Lion, Tiger, and Lies
by Anita Pratap
May 25, 2009
The Week
Too many loose ends in Lankan army's version of Prabhakaran's death
Precisely because he is many things to many people, LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran’s death has been greeted with joy by the Sinhalese, grief by his Tamil supporters, and relief by many who hope his death will bring peace to beleaguered Sri Lanka.
But is he really dead? Speculation is rife only because journalists are not allowed in, and independent verification is impossible. I was sceptical of the first report, which said he was killed while fleeing the war zone in an ambulance. No way. Prabhakaran would not do something so idiotic. Remember, the Sri Lankan army told us that Prabhakaran and his cadres were surrounded in a tiny patch of land, less than 1 sq.km. The area was so small and so well surrounded that anyone coming out on a bicycle would be spotted and stopped. So logically, what chance would an ambulance have of sprinting past unnoticed? If he had to flee from such a tiny war zone, he would have scurried out through an underground tunnel.
And then came the picture of Prabhakaran’s corpse. The first question: if he was killed in an ambulance, how come his body was discovered in a lagoon? The picture looked fake. Top of the head was blown off, but the face was clear and the eyes wide open. Prabhakaran’s most distinguishing feature are his eyes, which seemed artificially wide, as if someone was trying to prove it was indeed him by grabbing attention to his eyes. It reminded me of the front-page picture of the terrorist killed in a shootout in Ansal Plaza in New Delhi a few years ago. I had said then that I found it hard to believe that the terrorist had died that way with the gun in his hand. I have seen innumerable civilians, soldiers and guerrillas lying dead in battlefields. They don’t look like this. I instinctively felt the picture was stage-managed. Forensically, I did not see how it was possible that a guy involved in a massive shootout could die so perfectly posed. Subsequent investigations reinforced these doubts.
That is the same feeling I had when I saw the picture of Prabhakaran’s corpse. Far from setting my doubts to rest, the picture convinced me that something was fishy. The initial version was that soldiers had “shelled” the ambulance, which caught fire and was destroyed. If you pummel an ambulance with artillery shells or rocket propelled grenades, it will explode. So, if Prabhakaran were inside, his body would have been blown to bits. At the very least, charred. And when his dog tags and identity cards surfaced, the whole thing seemed even more of a set-up. Besides, Karuna’s and Daya Master’s identification of Prabhakaran’s body has as much credibility as a confession extracted in police custody.
I am not saying that I know for sure Prabhakaran is alive. What I am saying is that this version of his death does not ring true.
I have said before that Prabhakaran will never be captured alive. But there is one more thing I would add. If he knew there was no way out, he would not only have killed himself but have made sure his body was not found. There are two reasons for this. One, he is a keen student of military history and knows if his body were found, it would be desecrated by the victorious Sinhalese soldiers. All triumphant soldiers have done this through history. I can still vividly recall the dead Afghan leader Najibullah hanging from a Kabul lamp-post, cigarette stuffed in his nose, body bloated and beaten black and blue by the victorious Taliban. I have seen videos of dead female LTTE soldiers being stripped naked and paraded by gleeful Sinhalese soldiers.
Many detest him, but one must understand Prabhakaran’s psyche. He is an extraordinarily proud man, one who believes he is fighting to restore the honour and glory of the Tamils. There is simply no way he will allow himself to be desecrated and bring eternal shame and dishonour to his people. So not only will he swallow his cyanide, have his bodyguard shoot him to make his death doubly sure, but he will ensure that his body is blasted to bits, so that no corpse ever surfaces.
That brings me to the second reason why he would ensure his body was never found if he had to commit suicide to evade capture. Remember, one of his favourite heroes is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Even today, there are people who believe that Bose is still alive. The mystery and the mystique remain. If Prabhakaran’s body is never found, no one can be sure whether he is really dead or alive and the conspiracy theories will spin forever—keeping him alive in people’s imagination. Purpose served, especially if he is dead.
I do not rule out Prabhakaran’s death. I don’t think he was killed, more likely he took his own life. If I were to pick a day that he decided to commit suicide with his top cadres, it would be May 16.
In my last article published a month ago in THE WEEK (Crouching Tiger, May 3) on what I expected Prabhakaran’s next move to be, I had written, “He will be watching the Indian elections closely to see which dispensation takes charge in New Delhi. He will be watching to see if there is a popular upsurge of support in Tamil Nadu for the plight of Tamils across the Palk Strait. …He will be watching President Barack Obama who rightly analysed that conflicts stem from our perception of the other.”
On May 13, referring to the “desperate, humanitarian crisis” in Sri Lanka, Obama urged the Tigers to “lay down their arms” and the government to stop the “indiscriminate shelling that has taken hundreds of innocent lives”. Tiger spokespersons said they were willing to accede to Obama’s request, but the Sri Lankan government refused to slacken or halt the final onslaught to wrest the last piece of land from Prabhakaran’s grip. On May 16, the Indian election results came out and contrary to media punditry, the Congress made a resounding comeback. That spelt doom for Prabhakaran: his implacable foes will remain in power for another five years. Instead of an upsurge in Tamil Nadu, staunch LTTE supporters like Vaiko were routed. Prabhakaran has been waging this battle alone for the last three years and he knows what it has cost him—his cadres, the Tamils civilians and the diaspora. It has been truly horrific. Surviving another five years of this isolation with a hostile Congress establishment at the helm in India and an impotent international community is very hard. Getting Eelam in the near future in such hostile international circumstances is impossible.
In the past, after he was routed, Prabhakaran started all over again from scratch. That is why I had said I could envision him continuing the war. But with Congress’s victory, Tamil Nadu’s political defeat and adamancy of the Sri Lankan state to disregard even the American president, I can see why he saw the futility of continuing his struggle, deciding then to fight unto death.
In his introduction to an absolute must-read 1964 book, The World of Yesterday by Austrian author Stefan Zweig, Harry Zohn talks about the three times that Zweig had to start his life all over, caught up as he was between the two world wars. Writes Zohn: “Too exhausted to start a fourth, Zweig took his life in Brazil soon after completing his autobiography, at a time when the prospects for the realisation of all that he had ever striven for looked particularly bleak.” Zweig and Prabhakaran are complete opposites. But this, I think, sums up Prabhakaran’s mood on May 16. What lends some credence to my theory is that several members of the Tamil diaspora said they began getting calls from their LTTE contacts in Vanni, tearfully bidding farewell. That most of the top rung of the LTTE’s military wing are dead, points to mass suicide.
Rumours began circulating in the blogosphere on May 16 that Prabhakaran and 300 of his top cadres had committed mass suicide and blown themselves up. In fact, Sri Lanka’s army website posted an item at 17:51 on May 17 from the battlefront: “Self-ignited LTTE explosions [were] heard and witnessed in close vicinity. Likelihood of Tigers committing suicide en masse or burning of LTTE assets on their own has not been ruled out.” Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced victory and end of war. On May 17 afternoon, the LTTE, issued a statement: “This battle has reached its bitter end. We remain with one last choice—to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns.” The statement blamed the silence of the international community, the impunity with which the Sri Lankan government ignored urgent appeals, used words like “desperate” and “saddened”, referred to “bitter end” twice. And added: “Against all odds, we have held back the advancing Sinhalese forces, without help or support…. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out any longer.” It reads like a suicide note.
For an even more absurd reason, I am inclined to believe that he could have committed suicide on May 17. Prabhakaran was very superstitious and once confessed to me that the number 8 is very unlucky for him—even though he is born on November 26. So he never undertook major offensives on 8th, 17th and 26th of a month. I reported that. And the Sri Lankan army took it easy on those days. But Charles Anthony, his son, couldn’t care less about superstition. Many of the operations he commanded were on 26th, precisely to surprise the army. On April 26, 2006, an LTTE suicide bomber tried in vain to assassinate Sri Lankan army commander, Sarath Fonseka, who since then became Prabhakaran’s mortal enemy. From this superstitious perspective, it is perhaps not a coincidence that the likely date of Prabhakaran’s suicide is May 17. When Prabhakaran told me about his superstition regarding numbers, I read Cheiro. According to Cheiro, people born with the birth number 8 are destined for great successes and great failures! If he has indeed committed suicide, this prediction certainly rings true for him!
On May 18 at 3 a.m. Vanni time, the LTTE political chief B. Nadesan and its peace secretariat director Puleedevan telephoned their European contacts requesting them to ask the ICRC to evacuate about 1,000 of their wounded cadres and LTTE’s civil officials. But a few hours later, the Sri Lankan defence ministry claimed they had found the dead bodies of Nadesan, Puleedevan and Anthony. The LTTE accused the Sri Lankan government of “treachery”. Their version is that their international contacts told them that arrangements had been made with the Sri Lankan military to discuss “an orderly end to the war”. So as instructed, Nadesan and Puleedevan, unarmed and carrying white flags, contacted the 58 division of the Sri Lankan troops operating nearby. But they were shot and killed. If this is true, under international conventions, this would be a war crime. The number of dead bodies shown on Sri Lankan websites indicates that this war on terror ended with a bloody massacre.
Sri Lankan army released pictures of Anthony’s corpse on May 18. Up until then, they had been releasing old pictures of a bulky Anthony in battle fatigues looking at the camera sulkily. But now two photos were released—one in which he is alive and the other his corpse. The strange thing is in both pictures he is wearing the same blue shirt. The explanation then could be that he, with Nadesan and Puleedevan, had gone dressed in civilian clothes with white flags to the 58 division. Pictures were taken, where he looks clean-shaven, relaxed and neat. And then something went wrong and a massacre followed some time later (the dead Anthony’s face has stubble). All Tiger fighters wear combat fatigues, so if he was fighting, Anthony should have been wearing battle dress. But the army’s version is that Anthony and others arrived dressed in civilian clothes on what was a suicide mission. But then that doesn’t explain the picture of Anthony alive.
Intriguingly, it took another whole day before the government released the picture of Prabhakaran’s dead body. If Prabhakaran did indeed blow himself up along with his top cadres, then there can be no body to parade. In which case, the Sri Lankan government came up with a Prabhakaran “double”. How weird is that? But the answer could be simple—the army was under pressure to show a dead body as proof. No one will believe otherwise that Prabhakaran is dead. If the Sri Lankan military has evidence that Prabhakaran did indeed blast himself, then they can be certain he will not surface to dispute their claim. On May 20, Sri Lanka’s defence ministry website carried a bizarre announcement: “We are not going to comment on how he died.”
But the story gets more curious. The LTTE is silent about Anthony, but has issued a statement that Prabhakaran is alive and safe. But few believe the LTTE, so rumours are now rife that Prabhakaran will give a television interview to prove he is alive. That will be a bombshell if it happens, suggesting he had waged an elaborate war of deception, complete with his own “double”. Any move he makes will be picked up by the Sri Lankan intelligence. But that is if he is alive. A Sinhalese blogger said: “He is alive and well—in hell.
But all these conspiracy theories can be quelled. The international community can force Sri Lanka to share the DNA tests done on Prabhakaran and Anthony and verify if they match Prabhakaran’s sisters’ who live in Canada and Europe. If they match, all speculation can be put to rest. India and the four co-chairs—the United States, Europe, Japan and Norway—should insist on this.
Read more!
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Review: Crouching Tiger
Crouching Tiger
by Anita Pratap
May 3, 2009
The Week
LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is many things to many people-national leader, freedom fighter, revolutionary, guerrilla, killer, saviour, tyrant, visionary and terrorist. Lionised or demonised, depending on their standpoint. I cannot know what is going on in Prabhakaran’s head, but I am certain he is neither frightened nor desperate. He is not afraid of death. He has been courting it since he was 17. He is an indefatigable warrior, one who is philosophically detached from all things tactical. Yet, paradoxically, in achieving his strategic goal of Tamil Eelam, he displays an unwavering attachment.
I doubt whether these military setbacks will discourage, undermine or erode his confidence or commitment to his goal. He is very clear in his mind-he is fighting to liberate his people. For that principle he lives. For that principle he fights. And for that principle he is willing to die. Victories and defeats come and go. Territories are lost and won. Cadres die, comrades betray. But to his dying breath, he will remain true to Eelam.
In the 30 years that I have written about this conflict, never has the LTTE been so alone and friendless in its struggle. Prabhakaran is a victim of a combination of his actions and international circumstances. By assassinating Rajiv Gandhi, he made an implacable foe of India. And after 9/11, George Bush’s war on terror created zero tolerance for terrorism around the world. It also blurred distinctions between terrorist organisations and national liberation groups.
There is no liberation army in the world that has not faced state terror and in turn used terror as a tactic to pursue its nationalist goals. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh-Prabhakaran considers them heroes-were designated terrorists by the British rulers of India. Until recently, Nelson Mandela was on the list of terrorists.
The LTTE is banned as a terrorist organisation in some 30 countries. That has given the Sri Lankan government global sanction to destroy the LTTE. But in doing so, the international community has allowed a disaster of epic proportion to unfold. This is not an LTTE, but a Tamil tragedy. Nowhere in the world has a government been continuously bombing its own civilians for over a year. This is a crime Israeli, American and NATO forces are not guilty of.
A designated No Fire Zone has turned into a vast death chamber for Tamil civilians, trapped between the LTTE and the attacking army. Nowhere else in the world is a war being waged without outsiders and independent witnesses, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Gaza. But in Sri Lanka, the media and NGOs have been banned from the war zone, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among the lone relief workers there, has described the civilian situation as catastrophic. A quarter of a million Tamils uprooted. Tens of thousands imprisoned in refugee camps. Thousands killed and maimed.
Those who say the Tamils deserve this fate because they supported Prabhakaran are heartless and blind. There are many who support him and many who don’t. Either way, they don’t have the power to influence him. Is it then justifiable to punish ordinary civilians? Is it fair to kill Americans for the sin that Bush committed in Iraq, even though they not only elected, but re-elected him? The Sri Lankan army cannot be faulted for trying to destroy the LTTE. But the Sri Lankan government cannot condone or justify destroying Tamils and their homeland in the process.
But this only strengthens Prabhakaran. Politicians and bureaucrats don’t realise that the LTTE welcomes war. It swells its ranks, reaffirms its raison d’étre, it produces more emotional support for a separate state. From the previous wars that I have witnessed (journalists could manage to get in then), LTTE cadres love fighting. During peacetime, LTTE guerrillas are disciplined and restrained. In battle, there is a complete makeover. They are highly excitable, almost gleeful.
The LTTE has been written off many times before. Prabhakaran has been ‘killed’ or ‘nearly killed’ many times in the past. If the army ever reaches his bunker, he will swallow his cyanide and the legend of Prabhakaran will probably attain mythical proportions. Lacking independent assessments, journalists repeat Sri Lankan claims that this is the end game, this is Prabhakaran’s last stand.
Judging from the past, I doubt it. Sure, the Sri Lankan army will wrest the last piece of land from Prabhakaran’s grip. But that doesn’t mean the end of the LTTE. They will revert to what they are best at-guerrilla warfare, striking when least expected. As armies before have realised, conquering territory is one thing, holding onto it opens a Pandora’s box of problems.
Prabhakaran has lost wars before. He had created a de facto Tamil Eelam with its own army, police, courts and taxation system not once, but several times in the past-only to have it all smashed and wiped out. And he had to start all over again. At 54, Prabhakaran still has enough grit to start again and continue for another 20 years.
In the meantime, he will be watching the Indian elections closely to see which dispensation takes charge in New Delhi. He will be watching to see if there is a popular upsurge of support in Tamil Nadu for the plight of Tamils across the Palk Strait. He will be watching the disastrous impact of war on Sri Lanka’s economy. He will be watching Hillary Clinton who said there should be a ‘nuanced’ approach to dealing with terrorism. He will be watching President Barack Obama who rightly analysed that conflicts stem from our perception of ‘the other’.
Today, Prabhakaran’s situation looks dire. But the wheels of fortune are not static. Things change. America has changed. The world is changing. Capitalism is discredited. Socialism sneaks in from the backdoor. Big banks have gone bust. Misery replaces prosperity in headlines. As new winds blow away many certitudes of the recent past, new opportunities, alignments and paradigms take their place on the world stage. And they will inexorably weave their impact in remote corners of faraway Sri Lanka, this beautiful emerald teardrop island that awaits its tryst with peace.
Read more!
by Anita Pratap
May 3, 2009
The Week
LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is many things to many people-national leader, freedom fighter, revolutionary, guerrilla, killer, saviour, tyrant, visionary and terrorist. Lionised or demonised, depending on their standpoint. I cannot know what is going on in Prabhakaran’s head, but I am certain he is neither frightened nor desperate. He is not afraid of death. He has been courting it since he was 17. He is an indefatigable warrior, one who is philosophically detached from all things tactical. Yet, paradoxically, in achieving his strategic goal of Tamil Eelam, he displays an unwavering attachment.
I doubt whether these military setbacks will discourage, undermine or erode his confidence or commitment to his goal. He is very clear in his mind-he is fighting to liberate his people. For that principle he lives. For that principle he fights. And for that principle he is willing to die. Victories and defeats come and go. Territories are lost and won. Cadres die, comrades betray. But to his dying breath, he will remain true to Eelam.
In the 30 years that I have written about this conflict, never has the LTTE been so alone and friendless in its struggle. Prabhakaran is a victim of a combination of his actions and international circumstances. By assassinating Rajiv Gandhi, he made an implacable foe of India. And after 9/11, George Bush’s war on terror created zero tolerance for terrorism around the world. It also blurred distinctions between terrorist organisations and national liberation groups.
There is no liberation army in the world that has not faced state terror and in turn used terror as a tactic to pursue its nationalist goals. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh-Prabhakaran considers them heroes-were designated terrorists by the British rulers of India. Until recently, Nelson Mandela was on the list of terrorists.
The LTTE is banned as a terrorist organisation in some 30 countries. That has given the Sri Lankan government global sanction to destroy the LTTE. But in doing so, the international community has allowed a disaster of epic proportion to unfold. This is not an LTTE, but a Tamil tragedy. Nowhere in the world has a government been continuously bombing its own civilians for over a year. This is a crime Israeli, American and NATO forces are not guilty of.
A designated No Fire Zone has turned into a vast death chamber for Tamil civilians, trapped between the LTTE and the attacking army. Nowhere else in the world is a war being waged without outsiders and independent witnesses, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Gaza. But in Sri Lanka, the media and NGOs have been banned from the war zone, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among the lone relief workers there, has described the civilian situation as catastrophic. A quarter of a million Tamils uprooted. Tens of thousands imprisoned in refugee camps. Thousands killed and maimed.
Those who say the Tamils deserve this fate because they supported Prabhakaran are heartless and blind. There are many who support him and many who don’t. Either way, they don’t have the power to influence him. Is it then justifiable to punish ordinary civilians? Is it fair to kill Americans for the sin that Bush committed in Iraq, even though they not only elected, but re-elected him? The Sri Lankan army cannot be faulted for trying to destroy the LTTE. But the Sri Lankan government cannot condone or justify destroying Tamils and their homeland in the process.
But this only strengthens Prabhakaran. Politicians and bureaucrats don’t realise that the LTTE welcomes war. It swells its ranks, reaffirms its raison d’étre, it produces more emotional support for a separate state. From the previous wars that I have witnessed (journalists could manage to get in then), LTTE cadres love fighting. During peacetime, LTTE guerrillas are disciplined and restrained. In battle, there is a complete makeover. They are highly excitable, almost gleeful.
The LTTE has been written off many times before. Prabhakaran has been ‘killed’ or ‘nearly killed’ many times in the past. If the army ever reaches his bunker, he will swallow his cyanide and the legend of Prabhakaran will probably attain mythical proportions. Lacking independent assessments, journalists repeat Sri Lankan claims that this is the end game, this is Prabhakaran’s last stand.
Judging from the past, I doubt it. Sure, the Sri Lankan army will wrest the last piece of land from Prabhakaran’s grip. But that doesn’t mean the end of the LTTE. They will revert to what they are best at-guerrilla warfare, striking when least expected. As armies before have realised, conquering territory is one thing, holding onto it opens a Pandora’s box of problems.
Prabhakaran has lost wars before. He had created a de facto Tamil Eelam with its own army, police, courts and taxation system not once, but several times in the past-only to have it all smashed and wiped out. And he had to start all over again. At 54, Prabhakaran still has enough grit to start again and continue for another 20 years.
In the meantime, he will be watching the Indian elections closely to see which dispensation takes charge in New Delhi. He will be watching to see if there is a popular upsurge of support in Tamil Nadu for the plight of Tamils across the Palk Strait. He will be watching the disastrous impact of war on Sri Lanka’s economy. He will be watching Hillary Clinton who said there should be a ‘nuanced’ approach to dealing with terrorism. He will be watching President Barack Obama who rightly analysed that conflicts stem from our perception of ‘the other’.
Today, Prabhakaran’s situation looks dire. But the wheels of fortune are not static. Things change. America has changed. The world is changing. Capitalism is discredited. Socialism sneaks in from the backdoor. Big banks have gone bust. Misery replaces prosperity in headlines. As new winds blow away many certitudes of the recent past, new opportunities, alignments and paradigms take their place on the world stage. And they will inexorably weave their impact in remote corners of faraway Sri Lanka, this beautiful emerald teardrop island that awaits its tryst with peace.
Read more!
Monday, January 6, 2014
Opinion: Re: Does TNA have game?
in response to Does TNA have game
by Gogol G.
The most recent post by Eelapalan, Does TNA have game, is the latest in a series of recent posts which describe the current trend in the TNA's position and why and how this can backfire greatly. Following the resounding TNA victory in the 2010 parliamentary elections, frustrations of the Tamil people grew after seeing the TNA engage GOSL in good faith over a long period of time and getting zero progress in return. Perhaps Sampanthan's speech at the ITAK convention in May 2012 temporarily assuaged Tamil people's fears. But those fears persist, and if anything have strengthened, and for good reason, as exemplified above. The TNA has done itself no favours here.
Having said that, let me play the devil's advocate. Although the benefit of the doubt that (some) Tamils conceded (perhaps unwillingly) to the TNA is quickly eroding, it is disconcerting how bashing the TNA has become almost a sport among Tamils. It's at least not old, confused, and deeply entrenched like America-bashing is among Canadians. But is it still slightly unfair? Are we shooting the messenger? Are we focusing less on the message, and more on who's saying it?
Words like "self-determination" are momentarily falling out of favour among Tamils because the TNA is finding the room to waffle by using the word and yet always referring to internal self-determination. How is this any worse than Anton Balasingham stating in the 3rd round of 6 rounds of peace talks in 2002-2003 that the LTTE will favourably consider exploring solutions based on internal self-determination, while still reserving the right to exercise external self-determination if & when GOSL proves itself incapable of accommodating internal self-determination? Knowing that GOSL is structurally incapable of anything but a positive feedback loop of anti-Tamil genocide, the process of good-faith talks on federalism between the LTTE and GOSL would make that evident for all to see, which is what happened (regardless of how Western observers tried to re-paint the picture). Isn't the exploration of federalism / internal self-determination what the TNA stated? And when the GOSL under Ranil couldn't get any greasier, and they had to prove their earnestness in working towards a political solution in order to restart peace talks, Ranil sent forth 3 draft political solutions that were no better than a provincial council in authority. The LTTE responded with 9 months of world-wide traveling, consultation, and brain-storming, after which they submitted the ISGA proposal. The ISGA proposal amounts to a fill-in-the-blank document for a federal solution, where the actual details of sharing finance, defense, and natural resources were explicitly left unspecified in order to be discussed (regardless of how Singala observers tried to re-paint the picture). Isn't such a solution what the TNA says it is working towards in good faith?
So if the LTTE could explore internal self-determination without abandoning the knowledge that [GOSL is structurally incapable of accommodation, therefore] external self-determination must remain on the table, why don't Tamils give the TNA a pass in this regard?
Read more!
by Gogol G.
The most recent post by Eelapalan, Does TNA have game, is the latest in a series of recent posts which describe the current trend in the TNA's position and why and how this can backfire greatly. Following the resounding TNA victory in the 2010 parliamentary elections, frustrations of the Tamil people grew after seeing the TNA engage GOSL in good faith over a long period of time and getting zero progress in return. Perhaps Sampanthan's speech at the ITAK convention in May 2012 temporarily assuaged Tamil people's fears. But those fears persist, and if anything have strengthened, and for good reason, as exemplified above. The TNA has done itself no favours here.
Having said that, let me play the devil's advocate. Although the benefit of the doubt that (some) Tamils conceded (perhaps unwillingly) to the TNA is quickly eroding, it is disconcerting how bashing the TNA has become almost a sport among Tamils. It's at least not old, confused, and deeply entrenched like America-bashing is among Canadians. But is it still slightly unfair? Are we shooting the messenger? Are we focusing less on the message, and more on who's saying it?
Words like "self-determination" are momentarily falling out of favour among Tamils because the TNA is finding the room to waffle by using the word and yet always referring to internal self-determination. How is this any worse than Anton Balasingham stating in the 3rd round of 6 rounds of peace talks in 2002-2003 that the LTTE will favourably consider exploring solutions based on internal self-determination, while still reserving the right to exercise external self-determination if & when GOSL proves itself incapable of accommodating internal self-determination? Knowing that GOSL is structurally incapable of anything but a positive feedback loop of anti-Tamil genocide, the process of good-faith talks on federalism between the LTTE and GOSL would make that evident for all to see, which is what happened (regardless of how Western observers tried to re-paint the picture). Isn't the exploration of federalism / internal self-determination what the TNA stated? And when the GOSL under Ranil couldn't get any greasier, and they had to prove their earnestness in working towards a political solution in order to restart peace talks, Ranil sent forth 3 draft political solutions that were no better than a provincial council in authority. The LTTE responded with 9 months of world-wide traveling, consultation, and brain-storming, after which they submitted the ISGA proposal. The ISGA proposal amounts to a fill-in-the-blank document for a federal solution, where the actual details of sharing finance, defense, and natural resources were explicitly left unspecified in order to be discussed (regardless of how Singala observers tried to re-paint the picture). Isn't such a solution what the TNA says it is working towards in good faith?
So if the LTTE could explore internal self-determination without abandoning the knowledge that [GOSL is structurally incapable of accommodation, therefore] external self-determination must remain on the table, why don't Tamils give the TNA a pass in this regard?
Read more!
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Review: Money where the (Sinhala) mouth is
Money where the (Sinhala) mouth is
by Eelapalan
Nov. 30, 2013
Following the money trail often leads to interesting findings. Sri Lanka’s 2014 budget is no exception. It is as Sinhala Buddhist as its constitution is but this analysis only focuses on one aspect which is the militarization.
Reference in the title to the Sinhala mouth is intentional. It is to highlight how it is being fed for the time being and how it is could potentially be robbed of food in the future. (Disclaimer: I am more interested in highlighting the general pattern through a trend analysis instead through absolute numbers. But would welcome input on accurate numbers if readers do have access. )
Of the eight sectors, National security & Law enforcement takes up 12.5% (Rs.309,057,392) of the total budget. To put it in context, that is more than both health and education combined total (Rs. 270,596,000). (1). This has been increasing year over year even after the war has ended. 80% of the total budget for this sector is for, curiously combined, Defence and Urban Development. A mere 20% is allocated for the other half of the sector heading which are Law & order, Justice, Rehabilitation and Prison Reform. And, of the total budget for this sector, 84% is recurrent expenditure: Meant for upkeep and maintenance. On the other hand, one subcategory, State Intelligence Service, got a whopping 717% year over year (YoY) increase for its Capital Expenditure.: Meant for Expansion.
So where does this lead to?
Active combat is over and it is unlikely in any foreseeable future. So why an exorbitant amount of money is being spent in the name of Defense and National security in a country that has no external enemy? Sinhala nation would soon realize occupation is as (or more) expensive as the war was. Military occupation, as referred to by the elected Chief Minister of North Province and many others, to be successful, requires two key elements. One is troop saturation and the other is a pervasive Intelligent apparatus.
Sri Lanka has one of the highest percentage of military per work force in the world. Sri Lanka is ranked 25th on armed personnel per labor force at a 2.59% on this site. The first person to broach this subject in the island is Sivaram. In a brilliant analysis he did in 1997, titled, The Cat, a bell and a few strategists, he analysed the conflict through the concept of MPR (Military Participation Ratio). He concluded correctly, at that time, that LTTE would not need to abandon the military option. But when he said “ The maximum degree to which the [Sri Lankan] army can raise its manpower, other things being equal, may not therefore go much beyond .82 percent of the Sinhala population”, it turned out to be incorrect. Sri Lankan military did raise its manpower beyond that and it happened with recruitments during cease fires periods (1995, 2001). See this chart. Even Though this chart is for armed personnel per labor force it correlates the same way to the armed personnel per Sinhala population base.
If the state is willing to recruit during the peacetime, Sinhala youth were willing to join the military in bigger numbers.
I believe the percentage of armed personnel per labor force in Sri Lanka, looked at it correctly, it much higher. Sri Lanka budget proposal deliberately does not list the numbers for the military personnel but does so for the police. So a quick reverse engineering (Explained at the end of the post ) shows that the total military personnel in Sri Lanka by conservative measure will be over 350,000. it is in line with this Srilanka Campaigninfographic. The very latest statistics from Sri Lanka shows a labor force of (Counted as 15 & above) 8,861, 919. So this alone would put the percentage of armed personnel per labor force at 4%, making Sri Lanka the 12th, not the 25th, in the world. But that still does not reveal the entire trend. If you were to account for the military recruitment age and understand one absolutely important factor that the Sri Lankan military is mono ethnic, it would move Sri Lanka well above in the ranking. Sri Lankan military is Sinhala, mono ethnic is important for two reasons. One, it shows the military participation and the dependence of the Sinhala nation on it (shown later). Second, it shows a much deeper sociological order of externalizing occupation.
Lets look at the second reason first. Heavily militarized Sinhala society export its men (some women) to the Tamil lands. As the earlier SriLanka campaign infographic shows and this site highlights, almost the entire ( 19 out of 20 divisions) Sinhala military is stationed in Tamil areas. It is not a wonder then that the ethnic reaction to this occupation is polarized. And explains why the state continues to pour more and more money, as allocated in the 2014 budget, into maintaining a saturated military presence in the Tamil regions.
In order to sustain that occupation among a hostile population, the state needs to expand its intelligence apparatus. The 2014 budget shows a whopping 717% year over year increase in the capital expenditure for the State Intelligence Service. Tamils can be sure of increasing intimidation and harassment in the coming years.
In the corporate world, any time money is spent, the results are measured by the Return on that investment. So what do Sinhalese and Tamils get in return for this budget spent?
Sinhala narrative is that of heros going to a far off land and fighting the good fight. But when they come back and the money does not, would the Sinhala nation reaction be different?
I would suggest that the Sinhala economical order is propped up by remittance. External worker remittance has been the highest revenue generator for the country amounting to 8% of the GDP. More than 70% of the Sri Lankan population is categorized as rural. It is from here most of the unskilled labor for the foreign labor market is drawn from. How much this remittance economy has permeated into the Sinhala sociological order would make an interesting study if one does not exist already. Does this external worker remittance mindset also explain the remittance of the Sinhala military serving in Tamil regions?
A critical study by Selvarathinam Santhirasegaram of the Jaffna University shows “how military expansion in Sri Lanka contributed to achieve.. macroeconomic goal [of], reduction of unemployment and poverty.”. And his study concludes that it is so in the Sinhala areas because the military is Sinhala. So the Sinhala nation has an economic dependency on the military and benefits from the expansion as long as it happens externally in the Tamil regions. Sinhala nation recently witnessed the implications of militarization it its own soil in Welliweriya. That military response to a civilian protest generated the outrage it deserved among the Sinhalese and others. Unfortunately it never translated into an empathy for the Tamils. Tamil civilians are facing the same, but alien, Military at a saturation level of 3:1.
So what do Tamils get in return for the money spent?
Tamils continue to face the onslaught of occupation. Unable to remember the dead, and unable to move on with their daily life without military intrusion. The recent UN report highlighted the impact of the militarization on the Tamils. How close military installations are to a Tamil and how often they are visited by military men are documented in that report. This psychological and physical abuse by occupation is not the entire picture. Since we are on the topic of money, the economical impact is important.
Sri Lanka, when collecting statistics, groups employment by three industry groups: Agriculture, Industries, and services. Armed forces are counted under the Services group. But in the north and east armed forces are intruding into the agriculture and the industries groups as a way to generate revenue to offset the cost of the occupation. Infographic by the Sri Lanka Campaign and the report by the International Crisis Group highlight this phenomenon. This encroachment into other employment groups denies livelihood to the Tamils.
The 2014 budget of Sri Lanka is a further indication (as if another one is needed) of the entrenched and structural nature of oppression Tamils are facing in the island. A budget that aims to fund the occupation by troop saturation and expansion of intelligence services. If we are to learn from history, no amount of oppression will keep the Tamils wallowing in apathy. If the Sinhala nation continues to tolerate this alarming militarization of the Island, it needs to know those military chickens will one day have to come home to roost.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Calculate the annual pay rate of police. and assume the same for others. Divide the annual salary total by the estimated annual pay, this gets a close enough number for the personnel.
Assumptions: Army is not getting combat pay since the end of war. Allowances and others don’t skew too much towards the officers corps as compared to the police.
Police:
Personal Emoluments: 26,995,500,000
employment profile: 79,100
estimated per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Army:
Personal Emoluments: 93,582,860,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 274,208
Navy:
Personal Emoluments: 26,356,000,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 77226
Airforce:
Personal Emoluments: 20,988,100,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 61497
STF:
Personal Emoluments: 3,402,900,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 9970
total military (excluding police) : 422901
Read more!
by Eelapalan
Nov. 30, 2013
Following the money trail often leads to interesting findings. Sri Lanka’s 2014 budget is no exception. It is as Sinhala Buddhist as its constitution is but this analysis only focuses on one aspect which is the militarization.
Reference in the title to the Sinhala mouth is intentional. It is to highlight how it is being fed for the time being and how it is could potentially be robbed of food in the future. (Disclaimer: I am more interested in highlighting the general pattern through a trend analysis instead through absolute numbers. But would welcome input on accurate numbers if readers do have access. )
Of the eight sectors, National security & Law enforcement takes up 12.5% (Rs.309,057,392) of the total budget. To put it in context, that is more than both health and education combined total (Rs. 270,596,000). (1). This has been increasing year over year even after the war has ended. 80% of the total budget for this sector is for, curiously combined, Defence and Urban Development. A mere 20% is allocated for the other half of the sector heading which are Law & order, Justice, Rehabilitation and Prison Reform. And, of the total budget for this sector, 84% is recurrent expenditure: Meant for upkeep and maintenance. On the other hand, one subcategory, State Intelligence Service, got a whopping 717% year over year (YoY) increase for its Capital Expenditure.: Meant for Expansion.
So where does this lead to?
Occupation is an expensive business
Active combat is over and it is unlikely in any foreseeable future. So why an exorbitant amount of money is being spent in the name of Defense and National security in a country that has no external enemy? Sinhala nation would soon realize occupation is as (or more) expensive as the war was. Military occupation, as referred to by the elected Chief Minister of North Province and many others, to be successful, requires two key elements. One is troop saturation and the other is a pervasive Intelligent apparatus.
Troop Saturation
Sri Lanka has one of the highest percentage of military per work force in the world. Sri Lanka is ranked 25th on armed personnel per labor force at a 2.59% on this site. The first person to broach this subject in the island is Sivaram. In a brilliant analysis he did in 1997, titled, The Cat, a bell and a few strategists, he analysed the conflict through the concept of MPR (Military Participation Ratio). He concluded correctly, at that time, that LTTE would not need to abandon the military option. But when he said “ The maximum degree to which the [Sri Lankan] army can raise its manpower, other things being equal, may not therefore go much beyond .82 percent of the Sinhala population”, it turned out to be incorrect. Sri Lankan military did raise its manpower beyond that and it happened with recruitments during cease fires periods (1995, 2001). See this chart. Even Though this chart is for armed personnel per labor force it correlates the same way to the armed personnel per Sinhala population base.
If the state is willing to recruit during the peacetime, Sinhala youth were willing to join the military in bigger numbers.
I believe the percentage of armed personnel per labor force in Sri Lanka, looked at it correctly, it much higher. Sri Lanka budget proposal deliberately does not list the numbers for the military personnel but does so for the police. So a quick reverse engineering (Explained at the end of the post ) shows that the total military personnel in Sri Lanka by conservative measure will be over 350,000. it is in line with this Srilanka Campaigninfographic. The very latest statistics from Sri Lanka shows a labor force of (Counted as 15 & above) 8,861, 919. So this alone would put the percentage of armed personnel per labor force at 4%, making Sri Lanka the 12th, not the 25th, in the world. But that still does not reveal the entire trend. If you were to account for the military recruitment age and understand one absolutely important factor that the Sri Lankan military is mono ethnic, it would move Sri Lanka well above in the ranking. Sri Lankan military is Sinhala, mono ethnic is important for two reasons. One, it shows the military participation and the dependence of the Sinhala nation on it (shown later). Second, it shows a much deeper sociological order of externalizing occupation.
Lets look at the second reason first. Heavily militarized Sinhala society export its men (some women) to the Tamil lands. As the earlier SriLanka campaign infographic shows and this site highlights, almost the entire ( 19 out of 20 divisions) Sinhala military is stationed in Tamil areas. It is not a wonder then that the ethnic reaction to this occupation is polarized. And explains why the state continues to pour more and more money, as allocated in the 2014 budget, into maintaining a saturated military presence in the Tamil regions.
Intelligence Apparatus
In order to sustain that occupation among a hostile population, the state needs to expand its intelligence apparatus. The 2014 budget shows a whopping 717% year over year increase in the capital expenditure for the State Intelligence Service. Tamils can be sure of increasing intimidation and harassment in the coming years.
Return on Occupation
In the corporate world, any time money is spent, the results are measured by the Return on that investment. So what do Sinhalese and Tamils get in return for this budget spent?
Sinhala Nation
Sinhala narrative is that of heros going to a far off land and fighting the good fight. But when they come back and the money does not, would the Sinhala nation reaction be different?
I would suggest that the Sinhala economical order is propped up by remittance. External worker remittance has been the highest revenue generator for the country amounting to 8% of the GDP. More than 70% of the Sri Lankan population is categorized as rural. It is from here most of the unskilled labor for the foreign labor market is drawn from. How much this remittance economy has permeated into the Sinhala sociological order would make an interesting study if one does not exist already. Does this external worker remittance mindset also explain the remittance of the Sinhala military serving in Tamil regions?
A critical study by Selvarathinam Santhirasegaram of the Jaffna University shows “how military expansion in Sri Lanka contributed to achieve.. macroeconomic goal [of], reduction of unemployment and poverty.”. And his study concludes that it is so in the Sinhala areas because the military is Sinhala. So the Sinhala nation has an economic dependency on the military and benefits from the expansion as long as it happens externally in the Tamil regions. Sinhala nation recently witnessed the implications of militarization it its own soil in Welliweriya. That military response to a civilian protest generated the outrage it deserved among the Sinhalese and others. Unfortunately it never translated into an empathy for the Tamils. Tamil civilians are facing the same, but alien, Military at a saturation level of 3:1.
So what do Tamils get in return for the money spent?
Tamil Nation
Tamils continue to face the onslaught of occupation. Unable to remember the dead, and unable to move on with their daily life without military intrusion. The recent UN report highlighted the impact of the militarization on the Tamils. How close military installations are to a Tamil and how often they are visited by military men are documented in that report. This psychological and physical abuse by occupation is not the entire picture. Since we are on the topic of money, the economical impact is important.
Sri Lanka, when collecting statistics, groups employment by three industry groups: Agriculture, Industries, and services. Armed forces are counted under the Services group. But in the north and east armed forces are intruding into the agriculture and the industries groups as a way to generate revenue to offset the cost of the occupation. Infographic by the Sri Lanka Campaign and the report by the International Crisis Group highlight this phenomenon. This encroachment into other employment groups denies livelihood to the Tamils.
The 2014 budget of Sri Lanka is a further indication (as if another one is needed) of the entrenched and structural nature of oppression Tamils are facing in the island. A budget that aims to fund the occupation by troop saturation and expansion of intelligence services. If we are to learn from history, no amount of oppression will keep the Tamils wallowing in apathy. If the Sinhala nation continues to tolerate this alarming militarization of the Island, it needs to know those military chickens will one day have to come home to roost.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
A logical calculation of the number of military personnel:
Calculate the annual pay rate of police. and assume the same for others. Divide the annual salary total by the estimated annual pay, this gets a close enough number for the personnel.
Assumptions: Army is not getting combat pay since the end of war. Allowances and others don’t skew too much towards the officers corps as compared to the police.
Police:
Personal Emoluments: 26,995,500,000
employment profile: 79,100
estimated per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Army:
Personal Emoluments: 93,582,860,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 274,208
Navy:
Personal Emoluments: 26,356,000,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 77226
Airforce:
Personal Emoluments: 20,988,100,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 61497
STF:
Personal Emoluments: 3,402,900,000
per person annual spend: Rs.341283
Estimated employment profile: 9970
total military (excluding police) : 422901
Read more!
Review: A new day in Asia
A new day in Asia
by C. Raja Mohan
Indian Express
Dec. 2, 2013
Rapidly unfolding developments to our east and west — the unexpected détente between the United States and Iran and the growing confrontation between China and Japan — demand that New Delhi discard its traditional impulse to view Asia through the anti-Western prism. The idea of Asian solidarity against the West, developed during the colonial era, has long been presumed to be a fundamental principle of India's foreign policy.
Despite repeated challenges to this proposition from the real world, Delhi pretends that nothing has changed. Unlike in the past, India's reluctance to confront the sources of Asian geopolitics will involve many costs. A globalised Indian economy today is very sensitive to regional developments, and ideological posturing meant for domestic politics could complicate the pursuit of India's national interests in Asia.
At the same time, given its size and the relative increase in its regional weight, India is in a good position to shape regional outcomes. But only if Delhi is ready to shed some of its foreign policy shibboleths. India must come to terms with the fact that some of the major certitudes that guided global politics since the end of the Cold War are beginning to fade way. Post-Cold War triumphalism in America gave birth to extraordinary hubris. Both the left and right in America believed that US power is inexhaustible and can be deployed to change the world. This delusion translated into profound tragedies in the greater Middle East. The hope that America can promote democracy, rebuild failed states and roll back the spread of advanced technologies across the developing world has come a cropper in the Middle East.
After two exhausting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, US President Barack Obama has become the biggest champion of a restrained foreign policy for America. In avoiding a military involvement in Syria and actively seeking a modus vivendi with Iran, Obama has invited the wrath of American foreign policy hawks. But his decision to put America on a less adventurous path in the Middle East and focus on nation-building at home has much popular support. Many people in the world, including in India, who agonised about unrestrained American power, must now come to terms with an America that is ready to downsize its global role.
Obama's realism was not enough to produce the interim nuclear accord with Iran; it needed pragmatism in Tehran. President Hassan Rouhani, backed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has challenged the powerful domestic proponents of a permanent confrontation with the US. While the effort by Rouhani and Obama might yet fall apart, there is no denying that anti-Americanism is no longer politically chic in Asia. Few countries in the world have had so many real reasons to be anti-American than the Islamic Republic of Iran — from the CIA coup against an elected leader in 1954, to support for an authoritarian monarchy that lasted many decades, to an intense hostility to Tehran since the revolution of 1979. In seeking political accommodation with the US, which has been long demonised in Iran, and offering significant nuclear concessions, Rouhani and Khamenei have buried the logic of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
If the relative decline of America has begun to induce some political realism into US foreign policy, the clamour for American support is rapidly rising in East Asia. Stunned by Beijing's assertion of power and its muscular approach to territorial disputes, many of China's Asian neighbours are seeking more intensive defence and security cooperation with Washington. Communist Vietnam, which fought against America in the 1960s and 1970s, is now eager to sustain US military presence in the region. Manila, which threw America out of its naval and air bases at the end of the 1980s, now wants the US military to return and prevent China from nibbling away at the territory of the Philippines.
It is only in India, it seems, ideological considerations take precedence over national security considerations. Keeping some distance from the US in East and West Asia has long been a major theme of Indian diplomacy. While a large nation like India cannot ever align with the US, seeking deliberate distance from Washington for presumed ideological reasons has had a corrosive effect on India's worldview. Recall the debate in 2005, when many foreign policy pundits in Delhi denounced India for voting with the US on the Iran issue at the IAEA. They were asking India to sacrifice its own interests, such as ending its long nuclear isolation, for preserving what was called Delhi's "principled" foreign policy.
In East Asia too, the idea of maintaining distance from the US is now considered important for the preservation of India's strategic autonomy. For many in Asia, in contrast, it is the rise of China that constrains their strategic autonomy. Acknowledging that fact, however, goes against political correctness in the UPA government.
Finally, India's obsession with non-alignment and anti-Western solidarity often prevents it from seeing the multiple contradictions within East and West Asia. In the Middle East, it is not just the US and other great powers that are shaping the region's destiny. The growing contradiction between the interests of Iran and Saudi Arabia and the mounting sectarian tension between the Shia and Sunni are perhaps as consequential today as the role of great powers. In East Asia, China's conflicts with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines are as critical as the uncertainty in the relations between Beijing and Washington.
Managing these regional contradictions will be a major challenge for India's Asia policy in the coming years. Non-alignment, strategic autonomy and Asian solidarity might be attractive slogans for some, but offer no guidance for the conduct of India's foreign policy in East Asia and the Middle East. To cope with the new geopolitical imperatives, India must learn to deal with Asia on its own terms and stop imposing its ideological preferences on the region.
C RAJA MOHAN
The writer is a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and a contributing editor for 'The Indian Express'
express@expressindia.com
Read more!
by C. Raja Mohan
Indian Express
Dec. 2, 2013
Rapidly unfolding developments to our east and west — the unexpected détente between the United States and Iran and the growing confrontation between China and Japan — demand that New Delhi discard its traditional impulse to view Asia through the anti-Western prism. The idea of Asian solidarity against the West, developed during the colonial era, has long been presumed to be a fundamental principle of India's foreign policy.
Despite repeated challenges to this proposition from the real world, Delhi pretends that nothing has changed. Unlike in the past, India's reluctance to confront the sources of Asian geopolitics will involve many costs. A globalised Indian economy today is very sensitive to regional developments, and ideological posturing meant for domestic politics could complicate the pursuit of India's national interests in Asia.
At the same time, given its size and the relative increase in its regional weight, India is in a good position to shape regional outcomes. But only if Delhi is ready to shed some of its foreign policy shibboleths. India must come to terms with the fact that some of the major certitudes that guided global politics since the end of the Cold War are beginning to fade way. Post-Cold War triumphalism in America gave birth to extraordinary hubris. Both the left and right in America believed that US power is inexhaustible and can be deployed to change the world. This delusion translated into profound tragedies in the greater Middle East. The hope that America can promote democracy, rebuild failed states and roll back the spread of advanced technologies across the developing world has come a cropper in the Middle East.
After two exhausting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, US President Barack Obama has become the biggest champion of a restrained foreign policy for America. In avoiding a military involvement in Syria and actively seeking a modus vivendi with Iran, Obama has invited the wrath of American foreign policy hawks. But his decision to put America on a less adventurous path in the Middle East and focus on nation-building at home has much popular support. Many people in the world, including in India, who agonised about unrestrained American power, must now come to terms with an America that is ready to downsize its global role.
Obama's realism was not enough to produce the interim nuclear accord with Iran; it needed pragmatism in Tehran. President Hassan Rouhani, backed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has challenged the powerful domestic proponents of a permanent confrontation with the US. While the effort by Rouhani and Obama might yet fall apart, there is no denying that anti-Americanism is no longer politically chic in Asia. Few countries in the world have had so many real reasons to be anti-American than the Islamic Republic of Iran — from the CIA coup against an elected leader in 1954, to support for an authoritarian monarchy that lasted many decades, to an intense hostility to Tehran since the revolution of 1979. In seeking political accommodation with the US, which has been long demonised in Iran, and offering significant nuclear concessions, Rouhani and Khamenei have buried the logic of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
If the relative decline of America has begun to induce some political realism into US foreign policy, the clamour for American support is rapidly rising in East Asia. Stunned by Beijing's assertion of power and its muscular approach to territorial disputes, many of China's Asian neighbours are seeking more intensive defence and security cooperation with Washington. Communist Vietnam, which fought against America in the 1960s and 1970s, is now eager to sustain US military presence in the region. Manila, which threw America out of its naval and air bases at the end of the 1980s, now wants the US military to return and prevent China from nibbling away at the territory of the Philippines.
It is only in India, it seems, ideological considerations take precedence over national security considerations. Keeping some distance from the US in East and West Asia has long been a major theme of Indian diplomacy. While a large nation like India cannot ever align with the US, seeking deliberate distance from Washington for presumed ideological reasons has had a corrosive effect on India's worldview. Recall the debate in 2005, when many foreign policy pundits in Delhi denounced India for voting with the US on the Iran issue at the IAEA. They were asking India to sacrifice its own interests, such as ending its long nuclear isolation, for preserving what was called Delhi's "principled" foreign policy.
In East Asia too, the idea of maintaining distance from the US is now considered important for the preservation of India's strategic autonomy. For many in Asia, in contrast, it is the rise of China that constrains their strategic autonomy. Acknowledging that fact, however, goes against political correctness in the UPA government.
Finally, India's obsession with non-alignment and anti-Western solidarity often prevents it from seeing the multiple contradictions within East and West Asia. In the Middle East, it is not just the US and other great powers that are shaping the region's destiny. The growing contradiction between the interests of Iran and Saudi Arabia and the mounting sectarian tension between the Shia and Sunni are perhaps as consequential today as the role of great powers. In East Asia, China's conflicts with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines are as critical as the uncertainty in the relations between Beijing and Washington.
Managing these regional contradictions will be a major challenge for India's Asia policy in the coming years. Non-alignment, strategic autonomy and Asian solidarity might be attractive slogans for some, but offer no guidance for the conduct of India's foreign policy in East Asia and the Middle East. To cope with the new geopolitical imperatives, India must learn to deal with Asia on its own terms and stop imposing its ideological preferences on the region.
C RAJA MOHAN
The writer is a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and a contributing editor for 'The Indian Express'
express@expressindia.com
Read more!
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Review: Check Your Sinhala Privilege
originally from the original post on the Check Your Des(h)i Privilege blog
By Ahila, Ram & Sinthujan
The social, political, and economic arrangements of a society can place some people in a privileged position relative to others, particularly with respect to important goods, like institutional representation, economic resources, and even less tangible goods like “respect” and “welfare”. Since societal arrangements are not always brought into reflective awareness, it is unsurprising when even well meaning and well-intentioned members of privileged groups are unaware of how they may benefit from social arrangements relative to members of other groups. Many times have we experienced Sinhalese people unable and unwilling to recognize the privilege they hold vis-à-vis non-Sinhalese groups in Sri Lanka and beyond. Sometimes they may well be aware of some of the difficulties faced by non-Sinhalese. Sometimes they may even work for the betterment of other communities in the island, but this hardly ever translates into wider acknowledgment of the privilege centred around their Sinhala identity.
The denial of these privileges is widespread. Often we find Sinhalese people relativising the inequalities felt by Tamils and Muslims, deflecting the undercurrent of racism that produces systemic and sociocultural inequalities which continue to haunt the island its diasporas.
This list attempts to highlight some of the privileges provided to Sinhala people in Sri Lanka and beyond just because they are, yes, ethnically Sinhalese. Noting these privileges are not meant to antagonize or alienate Sinhalese people but rather raise awareness and self-consciousness about how ethnic identities indeed do play a role in the way they perceive, interact, and ultimately, politicize minorities on the island as well as its diasporas. It is also meant to show the extensive ways that ethnic identity can track inequalities in opportunity and welfare within a society. With this compilation we hope to ignite meaningful conversations and introspections into what it means to be Sinhalese and ultimately what it means to not be Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and beyond.
(Some of our points are directly referenced or influenced by Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”).
Many of you will call us racist for having called you out on your privileges.
Read more!
By Ahila, Ram & Sinthujan
The social, political, and economic arrangements of a society can place some people in a privileged position relative to others, particularly with respect to important goods, like institutional representation, economic resources, and even less tangible goods like “respect” and “welfare”. Since societal arrangements are not always brought into reflective awareness, it is unsurprising when even well meaning and well-intentioned members of privileged groups are unaware of how they may benefit from social arrangements relative to members of other groups. Many times have we experienced Sinhalese people unable and unwilling to recognize the privilege they hold vis-à-vis non-Sinhalese groups in Sri Lanka and beyond. Sometimes they may well be aware of some of the difficulties faced by non-Sinhalese. Sometimes they may even work for the betterment of other communities in the island, but this hardly ever translates into wider acknowledgment of the privilege centred around their Sinhala identity.
The denial of these privileges is widespread. Often we find Sinhalese people relativising the inequalities felt by Tamils and Muslims, deflecting the undercurrent of racism that produces systemic and sociocultural inequalities which continue to haunt the island its diasporas.
This list attempts to highlight some of the privileges provided to Sinhala people in Sri Lanka and beyond just because they are, yes, ethnically Sinhalese. Noting these privileges are not meant to antagonize or alienate Sinhalese people but rather raise awareness and self-consciousness about how ethnic identities indeed do play a role in the way they perceive, interact, and ultimately, politicize minorities on the island as well as its diasporas. It is also meant to show the extensive ways that ethnic identity can track inequalities in opportunity and welfare within a society. With this compilation we hope to ignite meaningful conversations and introspections into what it means to be Sinhalese and ultimately what it means to not be Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and beyond.
(Some of our points are directly referenced or influenced by Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”).
Sinhala privilege in Sri Lanka & diasporas
- You can call yourself Sri Lankan without ever being questioned about the place of your own ethnicity within the national spectrum because your ethnicity IS viewed as coextensive with the national identity.
- You don’t have to overthink the question of ‘home’ as much as others insofar as you could easily travel back and forth between your country of origin and your country of residence.
- You can think ethnic and identity politics are unnecessary because we are all “Sri Lankan”.
- You can incorporate and assimilate the cultures of minorities to your wishes and negate them and externalize them to your liking.
- You don’t have to struggle to be recognized as a people, identity and nation with rights and a distinct history.
- You don’t have to question the writing of history of the country and its people because your presence won’t be unsettled or threatened by the current and dominant narrative.
- You can see your people’s history and art being exhibited anywhere where there is a label of Sri Lanka or Sri Lankan to be seen, i.e. international exhibitions, museums, galleries, festivals, etc..
- You never have to question Western characterizations of Buddhism as a non-violent religion, despite Buddhist violence against religious minorities being commonplace in Sri Lanka
- You can benefit from Orientalist perceptions of Buddhism by automatically being acquitted of accusations of being the aggressor in the conflict by fact of being Buddhist.
- You can benefit from anti-colonial and anti-imperial politics as a postcolonial people while ignoring the neo-colonial policies of the ethnic majority government.
- You can claim that we were all victims when only some of you experienced loss or physical fear for life and security.
- You can feel entitled to talk about societal, cultural, economic, political affairs of Tamils as if you are an ethnic insider.
- You can pretend to know it all, just because you have one Tamil or Muslim friend or acquintance.
- You can talk casually about “forgiving and moving on” because your community hasn’t borne the brunt of ethnic violence.
- You can talk about reconciliation without ever talking about truth and compensation for historical and contemporary injustices faced by non-Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka.
- You can deny racial violence in Sri Lanka by deflecting to the JVP insurgencies.
- You can tell Tamils they are living in the past while you don’t acknowledge how the past has affected their present day circumstances.
- You can think things have been worse in the past thus we shouldn’t complain so much about the present.
- You can narrativise others’ issue, frame them, translate them and word them in eloquent English without ever being questioned on your ethnicity and your subjectivities.
- You can say you want justice for Tamils but when a UN resolution is passed critical of Sri Lanka you feel like standing by and “protecting” your nation.
- You can publicly mourn the anti-Tamil pogrom of Karuppu July 1983 but remain conspicuously silent on the burnt earth tactics of the 2009 mass slaughter by the government forces.
- You can say you’re neutral in your position towards the conflict while everyone else is occupied with biases.
- You can tell diasporic Tamils that anti-government advocacy is negatively affecting their community at home while you will not acknowledge how your virtual silence or obfuscation of “majority-politics” is negatively affecting Tamils and all other people in the island, including Sinhalese.
- You can tell Tamils post-2009 that the war is over and they can all return now in peace without acknowledging that the larger part of Tamils fled from the state forces instead of the resistance movement.
- You can say boycotting Sri Lanka or Sri Lankan products, national events, sports, etc., is futile, extremist, immoral and unpatriotic but when you see a Tamil store or restaurant that displays LTTE and/or Tamil Eelam support, then, you start to notoriously avoid it and defame it.
- You can have no reservations in calling Sri Lankan Army soldiers ‘heroes’, yet bemoan and criminalizeTamils for calling LTTE combatans ‘heroes’ or ‘martyrs’.
- You can be liberal enough to consistently write and post about the violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka and go mute when the continuing violence against Tamils is thematized.
- You can think explaining your minority complex in regards to greater South Asian demographics will explain your disregard for minority rights.
- When you see state symbols, you can be reassured that your ethnicity is represented through the lion.
- You can get aggrevated by public displays of symbols Tamil nationalism but have little qualms about the presence of lion symbol in everyday life.
- You can call Sri Lanka a pluralistic democracy but have little concern over the prohibition of non Sinhalese (Buddhists) to become it’s elected national leader.
- You can vote in elections without fearing for your safety as a consequence of your electoral choices.
- You can be appalled by Tamil demands for self-determination through the ballot but never question the self-determination the Sinhalese people benefit from.
- You can think that putting an orange and green stripe on the Sri Lankan flag is sufficient to be inclusive of all ethnicities and religious groups.
- You can think that the Sinhala name ‘Sri Lanka’ is neutral and inclusive of all of our identities and experiences.
- Most of you never had to stop speaking your mothertongue in public or stop wearing identity markers such as religious symbol in the state that claims to represent you to not be identified as being part of your ethnicity.
- You can fly the national carrier ‘Sri Lankan’ and see your culture represented in the costumes and greetings.
Sinhala privilege Sri Lanka
- You can receive access to areas and facilities in Sri Lanka with the mere ability of speaking Sinhalese and carrying a Sinhalese name.
- You can visit the North and East as war and poverty tourists and call Tamils who are unable to travel to their homes as being disconnected.
- When you visit the North and East, you don’t have to worry about the traces you leave, the people you meet and their respective safety.
- You can engage with the military without being insecure about the position you’ve put yourself in.
- You can buy land and property in any geography without feeling threatened by settler colonialism
- You can critique the government and still be invited to private dinner parties and banquets arranged by the government.
- When you see signboards, you can be reassured that your language is always present.
- When you read signboards, you can be assured that the grammar of your language isn’t misused.
- You can more readily produce art and literature about the conflict and get national and international recognition.
- You can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of your own ethnicity widely represented.
- When you are told about your national heritage or about “civilization,” you are shown that people of your ethnicity made it what it is.
- You can be sure that your children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their ethnicity.
- You don’t have to care about the politics of tokenism because you are part of the ethnic majority that can tokenize minorities.
- You can be sure of having your voice heard in a group in which you are the only member of your ethnicity
- You can pass checkpoints after checkpoints and be pretty well assured that you will not be harassed.
- You do not have to educate your children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
- You can be sure that your children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms.
- You can be sure that you will not be excluded from the education or employment sector because of your ethnicity.
- You are never seen as speaking on behalf of your ethnic group.
- You can criticize the government and talk about how much you fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
- You can be pretty sure that if you ask to talk to the “person in charge”, you will be facing a person of your ethnicity.
- You can go home from most meetings of organizations you belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
- You can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another ethnicity is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize yours.
- If you declare there is a racial/ethnic issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial/ethnic issue at hand, your ethnicity will lend you more credibility than a Tamil or Muslim will have.
- You can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, you can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
- Your culture gives you little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other ethnicities.
- You can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
- You can be sure that if you need legal, medical or social help, your ethnicity will not work against you.
- You can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of your ethnicity.
- You can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of your ethnicity
- You will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
- You can elect chauvinist politicians and yet pretend to champion “democracy” and “liberation” for Tamils.
- You can venture into broken homes and people on your war tours and assume to know it all.
- You can say genocide hasn’t happened because no one you met on your tour in occupied and militarized land mentioned the “G word”.
- You can support charities in the North and East while never having to acknowledge the institutional history that created today’s conditions.
- You think that Indian soap operas are negatively influencing the youth in Sri Lanka by instilling Hindu popular customs by assuming Hindu culture is a foreign product despite 15% of the islands population being native Hindu.
- You go to Prabhakaran’s bunker in Mullaitheevu on a war spectator tour and shake your head about the “luxuries” he enjoyed while you ignore the extravagant lifestyle of almost every Sinhalese leader.
- You think “self determination” is unwarranted and yet think British colonialism was bad for the Sinhalese but consider Sinhala neo-colonialism as “growing together”.
- You never admit to the power relation that will always belie any Sinhala-Tamil relation.
- You think inflation in the South is equal to engineered impoverishment and displacement in the North and East.
- You think that string hoppers and kottu roti are enough to make a happy masala out of all of us
- You think fear of suicide bombers is equal to the fear of the omnipresent hands of state terror.
- You think that anti-Muslim attitudes are unconnected to the racism and xenophobia experienced by Tamils.
- You can go to the police and court and expect to sign papers in your own language.
- You don’t have to fear being harassed, tortured or raped based on your ethnic background.
- You don’t have to fear being racially profiled and stereotyped as terrorists despite state-terrorism
- You can defy ethnic majoritarian government policies and yet fear fewer reprisals.
In the diasporas
- Most of you haven’t lost your property and identity when you left the country while countless others, mostly Tamils, have because of state oppression.
- Most of you established yourself abroad with more social, economic and cultural capital than most Tamils ever had.
- Most of you haven’t gone through the traumatic experience of fleeing and becoming refugees.
- You can question the legitimacy of refugee status granted to Tamils (past and present) but don’t question the depth of discrimination , inequalities and racial violence in the country that made them refugees in the first place.
- Most of you don’t have to fear the dispossession of property back home.
- Most of you don’t have to fear the nationalisation of your savings in banks back home.
- You can benefit from the facilities established, such as shops and restaurants, by Tamil refugees who have eased your transnational cosmopolitan life by bringing you Sri Lankan items into your diasporic existence.
- You can think that being economically established in the diaspora erases the losses experienced back home and the claims to ancestral lands and a political solution for Tamils.
- You can assume every diaspora Tamil to be socio-economically well-to-do.
- You can blame the ‘Tamil diaspora’ for being physically removed from the island without ever once asking why so many had to become so in the first place.
- You can be quick to project your anti-Tamil sentiments on diasporic Tamils yet can claim to not be ethnically biased in Sri Lanka.
- You canmake countless of generalizations about diasporic Tamils while claiming plurality and diversity for Sinhalese.
- You can think of diasporic Tamils as being attached to parochial concerns without ever admitting to your own diasporic condition.
- You can blame ‘the diaspora’ for its support of the Tamil resistance and yet get never be blamed for your support of the government.
- You can apply for a visa to Sri Lanka without wondering what the government will do with your records.
- You can obtain visas for countries like India without fearing rejection based on ethnic and/or political association.
- You can have access to Sri Lankan institutions abroad and at home like no one else has.
- You don’t have to fear being filmed if attend an anti-government demonstration.
- You don’t have to fear for the lives of your family if you voice open criticism against the government.
- You don’t have to worry about having your Sri Lankan scholarships revoked if you participate in protests against Sri Lankan state policies.
- You think that Sri Lankan student societies should suffice for making Tamil students feel politically and culturally represented in universities.
- You can think MIA is a terrorist because she articulates anti-Tamil violence through her art but praise Sinhalese rapper and actor DeLon for his nationalist pro-Sinhala stances.
- You can post videos on YouTube about what is Sri Lankan that only responds to majority Sinhala cultural references. Isn’t that so Sri Lankan?
Many of you will call us racist for having called you out on your privileges.
Read more!
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Opinion: Notes about Puttalam and the 2013 Provincial Elections
by Gogol G.
Three provincial councils of GoSL will have elections in exactly 3 weeks. Much media attention is given to the Northern Provincial Council's elections for various reasons. Those reasons all boil down to the fate of Tamils and "Tamil Eelam" -- the traditional areas of inhabitation, and thus homeland, of Tamil-speaking people. Some have presciently described the fate of Tamil Eelam, but what then of its borders? One answer is the incisive, witty quip from Kittu about painting by colours wherever GoSL has bombed and attacked. Most Western and Indian media describe it in terms of SL's current provincial divisions, namely the Northern and the Eastern ones. But that omits the Puttalam district from the full map of Tamil Eelam. Under current GoSL boundaries, Puttalam is 1 of 2 districts in the North West Province, and the North West Province, just like the Northern Province is 1 of the 3 councils having elections next month.
Whether Puttalam "belongs" in Tamil Eelam is a contested point, and there are good reasons on both sides why the contestation exists. But before delving into history, let's try to see how emerging regional security issues play out into the future.
If the reports are true, India is being infiltrated by Pakistani militants who are using Sri Lanka as a launchpad and entering through Tamil Nadu. There is also the ongoing saga of fisherman from Tamil Nadu being directly punished by the SL Navy, and no real end in sight despite the political hay people make. This makes the narrow waterway separating Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka an important area in terms of security, and all along the areas of land nearest each other on both sides are Tamils. Puttalam is an important part of this stretch, too, as it faces Thoothukudi (Tuticorin), a developing port, and Kanniyakumari. The best way for the future of the Palk Strait to remain stable and an area of commerce is if Tamils are on both sides of the negotiating table, representing the lands that they administer respectively. And that much is clear given the way water resources in South India -- namely, the rivers -- have been mis-/shared. And, not surprisingly, the non-constructive, negligent attitude that India has maintained towards Tamil grievances over river water vis-a-vis Kerala and Karnataka is the same attitude it applies to Tamil grievances vis-a-vis the SL Navy. When we take the linguistic and ethnic identity issues out of the equation, resolving issues like over-fishing or security can be achieved in constructive ways.
And then there's the environmental issue. If it were up to Southern Lanka, they would drill for oil in the Mannar basin for all it's worth. If there is an oil spill, it's only Tamils who would be directly affected, right? Although India is wary of the oil reserves being sucked dry by China before India has an opportunity to get at them, the concern is not only a hypocritical self-serving one. This is the same sort of cavalier attitude that India maintains to the protests of Tamils in Koodankulam who protest a Russian-built nuclear plant in this coastal town also on the Mannar basin. If the power plant experiences a meltdown, it will only be Tamils who are affected. Both oil drilling and a nuclear reactors are severe natural disasters waiting to happen. Just look at the oil disaster in the US coast around the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. When you factor in the fact that this part of South Asia is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, just like the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the consequences can be severe. Just look at the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, also located on a earthquake fault line and tsunami-prone body of water. Only 2 years later are we hearing news that the disaster is much worse than we thought, and that radioactive particles can reach all the way across the Pacific Ocean as soon as 2014. The coral reefs in the Mannar basin are an important and delicate part of the ecosystem that does not stand a chance to survive against these short-sighted exploitative schemes. So both locally and globally, the environment and the people are severely threatened by the callously negligent decisions of colonial-minded rulers in Delhi and Colombo who don't speak their language nor care about their lives and livelihoods. And when it comes to ideas like the Sethusamudram idea to dredge up the Palk Strait, the benefits are small and the risks are great, for the same reasons as mentioned above. In fact, there is no real trade benefit when you consider the depths required to accommodate the next generation of super-barges plying the seas. The only benefit is slightly easier access of Indian submarines, and that, too, would be mooted if the radars that Pakistan is installing in Jaffna are accompanied by sonar. But ultimately, the Sethusamduram idea should be decided by the people of the Palk Strait, and that is best done when the concerned parties are on the same page, speaking each other's language, so to speak.
So why are Tamils the majority of the people on both sides of the Palk Strait? This is not a coincidence, but it is the legacy of a history of Tamils in these areas for more than 2000 years. We know that there were Tamils in Mannar at least 2000 years ago based on the buried city called Maanthai. The Thiruketheeswaram Temple near Mannar is a remnant of this bustling port city that connected major Indian Ocean trade, from China to the Middle East. It is probably worth repeating that the South Indians who could sail to Australia 4000 years ago, bringing some of their culture and their more advanced technology with them, also had settled Ceylon, since Ceylon was so close and unavoidable on any trip south or east. Throughout time, Puttalam was 1 of 2 capitals of the Jaffna kingdom, the other being Jaffna, of course. What made Puttalam valuable was the pearling industry in the Gulf of Mannar maintained by Tamils for over 3000 years. It is also well known that in those times, for ancient Rome, salt and pepper were so valuable that they were used in lieu of currency to pay their soldiers, or at least the ones "worth their salt", as the phrase originated. The Puttalam Lagoon, between Puttalam town and Kalpitti at the end of the peninsula, is an ideal place for valuable salt pans, and this is perhaps where Puttalam gets its name. (The Dead Sea no doubt also provided a source for salt, but the pepper had to come from present-day Kerala and perhaps SE Asia.)
Despite the passage of a few millennia, Puttalam was still a part of the Jaffna kingdom by the time the first European colonialists arrived. During the British period of colonial rule, Puttalam remained Tamil-speaking. Parts of it were given to Muslims for help with British counter-insurgency, but as the article says, "What remains as territorial demarcation of Muslims which was once ceded a Muslim territory by the Tamils should remain as such and there is no need to reclaim it as Tamil area." In British colonial tradition, provincial lines were drawn to split groups of people so as to weaken them as much as they were to convenience the wealth-extraction part of the colonial apparatus. Despite that, even at the beginning of the 20th century, a majority of Puttalam district was Tamil speaking. Due to conversions by the Portugese of coastal people to Catholicism, coupled with efforts to Sinhalicise the Tamil-speaking Christians during the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist movement spurred by people like Anagarika Dharmapala, Tamils adopted Sinhalese and Sinhalese names. For these people -- "Negombo Tamils" -- language and identity has become a fluid thing in what is a short period of time in the bigger picture. So what used to be a Tamil province in 100 years' time appears as if it is majority Sinhalese.
(Side note: the type of "Buddhist revivalism" espoused by people like Anagarika Dharmapala, considered the father of modern Singala Buddhism nationalism, is really just glorified racism buttressed by the rationale of a parallel universe. Dharmapala was born as Don David Hewavitarne into a Christian family and was influenced by the occultist sect of colonialists, the Theosophical Society, before discovering his new identity.)
(Side note: the question running through Tamils' minds is, with the rapid pace of unabashed and unbridled Sinhalicisation and colonisation happening in the Vanni by GoSL, will the Vanni demographics change so fast that what happened in Puttalam will take only 10 years, not 100 years?)
In the last 20 years, the demographics changes in Puttalam district have come from an influx of Muslims and Tamils from the north during the war. Most notably, the LTTE kicked out Muslims from Jaffna in 1990 overnight, thereby sending them to Puttalam. The formerly displaced Muslims now face a perplexing dilemma, where they feel more settled in Puttalam now than they do to their former home in Jaffna. The government agents in the Northern province, as well as NGOs, prioritise the issues of war-affected Tamil IDPs over those of the Muslims who were kicked out to Puttalam, citing that the Muslims have not experienced the same hardships, destruction, and loss of life. As the Northern Muslims now settle down in Puttalam, there are issues between them and the Muslims of Puttalam who have been there since the times of the British (as the British maps attest). So we can see that in a current map of the demography of Ceylon, the Muslim representation of northern Puttalam surprisingly survives. And we see that southern Puttalam has a noteworthy presence of Christians.
One of the villages in southern Puttalam that has surprisingly retained its Tamil identity is Udappu, which is a destination of Tamil NDPs from the Northern province (to a lesser degree than the Muslim displacement from Jaffna). Udappu residents speak a Tamil Nadu dialect of Tamil (different from Jaffna/Batticaloa Tamil), supposedly from its 400 year history as a settlement of fishermen from Tamil Nadu. And this is reminiscent of the question of the Upcountry Tamils, who are also descendants of Tamils from Tamil Nadu with a history of a couple of centuries -- what & where do they see themselves in a future where political rights are somehow guaranteed for everyone in the island? Surely, they will not live in sub-human closet-sized houses, without education, without citizenship, picking tea leaves as economic slaves. The Upcountry Tamil refugees who fled to India recently were given asylum in camps that were set up by the Indian government in the Nilgiris hills of Tamil Nadu, reminiscent of the landscape they came from. But the living conditions of those asylums in Tamil Nadu by the Indian government were just as bad, if not worse, then what they escaped, if that's possible. So it is not surprising that the affinity of Upcountry Tamils towards India is fading, and for good reason, but they're still Tamil and they need a place to belong to. It is apropos to mention here that one of the districts with a Tamil-speaking majority in the south is Nuwara Eliya, which is contained in the Central Province, and that is, along with the Northern Province and the North West Province, 1 of the 3 provinces going to the polls in 3 weeks' time.
So as CaFFE gets ready to monitor the upcoming elections, and the TNA is hard at work campaigning, and the UN and the world are keenly watching how GoSL behaves throughout the elections, and Mahinda Rajapakse knows he remains the island's potentate regardless of the provincial elections, all eyes will be on how the most brutalised of people in Ceylon register their voice in a secret ballot in the Northern Province. But while that is going on, away from the lights and media attention, Tamil-speaking people in the North West Province and the Central Province, hopefully, will be doing the same.
Read more!
Three provincial councils of GoSL will have elections in exactly 3 weeks. Much media attention is given to the Northern Provincial Council's elections for various reasons. Those reasons all boil down to the fate of Tamils and "Tamil Eelam" -- the traditional areas of inhabitation, and thus homeland, of Tamil-speaking people. Some have presciently described the fate of Tamil Eelam, but what then of its borders? One answer is the incisive, witty quip from Kittu about painting by colours wherever GoSL has bombed and attacked. Most Western and Indian media describe it in terms of SL's current provincial divisions, namely the Northern and the Eastern ones. But that omits the Puttalam district from the full map of Tamil Eelam. Under current GoSL boundaries, Puttalam is 1 of 2 districts in the North West Province, and the North West Province, just like the Northern Province is 1 of the 3 councils having elections next month.
Whether Puttalam "belongs" in Tamil Eelam is a contested point, and there are good reasons on both sides why the contestation exists. But before delving into history, let's try to see how emerging regional security issues play out into the future.
If the reports are true, India is being infiltrated by Pakistani militants who are using Sri Lanka as a launchpad and entering through Tamil Nadu. There is also the ongoing saga of fisherman from Tamil Nadu being directly punished by the SL Navy, and no real end in sight despite the political hay people make. This makes the narrow waterway separating Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka an important area in terms of security, and all along the areas of land nearest each other on both sides are Tamils. Puttalam is an important part of this stretch, too, as it faces Thoothukudi (Tuticorin), a developing port, and Kanniyakumari. The best way for the future of the Palk Strait to remain stable and an area of commerce is if Tamils are on both sides of the negotiating table, representing the lands that they administer respectively. And that much is clear given the way water resources in South India -- namely, the rivers -- have been mis-/shared. And, not surprisingly, the non-constructive, negligent attitude that India has maintained towards Tamil grievances over river water vis-a-vis Kerala and Karnataka is the same attitude it applies to Tamil grievances vis-a-vis the SL Navy. When we take the linguistic and ethnic identity issues out of the equation, resolving issues like over-fishing or security can be achieved in constructive ways.
And then there's the environmental issue. If it were up to Southern Lanka, they would drill for oil in the Mannar basin for all it's worth. If there is an oil spill, it's only Tamils who would be directly affected, right? Although India is wary of the oil reserves being sucked dry by China before India has an opportunity to get at them, the concern is not only a hypocritical self-serving one. This is the same sort of cavalier attitude that India maintains to the protests of Tamils in Koodankulam who protest a Russian-built nuclear plant in this coastal town also on the Mannar basin. If the power plant experiences a meltdown, it will only be Tamils who are affected. Both oil drilling and a nuclear reactors are severe natural disasters waiting to happen. Just look at the oil disaster in the US coast around the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. When you factor in the fact that this part of South Asia is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, just like the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the consequences can be severe. Just look at the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, also located on a earthquake fault line and tsunami-prone body of water. Only 2 years later are we hearing news that the disaster is much worse than we thought, and that radioactive particles can reach all the way across the Pacific Ocean as soon as 2014. The coral reefs in the Mannar basin are an important and delicate part of the ecosystem that does not stand a chance to survive against these short-sighted exploitative schemes. So both locally and globally, the environment and the people are severely threatened by the callously negligent decisions of colonial-minded rulers in Delhi and Colombo who don't speak their language nor care about their lives and livelihoods. And when it comes to ideas like the Sethusamudram idea to dredge up the Palk Strait, the benefits are small and the risks are great, for the same reasons as mentioned above. In fact, there is no real trade benefit when you consider the depths required to accommodate the next generation of super-barges plying the seas. The only benefit is slightly easier access of Indian submarines, and that, too, would be mooted if the radars that Pakistan is installing in Jaffna are accompanied by sonar. But ultimately, the Sethusamduram idea should be decided by the people of the Palk Strait, and that is best done when the concerned parties are on the same page, speaking each other's language, so to speak.
So why are Tamils the majority of the people on both sides of the Palk Strait? This is not a coincidence, but it is the legacy of a history of Tamils in these areas for more than 2000 years. We know that there were Tamils in Mannar at least 2000 years ago based on the buried city called Maanthai. The Thiruketheeswaram Temple near Mannar is a remnant of this bustling port city that connected major Indian Ocean trade, from China to the Middle East. It is probably worth repeating that the South Indians who could sail to Australia 4000 years ago, bringing some of their culture and their more advanced technology with them, also had settled Ceylon, since Ceylon was so close and unavoidable on any trip south or east. Throughout time, Puttalam was 1 of 2 capitals of the Jaffna kingdom, the other being Jaffna, of course. What made Puttalam valuable was the pearling industry in the Gulf of Mannar maintained by Tamils for over 3000 years. It is also well known that in those times, for ancient Rome, salt and pepper were so valuable that they were used in lieu of currency to pay their soldiers, or at least the ones "worth their salt", as the phrase originated. The Puttalam Lagoon, between Puttalam town and Kalpitti at the end of the peninsula, is an ideal place for valuable salt pans, and this is perhaps where Puttalam gets its name. (The Dead Sea no doubt also provided a source for salt, but the pepper had to come from present-day Kerala and perhaps SE Asia.)
Despite the passage of a few millennia, Puttalam was still a part of the Jaffna kingdom by the time the first European colonialists arrived. During the British period of colonial rule, Puttalam remained Tamil-speaking. Parts of it were given to Muslims for help with British counter-insurgency, but as the article says, "What remains as territorial demarcation of Muslims which was once ceded a Muslim territory by the Tamils should remain as such and there is no need to reclaim it as Tamil area." In British colonial tradition, provincial lines were drawn to split groups of people so as to weaken them as much as they were to convenience the wealth-extraction part of the colonial apparatus. Despite that, even at the beginning of the 20th century, a majority of Puttalam district was Tamil speaking. Due to conversions by the Portugese of coastal people to Catholicism, coupled with efforts to Sinhalicise the Tamil-speaking Christians during the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist movement spurred by people like Anagarika Dharmapala, Tamils adopted Sinhalese and Sinhalese names. For these people -- "Negombo Tamils" -- language and identity has become a fluid thing in what is a short period of time in the bigger picture. So what used to be a Tamil province in 100 years' time appears as if it is majority Sinhalese.
(Side note: the type of "Buddhist revivalism" espoused by people like Anagarika Dharmapala, considered the father of modern Singala Buddhism nationalism, is really just glorified racism buttressed by the rationale of a parallel universe. Dharmapala was born as Don David Hewavitarne into a Christian family and was influenced by the occultist sect of colonialists, the Theosophical Society, before discovering his new identity.)
(Side note: the question running through Tamils' minds is, with the rapid pace of unabashed and unbridled Sinhalicisation and colonisation happening in the Vanni by GoSL, will the Vanni demographics change so fast that what happened in Puttalam will take only 10 years, not 100 years?)
In the last 20 years, the demographics changes in Puttalam district have come from an influx of Muslims and Tamils from the north during the war. Most notably, the LTTE kicked out Muslims from Jaffna in 1990 overnight, thereby sending them to Puttalam. The formerly displaced Muslims now face a perplexing dilemma, where they feel more settled in Puttalam now than they do to their former home in Jaffna. The government agents in the Northern province, as well as NGOs, prioritise the issues of war-affected Tamil IDPs over those of the Muslims who were kicked out to Puttalam, citing that the Muslims have not experienced the same hardships, destruction, and loss of life. As the Northern Muslims now settle down in Puttalam, there are issues between them and the Muslims of Puttalam who have been there since the times of the British (as the British maps attest). So we can see that in a current map of the demography of Ceylon, the Muslim representation of northern Puttalam surprisingly survives. And we see that southern Puttalam has a noteworthy presence of Christians.
One of the villages in southern Puttalam that has surprisingly retained its Tamil identity is Udappu, which is a destination of Tamil NDPs from the Northern province (to a lesser degree than the Muslim displacement from Jaffna). Udappu residents speak a Tamil Nadu dialect of Tamil (different from Jaffna/Batticaloa Tamil), supposedly from its 400 year history as a settlement of fishermen from Tamil Nadu. And this is reminiscent of the question of the Upcountry Tamils, who are also descendants of Tamils from Tamil Nadu with a history of a couple of centuries -- what & where do they see themselves in a future where political rights are somehow guaranteed for everyone in the island? Surely, they will not live in sub-human closet-sized houses, without education, without citizenship, picking tea leaves as economic slaves. The Upcountry Tamil refugees who fled to India recently were given asylum in camps that were set up by the Indian government in the Nilgiris hills of Tamil Nadu, reminiscent of the landscape they came from. But the living conditions of those asylums in Tamil Nadu by the Indian government were just as bad, if not worse, then what they escaped, if that's possible. So it is not surprising that the affinity of Upcountry Tamils towards India is fading, and for good reason, but they're still Tamil and they need a place to belong to. It is apropos to mention here that one of the districts with a Tamil-speaking majority in the south is Nuwara Eliya, which is contained in the Central Province, and that is, along with the Northern Province and the North West Province, 1 of the 3 provinces going to the polls in 3 weeks' time.
So as CaFFE gets ready to monitor the upcoming elections, and the TNA is hard at work campaigning, and the UN and the world are keenly watching how GoSL behaves throughout the elections, and Mahinda Rajapakse knows he remains the island's potentate regardless of the provincial elections, all eyes will be on how the most brutalised of people in Ceylon register their voice in a secret ballot in the Northern Province. But while that is going on, away from the lights and media attention, Tamil-speaking people in the North West Province and the Central Province, hopefully, will be doing the same.
Read more!
Friday, August 23, 2013
Review: Issues of Human Rights of Women, Children, and Caste Under LTTE Rule
Excerpts come from A Fleeting Moment in My Country by human rights worker N. Malathy, who spent 4 years on the ground recording various aspects of life under the LTTE in 2006-2010. She conducted her work with knowledge of fluent Tamil and access to high-level representatives of all major institutions, groups, and governments who were relevant at the time.
My very first visit to Vanni in December, though short, was memorable. On this visit I befriended Janani in the forests of Vallipunam, where the Senchoolai children's home was set up. The location was chosen in order to be as far away from the battle lines of the pre-2002 ceasefire era as possible. I ended up there on the pretext of teaching music on the recorder. Anyone who knows anything about LTTE would have at least heard about the LTTE-run Senchoolai children's home for orphaned girls. This institution was formally opened in 1991 in Jaffna for the increasing number of children orphaned by the civil war.
...
I met very young girls as well as older girls. I heard their life stories, the great tragedies they were, in the surrounding Vallipunam jungle. Their stories, from a world very different to mine, sounded even more distant when heard in that surrounding. There was one very smart four-year-old who was rescued from among the ashes of a cemetery, and thus was named Sampavi, deriving from the Tamil word for ashes. There were several older girls who, as very young children, had witnessed the killing of their parents by the Lankan Military in their own home. Some had witnessed large scale massacres. Many of these girls who witnessed gruesome massacres were from the eastern areas, where massacres of civilians were very common in the 1980s, unnoticed by the outside. Many of the girls had brothers in Senchoolai's brother institution, Arivuchchoolai.
...
Unlike all other children's homes in Vanni, Senchoolai for girls and Arivuchchoolai for boys were funded directly by LTTE and were staffed by many LTTE members. In the case of Senchoolai, it was female members under Janani's leadership. Only a few LTTE members holding positions of high responsibility in these two institutions were permanently attached to them. Other members might have been assigned to these two institutions for period of time, and later moved out. All LTTE members, not just those serving in these two institutions, were encouraged to develop a special, caring relationship toward these two children's home. Most LTTE members did have a special place in their heart for these two institutions that was different from the way they related to other children's homes.
(pp. 40-42)
In the heyday of child soldier releases, getting funding for child soldiers was such a lucrative business for international NGOs, that they all wanted a part of it. The Action Plan took off with much media hype, but the implementation was frustrating to the released child soldiers and their families. These young people had become used to the life with LTTE that offered good food, occupation, discipline, and camaraderie. The rehabilitation program put in place by the international NGOs failed to rehabilitate the released children back into the civilian society. The LTTE said most of the released child soldiers were returning back to them, causing them a big headache. The LTTE accused the international NGOs of wasting the huge amounts of funds obtained for this rehabilitation and it unofficially withdrew from the Action Plan. Indeed a study commissioned by UNICEF in 2007 about this Action Plan found implementation problems due to the lack of coordination among the international NGO implementation partners.
(p. 62)
This meeting, intended as a launching pad for the Child Protection Authority (CPA), did not go anywhere. I, however, for the first time heard directly from Thamilselvan about the seriousness with which the LTTE intended to implement the minimum age policy of seventeen. I was even more confounded as to why it was so difficult to implement this policy.
It was after I left NESoHR and started working at Peace Secretariat that I had the opportunity to hear directly from many LTTE members. Things now started to become clearer to me. I noticed the noncommittal stance of some members towards the minimum age and the take-it-easy approach of some others towards this issue. The whole concept seemed alien and meaningless to LTTE members, and I was able to see that this derived from an institutional culture with two decades of history. It was a culture that predated the 2001 Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, a culture born of decades of actual experience of war. It was only in this 2001 Protocol that the age limit was set at eighteen for the first time, and that, too, only for non-state armed actors; states were permitted to recruit those under 18. This is a major point that has been missed in the media hype.
(pp. 92-93)
Once Pulitheevan asked me to take on the role of Director of [the Child Protection Authority], I knew that I was not going to lie back and accept the LTTE's softly-softly approach on the issue of child soldiers. I suspect the LTTE fraternity knew it too. In this role I worked with LTTE's liaison office, which was physically located adjacent to the Peace Secretariat, for liaising with international agencies. For more than one year, I had weekly meetings with UNICEF to discuss progress.
I had disagreements with both sides, the LTTE and UNICEF, and to some occasions I broke down and cried. Once it was because of the "mandate mentality" of UNICEF that displayed insensitivity to the plight of some children, mainly the girls. Once it was because of an LTTE action that ignored my "authority" in this area. For one year, all of 2007, this was my primary goal, ensuring that the LTTE did not fall back into the old softly-softly approach. It consumed me. I saw a clear demonstration of the non-nonsense approach of LTTE when I heard of middle-level LTTE leaders given punishment for recruiting children. It was mainly kitchen-duty punishment, which was a common form of mild punishment given to members. But when it was given to a leader, it was viewed as serious punishment and talked about. A senior female LTTE told me that when those under her recruited someone even a month younger than the specified age, her stomach churned in fear of punishment.
...
We came across several names of extremely young children from Batticaloa and Amaparai in the UNICEF list of LTTE child soldiers. We eventually traced these children in Senchoolai and Arivuchchoolai children's home. LTTE had taken these children, who were not receiving adequate care, into the branch of Senchoolai that was started in Batticaloa following the 2004 tsunami. When the LTTE withdrew from Batticaloa, these children were shifted to the Vanni Senchoolai and Arivuchchoolai. UNICEF refused to remove their names from the list, insisting that they would do so only after they were reunited with their families. But neither UNICEF nor ICRC were able to complete that task. In some cases they could not trace the families who had been displaced or gone missing following the tsunami. Even in cases where the families were traced, the Lankan government refused permission to take the children from Vanni to the eastern districts. Thus it remianed that even at this time, and despite the latest LTTE efforts, the youngest child in the LTTE was only seven years old. In fact, even in late 2007, there were international media reports, quoting UNICEF, that the youngest person in the LTTE was only seven years old. When I confronted the head of UNICEF Sri Lanka at that time about this report, the comment was that UNICEF could not do anything about it because it still was a "fact". The media kept reporting this "fact", a sexy issue, and UNICEF "could do nothing" about it, though they were fully aware of the background to the "seven-year-old LTTE member".
There were many more instances of misreporting by the media that convinced me of the unhealthy and biased media attraction to this issue, which was acknowledged privately to me by more than one UNICEF official. Some cases will illustrate my point. A nine-year-old girl with a mild intellectual handicap, who was abused at home, began behaving erratically at school. One day she was found hanging around in her class room late at night to avoid going home. An LTTE member eventually removed her from school and put her in the care of a children's home. Someone, probably a family member, reported this UNICEF. This child remained in the children's home even in early 2009 because she did not have a safe home to go to. Yet, she remained as a child soldier entry in the UNICEF database though UNICEF eventually removed her from their database.
(pp. 93-95)
It was interesting to observe that anti-castism was never discussed in the media. It seems this had already been dealt with and progress had been made. Harping on it was considered a step backwards rather than progressive; especially when some of the senior LTTE leaders, as well as the juniors, were from all types of castes. Love marriages, as opposed to arranged marriages, were more common within the LTTE compared to the rest of the Tamil community. Castism, though not entirely eradicated, seemed to be on the way out in Vanni.
One incident I experienced drove this point home to me very clearly. I did not have my own transport in Vanni except for a brief period after I learned how to ride a scooter. I quickly gave up the scooter because I found it difficult to deal with the roads and traffic in Vanni. Thus most of my transport was provided by the LTTE Peace Secretariat vehicle. I thus came to know the drivers well. They were all civilians of well above average intelligence, and came from families that were strong supporters of the LTTE. I found talking to them to be very educative, and we would chat a lot during our rides about many things concerning Vanni. It never dawned on me to wonder what castes they came from, and we always chatted as social equals. During early 2005, when the A9 route remained opened, I made several trips to Jaffna and I stayed with a family friend. The incident occurred when the LTTE Peace Secretariat vehicle was to pick me up from Jaffna to return to Vanni. The driver and the vehicle arrived at my friend's house, and there was a short delay before I was ready to get into the car. I asked the driver to come into the house and wait while I got ready. He refused and his mannerism was starkly different to his usual mannerism. He conveyed to me through his body language that the people in that home would not want to welcome him into their house if they knew about his caste. It was the typical refusal of a person aware of his lowly caste and the inappropriateness of his associating as an equal with members of the higher caste. It then dawned on me that he was forced to be caste conscious in Jaffna, but did not have to be in the circles he moved in, in Vanni.
(p. 79)
The majority of the female members within LTTE reported directly to female leaders. This hierarchy was intercepted somewhere up the chain by a male leader. In the case of military divisions, this interception by a male leader would only be at the very top, Pirapaaharan himself. Within the political division of LTTE, there was a separate women's section with a female leader. All female members within the political division of the LTTE eventually reported to this female leader up the hierarchy. She in turn reported to the leader of the political division, invariably a male, who in turn reported to the LTTE leader, Pirapaaharan.
However, there existed another parallel group of about twenty female leaders from all divisions. This group met Pirapaaharan regularly to discuss issues relating to women. Many male leaders viewed this special access that women leaders had as a privilege. Many senior male leaders of similar ranking did not have this kind of access. Pulitheevan often expressed frustration that the women leaders failed to exploit the special privilege they had in order to further women's rights within the movement. I, too, had requested, through women leaders in the political division who were part of the group that regularly met Pirapaaharan, that some issues related to women be raised and resolved. I observed some reluctance on the part of these women leaders to be assertive.
In many institutions, female LTTE members often had to work under the leadership of a male LTTE leader; this occurred more frequently in non-military divisions like the political division. These female members working under male leaders ended up having two leaders to whom they had to report. An unwritten understanding was that in all work-related matters they took orders from their male leader, whereas all other matters, such as discipline etc., were dealt with by their female leader. This issue of two leaderships remained contentious and was not fully resolved. It must also be mentioned that LTTE male members also sometimes reported to female leaders, and this was seen as very normal.
(pp. 109-110)
There was an ongoing debate in Vanni on the female civilian attire. On several occasions, I had been part of this debate. Trivial as it may have been, this debate represented in a microcosm the forces acting for and against a more liberated female culture in Vanni.
A visually exhilarating sign of women's liberation in Vanni was the sight of confident-looking LTTE women in their non-military LTTE attired of black pants, light colored loosely fitting shirt with a belt worn over it. A similarly smart uniform was also worn by LTTE police women. Many outside observers had been impressed by the sight of these women in smart-looking and relatively liberating attire in this part of the world. Yet, visually, the most obvious sign of oppressive habits among civilian women in Vanni was also the practice of wearing the saree by even those employed in LTTE civilian institutions. Thousands of civilian women worked in such institutions, and they were all compelled to wear the saree in a uniform style determined by that LTTE institution. The contrast was striking for anyone who cared to observe it. It was shocking to see the saree being made compulsory for civilian women working in LTTE institutions, when LTTE women wore trousers and shirts as their uniform. Many young women have told me that they resisted applying for jobs in LTTE institutions because of the compulsion to wear the saree. Almost all women resisted this practice. LTTE women were vocal about their resistance and they were never subjected to it. Civilian women on the other hand were subjected to this rule. The saree rule was invariably made and enforced by senior male LTTE leaders within various LTTE institutions.
There was another important aspect to this microcosmic view of using the uniform rule for civilian women to depict the status of female liberation under the LTTE. There is one story that senior female LTTE members repeated about how women first joined the movement as arms-carrying members. The story goes like this. It was vehemently resisted by almost all the senior LTTE male members. LTTE leader Pirapaaharan nevertheless implemented this, dismissing all objections. The typical and now well-known female non-military LTTE attire of trouser and shirt was also vehemently resisted by the senior male LTTE members who said it would not be accepted by the community at large. Pirappaaharan dismissed this objection too, and he was proved right.
These different tensions acting on the issue of female attire accurately captured the status of women's issues in general in Vanni. LTTE women and a large section of the civilian women had a heightned awareness; the LTTE leader, Pirapaaharan, appeared to have understood some of the basic issues, but the other senior LTTE male leaders were lagging behind. Pirapaaharan was reputed to have said that his senior male leaders carried out all the tasks he assigned to them well beyond his expectations, but when it came to issues of women's rights, they were failing abysmally. This was not to say that there were no other senior male LTTE members who understood the women's rights issues. Indeed, I, too, came to know of some who did.
In 2008, when Ilanko took over the police department from Nadeesan after the demise of Thamilselvan, to my astonishment he initiated many pro-women programs within the police force. He organized training for all the female police officers to deal with women-related issues. Bearing in mind that the majority of the female police officers were young women with only limited training in the police force, this targeted training of women related-issues was a new area of knowledge for these young women. Unfortunately, the program never had a chance to prove its worth due to the multiple displacements starting from 2008 till the end war. I had the opportunity to have close interactions with Ilanko in regard to this project to train female police officers. His understanding of the issues and his one hundred percent pro-woman stance was so refreshing and heartwarming. He told me that he had produced awareness-raising dramas in the past on women's issues. He expressed frustration that the LTTE women in Vanni were not more pro-active in this area. Ilanko's fate after the war remains unknown. It is suspected that he was also among the hundreds who were either killed or made to disappear following capture by the Lankan Military as they walked out of the war zone during the end the war in 2009.
(pp. 111-112)
UPDATE 2013-08-24
An undercurrent has swelled in India, with reverberations felt across all of South Asia, when news broke 8 months ago of a female medical student who was raped and killed in December 2012. Many people took to the streets all over the country to protest, and the Indian government's response only fueled more anger. News stories began to break of similar incidents happening all over Delhi and all over the country. Granted, Western concern over South Asia's cultural degradation of women should be tempered by the fact that safety of females and gender inequity are issues partially tied to wealth and equity, which Western colonialism has and still creates. The fact still remains that women across the board are significantly more unsafe in India than even a place like America. Even foreigners are not safe in North India, as a Swiss tourist was raped in 2013. And if you think this is a recent phenomenon and/or just Western media hype, you are wrong: a medical student was raped in New Delhi in 2002 in broad daylight at a historical monument on a road with heavy traffic, and a Swiss diplomat was raped in 2003. What more conclusively proves that the status of women in South Asia is still largely attributable to culture is that not every culture in South Asia treated women this way. In particular, LTTE-administered Tamil Eelam, while it existed, appears to have been a unique oasis in this regard, too, as the following additional excerpts attest:
I was able to see at close quarters that the peace talks that unfolded during this period did not have genuine female representation on either side. At the same time, both sides made it a point to include token gestures towards female representation. The one exception to this was LTTE Human Rights spokesperson, Selvi, but her role was limited to being a spokesperson only.
I also observed female members in their relationships with each other, with male members, and with the society at large, and the views they held on women both in the movement and in the wider community, etc. I also learned more about the organizations that specifically devoted their time to women's issues. Various aspects of women's issues kept coming up in different contexts--in private conversations, in the work I did, and in the problems I had to deal with in respect to female employees and members. Initially I was disappointed. I arrived in Vanni hoping for a more liberated enlightened womenfolk, both members and civilians, but failed to find it. Gradually I realized that my disappointment was the result of looking for signs of women's liberation through the glasses of Western feminist ideologies.
Though I did not have the statistics, just observing the number of women on the streets during peak hours dressed for work, it was obvious that a greater percentage of women in Vanni went to work outside the home. There were also more women in civilian clothes riding motorbikes on Vanni roads compared to the rest of the island. Women, both LTTE members as well as civilians, occupied the public space in large numbers. They were very visible on the roads in the LTTE institutions. This gave Vanni a uniquely pro-woman character, which was absent elsewhere on the island.
In Vanni there were several institutions under the women's section of the political division of LTTE working to improve the women's condition. Two notable notable ones were the Women's Research Centre (CWR) and the Centre for Women's Development and Rehabilitation (CWDR). CWR published a magazine called Nattru (Seedling) which carried some good articles. Its circulation was limited, and the institutions itself did not have a large public presence. CWDR on the other hand, due to the growing need for assistance for destitute women, had a larger presence and was in fact a rather large institution.
The LTTE police force and its associated courts, made up mostly of civilians, was a mixed-gender institution that was well represented by females. The police force, as well as the lawyers and the judges, had nearly 50 percent female members. This was quite an achievement. Even the laws enacted by the LTTE to be implemented by its courts had a gender equality that was absent in the Lankan laws. Lankan laws had remnants of older customary laws of the land. Indeed LTTE laws had some unique features that went overboard to protect women who may have been cheated by men with the promise of marriage. During my stay, I heard LTTE women arguing against this special provision in the law for females, saying women did not need special protection against being cheated by men. I viewed it as a sign of an already existing sense of empowerment of the women to assert that they did not need gender specific laws to protect them, and the law should be enacted and applied equally to both genders.
LTTE women, women employed by the LTTE institutions, and self employed women were all interconnected through the many LTTE institutions, resulting in a unique female culture. These women openly and routinely discussed domestic violence and other problems faced by women. They were all on the lookout for women who needed a helping hand. Several LTTE institutions including health, welfare, banking-development, police, law, and the media support this female culture by providing supporting services. These institutions all had more than 50 percent female representation. Some of them were run solely by women, both LTTE and civilian, and for civilian women. Women needing help were directed to the appropriate institutions, which were all focused on giving a helping hand to women. This was the best feature of this female culture--the elimination of destitution through universal women's action. It was a unique kind of feminism, created by connecting the majority of women living all over Vanni, from all walks of life, for public action regarding women and children in need of help.
In my involvement with women's groups in Vanni, I met a category of civilian women whose family support structers were broken mainly due to the war. It was easy to think that the young among them would be prime targets for recruitment by the LTTE. Though this was partly true, I found that the reasons for women to join the LTTE were more varied. I actually asked a few dozen female members of varying age and length of time with the LTTE for their reasons for joining. It was an interesting mix that fell into eight broad categories.
To punish the Lankan Military for killing someone they loved: Girls joined because a close family member had been affected. Prior to 2002, an unknown number of civilians, well in excess of 40,000, had been killed by the Lankan Military and Sinhala thugs during the five decades of conflict. There was no shortage of girls whose family members had been directly affected by the killings and disappearances. Girls cited this as the most common reason for joining. They all expressed an urge to punish the military for what it had done to their families.
To avoid falling victim to sexual violence by the enemy military: During the 80s and 90s rape by the military, both Lankan and Indian, was very prevalent. Also, with numerous military camps set near schools, school girls faced regular sexual harassment by the military. Often the military would insist on body checking the girls before letting them inside. Many girls reported male military members suspiciously touching their sanitary pads during the body checks. Girls joined LTTE, outraged by this violence against other girls. Joining the movement made them feel empowered rather than a potential victim. At the risk of stating the obvious, it must be said that the pull to join LTTE was especially strong because girls felt secure in the LTTE movement, within which sexual harassment and rape was totally absent.
Displacement and lack of regular schooling: As the war progressed over a period of two decades people displaced multiple times losing their homes and possessions each time they displaced. Sometimes these displacements would be anticipated and organized. Often during military attacks people displaced many times in chaotic conditions often living under trees while on the move. They would eventually end up in crowded camps for the displaced, mostly in public buildings like schools. They would continue to live in these crowded camps for several months until they could set up a rudimentary home somewhere in the displaced location. Such conditions took away the normal life for the young girls. Continuous bombing and shelling also disrupted the schools. These factors created a fertile environment for a young girl to join the LTTE. Joining the movement gave purpose and order to their life.
Senior female LTTE members as role models: In Tamil society, young girls did not move freely and independently in the community. Their dress code was also fairly strict. Most girls would not be allowed to wear trousers. Seeing female LTTE members, self-confident and well-dressed in smart trousers, brought out a desire in civilian girls to be like them. LTTE members in general moved freely within the community. They visited them, had meals with them, and helped them. This brought the female members into close contact with the civilian girls, creating in them a desire to follow suit.
Extreme poverty (domestic duty, no school): As a result of: death of bread winners in the family, multiple displacements, and the economic blockade by the Lankan government, families reached extreme levels of poverty. In the families most affected by poverty, the girl child's education was the first casualty. She was often expected to stay home and take on the duties of the mother and let the mother go out to earn money as a daily wage laborer. Girls rebelled against this and joined the LTTE.
LTTE awareness campaign: The LTTE conducted extensive political education campaigns in the community, and this had an effect on both the boys and the girls, moving them to join the movement.
Rebellion against the traditional culture: Tamil society, like many traditional societies, had arranged marriages, and girls, even if they desired to, could not escape it. Dowry was also a humiliating practice for many girls. If not for the lTTE, these girls would have had no plausible channel to rebel against the restrictive traditions of their society. Joining the LTTE provided that channel. The LTTE was an attractive option for these girls because of the LTTE policies promoting women's rights and banishing dowries.
Abuse of one form or other in the family: There were several cases of girls joining the LTTE to escape sexual abuse at home. In Tamil society, and indeed in the entire of South Asia, sensitive handling of this issue had not been developed nationally. It remained unspoken. By joining the LTTE, these victims were able to escape the abuse without have to face exposing the culprit.
The involvement of women in the armed struggle was present from the beginning, when they served mainly as carers, providing meals, and caring for the wounded. Then the concept of Suthanthira Paravaikal (freedom birds) was introduced in the 1980s. A women's organization and publication carrying this name were launched. Once women started to join the LTTE as arms-carrying members, this organization died a natural death. But the women's section of the LTTE political division continued the publication of Suthanthira Paravaikal until the end, but with much reduced vigor.
Between male and female members a degree of separation was maintained within the LTTE. They did come together for executing specific tasks, both in civilian and military spheres. Two opposing views on whether this separation assisted or hindered women's development prevailed in Vanni. On the one hand was the view that it permitted freer development of women, which was similar to the theory that girls-only schools are good for girls. The implementation of discipline was also seen as better when it was carried out in segregated spaces. On the other hand was the view that women lost out on exposure to male-dominated knowledge and skills because of too much separation. I believe that in Vanni the tension between these two views was being gradually resolved as men and women came together more and more to do tasks in many spheres.
(pp. 105-109)
Read more!
Children
My very first visit to Vanni in December, though short, was memorable. On this visit I befriended Janani in the forests of Vallipunam, where the Senchoolai children's home was set up. The location was chosen in order to be as far away from the battle lines of the pre-2002 ceasefire era as possible. I ended up there on the pretext of teaching music on the recorder. Anyone who knows anything about LTTE would have at least heard about the LTTE-run Senchoolai children's home for orphaned girls. This institution was formally opened in 1991 in Jaffna for the increasing number of children orphaned by the civil war.
...
I met very young girls as well as older girls. I heard their life stories, the great tragedies they were, in the surrounding Vallipunam jungle. Their stories, from a world very different to mine, sounded even more distant when heard in that surrounding. There was one very smart four-year-old who was rescued from among the ashes of a cemetery, and thus was named Sampavi, deriving from the Tamil word for ashes. There were several older girls who, as very young children, had witnessed the killing of their parents by the Lankan Military in their own home. Some had witnessed large scale massacres. Many of these girls who witnessed gruesome massacres were from the eastern areas, where massacres of civilians were very common in the 1980s, unnoticed by the outside. Many of the girls had brothers in Senchoolai's brother institution, Arivuchchoolai.
...
Unlike all other children's homes in Vanni, Senchoolai for girls and Arivuchchoolai for boys were funded directly by LTTE and were staffed by many LTTE members. In the case of Senchoolai, it was female members under Janani's leadership. Only a few LTTE members holding positions of high responsibility in these two institutions were permanently attached to them. Other members might have been assigned to these two institutions for period of time, and later moved out. All LTTE members, not just those serving in these two institutions, were encouraged to develop a special, caring relationship toward these two children's home. Most LTTE members did have a special place in their heart for these two institutions that was different from the way they related to other children's homes.
(pp. 40-42)
In the heyday of child soldier releases, getting funding for child soldiers was such a lucrative business for international NGOs, that they all wanted a part of it. The Action Plan took off with much media hype, but the implementation was frustrating to the released child soldiers and their families. These young people had become used to the life with LTTE that offered good food, occupation, discipline, and camaraderie. The rehabilitation program put in place by the international NGOs failed to rehabilitate the released children back into the civilian society. The LTTE said most of the released child soldiers were returning back to them, causing them a big headache. The LTTE accused the international NGOs of wasting the huge amounts of funds obtained for this rehabilitation and it unofficially withdrew from the Action Plan. Indeed a study commissioned by UNICEF in 2007 about this Action Plan found implementation problems due to the lack of coordination among the international NGO implementation partners.
(p. 62)
This meeting, intended as a launching pad for the Child Protection Authority (CPA), did not go anywhere. I, however, for the first time heard directly from Thamilselvan about the seriousness with which the LTTE intended to implement the minimum age policy of seventeen. I was even more confounded as to why it was so difficult to implement this policy.
It was after I left NESoHR and started working at Peace Secretariat that I had the opportunity to hear directly from many LTTE members. Things now started to become clearer to me. I noticed the noncommittal stance of some members towards the minimum age and the take-it-easy approach of some others towards this issue. The whole concept seemed alien and meaningless to LTTE members, and I was able to see that this derived from an institutional culture with two decades of history. It was a culture that predated the 2001 Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, a culture born of decades of actual experience of war. It was only in this 2001 Protocol that the age limit was set at eighteen for the first time, and that, too, only for non-state armed actors; states were permitted to recruit those under 18. This is a major point that has been missed in the media hype.
(pp. 92-93)
Once Pulitheevan asked me to take on the role of Director of [the Child Protection Authority], I knew that I was not going to lie back and accept the LTTE's softly-softly approach on the issue of child soldiers. I suspect the LTTE fraternity knew it too. In this role I worked with LTTE's liaison office, which was physically located adjacent to the Peace Secretariat, for liaising with international agencies. For more than one year, I had weekly meetings with UNICEF to discuss progress.
I had disagreements with both sides, the LTTE and UNICEF, and to some occasions I broke down and cried. Once it was because of the "mandate mentality" of UNICEF that displayed insensitivity to the plight of some children, mainly the girls. Once it was because of an LTTE action that ignored my "authority" in this area. For one year, all of 2007, this was my primary goal, ensuring that the LTTE did not fall back into the old softly-softly approach. It consumed me. I saw a clear demonstration of the non-nonsense approach of LTTE when I heard of middle-level LTTE leaders given punishment for recruiting children. It was mainly kitchen-duty punishment, which was a common form of mild punishment given to members. But when it was given to a leader, it was viewed as serious punishment and talked about. A senior female LTTE told me that when those under her recruited someone even a month younger than the specified age, her stomach churned in fear of punishment.
...
We came across several names of extremely young children from Batticaloa and Amaparai in the UNICEF list of LTTE child soldiers. We eventually traced these children in Senchoolai and Arivuchchoolai children's home. LTTE had taken these children, who were not receiving adequate care, into the branch of Senchoolai that was started in Batticaloa following the 2004 tsunami. When the LTTE withdrew from Batticaloa, these children were shifted to the Vanni Senchoolai and Arivuchchoolai. UNICEF refused to remove their names from the list, insisting that they would do so only after they were reunited with their families. But neither UNICEF nor ICRC were able to complete that task. In some cases they could not trace the families who had been displaced or gone missing following the tsunami. Even in cases where the families were traced, the Lankan government refused permission to take the children from Vanni to the eastern districts. Thus it remianed that even at this time, and despite the latest LTTE efforts, the youngest child in the LTTE was only seven years old. In fact, even in late 2007, there were international media reports, quoting UNICEF, that the youngest person in the LTTE was only seven years old. When I confronted the head of UNICEF Sri Lanka at that time about this report, the comment was that UNICEF could not do anything about it because it still was a "fact". The media kept reporting this "fact", a sexy issue, and UNICEF "could do nothing" about it, though they were fully aware of the background to the "seven-year-old LTTE member".
There were many more instances of misreporting by the media that convinced me of the unhealthy and biased media attraction to this issue, which was acknowledged privately to me by more than one UNICEF official. Some cases will illustrate my point. A nine-year-old girl with a mild intellectual handicap, who was abused at home, began behaving erratically at school. One day she was found hanging around in her class room late at night to avoid going home. An LTTE member eventually removed her from school and put her in the care of a children's home. Someone, probably a family member, reported this UNICEF. This child remained in the children's home even in early 2009 because she did not have a safe home to go to. Yet, she remained as a child soldier entry in the UNICEF database though UNICEF eventually removed her from their database.
(pp. 93-95)
Caste
It was interesting to observe that anti-castism was never discussed in the media. It seems this had already been dealt with and progress had been made. Harping on it was considered a step backwards rather than progressive; especially when some of the senior LTTE leaders, as well as the juniors, were from all types of castes. Love marriages, as opposed to arranged marriages, were more common within the LTTE compared to the rest of the Tamil community. Castism, though not entirely eradicated, seemed to be on the way out in Vanni.
One incident I experienced drove this point home to me very clearly. I did not have my own transport in Vanni except for a brief period after I learned how to ride a scooter. I quickly gave up the scooter because I found it difficult to deal with the roads and traffic in Vanni. Thus most of my transport was provided by the LTTE Peace Secretariat vehicle. I thus came to know the drivers well. They were all civilians of well above average intelligence, and came from families that were strong supporters of the LTTE. I found talking to them to be very educative, and we would chat a lot during our rides about many things concerning Vanni. It never dawned on me to wonder what castes they came from, and we always chatted as social equals. During early 2005, when the A9 route remained opened, I made several trips to Jaffna and I stayed with a family friend. The incident occurred when the LTTE Peace Secretariat vehicle was to pick me up from Jaffna to return to Vanni. The driver and the vehicle arrived at my friend's house, and there was a short delay before I was ready to get into the car. I asked the driver to come into the house and wait while I got ready. He refused and his mannerism was starkly different to his usual mannerism. He conveyed to me through his body language that the people in that home would not want to welcome him into their house if they knew about his caste. It was the typical refusal of a person aware of his lowly caste and the inappropriateness of his associating as an equal with members of the higher caste. It then dawned on me that he was forced to be caste conscious in Jaffna, but did not have to be in the circles he moved in, in Vanni.
(p. 79)
Women
The majority of the female members within LTTE reported directly to female leaders. This hierarchy was intercepted somewhere up the chain by a male leader. In the case of military divisions, this interception by a male leader would only be at the very top, Pirapaaharan himself. Within the political division of LTTE, there was a separate women's section with a female leader. All female members within the political division of the LTTE eventually reported to this female leader up the hierarchy. She in turn reported to the leader of the political division, invariably a male, who in turn reported to the LTTE leader, Pirapaaharan.
However, there existed another parallel group of about twenty female leaders from all divisions. This group met Pirapaaharan regularly to discuss issues relating to women. Many male leaders viewed this special access that women leaders had as a privilege. Many senior male leaders of similar ranking did not have this kind of access. Pulitheevan often expressed frustration that the women leaders failed to exploit the special privilege they had in order to further women's rights within the movement. I, too, had requested, through women leaders in the political division who were part of the group that regularly met Pirapaaharan, that some issues related to women be raised and resolved. I observed some reluctance on the part of these women leaders to be assertive.
In many institutions, female LTTE members often had to work under the leadership of a male LTTE leader; this occurred more frequently in non-military divisions like the political division. These female members working under male leaders ended up having two leaders to whom they had to report. An unwritten understanding was that in all work-related matters they took orders from their male leader, whereas all other matters, such as discipline etc., were dealt with by their female leader. This issue of two leaderships remained contentious and was not fully resolved. It must also be mentioned that LTTE male members also sometimes reported to female leaders, and this was seen as very normal.
(pp. 109-110)
There was an ongoing debate in Vanni on the female civilian attire. On several occasions, I had been part of this debate. Trivial as it may have been, this debate represented in a microcosm the forces acting for and against a more liberated female culture in Vanni.
A visually exhilarating sign of women's liberation in Vanni was the sight of confident-looking LTTE women in their non-military LTTE attired of black pants, light colored loosely fitting shirt with a belt worn over it. A similarly smart uniform was also worn by LTTE police women. Many outside observers had been impressed by the sight of these women in smart-looking and relatively liberating attire in this part of the world. Yet, visually, the most obvious sign of oppressive habits among civilian women in Vanni was also the practice of wearing the saree by even those employed in LTTE civilian institutions. Thousands of civilian women worked in such institutions, and they were all compelled to wear the saree in a uniform style determined by that LTTE institution. The contrast was striking for anyone who cared to observe it. It was shocking to see the saree being made compulsory for civilian women working in LTTE institutions, when LTTE women wore trousers and shirts as their uniform. Many young women have told me that they resisted applying for jobs in LTTE institutions because of the compulsion to wear the saree. Almost all women resisted this practice. LTTE women were vocal about their resistance and they were never subjected to it. Civilian women on the other hand were subjected to this rule. The saree rule was invariably made and enforced by senior male LTTE leaders within various LTTE institutions.
There was another important aspect to this microcosmic view of using the uniform rule for civilian women to depict the status of female liberation under the LTTE. There is one story that senior female LTTE members repeated about how women first joined the movement as arms-carrying members. The story goes like this. It was vehemently resisted by almost all the senior LTTE male members. LTTE leader Pirapaaharan nevertheless implemented this, dismissing all objections. The typical and now well-known female non-military LTTE attire of trouser and shirt was also vehemently resisted by the senior male LTTE members who said it would not be accepted by the community at large. Pirappaaharan dismissed this objection too, and he was proved right.
These different tensions acting on the issue of female attire accurately captured the status of women's issues in general in Vanni. LTTE women and a large section of the civilian women had a heightned awareness; the LTTE leader, Pirapaaharan, appeared to have understood some of the basic issues, but the other senior LTTE male leaders were lagging behind. Pirapaaharan was reputed to have said that his senior male leaders carried out all the tasks he assigned to them well beyond his expectations, but when it came to issues of women's rights, they were failing abysmally. This was not to say that there were no other senior male LTTE members who understood the women's rights issues. Indeed, I, too, came to know of some who did.
In 2008, when Ilanko took over the police department from Nadeesan after the demise of Thamilselvan, to my astonishment he initiated many pro-women programs within the police force. He organized training for all the female police officers to deal with women-related issues. Bearing in mind that the majority of the female police officers were young women with only limited training in the police force, this targeted training of women related-issues was a new area of knowledge for these young women. Unfortunately, the program never had a chance to prove its worth due to the multiple displacements starting from 2008 till the end war. I had the opportunity to have close interactions with Ilanko in regard to this project to train female police officers. His understanding of the issues and his one hundred percent pro-woman stance was so refreshing and heartwarming. He told me that he had produced awareness-raising dramas in the past on women's issues. He expressed frustration that the LTTE women in Vanni were not more pro-active in this area. Ilanko's fate after the war remains unknown. It is suspected that he was also among the hundreds who were either killed or made to disappear following capture by the Lankan Military as they walked out of the war zone during the end the war in 2009.
(pp. 111-112)
UPDATE 2013-08-24
An undercurrent has swelled in India, with reverberations felt across all of South Asia, when news broke 8 months ago of a female medical student who was raped and killed in December 2012. Many people took to the streets all over the country to protest, and the Indian government's response only fueled more anger. News stories began to break of similar incidents happening all over Delhi and all over the country. Granted, Western concern over South Asia's cultural degradation of women should be tempered by the fact that safety of females and gender inequity are issues partially tied to wealth and equity, which Western colonialism has and still creates. The fact still remains that women across the board are significantly more unsafe in India than even a place like America. Even foreigners are not safe in North India, as a Swiss tourist was raped in 2013. And if you think this is a recent phenomenon and/or just Western media hype, you are wrong: a medical student was raped in New Delhi in 2002 in broad daylight at a historical monument on a road with heavy traffic, and a Swiss diplomat was raped in 2003. What more conclusively proves that the status of women in South Asia is still largely attributable to culture is that not every culture in South Asia treated women this way. In particular, LTTE-administered Tamil Eelam, while it existed, appears to have been a unique oasis in this regard, too, as the following additional excerpts attest:
Women - cont'd
I was able to see at close quarters that the peace talks that unfolded during this period did not have genuine female representation on either side. At the same time, both sides made it a point to include token gestures towards female representation. The one exception to this was LTTE Human Rights spokesperson, Selvi, but her role was limited to being a spokesperson only.
I also observed female members in their relationships with each other, with male members, and with the society at large, and the views they held on women both in the movement and in the wider community, etc. I also learned more about the organizations that specifically devoted their time to women's issues. Various aspects of women's issues kept coming up in different contexts--in private conversations, in the work I did, and in the problems I had to deal with in respect to female employees and members. Initially I was disappointed. I arrived in Vanni hoping for a more liberated enlightened womenfolk, both members and civilians, but failed to find it. Gradually I realized that my disappointment was the result of looking for signs of women's liberation through the glasses of Western feminist ideologies.
Though I did not have the statistics, just observing the number of women on the streets during peak hours dressed for work, it was obvious that a greater percentage of women in Vanni went to work outside the home. There were also more women in civilian clothes riding motorbikes on Vanni roads compared to the rest of the island. Women, both LTTE members as well as civilians, occupied the public space in large numbers. They were very visible on the roads in the LTTE institutions. This gave Vanni a uniquely pro-woman character, which was absent elsewhere on the island.
In Vanni there were several institutions under the women's section of the political division of LTTE working to improve the women's condition. Two notable notable ones were the Women's Research Centre (CWR) and the Centre for Women's Development and Rehabilitation (CWDR). CWR published a magazine called Nattru (Seedling) which carried some good articles. Its circulation was limited, and the institutions itself did not have a large public presence. CWDR on the other hand, due to the growing need for assistance for destitute women, had a larger presence and was in fact a rather large institution.
The LTTE police force and its associated courts, made up mostly of civilians, was a mixed-gender institution that was well represented by females. The police force, as well as the lawyers and the judges, had nearly 50 percent female members. This was quite an achievement. Even the laws enacted by the LTTE to be implemented by its courts had a gender equality that was absent in the Lankan laws. Lankan laws had remnants of older customary laws of the land. Indeed LTTE laws had some unique features that went overboard to protect women who may have been cheated by men with the promise of marriage. During my stay, I heard LTTE women arguing against this special provision in the law for females, saying women did not need special protection against being cheated by men. I viewed it as a sign of an already existing sense of empowerment of the women to assert that they did not need gender specific laws to protect them, and the law should be enacted and applied equally to both genders.
LTTE women, women employed by the LTTE institutions, and self employed women were all interconnected through the many LTTE institutions, resulting in a unique female culture. These women openly and routinely discussed domestic violence and other problems faced by women. They were all on the lookout for women who needed a helping hand. Several LTTE institutions including health, welfare, banking-development, police, law, and the media support this female culture by providing supporting services. These institutions all had more than 50 percent female representation. Some of them were run solely by women, both LTTE and civilian, and for civilian women. Women needing help were directed to the appropriate institutions, which were all focused on giving a helping hand to women. This was the best feature of this female culture--the elimination of destitution through universal women's action. It was a unique kind of feminism, created by connecting the majority of women living all over Vanni, from all walks of life, for public action regarding women and children in need of help.
"Why did I join?"
In my involvement with women's groups in Vanni, I met a category of civilian women whose family support structers were broken mainly due to the war. It was easy to think that the young among them would be prime targets for recruitment by the LTTE. Though this was partly true, I found that the reasons for women to join the LTTE were more varied. I actually asked a few dozen female members of varying age and length of time with the LTTE for their reasons for joining. It was an interesting mix that fell into eight broad categories.
To punish the Lankan Military for killing someone they loved: Girls joined because a close family member had been affected. Prior to 2002, an unknown number of civilians, well in excess of 40,000, had been killed by the Lankan Military and Sinhala thugs during the five decades of conflict. There was no shortage of girls whose family members had been directly affected by the killings and disappearances. Girls cited this as the most common reason for joining. They all expressed an urge to punish the military for what it had done to their families.
To avoid falling victim to sexual violence by the enemy military: During the 80s and 90s rape by the military, both Lankan and Indian, was very prevalent. Also, with numerous military camps set near schools, school girls faced regular sexual harassment by the military. Often the military would insist on body checking the girls before letting them inside. Many girls reported male military members suspiciously touching their sanitary pads during the body checks. Girls joined LTTE, outraged by this violence against other girls. Joining the movement made them feel empowered rather than a potential victim. At the risk of stating the obvious, it must be said that the pull to join LTTE was especially strong because girls felt secure in the LTTE movement, within which sexual harassment and rape was totally absent.
Displacement and lack of regular schooling: As the war progressed over a period of two decades people displaced multiple times losing their homes and possessions each time they displaced. Sometimes these displacements would be anticipated and organized. Often during military attacks people displaced many times in chaotic conditions often living under trees while on the move. They would eventually end up in crowded camps for the displaced, mostly in public buildings like schools. They would continue to live in these crowded camps for several months until they could set up a rudimentary home somewhere in the displaced location. Such conditions took away the normal life for the young girls. Continuous bombing and shelling also disrupted the schools. These factors created a fertile environment for a young girl to join the LTTE. Joining the movement gave purpose and order to their life.
Senior female LTTE members as role models: In Tamil society, young girls did not move freely and independently in the community. Their dress code was also fairly strict. Most girls would not be allowed to wear trousers. Seeing female LTTE members, self-confident and well-dressed in smart trousers, brought out a desire in civilian girls to be like them. LTTE members in general moved freely within the community. They visited them, had meals with them, and helped them. This brought the female members into close contact with the civilian girls, creating in them a desire to follow suit.
Extreme poverty (domestic duty, no school): As a result of: death of bread winners in the family, multiple displacements, and the economic blockade by the Lankan government, families reached extreme levels of poverty. In the families most affected by poverty, the girl child's education was the first casualty. She was often expected to stay home and take on the duties of the mother and let the mother go out to earn money as a daily wage laborer. Girls rebelled against this and joined the LTTE.
LTTE awareness campaign: The LTTE conducted extensive political education campaigns in the community, and this had an effect on both the boys and the girls, moving them to join the movement.
Rebellion against the traditional culture: Tamil society, like many traditional societies, had arranged marriages, and girls, even if they desired to, could not escape it. Dowry was also a humiliating practice for many girls. If not for the lTTE, these girls would have had no plausible channel to rebel against the restrictive traditions of their society. Joining the LTTE provided that channel. The LTTE was an attractive option for these girls because of the LTTE policies promoting women's rights and banishing dowries.
Abuse of one form or other in the family: There were several cases of girls joining the LTTE to escape sexual abuse at home. In Tamil society, and indeed in the entire of South Asia, sensitive handling of this issue had not been developed nationally. It remained unspoken. By joining the LTTE, these victims were able to escape the abuse without have to face exposing the culprit.
Female membership structure
The involvement of women in the armed struggle was present from the beginning, when they served mainly as carers, providing meals, and caring for the wounded. Then the concept of Suthanthira Paravaikal (freedom birds) was introduced in the 1980s. A women's organization and publication carrying this name were launched. Once women started to join the LTTE as arms-carrying members, this organization died a natural death. But the women's section of the LTTE political division continued the publication of Suthanthira Paravaikal until the end, but with much reduced vigor.
Between male and female members a degree of separation was maintained within the LTTE. They did come together for executing specific tasks, both in civilian and military spheres. Two opposing views on whether this separation assisted or hindered women's development prevailed in Vanni. On the one hand was the view that it permitted freer development of women, which was similar to the theory that girls-only schools are good for girls. The implementation of discipline was also seen as better when it was carried out in segregated spaces. On the other hand was the view that women lost out on exposure to male-dominated knowledge and skills because of too much separation. I believe that in Vanni the tension between these two views was being gradually resolved as men and women came together more and more to do tasks in many spheres.
(pp. 105-109)
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