www.sacw.net > Citizens Action & Ideas for Peace in South Asia | July 7, 2007
The Ongoing Struggle for Democracy in Sri Lanka
by Rohini Hensman
The eviction of hundreds of Tamils from Colombo would have been a catastrophe, threatening to push the country into the infamous category of nations which practice ethnic cleansing, internationally defined as a crime against humanity. Fortunately, the outcry against the move by citizens of all communities, as well as international condemnation and the Supreme Court ruling ordering the evictions to stop, averted this disaster.
The Prime Minister apologised for the gross violation of constitutionally guaranteed rights which had taken place, saying the government took full responsibility for the action. But the Defence Secretary continued to maintain that old women and small children carried by their mothers, reported by Reuters to be among those evicted, could have been terrorists, and that young men fleeing LTTE conscription should be sent back to swell LTTE ranks. Furthermore, ethnic cleansing continued in the East, as thousands of Tamils displaced from Sampur and Muttur East were barred from returning to their villages on the pretext that the area was to be converted into a High Security Zone. State-sponsored programmes displacing Muslims in Amparai Province also fuelled fears of ethnic cleansing.
This reversal of the expulsion of Tamils from Colombo demonstrates that unlike the LTTE, which expelled the entire Muslim population of the North in 1990 and has never allowed it to return, the government of Sri Lanka still retains some commitment to democracy. But it also demonstrates the alarming degree to which that democracy is threatened by senior members of the government and security forces. The notion of collective punishment -- 'punishing' an entire community for the crimes committed by some of its members -- is anathema to modern notions of justice and democracy.
Democracy cannot be reduced to parliamentary elections or the rule of the majority; it is the rule of ALL the people, which in turn depends on certain fundamental rights for ALL members of the population. The right to move freely within the country is one such right enshrined in our constitution. Interference with it is warranted only if there is serious suspicion that a person has committed a criminal offence, and the crime can be proved in a court of law. No such evidence was presented against the people who were deported from Colombo. The only other situation in which deportation is legally (though not necessarily morally) justifiable is when the person being deported is from a foreign nation-state and does not have a valid visa for the country in which he or she is residing. Does the Government of Sri Lanka agree with the LTTE that the Northeast is a separate state?
The strategy of victimising a whole section of society in order to eliminate a terrorist threat posed by a few of its members, which was justified by Gotabhaya Rajapakse, can have horrific consequences. His attitude was shared by sections of the state during the JVP uprising:
exterminate all the Sinhalese youths in a village, they argued, and any JVP members among them would be wiped out. These people do not seem to think that the price to be paid, in terms of extrajudicial executions and the slaughter of innocents, is too high. The LTTE thinks in the same way, justifying the 'punishment' of innocent Muslims and Sinhalese for actions committed by other members of their communities. Allowing such people to tighten their control over state power in Sri Lanka would mean the death of our democracy.
Feeding the Tigers
The eviction of Tamils from Colombo puts a big question mark not only over the moral and legal credentials of those sections of the government and security forces who are driving the agenda today, but also over their competence and intelligence. Presumably they know that a war is raging in the North and East, that thousands of people have been killed in the last two years, lakhs have been displaced, and forcible conscription is occurring, including child conscription? You don't have to be a genius to recognise that people from these troubled provinces have very good reasons for seeking refuge in more secure parts of the island.
What is achieved by sending these hapless people back into LTTE-controlled territory? First and foremost, whatever faith they might have had in the Sri Lankan government's claim that it is trying to liberate them from the Tigers would be destroyed: you do not 'liberate' people from a terrorist group by forcibly sending them back into territory controlled by it! Secondly, as we noted, young people fleeing conscription by the LTTE would be forced -- by state security forces -- into a position where they have no option but to join the Tigers and thus strengthen them militarily. Thirdly, outrage by Tamils around the world at this unjustified attack would tend to spur fund-raising efforts by LTTE supporters. Such policies, combined with the SLFP's pathetic proposals for a political solution, can only give credibility to LTTE arguments for Tamil Eelam.
No decent person can justify the ghastly acts of terrorism perpetrated by the LTTE, but 'punishing' innocent people for them is not going to stop those acts. On the contrary, the more innocent Tamils are attacked, the easier it will be for the LTTE to recruit suicide bombers from among relatives of the dead who have been driven mad by grief and rage. This dynamic has been observed in many other situations of terrorism. Thus every action of the state which victimises innocent Tamils succeeds only in feeding the Tigers.
'Bullying' or Assistance?
International concern about rampant human rights violations in Sri Lanka has been characterised by chauvinist elements in the government as 'bullying' of a sovereign nation by outsiders. The Sinhala nationalist lobby believes, apparently, that Sri Lanka is not located on planet earth but on some other planet of its own. But people who have their feet planted more firmly on the ground know that Sri Lanka is a small island in the Indian Ocean, it is affected by events that occur in other parts of the world, and it belongs to the international community. If it wishes to be a respected member of that community, it must abide by international law. These laws have been enacted to protect the weak and vulnerable from their oppressors, and all those who wish to defend human rights and democracy in Sri Lanka see them as a source of strength, not of weakness.
No one objects to having a foreign coach for our cricket team if that helps the team to play better; no one would think of calling that 'bullying'. Nor did we object to the foreign aid that poured into Sri Lanka after the tsunami as being a form of 'interference' in the affairs of our sovereign nation. When we are in need of something, and the resources to satisfy that need are not available within the country, we are grateful for help from abroad. As former Foreign Secretary H.M.G.S.Palihakkara correctly pointed out, Sri Lanka's peace process has become highly internationalised only because our country has failed to solve its own problems.
Our greatest need at the moment -- greater even than the need for tsunami reconstruction -- is the need for assistance to bring to justice the perpetrators of heinous crimes, including acts of terrorism, murder, enforced disappearances, rape, child conscription, forcible conscription of adults, abduction, and extortion. These crimes are being committed daily, often in broad daylight; recently, for example, two humanitarian workers of the Red Cross were abducted at Fort Station in the heart of Colombo and later found murdered, yet the government and security forces were unable to identify or catch the criminals. The fact that such occurrences have become routine, and the perpetrators are never prosecuted, indicates that even in areas securely under government control, the criminal justice system is unable to cope with the task of investigating these crimes, locating and arresting the criminals, and
bringing them to justice; the very fact that the police resorted to indiscriminate expulsion of Tamils from Colombo proves that they lack the detective skills to identify the real terrorists. In areas under LTTE control, torture, killings and child conscription go on with complete impunity.
Under these circumstances, anyone with an interest in justice and security would welcome the offer of a UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission to investigate these crimes and procure evidence enabling the arrest and indictment of the perpetrators. Indeed, the only people who might oppose such assistance would be the criminals themselves. If the government continues to refuse the offer of international assistance, the suspicion will inevitably grow that the criminals currently evading justice include elements within the government itself and its security forces, since a
government which had nothing to hide would welcome all the help it could get to restore the rule of law. Such assistance no more constitutes foreign interference in internal affairs than tsunami aid from foreign countries. Every citizen who is sick of the prevailing lawlessness and insecurity should press the government to invite help from the international community to re-establish the rule of law in our country.
Defeating the Tigers, Ending the War
The Defence Secretary has gone on record claiming that the LTTE can be defeated militarily with the help of the Karuna forces. Is this true? The TMVP can certainly help state security forces in the East, but what about the North, where Karuna has no presence? All the dismal experience of nearly 25 years of war tells us that any attempt to tackle the LTTE militarily in their Northern stronghold will cost thousands of lives, and end in a stalemate. Meanwhile, the cost of the war will drive prices ever higher, tourism and investment will suffer, jobs will be lost, poverty will sky-rocket. Aid has already been cut, and could be slashed further. International trade minister G.L.Pieris has bemoaned the withholding of aid, saying that it might strengthen terrorism, but donor countries have to reckon with the possibility that, on the contrary, providing aid could strengthen (state) terrorism, unless international monitors confirm that is not happening.
Worst of all, we would still have the prospect of a never-ending war. Isn't it time to try something different? Dry up the sources of LTTE funding and recruitment, and they will wither away. No doubt there will still be a hard core of incorrigible LTTE supporters, and the leadership will never give up their goal of Tamil Eelam, but they will gradually lose their power as they find that no one is following them. This is not an impossible task. If the majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka were convinced that they could live safely and securely in a united (NOT unitary) Sri Lanka, with their right to equality and dignity protected, why would they risk their lives fighting for a totalitarian Tamil state? And if the international community were convinced that the human and democratic rights of Tamils were protected in a united Sri Lanka, they would put much heavier pressure on the LTTE to lay down their arms and accept a democratic political solution.
Three things are required to arrive at such a goal. One is to clamp down firmly on all attacks on Tamil and Muslim civilians, including ethnic cleansing of any sort, so that they feel the government is on their side. A UN human rights mission would help to achieve this. The second is to come up with proposals for a political soluton which satisfies Muslims and the majority of Tamils. Tissa Vitharana's APRC proposal, based on a synthesis of the majority and minority reports of the panel of experts, has already laid the basis for this, although Sinhalese extremists in the
SLFP are trying to undermine it. And thirdly, military operations must be limited to defensive ones. It is certainly legitimate for the security forces to foil terrorist attacks and defend themselves if attacked, but unnecessary offensive operations, which kill civilians as well as children and adults who are already victims of forcible conscription by the LTTE, should be avoided. The aim should be to liberate such people, not kill them.
The people of Sri Lanka recently scored a significant victory in their struggle to force the government to fight the Tigers politically instead of feeding them, when they succeeded in reversing the policy of evicting Tamils from Colombo. They can do more to defeat the Tigers and end the war if they press for the policies outlined above: inviting a UN human rights monitoring mission, finalising a democratic political solution acceptable to the majority of Tamil-speaking people, and avoiding unnecessary military operations.
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