The winners in Sri Lanka’s civil war continue to make life hard for the losers
Finally, someone in the Western mainstream media recognises that the war in Ceylon was between Tamil-speaking peoples and the Singhala dominated Colombo government. For if we were ever to have believed the narrative that the war was only between the LTTE and an unresponsive, slightly undemocratic Sri Lanka, it would not explain why the country is more militarised than ever before four years after the war, and why oppressive conditions exist strongly along ethnic lines. But there is no good excuse to have ever missed the descent of Ceylon into a structurally-reinforced, genocidal Sri Lanka, for what happened in 2008-09, or what has happened since 2009, is really just the continuation of what has been happening since 1948, or to be precise, since before 1948. The 2009 genocide onslaught was a "hockey stick" increase in anti-Tamil genocide, only the latest in recent years following 1983, 1989, and 1995.
Jun 22nd 2013 |From the print edition
OFTEN, when Sri Lanka’s ethnic-Sinhalese-dominated government appears to be offering a hand in friendship to the Tamil minority, it turns out to be a slap in the face.
"Often"? In all seriousness, when has Sri Lanka's Sinhalese-dominated government ever genuinely helped Tamils of its own volition?
(And no, making Tamil a national language does not count because: 1) this should've been made so back in 1956 along with Singalese 2) it hasn't been implemented in practice, and is further from being so with each passing day, and 3) many such measures only happen "too little, too late", ex: after the breakout of armed conflict, and often times as weak attempts to blunt the resistance)
For example, in 2010 it appointed a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the final phase of the 26-year civil war. But many Tamils saw it as a whitewash, because it absolved the Sri Lankan army of charges that it had deliberately attacked civilians during the war’s apocalyptic final battles in 2009, and many of its confidence-building recommendations have not been implemented
Let's be candid: everybody thinks (has thought, continues to think) it's eyewash. It's not just Tamils, or many Tamils. The real story here is for how long does the Western bloc want to silently pretend to be ignorant, and especially where does the Western bloc's roadmap lead to, and what is the timeline for it?
But for now, "Tamils" will conveniently absorb responsibility for all actions that challenge the Sri Lankan state. Tamils in Tamil Nadu have been galvanized against the Sri Lankan government ostensibly based on disparate events. The TNA can always blame the "hardline" diaspora Tamils if Sri Lanka and India find it thinking too independently for their (transparent) designs, and GoSL blames the diaspora Tamils for the unfolding story at UN HRC sessions. Even in international relations, Tamils serve as the universal whipping boy! This pitiful state of affairs for Tamils politically has a finite limit to it.
Or take the election scheduled for this September in the north of the country when (mostly Tamil) voters are for the first time to elect a provincial council. The government is now moving to neuter the council, depriving the region of much of the autonomy it had been promised.
The election would honour the letter of a 1987 amendment to the constitution, the 13th. This was a legacy of India’s disastrous intervention in the civil war with the Tamil Tigers, who had been fighting for a separate Tamil homeland, or “eelam”.
Wrong. "Eelam" is a name for the island of Ceylon. "Tamil Eelam" is the traditional Tamil-speaking homeland, which stretches from Puttalam to Jaffna to Amparai.
And it may be too soon to say that India's intervention in the war was disastrous. Yes, the 80,000 (?) strong army from India lost to the 5-10,000 strong army of the LTTE. But the point of the intervention was to block the US from seriously establishing a presence in India's backyard through the autocratic, US-friendly J.R. Jayawardene, and the signing of the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord successfully kept the US at bay for almost 2 decades. The 13th Amendment is just a symbolic, obligatory "quid pro quo" that recognises India's grip on Sri Lanka. The Indian army (IPKF) defeat only happened after, and in response to, the Indian attempts to enforce its control that the IPKF represented. However, the last 2-3 years, and the last decade as a whole, show that with every passing day, the sum effect of India's activities in this regard is fast approaching nothing or less.
Written at India’s behest, the amendment devolved political power to the provinces, including, in theory, to the Tamil-majority north. In eight other provinces councils have been elected. Holding the election now will fulfil promises to India, Japan and others that want to see a genuine effort at national reconciliation after the rout of the Tigers. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has itself long promised greater autonomy for the Tamils.
Actually, no other country really cares about the 13th Amendment besides India. Other countries (not including China and Russia!) pay lip service to the 13th Amendment only because India tries so hard to keep this charade up. Pretending to care about the 13th Amendment allows other countries to pursue their interests without being obvious. There is poetic justice, in a dark, humourous sort of way, to watch these other countries subtly supplant India in South Asia while verbally pledging support to India's efforts in Sri Lanka, and to watch Sri Lanka continually abuse and reject an increasingly impotent India, in word and deed.
The government would lose a fair provincial election. Demoralised after the defeat of the Tigers in 2009, resentful of the large numbers of soldiers in their province, and suspicious that the government is planning large-scale Sinhalese immigration, Tamils in the north are likely to vote for their own parties, in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) coalition.
In addition to the words "demoralised" and "resentful", we should add "defenseless" and "hopeless" and "bitter" as to how Tamil-speaking feel after the defeat of the Tigers. It is important to point out that the [Tamil-speaking] Muslims of the Northeast also were alarmed by the defeat of the Tigers, for it spelt out their vulnerability to an oppressive, hegemonic government. Sure enough, 4 years later, we are seeing this racism spread to the Muslims. So really, in Tamil Eelam, as in Southern Lanka, you are either Sinhalese-Buddhist or you are a terrorist. Call Tamils parochial ("to vote for their own parties"), but I would vote for any party that resists this notion, and let me tell you, of course Ranil W. and his United National Party (aka UNP aka Uncle-Nephew Party) are part of the racist Sinhalese establishment. FYI, the UNP and Mahinda Rajapakse's SFLP are the two main parties in SL that alternate being the ruling and opposition parties.
The question now is whether the TNA is fully representing the interests of Tamils at this historical juncture. Signs are increasingly pointing to "no", with the TNA risking repeating the mistakes of the TULF after the demise of Chelvanayagam. The TNA should not take the Northern Provincial Council elections too seriously because, after all, their legitimacy only has ever existed on paper. The structure of Sri Lanka is still a centralised one. The president has the power to do as he pleases with the provinces. At worst, the president controls the 99% Sinhalese military, since we know that defense minister Gotabaya Rajapakse and his brother president Mahinda Rajapakse are like two peas in a pod...
While the Tamils might vote for the TNA, for lack of other clear options at this juncture, if the TNA continues to play along with India, then what the TNA does in the future may not necessarily be the best barometer of how Tamils feel. That being said, perhaps there is a longer-term plan that the TNA is following, even if blindly. Today, in South Asia, 1-2 years is a long timeframe, for many drastic changes may transpire then.
The government has pushed through changes that would enable those displaced from the region during the war to come back to vote. But the Tamil parties have welcomed the changes, calculating that more Tamils than Sinhalese or Muslims would make the trip home.
The government also wants to amend the 13th amendment, diluting it in two ways. One is to remove the right that adjacent provinces have to merge. It fears that the Northern Province would rejoin its neighbour, the Eastern Province, which has a mixed population of Muslims, Tamils and Sinhalese. Combined, the two provinces would cover about 30% of Sri Lanka—and have a Tamil majority. In 1990 a local leader declared independence for this region as a Tamil eelam. Sinhalese nationalists are convinced that the TNA has similar plans. The president’s brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the defence secretary, has said that a TNA win would “jeopardise national security and integrity”. Less cautious coalition partners warn luridly of another bloodbath.
First of all, Tamil Eelam is misspelled. The "e" should be capitalised -- it's a proper noun (name), not a common noun. The name comes from the world for gold or metal, but I doubt that meaning was intended. That tidbit is better reserved for a different part of The Economist.
Second of all, where is India in all this nonsense-mongering? Still a non-factor, that's right. It's interesting that simultaneously, the government appears to be helping Tamils by letting displaced people vote, and giving thinly-veiled threats that they're going to attack all of the Tamils if (more like, when) they win the elections. Perhaps the the freedom to let Tamils return to vote is a means to herd Tamils so that a genocidal pogrom has a greater effect. This is reminiscent of 1983, or 2009, or really all of the events in the history of Ceylon/Sri Lanka.
The second set of changes is more controversial. They would weaken the provinces’ power to block laws and constitutional changes that affect them. This power can be irksome for the centre. Last year, for example, a national bill on rural development was held up by the courts on the ground that many of its provisions were provincial issues. The government is not alone in thinking that the two-tier system introduced by the 13th amendment is cumbersome and inefficient. But to Tamils in the north, it looks as if the bar is closing just as they are being let into the party.
No, many Tamils have lost faith in any sense of justice following the defeat of the LTTE. The administration run in the Vanni by the LTTE was perceived as fair, and perceived as more fair than Southern Lanka, even by Sinhalese living on the border villages in Southern Lanka. So, there is no party, so to Tamils, it looks as if the Singalese are too extremist to even bother with pretenses and smokescreens like they used to be.
The 13th-amendment dust-up shows three things about the Rajapaksas (President Mahinda heads a clan that sits atop the Sri Lankan polity). The first is their readiness to use their healthy parliamentary majority to drive through controversial measures with a minimum of democratic process. In 2010 the 18th amendment to the constitution was adopted by means of an “urgent” parliamentary bill. It was a mystery what the urgency was in lifting Mr Rajapaksa’s term limit and according him the final say in the most important civil-service, judicial and police appointments. In January this year, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the government-inspired impeachment of the chief justice, the president and parliament simply overruled it. Now the merger-banning part of the 13th amendment may again be introduced as an “urgent” bill.
Second is the Rajapaksas’ centralising tendency. The two themes of their rule are to take power back to the central government and to make the central government ever more of a family-run conglomerate. And they have an authoritarian streak. This week their government produced a draft media code that Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog, said, “could have a severe and chilling effect on free speech.” Third is their willingness to sacrifice national reconciliation for enhanced “security”—however far-fetched it now seems that the cowed Tamil population might again take up arms.
While diplomats and journalists will likely will focus their current frustrations with Southern Lanka on the Rajapakse clan, it apparently can never be stressed enough that the Rajapakses are just the latest in the succession of of people who advance SL along the inevitable path charted by its political structure. Chandrika's father started it officially in the open democratic process in 1956, and he himself was taking forward sentiments that were allowed to build up for decades before Ceylon's independence. So when we read "Rajapaksa(s)", we should instead read "the structure of Sri Lanka".
These tendencies have costs. Sri Lanka is still the butt of criticism from Western governments for failing to provide any proper accounting of the horrors at the end of the war and for continuing to discriminate against minorities. The Tamil diaspora remains influential in heaping international opprobrium on the government. And Sri Lanka’s relations with India remain fraught because of the sympathies of Indian Tamils for their ethnic kin.
Yes, Western governments are highly critical of what Southern Lanka is doing. But the Tamil diaspora should be seen less as "influential" and "powerful" (because that's more flattering than true) as much as an important source of credible information about the truth of what's happening on the ground to Tamil-speaking peoples in Sri Lanka. For example, the footage validated by forensics experts and included in documentaries about the final year of the war in 2009 came from people on the ground in Vanni and disseminated to the outside world via the Tamil diaspora. In fact, many of the videos were hitting social media like the TROKilinochchi channel on Youtube (owned by Google) from about Jan 2009 until about April 2009, which was then suspended by Youtube for who-knows-what reason. The same figures of civilians killed -- tens of thousands -- was announced by the Tamils protesting in Western capitals and reported by TamilNet, but summarily dismissed in 2009. In 4 years, those numbers are increasingly looking more credible than anything else.
Homeland security
Yet the government can shrug off foreign carping, pointing out that China is ever ready to help. A jamboree later this year, when Sri Lanka plays host to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, is unlikely to be much disrupted by boycotts. Even if it is, it would only boost the Rajapaksas’ popularity with the Sinhalese. Yet continuing Tamil alienation does matter. Drastically under-represented in the civil service and the army, for example, many Tamils want not their own homeland so much as simple equality. In refusing to grant them that, the government is fostering the separatism which it so fears.
Good riddance, Rajapaksa-family cabal.
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