Monday, July 18, 2022

Analysis: Southern Lankan democracy is the myth that keeps on living

By Gogol G.

The title of our recent previous analysis said it all: How Southern Lanka's Political Bankruptcy Caused Its Economic Bankruptcy. The imminent bankruptcy finally happened, and the country is amok because the Sinhalese of Southern Lanka have now experienced just a slice of what Tamils of Tamil Eelam have experienced for the past few decades of the brutalist, genocidal, destructive occupation of their land. Although the Sinhalese have accomplished the unthinkable in overthrowing the Rajapakse clan from power (for now), the Sinhalese were solely responsible in the first place for electing and re-electing them into power as heroes and gods. Ranil betrayed his lifelong power-hungry quest to make himself king president, just as his uncle JR Jeyawardene was when he created the despotic position. In order to be president, Ranil clearly struck a deal to allow Gotabaya to escape, and together they did a clumsy job of hiding it from the tens of thousands of protestors. There has been so much self-induced political instability in a period when the country has acknowledged that it is bankrupt. As we mentioned before, the military is unaffordable and the opposite of beneficial. But SL has shown no signs of demilitarising, and during this time, it was incapable of even reaching a staff-level agreement for an IMF bailout (let alone attaining the step of an executive level approval). Any surprise? In the midst of this widespread suffering and economic dysfunction, the political leaders of the country were choreographing a baton pass for a de facto crown & sceptre.

Let’s be clear: it wasn’t despite the war crimes and genocide that the Sinhalese elected the Rajapakses; rather, it was because the war crimes and genocide happened against Tamils that they were elected heroes. “They saved the country” in 2009 — as if in a zero-sum way, the "country" they mean is Southern Lanka, and they instead "saved" the unemployment numbers by funding poor Sinhalese as soldiers to destroy Tamil Eelam. The last 3 months have shown that Southern Lanka is willing to destroy itself and cut itself off from trade links if it means that Tamils will not prosper one iota more, and so long as Sinhalese have enough food on the table and enough petrol in the tank. Given the level of ignorance and denial that they have for the genocide they have put Tamils through, the ostrich seems a more fitting mascot than the lion for the Sinhalese.

Just as the previous analysis was a preemptive reminder for casual observers to not superficially understand Southern Lanka’s problems through the lens of economics, and likewise its solutions through the pigeonhole of regime change, this piece will be another preemptive reminder. Given the political instability, and the constant attempts by Ranil and other establishment characters to exercise the letter of the law in order to run opposite of the will of the people, there will be lots of debate over the strength of Sri Lanka’s democracy and rule of law. However, from the outset of its independence, SL has always had a contradiction between what's legal and what’s democratic / inclusive / representative of its citizenry.

When legal is not democratic

How can the laws of a democratic country not be democratic? If the laws are enacted by the people, then surely they are democratic laws, right?

Democracy is rule by the people. The maxim is “majority rules, minority rights”. The majority makes decisions, but the rights of the people who don’t make the decisions should still be respected. So laws that do not protect the rights of everyone in the country only serve a subset of the country. If a subset of the country is oppressed, then their participation in the country is greatly diminished. What is the difference whether a subset of the population is denied the right to vote, which overtly undermines the core tenets of democracy, or whether their voice is never heard due to consistent systematic discrimination?

So if Sinhalese Buddhists decide to use their overwhelming numerical majority to consistently create laws that systematically discriminate and excludes the Tamil-speaking people and/or people of other faiths (Hindu, Muslim, Christian), then really, how is that different from just ignoring their right to vote? The history of Ceylon gives undeniable examples that laws made in an ostensible democracy can indeed be very undemocratic and undermine the tenets of equality and voting that are necessary for a democracy to function.

The following is a short list of important events in which Ceylon / Southern Lanka has, from the very beginning of its short independence in 1948, dismantled any semblance of its democratic credentials:

1948: removed 1 million Tamils' citizenship

The first major law of post-independent Ceylon was to create a law that retroactively removed the citizenship of 1 million Tamils who work as labourers on Ceylon’s famous and lucrative tea plantations. This is akin to how several slave-holding states in the United States after the American Civil War recreated the conditions of slavery in a post-abolition environment through laws known as “Jim Crow laws”, such as voting tests, voting fees, retroactive citizenship requirements based on ancestry and/or skin tone.

There is nothing more obviously inimical to democracy than denying people the right to vote. The fact that this law was enacted in the very first year of Ceylon’s independence, and which lasted until the 21st century until its begrudging and passive repeal, should tell you all you need to know about Southern Lanka

1956: Sinhala Only law

For some reason, it took 8 years for Ceylon to have its first election, even though it began its independence with a prime minister and government. Although the prime minister was a shoo-in to be re-elected, an important deputy in his cabinet (SWRD Bandaranaike) created a splinter party at the last minute and launched a campaign based on enacting an exclusionary racist law that makes Sinhalese the only official language. This immediately excluded nearly all Tamil speaking people from government jobs, and it sent a clear message of inequality and hierarchy for the people of the country.

The status of a government job in Ceylon at the time should not be underestimated. Ceylon’s government has historically had very strong social programs and benefits. A government job was highly prized because they were well-paying for the time, stable, and assured great pensions. A government job was as respectable as any other high-paying job like doctor, lawyer, or engineer would be.

The law made a deep and lasting impact in dividing the island’s people, directly and indirectly. The island has yet to recover. Even in the responses to the protests of today's 2022 economic crisis, there has been a stark difference between the Sinhalese of Southern Lanka and the Tamil-speaking people of Tamil Eelam. Sinhalese celebrated the achievement of overthrowing Gotabaya from power without acknowledging that they alone voted him into power, and then lamented the lack of participation from Tamils and Muslims. Tamil-speaking people in Tamil Eelam still live under military occupation, so demonstrations would be swiftly and violently stopped in a way that many Sinhalese are completely unaware of. Buddhist monks were spotted participating in the protests in Colombo, while in Tamil Eelam they were seen alongside military in preventing Tamil protests against military occupation of new land in which to build yet more Buddhist temples on occupied land.

1961: Colonisation via Mahaweli scheme

Borrowing from the Israeli playbook of colonisation schemes, the Mahaweli scheme was a very large scale irrigation project to enable lands in Tamil Eelam on the border with Southern Lanka to be irrigated and farmed. Importantly, the government recruited Sinhalese from the South to settle these newly arable lands. In a convenient stroke of competence, the government finished the project well ahead of schedule. The location of the colonization scheme was in the area in which the geography of Tamil Eelam land is “thinnest”, such that a Sinhalese demographic shift would break the contiguity of the Tamil demographic majority.

The Mahaweli colonization scheme was started before the war, as a legal, civilian, peace time “development scheme”, and it has had a lasting effect on the voting patterns in the island. It has also affected collective human rights inherent to the Tamil-speaking peoples to govern themselves and protect their culture and lands.

1978: Prevention of Terrorism Act (due process)

The Prevention of Terrorism Act violates many democratic norms and human rights, like the right to due process. There is no real definition of terrorism because if there were, the Southern Lankan police and military would be the biggest violators of it, to a degree far beyond anything that the Liberation Tigers or the JVP have been accused of. This law continues to be invoked to detain people, sometimes 12-18 months at a time, before they are allowed access to a lawyer or know what charges they were detained on, and trials can be often postponed repeatedly.

Only a Lankan lawyer would be well placed to indicate the full list of existing laws that the PTA violates. But the fairness and justice of due process are cornerstones of modern democracies, and the PTA persists despite constant criticism of the UN and other international rights agencies.

1983: Sixth Amendment (freedom of speech)

The 6th Amendment to SL’s constitution outlaws professing support to secession. It is one thing to exercise your freedom of speech about the state-supported genocide and the need for a separate Tamil Eelam to avoid Southern Lankan genocide. It is a totally different thing to actually launch an armed rebellion against the state. From the perspective of the law, there is no differnece.

Dissent is an important part of a healthy democracy, and you cannot criminialise dissent just because you don’t like it. But that’s exactly the point of the 6th Amendment. A country that cannot distinguish dissent from an incitement to violent rebellion reveals that is fundamentally flawed, and only bolsters the case for its radical overhaul.

1980s-now: Genocide

It is absurd that the Sinhalese Southern Lankan government, a member of the United Nations, can use its resources and legitimacy as a country to commit a genocide against Tamil-speaking peoples of Tamil Eelam. It can pit “legitimate” forms of organized violence against civilians to commit that genocide: the police plus each branch of the military (army, navy, air force, coast guard), paramilitary Special Task Force.

If the laws are fundamentally undemocratic, if the electoral systems are not truly democratic despite a veneer of such, then the civilian victims have no recourse. When other member states of the United Nations shirk their responsibility to invoke their obligations according to the Charter to intervene against a state in defense of a nationality that is a victim to genocide, they provide the excuse that it is “an internal matter”. Even though UN’s R2P (Responsibility to Protect) framework was created to reinforce that obligation after the Rwandan genocide of the mid-1990s, it has been largely ignored in the major situations where it matters, like the Tamils of the island of Eelam.

Actions of genocide take many forms, not just the killing of people but also the destruction of its economic base and its cultural identity.

Take this small sampling of historical events:

  • 1981: Burning of Jaffna Library - one of the largest libraries in South Asia was burned to the ground, including irreplaceable ancient Tamil manuscripts. This was planned by high-ranking government ministers
  • 1983: Black July - a week long, government planned Kristallnacht-style pogrom designed to destroy Tamil generational wealth. Read this article to understand the intentional economic impact resulting from the government-planned island-wide massacre.
  • 1987: 13th Amendment - an amendment that was passed in conjunction with the Indo-Lanka Accord but that has never been implemented fully for Tamil-speaking areas. The Northern and Eastern Provinces were supposed to be merged into one, and the provinces would be given a provincial government that includes powers of police and land. The merged Northeast Province with its own government with powers of police and land have never been implemented. The 13th Amendment was constructed to only allow a weak autonomy which can be overruled by the central government (just like in India’s constitution), in which a colonial-era style governor has veto power over much of the provice.
  • 1994-5: War for Peace - Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected as president in 1994 and then immediately launched the Orwellian named “War for Peace” that was a scorched earth campaign against Tiger-held Tamil areas. The blockade affected civilians and Tiger soldiers alike, and thus effectively holds the entire civilian population hostage. It included enforcing a total economic embargo on Tamil areas, which blockaded nearly everything from reaching Tamil areas, including essentials like medicines, petrol, and even batteries.
  • Always: Using military against citizens - What kind of government uses its military to drop bombs on its own civilians, indiscriminately, using chemical and cluster bombs? But because the military is a part of the government, it is considered “legitimate”, and it is the only “legitimate” form of organised violence.
  • Always: A culture of extrajudicial violence - The Special Task Force is a a commando police unit that has for decades supported extrajudicial activities supported by the undemocratic Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Ministry of Defense also has used proxy militia groups for just as long to commit overtly illegal and brutal, tortuous (“terrorist”) acts but provide a modicum of plausible deniability for the government

Reality for Sinhalese of Southern Lanka

Despite what some of the protesters in Colombo have started to assert in interviews to international journalists, which is that the protesters represent a broad cross-section of society, that is not true. While they may come from various socio-economic backgrounds, they are mostly Sinhalese from Colombo and surrounding areas. Tamils and Muslims who participate are few and far between, and come from Colombo. Tamil-speaking peoples of Tamil Eelam are still under military occupation, and Tamils of the Upcountry are still sharecroppers (economic slave labour), so protesting is out of the question. Meanwhile in Southern Lanka, the protests (by mostly Sinhalese) to replace Gotabaya as president are yet another regime change exercise that do not even acknowledge the country's deeply engrained systemic oppression. Most Sinhalese do not instinctively want to perform real gestures of inclusion, even at these progressive revolutionary protests, like screening the Channel 4 documentary Killing Fields in Sinhalese on the anniversary of the 2009 genocide on May 18. Even token gestures, like singing the Southern Lankan anthem also in Tamil, did not occur until after days of complaints inside the protests and on social media. Sinhalese have largely reacted negatively and in denial to arguments that their economic and political problems could be related to the systemic racist system and militarised occupation of Tamil Eelam. The country is just as divided in its “people power” during these "revolutionary" times, just as it has been divided always, as when that same “democratic people power” voted successive Sinhalese Buddhist racist leaders into power.

A few Sinhalese have the courage to say the simple truth that Tamils have always known. Here are samples of that from the internet:

As the above comments show, they also realise that was / is legal is not truly representative and democratic.

Reminder

It’s not clear what India and America want to see out of Southern Lanka, given that India likely saved Gotabaya. India probably did so because it has always preferred the Rajapaksa family to stay in power, while America has been distinctly anti-Rajapaksa. India can't keep bailing out Southern Lanka with money permanently even if it wants to, whereas America has shown little interest in granting much short-term “bridge financing” bailout money altogether. Yet they both need the country to be stable to prevent further Chinese influence on the island.

So over the next few days, you will see political moves to see Ranil sworn in as acting president, and a new prime minister sworn in, and a new president elected. Ranil is the likely president, but he is disliked very much by the protester movement. And these political moves need to be settled so that a stable government can take hold before any economic bailout and restructuring can take place, so political moves ought to move fast.

But it should be clear that Ceylon has squandered its head start at independence of 1948 as the jewel of South Asia, and it started immediately with laws that undermined its own democratic credentials.

When international reporters start coming out with talk about saving Southern Lankan democracy, just remind them that you cannot save what does not exist. You have to throw away the scraps and build something new.
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Posted by Voices in Exile at 8:03 AM
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