Sri Lanka’s Own Goal

Sri Lanka’s own goal

December 2010, by Padraig Colman

In September 2009 I wrote about the Sri Lankan government’s failure to convey a positive image of the country to the world after its impressive victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended the national nightmare that began in 1975 when Vellupillai Prabhakaran shot dead the mayor of Jaffna. Prabhakaran went on to be leader of the LTTE, a ruthless terrorist group which began to seem invincible in its fight for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran was killed in May 2009 and there have been no terrorist incidents in Sri Lanka since. Yet the Sri Lankan government has almost managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – by bungling the PR war. There is something of a siege mentality in Sri Lanka – a feeling that, after winning a long and brutal war, the country’s independence is threatened by unfair criticism from abroad.

The release by WikiLeaks of a batch of “diplomatic” cables gave encouragement to the “told you so” tendency. Those leaks relating to the former UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, have caused particular smugness. When Miliband visited Sri Lanka towards the end of the war against the LTTE, pressing for a ceasefire and negotiations, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa scolded him and reminded him that Sri Lanka was no longer a British colony. The cables now reveal that Miliband exerted his influence to get Sri Lanka’s bid to host the Commonwealth Games rejected: the UK did not want Sri Lanka to be given legitimacy for its actions in defeating the Tamil Tigers. Another cable revealed that Miliband supported US efforts to delay an IMF loan to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankans at the time thought that Miliband was backing Tamil terrorists for electoral advantage: in a cable dated 7 May 2009, the British Foreign Office “Sri Lanka team leader”, Tim Waite, wrote that, with UK elections soon due, and with many Tamils living in marginal UK constituencies, the UK government was calling for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka and would later pay close attention to the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. Miliband said that he was spending 60% of his time on Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government strongly believed that a ceasefire would be foolish when victory was imminent because it would, as had happened many times before, have allowed the LTTE to regroup and fight again. Miliband and his aides wrote about “ratcheting up” the case for humanitarian relief efforts: “[That] cable,” said one Sri Lankan writer, “exposes how a matter of a few thousand British votes took priority over the fate of a small state battling against a ruthless terrorist enemy” (1).

The leaking of the cables should have put Sri Lanka in PR heaven. But the president’s advisors managed to play it all wrong, and new life was injected into the moribund overseas rump of the LTTE.

As the revelations were taking place, President Rajapaksa travelled to the UK to address the Oxford Union. The event was cancelled because of security fears – not because President Rajapaksa himself posed any threat to the good citizens of Oxford or its students (the Thames Valley police later said they would have had no trouble policing the event). As someone pointed out, Kermit the Frog had also been invited on one occasion, and it was “unfortunate that the Sri Lankan High Commission in London did not file an intelligence report on such security threats.” Another source said: “It is a strong shot of oxygen to a dying LTTE. Fundraising will pick up again.”

Yet, as Namini Wijedasa wrote in Lakbima News, “Mystifyingly for a government that shuns the West, the event was flaunted as an honour of the highest proportions” (2). “The ideal path would be to work towards restoring relations to their former warmth, engaging with the West as much as we do with China, Libya, Myanmar, Iran and Cuba. Diplomacy is not a zero sum game where your developing ties with some countries give you courage to cold-shoulder the rest. It’s about dealing with everyone that can give you comparative advantage. … The president is already ahead in the game in Sri Lanka. But the direction he wants to take the country in internationally remains a perturbing mystery.”

Confirmation of the hypocrisy of the US, UK and EU always plays well in Sri Lanka; and the cables revealed what everyone already knew about the use of cluster bombs and abuse of civilians by the US and UK. Freedom of speech is an important issue for the West when it deals with Sri Lanka, and there was much legitimate concern about the murder of the Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickrematunge. Yet western politicians have called for Julian Assange to be assassinated and the whistleblower Bradley Manning is not likely to be treated kindly. The Sri Lankan government is reported, after initial fierce resistance to perceived threats to the nation’s sovereignty, to have relented and decided to allow a UN panel advising Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on Sri Lankan war crimes to visit the country. The foreign ministry has been criticised for its handling of this matter, which has added to the confusion over government policy. At the same time, favours have been seen to be rewarded: retired military staff have been given embassy posts after their war service, in preference to career diplomats. The Sri Lankan government pays more than a million pounds a year to the PR firm Bell Pottinger. It does not seem to have been a good investment.

Sri Lanka Imprisons a Military Hero

Sri Lanka imprisons a military hero

Exclusive November 2010, by Padraig Colman

Politics is a rough old trade, nowhere more so than in Sri Lanka where the former army commander Sarath Fonseka, military hero of the victory over the Tamil Tigers (LTTE, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), has been imprisoned after his foray into politics. In January, he ran for president but lost. In April, he was elected to parliament. Now he has now been deprived of his seat and has to conduct his political life from a 12’ x 8’ cell.

He was court-martialled twice, found guilty of engaging in political activity while a member of the armed forces and stripped of his medals and army pension. At his second court-martial, he was found guilty of irregularities in arms procurement while army commander and sentenced to 30 months imprisonment.

Also being heard at the High Court in Colombo is the “white flag case”, in which Fonseka is accused of violating the Public Security and Emergency Regulations Acts via an interview in The Sunday Leader on 13 December 2009 (1). In this, Fonseca claimed that defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had issued an illegal order to Brigadier Shavendra Silva (now Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN) to shoot and kill LTTE cadres, surrendering with white flags, during the final stages of the war.

The charges and punishment have been scaled down (despite rumours that he was to be charged with harbouring military deserters, plotting a coup and the assassination of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers. Rajapaksa said in a BBC interview that Fonseka deserved to be executed). However, the white flag case could end in a 20-year sentence.

A motley alliance is campaigning for Fonseka’s release. The main opposition party, the UNP (United National Party), wants a remission of the sentence, which would amount to a pardon. But Fonseka refuses to ask for a pardon because he says he is not guilty and does not recognise the legitimacy of the court that tried him.

The JVP (People’s Liberation Front) also wants a remission, but it is facing an internal revolt and defections since ground-level activists object to their party’s support for Fonseca (whom they accuse of involvement in extra-judicial killings of their comrades during a JVP uprising of 1988-89).

Many Sri Lankans, even those who do not support Fonseka, are critical of the fact that some former senior LTTE members go free because they support President Rajapaksa, while Fonseka – who was a major factor in the LTTE’s defeat – languishes in prison. Some Buddhist priests have even offered to serve Fonseka’s sentence for him; and the JVP claims to have collected a million signatures in a petition calling for Fonseka’s release.

Even so, popular sympathy for Fonseka has been muted. But he has support among the Tamil diaspora. David Poopalapillai, spokesman for the Canadian Tamil Congress, a pro-LTTE group, said: “We in the Tamil diaspora will fight not only for the release of thousands of Tamils but also Fonseka” (2). That left the Canadian Daily Tamil News bemused: “Many Tamils are angry at Poopalapillai and CTC for expressing such unequivocal support for the jailed general. In some queer way David Poopalapillai and Canadian Tamil Congress has managed to upset all three parties in this conflict. Namely the Rajapaksa regime, General Fonseka’s supporters and Tamils in general.”

Back in Colombo, The Island newspaper questioned the motives of many of those campaigning for Fonseka’s release: “That his release is far from their goal is clear from their grinning mugs at protests which they have apparently turned into carnivals of sorts” (3). Many Sri Lankans were amused that Fonseka had campaigned for the presidency on a platform of fighting for oppressed minorities and press freedom, and against corruption and nepotism. For Fonseka is no Aung Suu Kyiu: as army commander, he upset all minorities with his bigoted outbursts. And before his candidacy, he had failed to champion press freedom.

Fonseka could now be more of a problem inside prison than out. As economist RMB Senanayake wrote in The Island, “If he dies in prison, Sarath Fonseka would prove himself to be not only a war hero, but a martyr.”

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Sri Lanka and the 18th Amendment

Sri Lanka and the 18th amendment

Exclusive September 2010, by Padraig Colman

Recent events in Sri Lanka have been overshadowed by a new amendment to the constitution approved by parliament on 8 September. Its main changes are:

 A president, if elected, can serve any number of terms; previously a president could serve a maximum of two six-year terms;
 The 17th amendment to the constitution has been repealed;
 The election commission will no longer have the power to prevent the use of state resources during elections.

Apart from the government papers the Daily News and the Sunday Observer, the English language press has led protests against the 18th amendment. The parliamentary opposition, the United National Party (UNP), caved in to the changes (two days after they were publicised, its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe left for a wedding in India. Ranil’s challenger for the UNP leadership, Sajith Premadasa, made no statement about the changes.)

The United National Party ceased long ago to be an effective opposition. It is no longer “national” (it mainly appeals to a westernised urban elite, ignoring the rural masses), nor “united” (many members want their party leader out), nor hardly even a “party” any more (President Rajapaksa has persuaded many of its MPs to cross over to the government).

After parliament passed the amendment — with a majority of 144 votes — the UNP suspended the membership of seven of their MPs who had supported the bill. One TNA (Tamil National Alliance) MP voted with the government. Rauff Hakeem and seven other SLMC (Sri Lanka Muslim Congress) members, elected only this April on the UNP ticket, voted with the government. Hakeem spoke for the bill using time allocated for the opposition. (Hakeem, who once said it was unreasonable to expect a party to stand by its election promises, has taken his party into and out of alliances with the government. He says: “My conscience is clear. I know I have not sought any opportunistic favours.”) (1).

Leftists who have consistently said the presidency was too powerful did not oppose the bill. The 17 votes against the amendment were by members of the DNA (Democratic National Alliance, Sarath Fonseka’s party) and the TNA. The rest of the UNP, including Ranil Wickremesinghe, did not vote.

The received wisdom has been that most of Sri Lanka’s problems have been caused by the executive presidency introduced in President JR Jayawardene’s 1978 constitution. Since 1994, SLFP-led political alliances have been clamouring for changing what was seen as a UNP constitution. SLFP president Kumaratunga promised to abolish it but didn’t. Abolition was a main plank of Fonseka’s platform. Wickremesinghe said the country should be ruled by an executive prime minister (preferably himself). President Rajapaksa himself promised to abolish the executive presidency and has helped the UNP leader by having one-to-one discussions with him purportedly to that end.

Professor GL Peiris entered parliament in 1994 from academia calling for constitutional change. He has served in UNP governments and had a hand in drafting the 17th amendment which he now finds deeply flawed. He is currently foreign minister in the SLFP-led government. Professor Pieris’s explanation for supporting the executive presidency now is that the LTTE would not have been defeated without strong leadership and similarly such power is needed to rebuild the nation.

The 17th amendment provided checks on the powers of the president, providing for high-level appointments like the chief justice, the inspector general of police, and the election commissioner and appointments to the important state commissions.

Inefficiency, and unfairness, results if jobs are handed out as political patronage. TUC secretary Saman Rathnapriya said the end of the 17th amendment will mean a politicised and corrupt public service. Navarthne Bandara, president of the Postal Officers Union, said that under the new arrangements “power to appoint officials to the public service will be vested with ministry secretaries who are appointed by ministers under whose whims and fancies they will function. This will surely have the public service eating out of the politician’s hand” (2).

The pressure group CPA (the Centre for Policy Alternatives) (3) says the 17th amendment did not work because of “intransigence and contempt for constitutional provisions on the part of successive presidents, rather than any fatal structural flaw that made it inherently unworkable.”

The 18th amendment will replace the Constitutional Council by a Parliamentary Council consisting of five members. Three are ex-officio: the speaker, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. The speaker (currently the president’s brother) and the prime minister are nominated by the president. The other two members will be separately nominated by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition (Ranil is routinely referred to by the Sunday Leader as the president’s “fourth brother”) to include ethnic groups not represented by the three ex-officio members.

Those opposed to the amendment are concerned at the way it was rushed through, as an urgent bill without consultation. The Supreme Court ruled that a referendum was not required. The CPA says: “These changes are contrary to the successive mandates given to the president by the people in the 2005 and 2010 presidential elections.” The CPA condemns the secrecy of the operation: “Even at the Supreme Court hearing the intervening petitioners were only given copies of the proposed changes after the government started making its submissions. Few outside government even had access to the proposed amendment before it was sent to the Supreme Court”.

Supporters claim it allows the electorate to vote for whomever they want. Opponents argue that the incumbent has unfair advantage because of the state resources he commands. The changes to the electoral commission further strengthen the position of the incumbent.

A craving for firm government can border on a masochistic desire to be dictatorially dominated. Most businessmen interviewed in Lanka Monthly Digest cite “benevolent” dictators like Lee Kwan Yew or Mahathir Mohammed as personal heroes. Lakbima News editor, Rajpal Abeynayake, writes: “It has to be remembered that Mahathir’s repression in Malaysia and Lee Kwan Yew’s domination in Singapore went as far as was necessary to keep opponents at bay but was tolerated because the economy flourished. There was no toleration of bad governance or political clowns who embarrassed everybody.”

The columnist Malinda Seneviratne warns: “History has shown time and again that tyrants have come to power democratically and ‘nice people’ have ended up abusing trust and position” (4). He adds: “Forget names and faces. Let’s concentrate on the wording. Let’s imagine the unimaginable. It is far better to assess the worth of any particular amendment by imagining that the benefits accrue to the politician you dislike most” (5).

Sri Lanka Dependent on India

Sri Lanka dependent on India

Exclusive June 2010, by Padraig Colman

Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa visited New Delhi for four days last week for talks with Indian ministers. He returned home with seven bi-lateral agreements with India, and immediately met China’s deputy prime minister in Colombo.

Small nations are bound to have complex relationships with large powerful neighbours. Ireland, for instance, had an ambivalent association with Britain, and the imperial power continued to exert power long after Ireland became independent. Cyprus’s fate will always be intertwined with that of Turkey and Greece. Sri Lanka is a nation about the same size as Ireland with a population of 20 million. Yet just across the Palk Straits there are around 65-70 million Tamils, many of whom were sympathetic to the fight by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) for a separate Tamil state within the territory of Sri Lanka.

India’s support for Sri Lanka in recent years was a vital factor in the defeat of the LTTE in 2009. Radar equipment was supplied and the Indian secret service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), discreetly provided intelligence and training for pilots. Indian naval support prevented the Tiger leaders from escaping by sea to fight again.

The Indian government is today providing aid for de-mining areas formerly controlled by the LTTE and rebuilding the railways in the north. Some Sri Lankans are ambivalent about India’s agenda in promoting reconciliation through devolution, under the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution. India’s help to the LTTE is seared into the national memory – the mines that India is now helping to remove were originally laid with Indian assistance.

Part of the game plan

Governments from the India state of Tamil Nadu had long provided a haven for Tamil separatist militants from Sri Lanka. The central government under Indira Gandhi connived in this, and tolerated the existence of bases and training camps in other parts of India. According to MR Narayan Swamy, the biographer of the LTTE leader Prabakharan, the RAW trained 1,200 Sri Lankan Tamils in the use of weapons and laying mines between 1983 and 1987. Arms deliveries to various groups began in 1984 and went on almost up to the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement in 1987 (1).

Douglas Devananda, once a separatist militant and now a government minister (he accompanied Rajapaksa on his recent trip to India and was threatened with arrest for murders carried out in Tamil Nadu in 1986), says: “We realised that they were only trying to use us in their game plan.” It was widely rumoured that Indira Gandhi intended to use Sri Lankan Tamil rebels as an advance force in a plan to emulate the Turkish action in North Cyprus in 1974 and actually take over part of Sri Lanka. A retired Sri Lankan intelligence officer writing anonymously in the Sunday Leader (2) claims the RAW was responsible for a bomb blast in Colombo’s Pettah market in 1987 and planned to blow up the city’s sewerage system if the Sri Lankan government did not comply with India’s wishes. That same year India, finding the LTTE intractable, sent in the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). The stated intention was to bring a swift end to the conflict by disarming the LTTE, but the Tigers were as ready to fight the Indians as the Sinhalese.

Sri Lankan Tamils were alienated when frustrated Indian soldiers, out of their depth, committed atrocities, such as a massacre of doctors, nurses and patients at a hospital in Jaffna on 21 October 1987. This followed intensive shelling of the city of Jaffna. According to Narayan Swamy: “The Indian army had been welcomed with garlands and prayers…For the mass of Jaffna people, the IPKF offensive was an unbelievable conflagration, a horror movie come true.” And the Sri Lankan government accused India of violating its sovereignty and international law by sending the Indian air force to drop food supplies on Jaffna.

Ranasinghe Premadasa, prime minister of Sri Lanka from 1978-88, had always been opposed to the accord with India. When he succeeded JR Jayawardene as president in December 1988, tensions between Sri Lanka and India increased. Premadasa saw the removal of the IPKF as essential to restore order to the south after the bloody JVP uprising because the Sinhalese nationalist JVP traded on bitter opposition to Indian interference. Premadasa was later assassinated by the LTTE, on May Day 1993.

Withdrawal was completed in March 1990. More than 1,000 Indian soldiers had been killed and over 2,000 wounded. The financial cost to India of its intervention in Sri Lanka was put at around $1.25bn. But the real cost was far higher. Rajiv Gandhi’s mother Indira was the architect of India’s interventionist policy: Rajiv oversaw its intensification and paid the ultimate price – assassination by the LTTE.

Poisoned chalice?

Before Rajapaksa’s visit to India there were street protests in Colombo by leftist elements and high profile lobbying by professional and business people against the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Part of the anxiety about this trade agreement, which has been growing for over two years, is that the government is withholding details, so people fear Sri Lanka could be dominated by cheaper and skilled Indian services at the expense of domestic industry. The fear is that this version of “free trade” with India will be analogous to the way the US uses Nafta to maintain hegemony over weaker trading partners. In The Island newspaper Douglas Jayasekera has related his experience of previous trade negotiations (3).

Deuteronomy tells us that gifts blind the eyes of the wise. Aid can be a poisoned chalice. Indian “aid” has come in the form of interest-bearing loans and development projects have provided few jobs for Sri Lankans. The big Chinese projects have used only Chinese labour. And the Chinese presence building a port at Hambantota has caused India anxiety and may be the reason for the proposed new Deputy High Commission in that city. Many Sri Lankans wonder at the real reason for an Indian diplomatic presence in Jaffna and Hambantota when there are few Indian nationals in either place. The suspicion is that the Jaffna office, which will undoubtedly have RAW personnel on its staff, is to develop closer relations between the Tamil community in Jaffna and Tamil Nadu.

Some Sri Lankans fear being colonised by India. The anonymous intelligence officer links this in with the promotion of the 13th amendment which India imposed on Sri Lanka as a means of devolving power to the north and east, the territory claimed by the LTTE as a Tamil homeland. He claims: “This is a first step towards setting up a client state in the north and east of our country which would ultimately vote to link itself with Tamil Nadu and India”. But Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s UN ambassador in Geneva during the closing stages of the war, sounds a warning note: “If India stops supporting us, not even the Non Aligned Movement will defend us fully, because they take their cue from respected Third World states such as India” (4).

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Sri Lanka Post Elections

Sri Lanka post elections

Exclusive April 2010, by Padraig Colman

On 8 April Sri Lankans went to the polls to elect a new parliament. This was the first general election since the defeat of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) in May last year and the first in almost 30 years which covered the whole nation.

It was a resounding victory, in seats, for the governing coalition headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The UPFA (United People’s Freedom Alliance) won 144 seats; the main opposition coalition the UNF (United National Front) 46; the DNA (Democratic National Alliance) consisting of a rump of the Marxist JVP (People’s Liberation Front) and supporters of retired General Sarath Fonseka, won five seats. Fonseka, who lost the presidential election in January and is now imprisoned and awaiting court martial on charges of fraudulent activities while Army Commander, won a seat in a Colombo ward.

Serge Halimi wrote in the January issue of Le Monde diplomatique: “Political combat sometimes stresses personal antagonisms and obsessive antipathies too much. The need for an all-out attack on an opponent makes for diverse alliances motivated solely by the desire to destroy the common enemy. But once that enemy has been brought down, the problems begin. What next? To make political decisions, the grey areas which in opposition had made an alliance possible have to be dispelled, and that brings disenchantment.” In this case the opponent was not brought down but disenchantment followed anyway.

I am not a great fan of counterfactual history but I would speculate that a military coup would have been possible if Fonseka had won the presidency. The coalition that supported his candidacy was fragile, its only unifying factor hatred of Rajapaksa. Fonseka’s intervention in politics has had the effect of weakening the opposition still further. The main opposition party, the UNP is dead in the water with its leader, Ranil Wickramesinghe, the butt of jokes. One of the kindest comments was that he is “personally hapless”. He gained 230,000 votes and a seat in Colombo but a former JVP man, Wimal Weerawansa, won more preferential votes (280,000).

The revolutionary JVP recovered from defeat (by torture and death squads) in 1989 to become a constitutional party that earned respect in many quarters for its grassroots approach to the problems of ordinary Sinhalese, and was seen as free of corruption. The JVP once had a say in government but joining Fonseka in his DNA party has lost them their previously solid bases: JVP activists are giving up politics and even leaving the country, and the party’s 39 seats in the previous parliament has been slashed to three.

The UNF tried to woo the minorities but failed. The Tamil National Alliance has transformed itself into ITKA (Illanka Thamil Arasu Katchi) and won only 15 seats, compared with the TNA’s 22 in the previous house. The governing UPFA won Nuwara Eliya, with its large population of plantation Tamils, from the UNF and the district now has seven Tamil MPs. Another district with a large population of plantation Tamils, Badulla, did not elect a single Tamil MP. There are signs that the dominant UPFA will become a national party with serious clout in the Tamil-majority areas of the north and east and that ITAK will decline without the LTTE’s muscle. The UPFA will probably extend its influence in the north through its ability to fund development and provide jobs and patronage.

There was a record number of candidates, but voting itself was lower than it had ever been. Sri Lanka has usually boasted a healthy turnout compared to most democracies – around 75%. Even during the times of the 1989 uprising (when the JVP were killing people who tried to vote and putting their heads on spikes), the turnout was 63%. This time it was around 50% and in the north it was a mere 23%.

The establishment of a Rajapaksa dynasty may be a matter of concern to commentators but it doesn’t seem to trouble the voters: Mahinda Rajapaksa got 60% of the vote in the presidential election. And in the general election, brother Basil got an astounding 425,861 preference votes. Three Rajapaksas were elected in Hambantota district. Rajapaksa has promised to abolish the executive presidency. Constitutional changes require a two-thirds vote in parliament. This has generally been thought impossible under proportional representation but Rajapaksa has almost achieved the requisite number of seats and has shown his skill in the past at forging coalitions and inducing crossovers. Some suspect that Rajapaksa wants to make constitutional changes because he is plotting a Putinesque ploy to become executive prime minister in perpetuity.

Many believe that devolution of power is essential to prevent further separatist revolts The 13th amendment to the constitution has been seen as the way forward on this but it has been in abeyance for some time. It was imposed by India, which is still promoting it. Not everyone, Tamil or Sinhalese, agrees that it is the panacea.

The 17th amendment has also been in abeyance. It was drafted to provide safeguards for human rights and curbs on police powers. Linked in with this are concerns about press freedom and corruption. Unemployment, youth and graduate dissatisfaction led to bloody revolutions in the past and the education system is felt by many to be in need of reform. A huge task faces the government if it is to reintegrate the north and east into the national economy.

Rajapaksa did not win the presidency easily in 2005 but now the nation seems transformed in his image. He has played a canny political game and people from a wide spectrum are grateful to him because, after 30 years of vicious war, there have been no terrorist incidents for over a year. Does he have the ability to now unite the nation and improve the economy?

Nationalism

Nationalism is the culprit

Exclusive July 2009, by Padraig Colman

One of the comments on my previous article on Sri Lanka for Le Monde diplomatique’s blog was: “Please write objectively on other conflicts too.”

So here I’d like to discuss the concept of revenge, and reflect on how the legitimate fight for human rights can transmute into terrorism when tainted by perverted fantasies of nationalism.

The non-violent civil-rights protests in Northern Ireland were hi-jacked by the Provisional IRA who appointed themselves protectors of the Catholic community and hitched the issue to their own nationalist agenda of a united Ireland.

Is there an inevitable regression from Northern Irish Catholics suffering discrimination, to innocent English (and Irish) people being blown to giblets while enjoying a drink with friends?

In Sri Lanka, militant separatism gained strength and developed into terrorism when Tamils’ grievances were not addressed through the normal democratic process. Inaction by successive governments led to action by militants which led to reaction from the ill-disciplined and ineffective security forces. Like the Black and Tans in Ireland, who burned villages in reprisal for rebel actions, Sri Lankan soldiers responded to the killing of comrades by killing innocents. The horrific anti-Tamil violence of July 1983 accelerated the emigration of Tamils from Sri Lanka, which in turn strengthened the position of the LTTE against other Tamil groups because of diaspora funding.

Where is the proportionality between unfair university admission quotas and a 30-year war and 100,000 dead? What was the connection between discrimination against Tamils and extortion and drug trading? How did the Sinhala-only policy lead to the assassination of Tamil politicians and the maiming of small children? How can a recurrence of such conflict be prevented?

“Revenge doesn’t know how to choose between the guilty and the innocent”. Slavko Goldstein wrote that in his book, 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. Goldstein is a Croatian Jew and describes the ethnic tensions during the second world war in former Yugoslavia. Goldstein’s father, who was a communist as well as a Jew, was taken away by the Ustashi, the ruling elite of the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, and never seen again.

The Ustashi began rounding up Serbs in April 1941. Extermination camps were set up in the woods and ravines of the Velebit Mountains. One camp at Jadnovno lasted 55 days and held 4,000 Serbs and Jews. Of those, 3,999 were killed (one escaped) by taking them to the edge of a pit where they were bludgeoned with sledgehammers and axes. These events were remembered in the 1990s when Milosevic, in his push for a Greater Serbia, massacred Muslims and Croats.

The poet, Charles Simic comments: “Once more, the culprit was nationalism, that madness of identifying with a single ethnic group to a point where one recognises no other duty other than furthering its interests even if it means placing its actions beyond good and evil. Many the world over believe this is the only way; that the survival of their people justifies any crime they commit. They find the scruples of those who cringe at the shedding of innocent blood in pursuit of some noble cause naive and repugnant”.

Benedict Anderson wrote: “It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny”. Nations “loom out of an immemorial past” and “glide into a limitless future.” Or, in the words of Ernest Gellner: “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.” Paul Ignotus, meanwhile, wrote of Hungary: “A nation is born when a few people decide that it should be.”

Irish historians like Roy Foster have deconstructed their nation’s foundation myths: “The construction of ‘advanced’ Irish nationalism at home relied on buttressing from abroad, and so did the creation of Irish identity.” As large and influential Irish communities were established in the US and Britain, the Irish diaspora kept alive the fairy tales. Sinister men rattled collection boxes in north London pubs “for the boys”. Americans dreamed about their romantic Irish roots and gave money to Noraid for IRA arms.

Nationalists in Ceylon such as AE Goonesinha were stimulated by accounts of Parnell, Davitt and the Irish freedom movement and closely followed Irish events in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Sinhalese Buddhist thinkers such as Ratmalane Sri Dharmarama thero and the Tamil disciple of William Morris, Ananda Coomaraswamy, wrote of an ancient, highly developed Lankan civilisation. Another Sinhalese, Anagarika Dharmapala, wistfully dreamed of a dazzling past: “We must wake from our slumber… We were a great people”. The Tamil political leader, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, wrote in his diary: “Thought much of the unhappy conditions of our country and what a glorious thing it would be for Ceylon to emulate and excel her great past.”

Modern-day Sri Lankans might echo Adamantios Koraes’s 1803 remarks about his contemporary Greeks’ relation to their classical ancestors. He said: “We must either try to become again worthy of this name, or we must not bear it.”

Sinhalese and Tamils, just like the Irish and countless other “nationalities”, delude themselves with the false memory syndrome of ancient glories and rights, which, unfortunately, are too often defined by hatred of “the other”.

The film critic Mark Cousins has noted the current prevalence of vengeance as a theme in movies. One of the questions of our time is how a tribe that has been harmed finds peace. Filmmakers’ answer seems to be to return harm to those who harmed. Movies seem to give comfort by ventilating an audience’s feelings of impotence. Armchair warriors get some satisfaction by keeping anger alive and espousing vengeance as if life were a movie, the pain of the wounded and incarcerated a matter relevant to their own egos. Action and reaction – will the cycle never be broken?

Debates on blogs often generate more heat than light. One despairs about reconciliation in Sri Lanka when one reads comments like this: “While you are at the praying mood also pray that the Transnational Tamils will be merciful on the Sinhalese when they are done with the ground work for a bigger and more deadlier struggle against you, your racist Sinhalese sisters and brothers led by your majesty the King Mahinda”. Tough guy at the keyboard without even good grammar!

On the other side there are many expressions by bloggers of distasteful Sinhalese triumphalism.

In 1938 the Irish nationalist, Stephen Gwynn, wrote: “We know in Ireland, and probably they know in Poland, in Slovakia and in Russia, and in a score of other countries where revolution has succeeded, what is the cost of victorious hate.”

There comes a time when truth and reconciliation has to take the place of endlessly rehearsing grievances from centuries back, as the Irish were prone to do. Sectarian killings in Northern Ireland sporadically continued long after the IRA gave up their arms, but peace now seems the norm. Only this week loyalist paramilitaries announced that they had renounced violence (tell that to the Roma that they terrorised into leaving Ireland).

In Sri Lanka, the grievances are still present and sharp and will take skilful and sensitive action by the victorious and currently popular government to manage.

Ernest Renan wrote that nationhood requires forgetting many things. He cited the massacre of Huguenots on St Bartholomew’s Day as a symbol of the kind of thing France needed to forget in order to be a nation. Will Sri Lankans be able to forget the many horrors of recent decades and forge a new nation combining all cultural histories as successfully as the Sri Lankan cricket team?

Sri Lanka: concentration camps or welfare centres ?

Sri Lanka: concentration camps or welfare centres ?

Exclusive August 2009, by Padraig Colman

Now that the war is over we are getting very contradictory reports on the situation in Sri Lanka. On 8 August Amnesty International criticised the Sri Lanka government for forcibly confining internally displaced people (IDPs) in camps. Meanwhile the Centre for Policy Alternatives has presented a petition to the government saying that 300,000 civilians are being detained illegally. The former chief justice Sarath Silva fears that the continuing confinement of Tamils could cause a new war.

Sections of the Tamil diaspora have described the camps as being part of a genocidal agenda. The government calls the camps “welfare centres”. Critics call them “concentration camps”.

A group of volunteers summarised their observations after visiting the camps. They said that:

 many families have relatives to go to but are kept in the camps;
 families are separated in different zones;
 the camps are administered by armed military personnel;
 and they concluded that aid agencies should be able to talk to the displaced.

The editor of The Hindu, N Ram, described Menik Farm: “Conditions in these camps are much better than has been depicted, without visiting the camps, in western media reports. Moreover, they are visibly better than conditions in Sri Lankan refugee camps in India, which are still mostly inaccessible to journalists, researchers, and other outsiders.” This is not to say that Menik Farm is a Club Mediterranée, but it isn’t Belsen either. I was surprised to read that in April, before the war was over, banks had set up ATMs in the camps. The Sri Lankan government is meeting basic needs, including education for schoolchildren and vocational training for youths.

However, the Tamil News says that according to “reliable sources”, foreigners are being misled by being shown the better facilities.

Laurent Sury, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières, observes that “with such a large number of people concentrated together, there is always the risk of waterborne disease with the rains.” The World Health Organisation says no large outbreaks of disease have been reported so far, although there is a risk of malaria and diarrhoea, and now there are worries about skin diseases.

Meanwhile an Indian medical team arrived in Sri Lanka on 10 March and set up a hospital in Pulmoddai in the Trincomalee district to receive IDPs being brought by Red Cross ships from the areas held by the LTTE. India now feels that conditions have improved sufficiently to withdraw by the end of August.

Security concerns

Adnan Khan, country director of the World Food Programme, confirms that “food supplies have never been affected by access restrictions.” He said his people were able to move freely within the camps.

One of the reasons given for holding people in the camps and restricting access was to weed out hard-core LTTE fighters. Interhamwe infiltration and intimidation was a serious problem in the camps housing Rwandan refugees in Goma. There have been reports of LTTE posters appearing in the Sri Lankan camps.

The army is finding large stores of weapons, ammunition and explosives hidden by the LTTE and expects to recover more. Vavuniya District Tamil National Alliance MP, S Kishor, said he was aware that around 50,000 IDPs have escaped from welfare camps by paying money to police and army personnel. Defence chief Gotabhaya Rajapaksa warned this could be a part of a strategy to revive the LTTE.

Many of us living in Sri Lanka feared that, despite the defeat of the LTTE, children traveling to school on buses or people buying food in markets would continue to be maimed and killed. A friend who was often vehement in her criticism of the president said: “I thank the president for finishing off the LTTE, who did nothing for the Tamils here. They represented the Tamils overseas. I thank the president because we do not hear of any deaths anymore due to bombs. What a relief that is to those of us who live here.”

Resettlement

The government says it will take at least six months to make the areas from which IDPs fled habitable again. The LTTE littered the area with land mines. India has already sent de-mining experts and the UK has promised £500,000 to the Mines Advisory Group.

Houses need to be rebuilt and other facilities provided: the LTTE controlled the area but neglected the infrastructure. The government plans to resettle at least 80% of those in the camps by the end of the year and rehabilitate over 10,000 ex-LTTE cadres and thousands of families who had direct contacts with the LTTE.

The UNHCR described a previous resettlement of 2,231 to seven villages in the Musali division in the southern part of Mannar district, which at one time was controlled by the LTTE: “The government has applied good practices in IDP return…The process was carried out in safety and dignity.”

On 9 June, 2,120 Tamils and Muslims were re-settled. At the end of June, some 9,000 people aged 60 or more were allowed to leave the camps and join their relatives. On 5 August, 1,100 people boarded 70 buses to return to Jaffna, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara in areas where de-mining, reconstruction of roads, supply of electricity and water were already completed. “I’m happy to go back to my own house. I never thought that we would be able to resettle in such a short period,” P Sundaralingam told Reuters in Jaffna.

The Canadian minister Bev Oda was encouraged by what she saw in the camps. “This is not an ideal situation,” she said but “I would say that in partnership with international organisations, the government of Sri Lanka is making very good efforts to meet the basic needs.’’ The Tamil journalist DB Jeyaraj writes: “I ask readers not to engage in ethnic-orientated recrimination about the IDP plight. Please see those caught up in a humanitarian tragedy as human beings and not as ethnic beings.”