is not likely to impose a humanitarian or any other ceasefire or solution on Sri Lanka. Therefore ending the war will be a matter for Sri Lankans. The war will not end through war, through collective suicide or through international intervention. This is why a sober and humanist approach is necessary to be evolved from within Sri Lankan society at this very juncture if a solution is to be found sooner rather than later for a shared future in our shared island.
dailymirror.lk
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT IN S.ASIA!
Democracy and development: Approaches in South Asia - immediate options for Sri Lanka
by M.A. Mohamed Saleem & Arjuna Hulugalle
The Mahatma Gandhi
Centre, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Abstract: The Sri Lankan experiment with democracy is flawed and incomplete. Still democracy has withstood challenges posed by protests and brutal insurgencies for regime change and demands for secession. In a multi-religious, multi-cultural and poly-lingual country where even trivial factors are freely exploited for causing divisions, insurgency threats are real and will continue to surface unless an environment is created in which people find equal opportunities for pursuing their life goals without fear of harassment and discrimination. This is Sri Lanka’s need of the hour. Success of Indian commitment to assist Sri Lanka in its reconstruction efforts will depend on how effectively the marginalized and war-displaced people are brought into the development mainstream. Gramarajya, which is akin to the Panchayati Raj village empowerment programme, seems promising for regaining trust and confidence for co-existence of the different communities. Gramarajya is also seen as a mechanism for effective use of the reconstruction funds on the intended development purpose. This is the thrust of this paper.
Experience with democracy
There is no universally accepted definition of development but, in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context, it is viewed as improvement of livelihood and quality of life for humans. Therefore, it encompasses governance, healthcare, education, gender equality, disaster preparedness, infrastructure, economics, human rights, environment and issues associated with them. Is democracy, a form of government in which power is held by citizens under a free electoral system, necessary to improve livelihood and living standards? We are familiar with countries that are undemocratic but, they have been able to deliver better livelihood and quality of life to their citizens. We are also familiar with countries, for instance countries that left the former Soviet Union, embracing democracy but loosing out on maintaining life quality hither to people enjoyed under ‘autocracy’. Since independence, Sri Lanka, like India, has chosen the path of democracy for its development.
Consolidating liberal democracy by making the elected legislators and governments fully accountable to the citizens, while retaining their ability to influence the course of governance on a sustained basis, has proved extremely difficult in Sri Lanka. Although the country had visionary leadership at the time of independence, power grabbing political agenda of some did not allow embryonic democratic experimentation to mature. The very leaders who had the intellectual charisma and strength of character also became instruments in creating conflict situations. As the Sinhalese aspired to recover the dominance in society they had lost during European rule, the Tamils wanted to protect their minority community from domination or assimilation by the Sinhalese majority. A manifestation of this clash is testing the democratic institutions while retarding Sri Lanka’s inherent capacity for global competitive development.
Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and poly-lingual country. The question as to whether there was a constitutional frame work and with it a willingness to respect and comply to procedures for consolidating democracy are questions frequently asked. With departure of the British, Sri Lanka adopted the Westminster Parliamentary system but, the major political parties succumbed to protecting democracy only to the extent of acquiring and retaining the required number of parliamentary members to govern as it became the sole political culture and goal. Our democracy therefore is legitimized by flawed elections, severely defective electoral rolls, irregularities in the polling process, vote-buying, unaccountable use of money in elections, criminalization of politics and the curse of defections of elected members to parliament for personal gains. Politicians aspiring for power also took the easiest route by placating the majority community playing the card of Sinhala nationalism.
Sri Lanka became a republic in 1972, and the new constitution introduced reforms was perceived to be discriminatory by the Tamils and fanned among the communities further racial distrust and mistrust which had started especially after 1956 when the Sinhala only Bill was made law. In 1978, the new government brought about a new constitution to replace the Westminster system of governance with the Executive Presidency. The President assumed enormous powers and ensured consolidation of his government’s term even at the cost of traditionally held democratic practices. The UNP government continued to rule the country for 17 years. This culture has not changed even after the government changed, and now the power to rule is ensured by making almost every Member of Parliament in the governing party ‘Ministers’.
Challenge to Democracy: - Urban biased development at the relative neglect of rural areas was another challenge to democracy and led to the first insurgency from the Sinhalese youth in 1971. The introduction of the 1972 constitution triggered protests also by the Tamils, and in their frustration Tamils, especially the youth formed themselves into militant groups demanding secession and the separate state of Elam. The communal riots of 1983 aggravated the situation and militancy and violence from the Tamil armed groups escalated especially when the Tamil representatives found after the riots that they could no more continue in the Parliament.
Violence in any form cannot be accepted or condoned in a democratic society. Violence invariably leads to terrorism and the consequences of that cannot be calculated. Violence and Terrorism have however root causes that need to be addressed. Violence and terrorism restricts dialogue to reach common positions. With the end of hostilities, Sri Lanka has another opportunity today to find answers for its problems. InIIIncreasing number of Tamils are demonstrating against the LTTE and are demanding the release of Tamil civilians from the LTTE. They are also yearning for democratic change, peace and stability.
www island.lk
by M.A. Mohamed Saleem & Arjuna Hulugalle
The Mahatma Gandhi
Centre, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Abstract: The Sri Lankan experiment with democracy is flawed and incomplete. Still democracy has withstood challenges posed by protests and brutal insurgencies for regime change and demands for secession. In a multi-religious, multi-cultural and poly-lingual country where even trivial factors are freely exploited for causing divisions, insurgency threats are real and will continue to surface unless an environment is created in which people find equal opportunities for pursuing their life goals without fear of harassment and discrimination. This is Sri Lanka’s need of the hour. Success of Indian commitment to assist Sri Lanka in its reconstruction efforts will depend on how effectively the marginalized and war-displaced people are brought into the development mainstream. Gramarajya, which is akin to the Panchayati Raj village empowerment programme, seems promising for regaining trust and confidence for co-existence of the different communities. Gramarajya is also seen as a mechanism for effective use of the reconstruction funds on the intended development purpose. This is the thrust of this paper.
Experience with democracy
There is no universally accepted definition of development but, in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context, it is viewed as improvement of livelihood and quality of life for humans. Therefore, it encompasses governance, healthcare, education, gender equality, disaster preparedness, infrastructure, economics, human rights, environment and issues associated with them. Is democracy, a form of government in which power is held by citizens under a free electoral system, necessary to improve livelihood and living standards? We are familiar with countries that are undemocratic but, they have been able to deliver better livelihood and quality of life to their citizens. We are also familiar with countries, for instance countries that left the former Soviet Union, embracing democracy but loosing out on maintaining life quality hither to people enjoyed under ‘autocracy’. Since independence, Sri Lanka, like India, has chosen the path of democracy for its development.
Consolidating liberal democracy by making the elected legislators and governments fully accountable to the citizens, while retaining their ability to influence the course of governance on a sustained basis, has proved extremely difficult in Sri Lanka. Although the country had visionary leadership at the time of independence, power grabbing political agenda of some did not allow embryonic democratic experimentation to mature. The very leaders who had the intellectual charisma and strength of character also became instruments in creating conflict situations. As the Sinhalese aspired to recover the dominance in society they had lost during European rule, the Tamils wanted to protect their minority community from domination or assimilation by the Sinhalese majority. A manifestation of this clash is testing the democratic institutions while retarding Sri Lanka’s inherent capacity for global competitive development.
Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and poly-lingual country. The question as to whether there was a constitutional frame work and with it a willingness to respect and comply to procedures for consolidating democracy are questions frequently asked. With departure of the British, Sri Lanka adopted the Westminster Parliamentary system but, the major political parties succumbed to protecting democracy only to the extent of acquiring and retaining the required number of parliamentary members to govern as it became the sole political culture and goal. Our democracy therefore is legitimized by flawed elections, severely defective electoral rolls, irregularities in the polling process, vote-buying, unaccountable use of money in elections, criminalization of politics and the curse of defections of elected members to parliament for personal gains. Politicians aspiring for power also took the easiest route by placating the majority community playing the card of Sinhala nationalism.
Sri Lanka became a republic in 1972, and the new constitution introduced reforms was perceived to be discriminatory by the Tamils and fanned among the communities further racial distrust and mistrust which had started especially after 1956 when the Sinhala only Bill was made law. In 1978, the new government brought about a new constitution to replace the Westminster system of governance with the Executive Presidency. The President assumed enormous powers and ensured consolidation of his government’s term even at the cost of traditionally held democratic practices. The UNP government continued to rule the country for 17 years. This culture has not changed even after the government changed, and now the power to rule is ensured by making almost every Member of Parliament in the governing party ‘Ministers’.
Challenge to Democracy: - Urban biased development at the relative neglect of rural areas was another challenge to democracy and led to the first insurgency from the Sinhalese youth in 1971. The introduction of the 1972 constitution triggered protests also by the Tamils, and in their frustration Tamils, especially the youth formed themselves into militant groups demanding secession and the separate state of Elam. The communal riots of 1983 aggravated the situation and militancy and violence from the Tamil armed groups escalated especially when the Tamil representatives found after the riots that they could no more continue in the Parliament.
Violence in any form cannot be accepted or condoned in a democratic society. Violence invariably leads to terrorism and the consequences of that cannot be calculated. Violence and Terrorism have however root causes that need to be addressed. Violence and terrorism restricts dialogue to reach common positions. With the end of hostilities, Sri Lanka has another opportunity today to find answers for its problems. InIIIncreasing number of Tamils are demonstrating against the LTTE and are demanding the release of Tamil civilians from the LTTE. They are also yearning for democratic change, peace and stability.
www island.lk
Sunday, March 8, 2009
SEE!! HOW SINHALA DEMOCRACY OF MR REGIME WORKS!!!
Was it a free and fair election?
Having read various pronouncements by organizations and people who should know better, I am writing to correct this misconception. As I was present in the Kandy District during the recent campaign in Kandy, Kadugannawa, Gampola and Nawalapitiya, I am aware that the election was anything but free and fair. Hundreds of people were fed free from an official residence of importance on several days of the week. Is this free and fair? Or are the people who say it is free and fair both deaf and blind?. This is a blatant violation of the election law.
Early in the campaign, an UNP office was burnt in Murutulawa in the Kadugannawa area. Again, both in Pilimatalawa and Mahaiyawa, the poorest of the poor were threatened by gun toting goons saying that their homes would be burnt and they would be killed if the government lost the election. Is this free and fair?
On election day very early in the morning two polling agents for the UNP on their way to the polling booth were assaulted near the Isipathana Temple in Weligampola in the Nawalapitiya electorate. The assailant is known and the assaulted were Walter and Manju. The UNP candidate managed to put them back in the booth but Walter was badly injured. Near Galeboda Tamil Vidyalaya, a govt supporter and thugs chased away Tamil voters and didn’t allow them to vote. The same thing was done in Inguruoya by a Govt. supporter backed by thugs.
Again at Nawalapitiya Central College, supporters of the Government prevented voters from casting their votes with threats of assault and assaulting them. At Soysakelle, near the polling booth, a crowd of govt. supporters gathered and threatened voters, intimidating them.
In Udagama, in the Gampola electorate, they asaulted the driver of a van in which two women were travelling, assaulted one of the women, Ajantha, and used raw filth on the other who is Priyanthi Goonetilleke, a member of the UC, Gampola.
The worst incident was when some Govt. supporters came into the office of the UNP candidate when she was out in another area where trouble was reported, smashed up her office, assaulted the counting agents who had come there to go for the count to Kandy and stole their passes for the Kachcheri.
Among those assaulted was a 50 year old woman called Agnes Margaret. Are all these incidents free and fair? All these were reported to the police. In some of the earlier incidents, police went to the spot but as they left the problems began again. In the incident of the UNP office, although the police is close by, they delayed to arrive and although they knew exactly what took place, later entertained a false entry from those who had committed the assault. None of these can be called free and fair.
What is the mentality of young men who assault a middle aged woman, probably the age of their own mothers. Being drunk is no excuse for such brutal and unforgivable behaviour. One can only think that they were inspired by a leader in the area who assaulted his own mother before her death some years ago and she had to be hospitalized.
It is a shame that some including sections of the media prefer to bury their heads in the sand to please the powers that be because of sheer fright and make false pronouncements that the election was free and fair. The State media particularly the electronic media was used to the maximum even on the eve of the election when there is a ban on campaigning. As long as the Constitutional Council is not appointed and there is no Police Commission, the government continues to use the police and the State media as if it is their private property. I do not see any point in the opposition fighting elections till these are duly appointed.
It is up to religious leaders of all religions to see that the government does this. The advance of the troops in the war must be applauded but it must be remembered that when the UNP lost the elections in 1994, all these areas that are claimed to have been got back now were in the hands of the then Government run by the Wijetunge-Wickremesinghe combine. It was the SLFP government which lost these areas to the LTTE of which the present Head of Government was also part of.
As a father, I feel I must suggest ways and means by which we can stop this violence in politics and in life as many decent people will leave our country if this state of affairs is allowed to continue unabated. Firstly, all leaders of political parties must choose candidates who are educationally qualified with at least a degree from a recognized university. A lack of education encourages bad behaviour, violence, revenge and a negative attitude of win at all cost no matter who one tramples on. This is a bad example for the young who will think that this is the only way to success.
Secondly, no person who is involved in cases of murder, robbery, drug abuse and rape should be given nomination by any party.
Leaders must have inquiries to question how those who used to travel on bicycles, didn’t own a car are now owning several valuable properties, sending their children to International schools, owning duty free shops although they make speeches saying they have no income and therefore don’t pay income tax!
This is the only way that clean, fair and free politics and elections can be held. Another reason that fosters disunity is the preferential vote. Candidates are not interested in promoting the party or increasing its vote base. Each one goes for the preferential vote, fighting among themselves to get a larger slice. Parties get more and more disunited causing more friction and infighting. All this is ruining our country and chasing away professionals, the learned and intellectuals whom we can hardly afford to lose.
I appeal to all leaders of political parties to do something before this volcano they have created erupts making our country even more of a hell than it is at the moment.
Palitha Indraratne,
www island.lk
Having read various pronouncements by organizations and people who should know better, I am writing to correct this misconception. As I was present in the Kandy District during the recent campaign in Kandy, Kadugannawa, Gampola and Nawalapitiya, I am aware that the election was anything but free and fair. Hundreds of people were fed free from an official residence of importance on several days of the week. Is this free and fair? Or are the people who say it is free and fair both deaf and blind?. This is a blatant violation of the election law.
Early in the campaign, an UNP office was burnt in Murutulawa in the Kadugannawa area. Again, both in Pilimatalawa and Mahaiyawa, the poorest of the poor were threatened by gun toting goons saying that their homes would be burnt and they would be killed if the government lost the election. Is this free and fair?
On election day very early in the morning two polling agents for the UNP on their way to the polling booth were assaulted near the Isipathana Temple in Weligampola in the Nawalapitiya electorate. The assailant is known and the assaulted were Walter and Manju. The UNP candidate managed to put them back in the booth but Walter was badly injured. Near Galeboda Tamil Vidyalaya, a govt supporter and thugs chased away Tamil voters and didn’t allow them to vote. The same thing was done in Inguruoya by a Govt. supporter backed by thugs.
Again at Nawalapitiya Central College, supporters of the Government prevented voters from casting their votes with threats of assault and assaulting them. At Soysakelle, near the polling booth, a crowd of govt. supporters gathered and threatened voters, intimidating them.
In Udagama, in the Gampola electorate, they asaulted the driver of a van in which two women were travelling, assaulted one of the women, Ajantha, and used raw filth on the other who is Priyanthi Goonetilleke, a member of the UC, Gampola.
The worst incident was when some Govt. supporters came into the office of the UNP candidate when she was out in another area where trouble was reported, smashed up her office, assaulted the counting agents who had come there to go for the count to Kandy and stole their passes for the Kachcheri.
Among those assaulted was a 50 year old woman called Agnes Margaret. Are all these incidents free and fair? All these were reported to the police. In some of the earlier incidents, police went to the spot but as they left the problems began again. In the incident of the UNP office, although the police is close by, they delayed to arrive and although they knew exactly what took place, later entertained a false entry from those who had committed the assault. None of these can be called free and fair.
What is the mentality of young men who assault a middle aged woman, probably the age of their own mothers. Being drunk is no excuse for such brutal and unforgivable behaviour. One can only think that they were inspired by a leader in the area who assaulted his own mother before her death some years ago and she had to be hospitalized.
It is a shame that some including sections of the media prefer to bury their heads in the sand to please the powers that be because of sheer fright and make false pronouncements that the election was free and fair. The State media particularly the electronic media was used to the maximum even on the eve of the election when there is a ban on campaigning. As long as the Constitutional Council is not appointed and there is no Police Commission, the government continues to use the police and the State media as if it is their private property. I do not see any point in the opposition fighting elections till these are duly appointed.
It is up to religious leaders of all religions to see that the government does this. The advance of the troops in the war must be applauded but it must be remembered that when the UNP lost the elections in 1994, all these areas that are claimed to have been got back now were in the hands of the then Government run by the Wijetunge-Wickremesinghe combine. It was the SLFP government which lost these areas to the LTTE of which the present Head of Government was also part of.
As a father, I feel I must suggest ways and means by which we can stop this violence in politics and in life as many decent people will leave our country if this state of affairs is allowed to continue unabated. Firstly, all leaders of political parties must choose candidates who are educationally qualified with at least a degree from a recognized university. A lack of education encourages bad behaviour, violence, revenge and a negative attitude of win at all cost no matter who one tramples on. This is a bad example for the young who will think that this is the only way to success.
Secondly, no person who is involved in cases of murder, robbery, drug abuse and rape should be given nomination by any party.
Leaders must have inquiries to question how those who used to travel on bicycles, didn’t own a car are now owning several valuable properties, sending their children to International schools, owning duty free shops although they make speeches saying they have no income and therefore don’t pay income tax!
This is the only way that clean, fair and free politics and elections can be held. Another reason that fosters disunity is the preferential vote. Candidates are not interested in promoting the party or increasing its vote base. Each one goes for the preferential vote, fighting among themselves to get a larger slice. Parties get more and more disunited causing more friction and infighting. All this is ruining our country and chasing away professionals, the learned and intellectuals whom we can hardly afford to lose.
I appeal to all leaders of political parties to do something before this volcano they have created erupts making our country even more of a hell than it is at the moment.
Palitha Indraratne,
www island.lk
A REPLY TO THE IGNORANT SINHALESE ....!!!
A reply to the deaf and blind
They ask: "What ails the Tamils?".............Kumar David
Last Sunday a correspondent in the Island, N. A. de S Amaratunga, pointedly directed a question at me: "At least now at this critical juncture can KD tell us in clear terms what he and his ilk (sic) refer to as the Tamil problem, Ethnic Problem, or lack of democracy for Tamils in Sri Lanka" (‘Sinhala Nationalism – A reply to Kumar David’). My first reaction was to ignore this person again because of his vitriolic tenor; it seems that I had taken no notice of a previous challenge (5 October 2008) to "prove with facts and figures that Tamils are discriminated against in Sri Lanka". Inexplicably, he refers to "KD’s dream of partition" and implies several times that I am a separatist, which I am not - though for the record I must state that separatists have a perfect moral and democratic right to further their aims by democratic means – and the piece is so replete with puerile distortions that, methinks, is he worth the ink and paper? However, a friend persuaded me otherwise, saying, "Though we see this query often in print the educated classes (both Sinhalese and Tamils) dismiss it because we know that intelligent Sinhalese, that is, all except the loony fringe, recognise that there is a serious problem of accumulated discrimination to address". But, added my friend, "this is the proper time to put some of it down again, not for the sake of the fringe, but as a reminder".
One corner of the story
I really refuse to use up the few valuable column inches that my Editor permits me going through a whole litany of woes. It is not my job to educate the deaf and the blind about systematic discrimination in employment and promotion in the public sector and university admissions in the post Sinhala Only decades. Nor am I in the mood to write a treatise on difficulties Tamils face in dealing with government departments and state corporations, and in cringing before an unhelpful and obstreperous police force - otherwise why is DEW rushing around with Tamil language training crash courses in the public service? Nor do I have space today to write about the denial of self-administration in Tamil areas, the sabotage of a few efforts to grant some devolution, and the disenfranchisement and forced repatriation of Upcountry Tamils to India.
Rather, my topic today is a different corner of the problem, physical security, because it is not often explicitly dealt with in the Colombo seminar circuit, or in media discussions, or in scholarly texts. But it is one of the central issues that defines the Tamil psyche, not only in the diaspora - and that is important enough given that the centre of gravity of Tamil nationalism will and has moved in that direction after the defeat of the LTTE - but it has also never ceased to occupy a central place in the attention of Tamils in Lanka.
Beginning 1958 the issue of violence and physical security has come to sway Tamil concerns and consequently shape politics. The Tamils, even the apolitical and regardless where they are domiciled in the island, are conscious of the possibility of violence directed at them as a community. Initially they saw in violence the work of politically-driven mobs, but in the last thirty years they have come to see violence as emanating from the state and its institutions. In the interim period they experienced and recognized an important change in the state and its police and armed forces (the emergence of the Sinhala State) and in their attitude and behaviour towards Tamils. Thus they see themselves as victims of a unilinear history of racially-motivated violence.
A personal and a recorded anecdote
Jeyan Anketell, whose mother is English and father Tamil, was in school with me, a classmate for several years, until he migrated to England and I entered university here in 1959. He is now an Anglican priest in the UK and wrote as follows in the Guardian (17 January 2009).
"The systematic physical abuse, including murder, of Tamil civilians (began) in 1956, while I was still resident in Sri Lanka. In 1956 supporters of Sinhalese political parties forming the coalition government attacked peaceful demonstrators calling for use of the Tamil language to be allowed in civil and other proceedings. The situation was aggravated by the then prime minister, and a number of Tamils living in the south of the country were attacked, beaten up and even killed, and houses were burned down. I can remember my English mother’s anxiety regarding my Tamil father’s insistence on driving the seven miles to work during these four or five days. The violence was all committed by Sinhalese thugs in the Sinhalese south - but the government sent the army into the Tamil north, in order to "keep the peace", where peace already existed. Similar Sinhalese-on-Tamil violence erupted again on an even uglier scale in 1958. Just a few hundred yards from my home, a Tamil man was set upon, doused with paraffin, set on fire and burned to death for no other reason than being a Tamil in a Sinhalese area. There was no Tamil-on-Sinhalese brutality during this time. From that time on Tamils lived with the terror of having a Tamil name or being identified as Tamil".
These are facts that Amerasekara seems not to know. I guess he is also unfamiliar with Tarzie Vittachi’s Emergency ’58. A little something then to tickle his memory buds.
"Young Annesly Mendis of Moratuwa and a friend of his, both employed as Technical Assistants in the Irrigation Department at Polonnaruwa, decided to flee the district with their families… As they were about to set out a youth called Leo Fernando — who had changed his name discreetly from the Tamil Fernandopulle after the Gal Oya riots — was offered a lift…. The Ford limped into Diyabaduma and was promptly surrounded by 200 terrorists. The leaders greeted them with a hostile question: ‘Aren’t you Tamil?’ They protested that they were Sinhalese. Mendis was forced out of the car and asked to recite a gatha — a Buddhist stanza in Pali. Being a Methodist he knew no gathas. He had also a bad stammer and fear made it worse so that he could not explain himself".
"The mob began to beat him up. Bleeding from his head and ears Mendis ran down the street. They shot him in the back. Insatiable, they then dragged Leo Fernando out of the car and hacked him to death without any palaver. In the confusion the other occupants of the car escaped into the jungle and reached Colombo two days later. Mendis’s body was carried, tied to a pole like a shot animal, to the far side of the bazaar. The goondas poured petrol over the mutilated bodies. Within minutes Mendis and Fernando were two hideous heaps of charcoal".
Wonder what the aforementioned Amarasekara makes of these "facts" and countless more such stories counting up quite some imposing "figures." And all this was long before 1977 and 1983 when things got really very ugly.
The Tamil and Non-Tamil narratives
I am not the best person to write this section; I am no nationalist and far from Tamil-typical in my attitudes, culture and lifestyle. But perhaps the political detachment that comes when a Marxist internationalist makes a point about "the Tamil problem, ethnic problem, or lack of democracy for Tamils" has its advantages since it is a more universal moral outrage, not an ethnic passion, that drives the interlocutor.
One seminal strand in ethnic relations over the last thirty years has been state inflicted violence. To the Tamils of those decades, and now to their children and grandchildren, this has become the Tamil Narrative. This Tamil Narrative has been complemented by the development of a non-Tamil Narrative, (the ‘NAdeS narrative’) one that denies the fundamentals of the Tamil Narrative. And it is the parallel existence of these two narratives which are in complete contradiction to each other that is critical because it is these opposed perceptions, or narratives of events that has ripped Lanka apart and left it bleeding with a bitter civil war in which no prisoners are taken.
To Tamils their narrative does not speak of events of a past that has ended. The experiences of 1956 and 1958 continued after 1977, especially in and since 1983, and now the humanitarian catastrophe in the Wanni. The attitude of non Tamils (including India and the international community) towards Tamils trapped in the Wanni, where tens if not hundreds of thousands are subjected to aerial bombardment, artillery shells and rocket fire, in an ever shrinking area, has angered and embittered Tamils and reinforced their narrative. One sees this even among Tamils who are openly anti-LTTE or largely apolitical; cosmopolitan, middle class Tamils. This narrative has taken deep roots in the Tamil psyche, but as they watched the violence against them was denied in the non-Tamil Narrative. In and after 1983 the architects of the then non-Tamil Narrative (forerunner of the N.AdeS narrative), the Jayewardene Regime and its successors, put their energy into denying this violence.
While Tamils are aware of the non-Tamil Narrative, they are also aware that a proclivity to denial prevents the converse, that is, an awareness of the Tamil Narrative and the fears and forebodings it evokes, not only by Amerasekara and the chauvinists, but also among many Sinhalese who are free from bigotry. This state of denial is why the question is repeatedly asked by some in all innocence: "What is the problem that the Tamils face?"
Closure
This piece has focussed on the issue of violence as a cardinal element in the ethnic conundrum. It is not implied that discrimination in the more ordinary sense, or that political-constitutional alienation, are less significant. Furthermore, this article must not be read to imply that the Tamils, as a people, did not make serious political blunders in the post independence decades, or as a whitewash of Tamil leaders, from Ponnampalam through Chelvanayagam to Prabaharan. I have written on these matters before and will return to these themes from time to time; but rest assured that my critique will be diagonally contrarian to the Amerasekara narrative and standpoint.
www island.lk
They ask: "What ails the Tamils?".............Kumar David
Last Sunday a correspondent in the Island, N. A. de S Amaratunga, pointedly directed a question at me: "At least now at this critical juncture can KD tell us in clear terms what he and his ilk (sic) refer to as the Tamil problem, Ethnic Problem, or lack of democracy for Tamils in Sri Lanka" (‘Sinhala Nationalism – A reply to Kumar David’). My first reaction was to ignore this person again because of his vitriolic tenor; it seems that I had taken no notice of a previous challenge (5 October 2008) to "prove with facts and figures that Tamils are discriminated against in Sri Lanka". Inexplicably, he refers to "KD’s dream of partition" and implies several times that I am a separatist, which I am not - though for the record I must state that separatists have a perfect moral and democratic right to further their aims by democratic means – and the piece is so replete with puerile distortions that, methinks, is he worth the ink and paper? However, a friend persuaded me otherwise, saying, "Though we see this query often in print the educated classes (both Sinhalese and Tamils) dismiss it because we know that intelligent Sinhalese, that is, all except the loony fringe, recognise that there is a serious problem of accumulated discrimination to address". But, added my friend, "this is the proper time to put some of it down again, not for the sake of the fringe, but as a reminder".
One corner of the story
I really refuse to use up the few valuable column inches that my Editor permits me going through a whole litany of woes. It is not my job to educate the deaf and the blind about systematic discrimination in employment and promotion in the public sector and university admissions in the post Sinhala Only decades. Nor am I in the mood to write a treatise on difficulties Tamils face in dealing with government departments and state corporations, and in cringing before an unhelpful and obstreperous police force - otherwise why is DEW rushing around with Tamil language training crash courses in the public service? Nor do I have space today to write about the denial of self-administration in Tamil areas, the sabotage of a few efforts to grant some devolution, and the disenfranchisement and forced repatriation of Upcountry Tamils to India.
Rather, my topic today is a different corner of the problem, physical security, because it is not often explicitly dealt with in the Colombo seminar circuit, or in media discussions, or in scholarly texts. But it is one of the central issues that defines the Tamil psyche, not only in the diaspora - and that is important enough given that the centre of gravity of Tamil nationalism will and has moved in that direction after the defeat of the LTTE - but it has also never ceased to occupy a central place in the attention of Tamils in Lanka.
Beginning 1958 the issue of violence and physical security has come to sway Tamil concerns and consequently shape politics. The Tamils, even the apolitical and regardless where they are domiciled in the island, are conscious of the possibility of violence directed at them as a community. Initially they saw in violence the work of politically-driven mobs, but in the last thirty years they have come to see violence as emanating from the state and its institutions. In the interim period they experienced and recognized an important change in the state and its police and armed forces (the emergence of the Sinhala State) and in their attitude and behaviour towards Tamils. Thus they see themselves as victims of a unilinear history of racially-motivated violence.
A personal and a recorded anecdote
Jeyan Anketell, whose mother is English and father Tamil, was in school with me, a classmate for several years, until he migrated to England and I entered university here in 1959. He is now an Anglican priest in the UK and wrote as follows in the Guardian (17 January 2009).
"The systematic physical abuse, including murder, of Tamil civilians (began) in 1956, while I was still resident in Sri Lanka. In 1956 supporters of Sinhalese political parties forming the coalition government attacked peaceful demonstrators calling for use of the Tamil language to be allowed in civil and other proceedings. The situation was aggravated by the then prime minister, and a number of Tamils living in the south of the country were attacked, beaten up and even killed, and houses were burned down. I can remember my English mother’s anxiety regarding my Tamil father’s insistence on driving the seven miles to work during these four or five days. The violence was all committed by Sinhalese thugs in the Sinhalese south - but the government sent the army into the Tamil north, in order to "keep the peace", where peace already existed. Similar Sinhalese-on-Tamil violence erupted again on an even uglier scale in 1958. Just a few hundred yards from my home, a Tamil man was set upon, doused with paraffin, set on fire and burned to death for no other reason than being a Tamil in a Sinhalese area. There was no Tamil-on-Sinhalese brutality during this time. From that time on Tamils lived with the terror of having a Tamil name or being identified as Tamil".
These are facts that Amerasekara seems not to know. I guess he is also unfamiliar with Tarzie Vittachi’s Emergency ’58. A little something then to tickle his memory buds.
"Young Annesly Mendis of Moratuwa and a friend of his, both employed as Technical Assistants in the Irrigation Department at Polonnaruwa, decided to flee the district with their families… As they were about to set out a youth called Leo Fernando — who had changed his name discreetly from the Tamil Fernandopulle after the Gal Oya riots — was offered a lift…. The Ford limped into Diyabaduma and was promptly surrounded by 200 terrorists. The leaders greeted them with a hostile question: ‘Aren’t you Tamil?’ They protested that they were Sinhalese. Mendis was forced out of the car and asked to recite a gatha — a Buddhist stanza in Pali. Being a Methodist he knew no gathas. He had also a bad stammer and fear made it worse so that he could not explain himself".
"The mob began to beat him up. Bleeding from his head and ears Mendis ran down the street. They shot him in the back. Insatiable, they then dragged Leo Fernando out of the car and hacked him to death without any palaver. In the confusion the other occupants of the car escaped into the jungle and reached Colombo two days later. Mendis’s body was carried, tied to a pole like a shot animal, to the far side of the bazaar. The goondas poured petrol over the mutilated bodies. Within minutes Mendis and Fernando were two hideous heaps of charcoal".
Wonder what the aforementioned Amarasekara makes of these "facts" and countless more such stories counting up quite some imposing "figures." And all this was long before 1977 and 1983 when things got really very ugly.
The Tamil and Non-Tamil narratives
I am not the best person to write this section; I am no nationalist and far from Tamil-typical in my attitudes, culture and lifestyle. But perhaps the political detachment that comes when a Marxist internationalist makes a point about "the Tamil problem, ethnic problem, or lack of democracy for Tamils" has its advantages since it is a more universal moral outrage, not an ethnic passion, that drives the interlocutor.
One seminal strand in ethnic relations over the last thirty years has been state inflicted violence. To the Tamils of those decades, and now to their children and grandchildren, this has become the Tamil Narrative. This Tamil Narrative has been complemented by the development of a non-Tamil Narrative, (the ‘NAdeS narrative’) one that denies the fundamentals of the Tamil Narrative. And it is the parallel existence of these two narratives which are in complete contradiction to each other that is critical because it is these opposed perceptions, or narratives of events that has ripped Lanka apart and left it bleeding with a bitter civil war in which no prisoners are taken.
To Tamils their narrative does not speak of events of a past that has ended. The experiences of 1956 and 1958 continued after 1977, especially in and since 1983, and now the humanitarian catastrophe in the Wanni. The attitude of non Tamils (including India and the international community) towards Tamils trapped in the Wanni, where tens if not hundreds of thousands are subjected to aerial bombardment, artillery shells and rocket fire, in an ever shrinking area, has angered and embittered Tamils and reinforced their narrative. One sees this even among Tamils who are openly anti-LTTE or largely apolitical; cosmopolitan, middle class Tamils. This narrative has taken deep roots in the Tamil psyche, but as they watched the violence against them was denied in the non-Tamil Narrative. In and after 1983 the architects of the then non-Tamil Narrative (forerunner of the N.AdeS narrative), the Jayewardene Regime and its successors, put their energy into denying this violence.
While Tamils are aware of the non-Tamil Narrative, they are also aware that a proclivity to denial prevents the converse, that is, an awareness of the Tamil Narrative and the fears and forebodings it evokes, not only by Amerasekara and the chauvinists, but also among many Sinhalese who are free from bigotry. This state of denial is why the question is repeatedly asked by some in all innocence: "What is the problem that the Tamils face?"
Closure
This piece has focussed on the issue of violence as a cardinal element in the ethnic conundrum. It is not implied that discrimination in the more ordinary sense, or that political-constitutional alienation, are less significant. Furthermore, this article must not be read to imply that the Tamils, as a people, did not make serious political blunders in the post independence decades, or as a whitewash of Tamil leaders, from Ponnampalam through Chelvanayagam to Prabaharan. I have written on these matters before and will return to these themes from time to time; but rest assured that my critique will be diagonally contrarian to the Amerasekara narrative and standpoint.
www island.lk
GOSL: TREATING TAMILS WITH MISTRUST AND INJUSTICE !!!
Notes of Dissonance....................... Tisaranee Gunasekara
"’Think as I think’, said a man
‘Or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad’.
And after I had thought of it, I said, ‘I will, then, be a toad’"
Stephen Crane (The Black Riders)
Vellupillai Pirapaharan needs human sacrifices to turn the final battle of the Fourth Eelam War into a Tamil epic, the psychological and political wellsprings of a future insurgency. Therefore it is in the interests of the LTTE to keep the civilians trapped in the war zone for as long as possible, forcing on them the triple roles of human shields, cannon fodder and propaganda props. Conversely, it is not in the interests of the Lankan state to let the humanitarian crisis in the Vanni fester any further. If (as claimed by Lankan defence authorities) the anti-Tiger offensive has slowed down because of the presence of the civilians, a planned evacuation is the most cost effective way out of the conundrum. Once the civilians are removed from the killing zone, the war can be taken to its logical conclusion, with no let or hindrance.
According to media reports a plan to deploy an international task force led by US marines to evacuate Tamil civilians from the war zone floundered because of the inflexibility of the Rajapakse administration and the LTTE. The government wanted the Tigers to lay down arms and surrender as a precondition to any evacuation; the LTTE insisted on a formal ceasefire. Given the nature of the protagonists and the state of play, both sets of demands are totally unrealistic; it does not make sense to expect the Tigers to surrender or the government to stop a war it is winning. Since neither protagonist is completely imbecilic, the obvious conclusion is that such inane demands were made precisely to sabotage the evacuation effort.
The Tigers’ need the humanitarian crisis to go from bad to worse; thus their obduracy on the issue of evacuation makes terrible sense. They have more to lose than to gain from such a plan. Not so the Lankan state. Rationally, it is not in the interests of the Lankan state to sabotage international plans to evacuate the civilians. On the contrary it is in Sri Lanka’s interests to defuse the humanitarian crisis by facilitating the orderly removal of all civilians from the last Tiger territory, under international auspices. Of course there will be a downside. Such an evacuation may enable some Tiger leaders to escape; effecting a temporary ceasefire to facilitate the evacuation may blunt the momentum of the military offensive (but then, civilian presence has blunted it already, according to the regime). Still, once the civilians are evacuated, the pressure on Sri Lanka to go for a permanent truce or to resume negotiations with the LTTE will cease. International attention will shift from the costs of war to the wellbeing of the displaced, allowing the government to bomb and shell the LTTE in peace. This is the very reason the Tigers sabotaged the international evacuation plan. Since the Lankan state had more to gain than to lose from it, why, did the Rajapakse regime scuttle it as well?
A touchstone common to two vastly different traditions, the 500 Jathaka Tales and the Old Testament, is pertinent in the current Lankan context. Confronted with the dilemma of determining the maternity of a baby in a time before DNA testing, Pandith Mahaoshada and King Solomon adopted a measure (made famous in our age by the Communist Brecht in his Caucasian Chalk Circle). The two contending mothers were asked to play at tug-of-war with the disputed baby. The pretender was intent on winning at any price, including a baby torn apart, while the real mother preferred to lose the baby rather than see it suffer.
In the Lankan conflict, the Tamils have no real representatives; only spurious ones who are more than willing to sacrifice every last one of them to win a point. In their total indifference to the safety and wellbeing of the Tamils they both claim to represent, the state and the Tigers are almost as one. By making an avoidable calamity inevitable, both protagonists are demonstrating their callous disregard to the fate of the unarmed men, women and children caught in the war zone. The regime’s attitude is more inexcusable because it is a democratic, civilised entity, and not a terrorist organisation. Consequently it cannot imitate the LTTE without bringing itself into disrepute.
The Fallouts
In the absence of an orderly evacuation, the humanitarian crisis will continue to worsen, which is precisely what the LTTE wants and needs. The Rajapakses may regard such an outcome with indifference but, its fallout is likely to be multifaceted, intense and long lasting. The first effects can already be seen in the statement by the Indian Foreign Minister asking Colombo to agree to the Tiger call for a truce. Given the Congress Party’s (wise) antipathy to the Tigers, the shift in Indian policy will happen in fits and starts, but it will happen. April to May is election season and that will be the hour of Tamilnadu, with its understandable preoccupation with the fate of Lankan Tamils. With the UN warning of ‘an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe’, of ‘deaths associated with a lack of food’, even Delhi will find it hard to look the other way.
In his representation to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former American Ambassador to Colombo Jeffrey Lunstead advocated the adoption of economic means to pressurise Lankan government on issues such as human rights and political reform. After months of bragging about not needing the help of the IMF, reality has compelled the Central Bank to go to the IMF for a loan of US$ 1,9 billion. This request is a tacit admission of failure by the Central Bank, an acknowledgement of its inability to handle the country’s burgeoning foreign exchange crisis through patriotic bonds and currency swaps (without ‘going to the international community with a beggar bowl’, as President Rajapakse once put it). In the last five months of 2008, Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves halved, from US$3.56 billion in July to US$1.75 billion in December. The situation is likely to get worse in 2009, given high debts service payments and crises in our foreign exchange earners, from tea and garments (about 50 factories have closed down causing around 40,000 job losses, according to media reports) to rubber and gems. The global financial crisis is also affecting remittances by Lankan expatriates (the Middle East job market will not expand; in fact it may contract, as oil revenues decline).
Responding to the steep drop in foreign exchange reserves, Fitch Ratings have downgraded Sri Lanka’s long term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs – an index reflecting the capacity to meet credit obligations throughout the loan period) from stable to negative. Though the Central Bank dismissed this downgrading as ‘unwarranted’, it is likely to have an impact on international financial markets, adversely affecting Sri Lanka’s ability to raise foreign currency loans and imposing higher interest rates on the loans obtained. In other words the crisis is structural and cannot be jollied away by singing hosannas to Mahinda Chinthanaya, as the Governor of the Central Bank is in the habit of doing (accompanied by Minister Champika Ranawaka of the JHU).
Irrationality seems a general malaise, from which no sector is immune. A classic example to this pathological condition is the manner in which the editor of Sudar Oli, N Vidyatharan was arrested. If carried out in a judicial manner, the adverse impact of this arrest would have been minimal. Instead the defence authorities went out of their way to arrest Mr. Vidyathran in the most outrageous way possible. The editor, who was attending a family funeral, was dragged away by a group of armed men (some in police uniform and some in civilian clothes) in a white van. Initially both the IGP and the Police Spokesman denied any arrest, giving rise to fears about Mr. Vidyatharan’s life. The obvious question is not why Mr. Vidyatharan was arrested but why the arrest was made in an unnecessarily arbitrary and extra-judicial fashion, tailor-made to bring discredit to the government? Was it inefficiency or stupidity? Or was the manner of arrest premeditated, aimed at sowing fear among the remaining critics of the regime?
A media blackout is preventing the South from discovering the casualties suffered by Lankan forces. But the very fact of the media blackout indicates that casualty figures are in the higher rather than the lower ranges. There is no let up in the recruitment drive either. This and the sense of urgency conveyed by the request to the applicants to bring their personal effects, as the selected ones will be sent for training immediately, belie the version of the war touted in government propaganda. Military funerals have become the norm in some of the rural districts, tucked away in the interior. A chronically inefficient government fails to prevent a shortage of painkiller injection Pethidine, necessary for the treatment of the war injured (in the context of a war, even a shortage of one day is too long). The reopening of the A 9 road epitomises the outstanding successes of the last three years. But the cover ups, the lies and the inefficiencies are notes of dissonance in this symphony of triumphalism, barely audible, but there nevertheless.
Symbols
With the conventional phase of the war coming into an end, will the government opt for a security policy that consciously refuses to make a distinction between Tamil nationalists and Tigers? After all the Army Commander did warn that "even if we finish the war, capture the whole of the north, still the LTTE might have some members joining them…. There are people who believe in Tamil nationalism" (BBC – 30.6.2008). Last year, "the JHU urged the government to issue an identity card for all Tamils living in Sri Lanka" (The Nation – 10.2.2008). Will acts of repression and laws of discrimination be the price imposed on the country in the name of national security? Are the ‘welfare villages’ which, at the best, offer their inmates a trade off between adequate facilities and basic freedoms, symbolic of the future that awaits Tamils, post-war?
During his recent appearance on the BBC’s Hardtalk, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said, as if in mitigation, that Tamils over the age of 60 will be permitted to leave the ‘welfare villages,’ if they have alternate accommodation. His statement amounts to an implicit admission that all displaced Tamils under 60 will be forced to live in the ‘welfare villages’. This factor of compulsion radically alters the very nature of these facilities, making them not refuges but centres of detention. Though they are not concentration camps, they are open prisons and their residents will not have freedom even if they have banks and post offices and schools and recreation centres.
The government would argue that such ‘security measures’ are necessary in order to neutralise LTTE cadres hiding amongst civilians. A similar mindset of collective guilt and punishment made Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse order the expulsion of all North-Eastern Tamils from Colombo lodges, because some of them might be suicide bombers. Even after the conventional war ends, Tiger guerrilla raids will continue, within and outside the North and the East. In such a context, what security measures will the regime resort to, in order to weed-out Tiger cadres hiding amongst civilian Tamils in Jaffna or Batticaloa or Trincomalee or Nuwara Eliya or Colombo? More ‘welfare villages’; separate ID cards? Permanent surveillance? Mass arrests and expulsions?
How will the next generation of Tamils react to such humiliatingly unjust treatment? Can we expect them (particularly the ones virtually imprisoned in ‘welfare villages’), to see the Lankan state in any other light than that of an alien oppressor? Will not that fact alone make them vulnerable to Tiger manipulation? Can a sense of Sri Lankanness be inculcated in the Tamils by treating them with mistrust and injustice? Or will we be teaching them to equate freedom with separation?
www island.lk
"’Think as I think’, said a man
‘Or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad’.
And after I had thought of it, I said, ‘I will, then, be a toad’"
Stephen Crane (The Black Riders)
Vellupillai Pirapaharan needs human sacrifices to turn the final battle of the Fourth Eelam War into a Tamil epic, the psychological and political wellsprings of a future insurgency. Therefore it is in the interests of the LTTE to keep the civilians trapped in the war zone for as long as possible, forcing on them the triple roles of human shields, cannon fodder and propaganda props. Conversely, it is not in the interests of the Lankan state to let the humanitarian crisis in the Vanni fester any further. If (as claimed by Lankan defence authorities) the anti-Tiger offensive has slowed down because of the presence of the civilians, a planned evacuation is the most cost effective way out of the conundrum. Once the civilians are removed from the killing zone, the war can be taken to its logical conclusion, with no let or hindrance.
According to media reports a plan to deploy an international task force led by US marines to evacuate Tamil civilians from the war zone floundered because of the inflexibility of the Rajapakse administration and the LTTE. The government wanted the Tigers to lay down arms and surrender as a precondition to any evacuation; the LTTE insisted on a formal ceasefire. Given the nature of the protagonists and the state of play, both sets of demands are totally unrealistic; it does not make sense to expect the Tigers to surrender or the government to stop a war it is winning. Since neither protagonist is completely imbecilic, the obvious conclusion is that such inane demands were made precisely to sabotage the evacuation effort.
The Tigers’ need the humanitarian crisis to go from bad to worse; thus their obduracy on the issue of evacuation makes terrible sense. They have more to lose than to gain from such a plan. Not so the Lankan state. Rationally, it is not in the interests of the Lankan state to sabotage international plans to evacuate the civilians. On the contrary it is in Sri Lanka’s interests to defuse the humanitarian crisis by facilitating the orderly removal of all civilians from the last Tiger territory, under international auspices. Of course there will be a downside. Such an evacuation may enable some Tiger leaders to escape; effecting a temporary ceasefire to facilitate the evacuation may blunt the momentum of the military offensive (but then, civilian presence has blunted it already, according to the regime). Still, once the civilians are evacuated, the pressure on Sri Lanka to go for a permanent truce or to resume negotiations with the LTTE will cease. International attention will shift from the costs of war to the wellbeing of the displaced, allowing the government to bomb and shell the LTTE in peace. This is the very reason the Tigers sabotaged the international evacuation plan. Since the Lankan state had more to gain than to lose from it, why, did the Rajapakse regime scuttle it as well?
A touchstone common to two vastly different traditions, the 500 Jathaka Tales and the Old Testament, is pertinent in the current Lankan context. Confronted with the dilemma of determining the maternity of a baby in a time before DNA testing, Pandith Mahaoshada and King Solomon adopted a measure (made famous in our age by the Communist Brecht in his Caucasian Chalk Circle). The two contending mothers were asked to play at tug-of-war with the disputed baby. The pretender was intent on winning at any price, including a baby torn apart, while the real mother preferred to lose the baby rather than see it suffer.
In the Lankan conflict, the Tamils have no real representatives; only spurious ones who are more than willing to sacrifice every last one of them to win a point. In their total indifference to the safety and wellbeing of the Tamils they both claim to represent, the state and the Tigers are almost as one. By making an avoidable calamity inevitable, both protagonists are demonstrating their callous disregard to the fate of the unarmed men, women and children caught in the war zone. The regime’s attitude is more inexcusable because it is a democratic, civilised entity, and not a terrorist organisation. Consequently it cannot imitate the LTTE without bringing itself into disrepute.
The Fallouts
In the absence of an orderly evacuation, the humanitarian crisis will continue to worsen, which is precisely what the LTTE wants and needs. The Rajapakses may regard such an outcome with indifference but, its fallout is likely to be multifaceted, intense and long lasting. The first effects can already be seen in the statement by the Indian Foreign Minister asking Colombo to agree to the Tiger call for a truce. Given the Congress Party’s (wise) antipathy to the Tigers, the shift in Indian policy will happen in fits and starts, but it will happen. April to May is election season and that will be the hour of Tamilnadu, with its understandable preoccupation with the fate of Lankan Tamils. With the UN warning of ‘an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe’, of ‘deaths associated with a lack of food’, even Delhi will find it hard to look the other way.
In his representation to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former American Ambassador to Colombo Jeffrey Lunstead advocated the adoption of economic means to pressurise Lankan government on issues such as human rights and political reform. After months of bragging about not needing the help of the IMF, reality has compelled the Central Bank to go to the IMF for a loan of US$ 1,9 billion. This request is a tacit admission of failure by the Central Bank, an acknowledgement of its inability to handle the country’s burgeoning foreign exchange crisis through patriotic bonds and currency swaps (without ‘going to the international community with a beggar bowl’, as President Rajapakse once put it). In the last five months of 2008, Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves halved, from US$3.56 billion in July to US$1.75 billion in December. The situation is likely to get worse in 2009, given high debts service payments and crises in our foreign exchange earners, from tea and garments (about 50 factories have closed down causing around 40,000 job losses, according to media reports) to rubber and gems. The global financial crisis is also affecting remittances by Lankan expatriates (the Middle East job market will not expand; in fact it may contract, as oil revenues decline).
Responding to the steep drop in foreign exchange reserves, Fitch Ratings have downgraded Sri Lanka’s long term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs – an index reflecting the capacity to meet credit obligations throughout the loan period) from stable to negative. Though the Central Bank dismissed this downgrading as ‘unwarranted’, it is likely to have an impact on international financial markets, adversely affecting Sri Lanka’s ability to raise foreign currency loans and imposing higher interest rates on the loans obtained. In other words the crisis is structural and cannot be jollied away by singing hosannas to Mahinda Chinthanaya, as the Governor of the Central Bank is in the habit of doing (accompanied by Minister Champika Ranawaka of the JHU).
Irrationality seems a general malaise, from which no sector is immune. A classic example to this pathological condition is the manner in which the editor of Sudar Oli, N Vidyatharan was arrested. If carried out in a judicial manner, the adverse impact of this arrest would have been minimal. Instead the defence authorities went out of their way to arrest Mr. Vidyathran in the most outrageous way possible. The editor, who was attending a family funeral, was dragged away by a group of armed men (some in police uniform and some in civilian clothes) in a white van. Initially both the IGP and the Police Spokesman denied any arrest, giving rise to fears about Mr. Vidyatharan’s life. The obvious question is not why Mr. Vidyatharan was arrested but why the arrest was made in an unnecessarily arbitrary and extra-judicial fashion, tailor-made to bring discredit to the government? Was it inefficiency or stupidity? Or was the manner of arrest premeditated, aimed at sowing fear among the remaining critics of the regime?
A media blackout is preventing the South from discovering the casualties suffered by Lankan forces. But the very fact of the media blackout indicates that casualty figures are in the higher rather than the lower ranges. There is no let up in the recruitment drive either. This and the sense of urgency conveyed by the request to the applicants to bring their personal effects, as the selected ones will be sent for training immediately, belie the version of the war touted in government propaganda. Military funerals have become the norm in some of the rural districts, tucked away in the interior. A chronically inefficient government fails to prevent a shortage of painkiller injection Pethidine, necessary for the treatment of the war injured (in the context of a war, even a shortage of one day is too long). The reopening of the A 9 road epitomises the outstanding successes of the last three years. But the cover ups, the lies and the inefficiencies are notes of dissonance in this symphony of triumphalism, barely audible, but there nevertheless.
Symbols
With the conventional phase of the war coming into an end, will the government opt for a security policy that consciously refuses to make a distinction between Tamil nationalists and Tigers? After all the Army Commander did warn that "even if we finish the war, capture the whole of the north, still the LTTE might have some members joining them…. There are people who believe in Tamil nationalism" (BBC – 30.6.2008). Last year, "the JHU urged the government to issue an identity card for all Tamils living in Sri Lanka" (The Nation – 10.2.2008). Will acts of repression and laws of discrimination be the price imposed on the country in the name of national security? Are the ‘welfare villages’ which, at the best, offer their inmates a trade off between adequate facilities and basic freedoms, symbolic of the future that awaits Tamils, post-war?
During his recent appearance on the BBC’s Hardtalk, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said, as if in mitigation, that Tamils over the age of 60 will be permitted to leave the ‘welfare villages,’ if they have alternate accommodation. His statement amounts to an implicit admission that all displaced Tamils under 60 will be forced to live in the ‘welfare villages’. This factor of compulsion radically alters the very nature of these facilities, making them not refuges but centres of detention. Though they are not concentration camps, they are open prisons and their residents will not have freedom even if they have banks and post offices and schools and recreation centres.
The government would argue that such ‘security measures’ are necessary in order to neutralise LTTE cadres hiding amongst civilians. A similar mindset of collective guilt and punishment made Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse order the expulsion of all North-Eastern Tamils from Colombo lodges, because some of them might be suicide bombers. Even after the conventional war ends, Tiger guerrilla raids will continue, within and outside the North and the East. In such a context, what security measures will the regime resort to, in order to weed-out Tiger cadres hiding amongst civilian Tamils in Jaffna or Batticaloa or Trincomalee or Nuwara Eliya or Colombo? More ‘welfare villages’; separate ID cards? Permanent surveillance? Mass arrests and expulsions?
How will the next generation of Tamils react to such humiliatingly unjust treatment? Can we expect them (particularly the ones virtually imprisoned in ‘welfare villages’), to see the Lankan state in any other light than that of an alien oppressor? Will not that fact alone make them vulnerable to Tiger manipulation? Can a sense of Sri Lankanness be inculcated in the Tamils by treating them with mistrust and injustice? Or will we be teaching them to equate freedom with separation?
www island.lk
LIKE JESUS, MURUGATHASAN SACRIFICED HIMSELF FOR TAMILS!!!
Tamil family proud of son's 'sacrifice'
By Julian Joyce and Dan Bell
BBC News
Mr Varnakulasingham wanted to draw attention to Sri Lanka's civil war
The UK-based family of a young Tamil man who set himself on fire in protest at the treatment of his countrymen in Sri Lanka have said they are proud of his actions.
Thousands of Tamils living in the UK and beyond attended the funeral on Saturday in Northolt, west London, of Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, 26, who travelled to Switzerland last month to kill himself in front of the United Nations building in Geneva.
Mr Varnakulasingham, a computing graduate who worked part-time in a supermarket, had attended demonstrations to protest against the Sri Lankan military's war against the Tamils, an ethnic minority who are fighting for their independence.
Thousands of people have been killed, and thousands more displaced on the island since fighting escalated after 2005.
I decided to sacrifice my life ... The flames over my body will be a torch to guide you through the liberation path
Murugathasan Varnakulasingham's suicide letter
Mr Varnakulasingham's brother-in-law Thavaroopan Sinnathamby, 33, said: "He was a very lovely guy and we miss him a lot, but he did this for the country.
"He was a sensitive guy. He was a refugee in his own country before he came here, so he knew the pain of what the people were going through.
"He'd go to the demonstrations and no-one was bothering and he wanted to make an impact. I think he wanted to give his life, we feel proud for that."
Before he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight in the the Place des Nations in Geneva., Mr Varnakulasingham wrote a five-page letter.
It read: "We Tamils, displaced and all over the world, loudly raised our problems and asked for help before [the] international community in your own language for three decades.
"But nothing happened... So I decided to sacrifice my life... The flames over my body will be a torch to guide you through the liberation path."
Copycat suicides
The young man's family, said Mr Sinnathamby, did not know in advance of his suicide plans.
He said: "We had no idea. If we did know, we would not have let him go."
He said the first they heard there was something wrong was when friends and family started calling up asking where he was.
Then friends started calling to say they had seen his brother-in-law's name on the internet.
The family checked online and on a Tamil news website, where they saw his name and date of birth.
"Unfortunately, it was true," said Mr Sinnathamby.
Mr Varnakulasingham's death appears to have inspired at least one other "copycat" suicide attempt in the UK - a man thought to be a Tamil who tried to set himself alight outside Downing Street last month.
Security tight
Previously there were at least two other reported incidents of attempted self-immolation in the UK by Tamils, and there have also been more than a dozen other suicides-by-fire in India and worldwide.
There are estimated to be about 250,000 Tamils living in the UK - many of them refugees of Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war between the Tamil Tigers and the majority Sinhalese government.
Speaking before the funeral, Thaya Idaikkadar, chairman of the British Tamil Councillors and Associates group said security would be tight.
On Saturday afternoon, after most mourners had paid their respects, a Scotland Yard spokesman said there had been a police presence at the funeral but there were no reports of disturbances.
courtesy: news.bbc.co.uk
HRW: PATHETIC PLIGHT OF TAMIL CIVILIANS!!!
Human Rights Watch on the pathetic plight of the Wanni civilians
War wounds, pain and hardship
The tragic plight of civilians existing in thenorthern mainland known as Wanni continues to deteriorate. While charges and counter-charges fly, the day to day life of the ordinary people worsens.
The New York-based human rights watchdog - Human Rights Watch - has in a recent 45 page report titled War On The Civilians vividly documented the various abuses perpetrated against Wanni civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
It is a powerful expose of the actual situation which currently prevails. Though exigencies of space does not permitextensive reproduction, this column will, through relevant extracts focus on salient aspects of the report.
The report summary in fullis presented here first:
Summary
After 25 years, the armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may be nearing its conclusion. But for the quarter of a million civilians trapped or displaced by the fighting, the tragedy has intensified. Since the fall of the LTTE's administrative centre, Killinochchi, in early January 2009, civilian casualties in the northern Wanni region have skyrocketed to more than 5,100, including at least a thousand deaths, based on a conservative tally by independent monitors analysed by Human Rights Watch.
More recent information places civilian casualties at 7,000, including 2,000 fatalities. Added to this are the dire hardship faced by the displaced - insufficient food, medical care, and shelter, whether in the combat zone or government-run "welfare villages."
The Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE appear to be engaged in a perverse competition to demonstrate the greatest disregard for the civilian population. In the last two months alone, both sides have committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law, the laws of war. While not all loss of civilian life is a laws-of-war violation, the failure of the government forces and the LTTE to meet their international legal obligations has undoubtedly accounted for the high death tolls.
Retreating from Sri Lankan Army (SLA) advances, the LTTE has forcibly taken along all civilians under its control. As the territory held by the LTTE has shrunk - now a short, narrow strip on the northeast coast of the island - the civilian population has been dangerously forced into a smaller and smaller space. In violation of the laws of war, the LTTE has refused to allow civilians to flee the fighting, repeatedly fired on those trying to reach government-held territory, and deployed forces near densely populated areas. The civilians who remain under LTTE control, including children, are subject to forced recruitment into LTTE forces and hazardous forced labour on the battlefield.
Atrocities
The LTTE's grim practices are being exploited by the government to justify its own atrocities. High-level statements have indicated that the ethnic Tamil population trapped in the war zone can be presumed to be siding with the LTTE and treated as combatants, effectively sanctioning unlawful attacks. Sri Lankan forces have repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled areas crowded with civilians. This includes numerous reported bombardments of government-declared "safe zones" and the remaining hospitals in the region.
The plight of displaced persons has been exacerbated by the government's decision in September 2008 to order most humanitarian agencies out of the Wanni. The government's own efforts to bring in food, medical supplies, and other relief with a minimal United Nations role have been insufficient. Continuing fighting, lack of oversight, and the manipulation of aid delivery by government forces and the LTTE have all contributed to the deepening humanitarian crisis.
Displaced persons are increasingly escaping from the battle zone to what they hope is safety within government-controlled areas. Instead, they are finding government internment centres masquerading as "welfare villages." While the government for security reasons should be screening new arrivals, it is instead secretly taking away LTTE suspects to arbitrary detention or possible enforced disappearances.
All displaced persons crossing to the government side are sent to internment centres in Vavuniya and nearby locations. As Human Rights Watch has reported previously, these are military-controlled, barbed-wire camps in which those sent there, including entire families, are denied their liberty and freedom of movement. Humanitarian agencies have tenuous access, but do so at the risk of supporting a long-term detention programme for civilians fleeing a war.
The hospital in Vavuniya mirrors the town's internment camps. When Human Rights Watch visited, it lacked even the most basic necessities: many of the hospital beds had no bed sheets, blankets, or pillows. And despite the obvious lack of capacity to handle all of the wounded and attend to their needs, the hospital personnel reportedly were instructed by the authorities not to ask for any assistance from international agencies, and very few agencies have been allowed access to the hospital. Relatives have had difficulty seeing patients, and some have later been visited by the security forces.
Human Rights Watch calls on the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to act immediately to stop the ongoing slaughter of civilians. Both parties should facilitate the creation of a humanitarian corridor and otherwise respect the laws of war. The LTTE should allow civilians to leave the war zone and the SLA should stop shelling near densely populated areas, safe zones and hospitals. Those displaced civilians who reach the government side should be assisted but not interned. And the government should permit independent media and human rights organisations to go to the conflict area. (More detailed recommendations are set forth at the end of this report.)
Instead of using its victories in the field to promote a more open and democratic nation, the Sri Lankan government has conducted a cynical campaign to prevent all independent public coverage of its military operations and the plight of civilians caught up in the war. While decrying LTTE abuses, it has kept out the media and human rights organisations that could report on them - and on government abuses. It has kept displaced persons who could describe the artillery bombardments locked up in camps and hospitals. It has traded the well-being of tens of thousands of Sri Lankan citizens for protection from international scrutiny. With civilian casualties mounting, it has sought to bury its abuses.
A short note by HRW on civilian casualties is reproduced:
A note on civilian casualties
Civilian casualties have risen dramatically since the LTTE retreated to a roughly 100-square-kilometre (39-square-mile) area in northeastern Mullaitivu District. Because the government has prohibited independent media and human rights organisations from visiting the combat area, information on civilian casualties has been difficult to obtain. Nonetheless, a conservative estimate can be made based on actual counts by independent observers on the ground.
During a three-week period from January 20 to February 13, 2009, independent observers in the Wanni collected information on 5,150 civilian casualties -1,123 deaths and 4,027 injuries-from the current fighting. This number was derived from a compilation of reports that recorded individual casualties, the date and place of the attack, and the nature of the attack. Newly obtained information places total civilian casualties at 7,000, with 2,000 deaths.
Information from other sources supports these findings. For instance, Human Rights Watch obtained a list of patients from Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) hospital containing patients' names, age, sex, address, place of injury, type of injury, type of blast, and arrival date at the hospital. The list shows that between January 1 and January 26 alone, this single hospital received 573 patients suffering conflict injuries, 75 of whom died.
The section explaining methodology adopted sheds much light on the manner and mode of how the HRW conducts its fact-finding missions:
Methodology
This report is based on research conducted by a Human Rights Watch mission to Sri Lanka from February 3 to 13, 2009. Human Rights Watch conducted over 60 interviews with representatives of local and international non-governmental and humanitarian organisations, UN agencies, medical personnel, religious leaders, diplomatic representatives, and ordinary civilians affected by the conflict. The interviews were conducted in Colombo and Vavuniya, in English or through a Tamil-English translator.
The research was conducted mainly in Vavuniya where the majority of displaced persons from conflict areas in the Wanni currently are arriving.
The Sri Lankan government has taken numerous measures to deny access to information for independent observers, including representatives of human rights organisations, journalists, and others. Just a handful of international agencies have been allowed access to the internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Vavuniya and especially the hospital where wounded civilians have been brought. Information on the current situation in the Wanni is extremely limited, coming primarily from local staff of international agencies trapped in the conflict area along with other civilians and medical personnel.
The Sri Lankan government's ongoing restrictions on information are denying the Sri Lankan public and the broader international community important information about the situation in the Wanni and the circumstances facing the population there, as well as the role not only of the government, but of the LTTE.
In our research, we focused on interviewing eyewitnesses to violations and seeking additional information from individuals who had access to the displaced persons in the Vavuniya camps and its hospital.
To protect the security of individuals with whom we spoke, we have removed certain identifying information and in some cases used pseudonyms, as specifically indicated at relevant points.
HRW has also submitted a list of recommendations to all parties concerned. These recommendations by themselves indicate very clearly all the problems in the current situation. Those concrete suggestions are given below:
VI. Recommendations
To the government of Sri Lanka
Cease all attacks that violate the laws of war, including artillery bombardment and aerial bombing that does not discriminate between military targets and civilians, or that causes expected harm to civilians and civilian objects that is disproportionate to the anticipated military gain. Investigate and prosecute as appropriate military personnel, regardless of rank, who commit serious violations of the laws of war, which are war crimes.
Cease attacks on hospitals, including makeshift hospitals. Hospitals used to commit hostile acts are only subject to attack after a reasonable warning has been given that goes unheeded.
Cease attacks using weapons, such as multi-barrel rocket launchers and heavy artillery, which are indiscriminate when used in or near densely populated civilian populations.
Cease justifying unlawful attacks on civilians on the spurious ground that civilians who are not in so-called "safe zones" may legitimately be attacked. Violations of the laws of war by the LTTE do not justify attacks by government security forces in violation of the law.
Humanitarian access and civil society
Facilitate the immediate creation of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians trapped by the fighting to travel to areas away from the fighting.
Immediately lift the September 2008 order barring humanitarian agencies from the Wanni conflict area in northern Sri Lanka and allow humanitarian agencies to return to assist at-risk individuals and reach all civilians in need. Restrictions on relief should be made on a case-by-case basis and only when there is a specific and justifiable security reason for the restriction. Refusals for valid security reasons should only be for as long as necessary and should not block legitimate humanitarian assistance.
Allow independent observers, including journalists, access to conflict zones so that accurate and timely information about the situation of civilians in such areas is publicly available.
Instruct security forces to respect and protect humanitarian aid personnel and their facilities, supplies, and transportation. Personnel who commit abuses against humanitarian organisations and their staff should be disciplined or criminally prosecuted as appropriate.
Ensure that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are able to perform their work without arbitrary government interference: regulation of NGO activities should comply with international standards, be transparent, and follow clearly defined procedures. Registration should ultimately facilitate the work of NGOs and should neither disrupt legitimate NGO activities nor put NGO workers at risk.
Work with donor governments to establish an international human rights monitoring mission under United Nations auspices to monitor violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
Displaced persons
Abide by the United Nations general principles on internal displacement, including by permitting the freedom of movement of displaced persons, respecting the right of displaced persons to return to their homes, and permitting humanitarian agencies access to displaced persons.
Permit humanitarian agencies to monitor the intake of displaced persons at checkpoints, such as at Omanthai.
Immediately end the arbitrary and indefinite detention of civilians displaced by recent fighting at the Kalimoddai, Sirunkandal, and Menik Farm camps in northern Sri Lanka, and at other proposed camps.
Make public the names of all persons detained by the military and police under Emergency Regulations and other laws, and provide those detained prompt access to their families and legal counsel.
To the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Stop preventing civilians from leaving areas under LTTE control. Respect and facilitate the right to freedom of movement of civilians, including the right of civilians to move to government-controlled territory for safety.
End all deliberate attacks on civilians, such as on civilians who are seeking to flee LTTE-controlled areas. Appropriately punish individuals responsible for such attacks.
Do not use civilians as "human shields," and take all feasible steps to avoid placing military targets near civilians.
Facilitate the immediate creation of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians trapped by the fighting to travel to areas away from the fighting.
Provide United Nations and humanitarian agencies safe and unhindered access to areas under LTTE control, and guarantee the security of all humanitarian and UN workers, including Wanni residents working as humanitarian or UN staff.
To the Co-Chairs of the Tokyo Donors' Conference (Japan, European Union, Norway, and the United States), India, United Kingdom, and other concerned governments.
Urgently seek a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in the Wanni and violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
Speak out publicly and in private meetings with Sri Lankan authorities and other concerned officials on the situation in the Wanni. Insist that the government adhere to its international legal obligations on human rights and humanitarian matters.
Urge the government to withdraw its September 2008 order and allow humanitarian agencies access to the Wanni so that they can provide urgent humanitarian assistance and help provide civilian protection.
Urge the government to ensure the protection of displaced persons, regardless of ethnicity, and end arbitrary detention. Press the government to follow the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which provide that, consistent with the right to liberty, internally displaced persons "shall not be interned in or confined to a camp."
Urge the government to allow the UN and its agencies to conduct a strategic, long-term needs assessment of displaced civilians in the north and permit a follow-up programme to implement these needs.
Allow
Press the government to allow independent observers, including journalists, access to conflict zones so that accurate and timely information about the situation of civilians in such areas is publicly available.
Work with the Sri Lankan government to establish an international human rights monitoring mission under United Nations auspices to monitor violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
To the Co-Chairs of the donor conference (Japan, European Union, Norway and the United States), India, United Kingdom and other concerned governments.
Urgently seek a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in the Wanni and violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
Speak out publicly and in private meetings with Sri Lankan authorities and other concerned officials on the situation in the Wanni. Insist that the government adhere to its international legal obligations on human rights and humanitarian matters.
Urge the government to withdraw its September 2008 order and allow humanitarian agencies access to the Wanni so that they can provide urgent humanitarian assistance and help provide civilian protection.
Urge the government to ensure the protection of displaced persons, regardless of ethnicity, and end arbitrary detention. Press the government to follow the UN guiding principles on internal displacement, which provide that, consistent with the right to liberty, internally displaced persons "shall not be interned in or confined to a camp."
Urge the government to allow the UN and its agencies to conduct a strategic, long-term needs assessment of displaced civilians in the north and permit a follow-up programme to implement these needs.
Press the government to allow independent observers, including journalists, access to conflict zones so that accurate and timely information about the situation of civilians in such areas is publicly available.
Work with the Sri Lankan government to establish an international human rights monitoring mission under United Nations auspices to monitor violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
thesundayleader.lk
War wounds, pain and hardship
The tragic plight of civilians existing in thenorthern mainland known as Wanni continues to deteriorate. While charges and counter-charges fly, the day to day life of the ordinary people worsens.
The New York-based human rights watchdog - Human Rights Watch - has in a recent 45 page report titled War On The Civilians vividly documented the various abuses perpetrated against Wanni civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
It is a powerful expose of the actual situation which currently prevails. Though exigencies of space does not permitextensive reproduction, this column will, through relevant extracts focus on salient aspects of the report.
The report summary in fullis presented here first:
Summary
After 25 years, the armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may be nearing its conclusion. But for the quarter of a million civilians trapped or displaced by the fighting, the tragedy has intensified. Since the fall of the LTTE's administrative centre, Killinochchi, in early January 2009, civilian casualties in the northern Wanni region have skyrocketed to more than 5,100, including at least a thousand deaths, based on a conservative tally by independent monitors analysed by Human Rights Watch.
More recent information places civilian casualties at 7,000, including 2,000 fatalities. Added to this are the dire hardship faced by the displaced - insufficient food, medical care, and shelter, whether in the combat zone or government-run "welfare villages."
The Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE appear to be engaged in a perverse competition to demonstrate the greatest disregard for the civilian population. In the last two months alone, both sides have committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law, the laws of war. While not all loss of civilian life is a laws-of-war violation, the failure of the government forces and the LTTE to meet their international legal obligations has undoubtedly accounted for the high death tolls.
Retreating from Sri Lankan Army (SLA) advances, the LTTE has forcibly taken along all civilians under its control. As the territory held by the LTTE has shrunk - now a short, narrow strip on the northeast coast of the island - the civilian population has been dangerously forced into a smaller and smaller space. In violation of the laws of war, the LTTE has refused to allow civilians to flee the fighting, repeatedly fired on those trying to reach government-held territory, and deployed forces near densely populated areas. The civilians who remain under LTTE control, including children, are subject to forced recruitment into LTTE forces and hazardous forced labour on the battlefield.
Atrocities
The LTTE's grim practices are being exploited by the government to justify its own atrocities. High-level statements have indicated that the ethnic Tamil population trapped in the war zone can be presumed to be siding with the LTTE and treated as combatants, effectively sanctioning unlawful attacks. Sri Lankan forces have repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled areas crowded with civilians. This includes numerous reported bombardments of government-declared "safe zones" and the remaining hospitals in the region.
The plight of displaced persons has been exacerbated by the government's decision in September 2008 to order most humanitarian agencies out of the Wanni. The government's own efforts to bring in food, medical supplies, and other relief with a minimal United Nations role have been insufficient. Continuing fighting, lack of oversight, and the manipulation of aid delivery by government forces and the LTTE have all contributed to the deepening humanitarian crisis.
Displaced persons are increasingly escaping from the battle zone to what they hope is safety within government-controlled areas. Instead, they are finding government internment centres masquerading as "welfare villages." While the government for security reasons should be screening new arrivals, it is instead secretly taking away LTTE suspects to arbitrary detention or possible enforced disappearances.
All displaced persons crossing to the government side are sent to internment centres in Vavuniya and nearby locations. As Human Rights Watch has reported previously, these are military-controlled, barbed-wire camps in which those sent there, including entire families, are denied their liberty and freedom of movement. Humanitarian agencies have tenuous access, but do so at the risk of supporting a long-term detention programme for civilians fleeing a war.
The hospital in Vavuniya mirrors the town's internment camps. When Human Rights Watch visited, it lacked even the most basic necessities: many of the hospital beds had no bed sheets, blankets, or pillows. And despite the obvious lack of capacity to handle all of the wounded and attend to their needs, the hospital personnel reportedly were instructed by the authorities not to ask for any assistance from international agencies, and very few agencies have been allowed access to the hospital. Relatives have had difficulty seeing patients, and some have later been visited by the security forces.
Human Rights Watch calls on the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to act immediately to stop the ongoing slaughter of civilians. Both parties should facilitate the creation of a humanitarian corridor and otherwise respect the laws of war. The LTTE should allow civilians to leave the war zone and the SLA should stop shelling near densely populated areas, safe zones and hospitals. Those displaced civilians who reach the government side should be assisted but not interned. And the government should permit independent media and human rights organisations to go to the conflict area. (More detailed recommendations are set forth at the end of this report.)
Instead of using its victories in the field to promote a more open and democratic nation, the Sri Lankan government has conducted a cynical campaign to prevent all independent public coverage of its military operations and the plight of civilians caught up in the war. While decrying LTTE abuses, it has kept out the media and human rights organisations that could report on them - and on government abuses. It has kept displaced persons who could describe the artillery bombardments locked up in camps and hospitals. It has traded the well-being of tens of thousands of Sri Lankan citizens for protection from international scrutiny. With civilian casualties mounting, it has sought to bury its abuses.
A short note by HRW on civilian casualties is reproduced:
A note on civilian casualties
Civilian casualties have risen dramatically since the LTTE retreated to a roughly 100-square-kilometre (39-square-mile) area in northeastern Mullaitivu District. Because the government has prohibited independent media and human rights organisations from visiting the combat area, information on civilian casualties has been difficult to obtain. Nonetheless, a conservative estimate can be made based on actual counts by independent observers on the ground.
During a three-week period from January 20 to February 13, 2009, independent observers in the Wanni collected information on 5,150 civilian casualties -1,123 deaths and 4,027 injuries-from the current fighting. This number was derived from a compilation of reports that recorded individual casualties, the date and place of the attack, and the nature of the attack. Newly obtained information places total civilian casualties at 7,000, with 2,000 deaths.
Information from other sources supports these findings. For instance, Human Rights Watch obtained a list of patients from Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) hospital containing patients' names, age, sex, address, place of injury, type of injury, type of blast, and arrival date at the hospital. The list shows that between January 1 and January 26 alone, this single hospital received 573 patients suffering conflict injuries, 75 of whom died.
The section explaining methodology adopted sheds much light on the manner and mode of how the HRW conducts its fact-finding missions:
Methodology
This report is based on research conducted by a Human Rights Watch mission to Sri Lanka from February 3 to 13, 2009. Human Rights Watch conducted over 60 interviews with representatives of local and international non-governmental and humanitarian organisations, UN agencies, medical personnel, religious leaders, diplomatic representatives, and ordinary civilians affected by the conflict. The interviews were conducted in Colombo and Vavuniya, in English or through a Tamil-English translator.
The research was conducted mainly in Vavuniya where the majority of displaced persons from conflict areas in the Wanni currently are arriving.
The Sri Lankan government has taken numerous measures to deny access to information for independent observers, including representatives of human rights organisations, journalists, and others. Just a handful of international agencies have been allowed access to the internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Vavuniya and especially the hospital where wounded civilians have been brought. Information on the current situation in the Wanni is extremely limited, coming primarily from local staff of international agencies trapped in the conflict area along with other civilians and medical personnel.
The Sri Lankan government's ongoing restrictions on information are denying the Sri Lankan public and the broader international community important information about the situation in the Wanni and the circumstances facing the population there, as well as the role not only of the government, but of the LTTE.
In our research, we focused on interviewing eyewitnesses to violations and seeking additional information from individuals who had access to the displaced persons in the Vavuniya camps and its hospital.
To protect the security of individuals with whom we spoke, we have removed certain identifying information and in some cases used pseudonyms, as specifically indicated at relevant points.
HRW has also submitted a list of recommendations to all parties concerned. These recommendations by themselves indicate very clearly all the problems in the current situation. Those concrete suggestions are given below:
VI. Recommendations
To the government of Sri Lanka
Cease all attacks that violate the laws of war, including artillery bombardment and aerial bombing that does not discriminate between military targets and civilians, or that causes expected harm to civilians and civilian objects that is disproportionate to the anticipated military gain. Investigate and prosecute as appropriate military personnel, regardless of rank, who commit serious violations of the laws of war, which are war crimes.
Cease attacks on hospitals, including makeshift hospitals. Hospitals used to commit hostile acts are only subject to attack after a reasonable warning has been given that goes unheeded.
Cease attacks using weapons, such as multi-barrel rocket launchers and heavy artillery, which are indiscriminate when used in or near densely populated civilian populations.
Cease justifying unlawful attacks on civilians on the spurious ground that civilians who are not in so-called "safe zones" may legitimately be attacked. Violations of the laws of war by the LTTE do not justify attacks by government security forces in violation of the law.
Humanitarian access and civil society
Facilitate the immediate creation of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians trapped by the fighting to travel to areas away from the fighting.
Immediately lift the September 2008 order barring humanitarian agencies from the Wanni conflict area in northern Sri Lanka and allow humanitarian agencies to return to assist at-risk individuals and reach all civilians in need. Restrictions on relief should be made on a case-by-case basis and only when there is a specific and justifiable security reason for the restriction. Refusals for valid security reasons should only be for as long as necessary and should not block legitimate humanitarian assistance.
Allow independent observers, including journalists, access to conflict zones so that accurate and timely information about the situation of civilians in such areas is publicly available.
Instruct security forces to respect and protect humanitarian aid personnel and their facilities, supplies, and transportation. Personnel who commit abuses against humanitarian organisations and their staff should be disciplined or criminally prosecuted as appropriate.
Ensure that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are able to perform their work without arbitrary government interference: regulation of NGO activities should comply with international standards, be transparent, and follow clearly defined procedures. Registration should ultimately facilitate the work of NGOs and should neither disrupt legitimate NGO activities nor put NGO workers at risk.
Work with donor governments to establish an international human rights monitoring mission under United Nations auspices to monitor violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
Displaced persons
Abide by the United Nations general principles on internal displacement, including by permitting the freedom of movement of displaced persons, respecting the right of displaced persons to return to their homes, and permitting humanitarian agencies access to displaced persons.
Permit humanitarian agencies to monitor the intake of displaced persons at checkpoints, such as at Omanthai.
Immediately end the arbitrary and indefinite detention of civilians displaced by recent fighting at the Kalimoddai, Sirunkandal, and Menik Farm camps in northern Sri Lanka, and at other proposed camps.
Make public the names of all persons detained by the military and police under Emergency Regulations and other laws, and provide those detained prompt access to their families and legal counsel.
To the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Stop preventing civilians from leaving areas under LTTE control. Respect and facilitate the right to freedom of movement of civilians, including the right of civilians to move to government-controlled territory for safety.
End all deliberate attacks on civilians, such as on civilians who are seeking to flee LTTE-controlled areas. Appropriately punish individuals responsible for such attacks.
Do not use civilians as "human shields," and take all feasible steps to avoid placing military targets near civilians.
Facilitate the immediate creation of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians trapped by the fighting to travel to areas away from the fighting.
Provide United Nations and humanitarian agencies safe and unhindered access to areas under LTTE control, and guarantee the security of all humanitarian and UN workers, including Wanni residents working as humanitarian or UN staff.
To the Co-Chairs of the Tokyo Donors' Conference (Japan, European Union, Norway, and the United States), India, United Kingdom, and other concerned governments.
Urgently seek a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in the Wanni and violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
Speak out publicly and in private meetings with Sri Lankan authorities and other concerned officials on the situation in the Wanni. Insist that the government adhere to its international legal obligations on human rights and humanitarian matters.
Urge the government to withdraw its September 2008 order and allow humanitarian agencies access to the Wanni so that they can provide urgent humanitarian assistance and help provide civilian protection.
Urge the government to ensure the protection of displaced persons, regardless of ethnicity, and end arbitrary detention. Press the government to follow the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which provide that, consistent with the right to liberty, internally displaced persons "shall not be interned in or confined to a camp."
Urge the government to allow the UN and its agencies to conduct a strategic, long-term needs assessment of displaced civilians in the north and permit a follow-up programme to implement these needs.
Allow
Press the government to allow independent observers, including journalists, access to conflict zones so that accurate and timely information about the situation of civilians in such areas is publicly available.
Work with the Sri Lankan government to establish an international human rights monitoring mission under United Nations auspices to monitor violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
To the Co-Chairs of the donor conference (Japan, European Union, Norway and the United States), India, United Kingdom and other concerned governments.
Urgently seek a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in the Wanni and violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
Speak out publicly and in private meetings with Sri Lankan authorities and other concerned officials on the situation in the Wanni. Insist that the government adhere to its international legal obligations on human rights and humanitarian matters.
Urge the government to withdraw its September 2008 order and allow humanitarian agencies access to the Wanni so that they can provide urgent humanitarian assistance and help provide civilian protection.
Urge the government to ensure the protection of displaced persons, regardless of ethnicity, and end arbitrary detention. Press the government to follow the UN guiding principles on internal displacement, which provide that, consistent with the right to liberty, internally displaced persons "shall not be interned in or confined to a camp."
Urge the government to allow the UN and its agencies to conduct a strategic, long-term needs assessment of displaced civilians in the north and permit a follow-up programme to implement these needs.
Press the government to allow independent observers, including journalists, access to conflict zones so that accurate and timely information about the situation of civilians in such areas is publicly available.
Work with the Sri Lankan government to establish an international human rights monitoring mission under United Nations auspices to monitor violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.
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