Resentments in Sri Lanka Reflect Challenges to Peace

by Seth Mydans, The New York Times, March 22, 2009

BATTICALOA — The homeless Tamil refugees camped in shanties here provide a hint of the difficulties and divisions that lie ahead as the Sri Lankan government fights what it says is a final battle to end a 25-year separatist insurgency.

Tamil refugees forced to flee as the army battled rebels spoke to relatives over a fence inside a refugee camp in northern Sri Lanka.

Ethnic Tamils who fled an earlier round of fighting three years ago, the refugees still live in uncertainty, surrounded by barbed wire, and their resentment against the majority-Sinhalese government has grown.

“If they won’t let us go back to our land, then cancel our citizenship and send us to another country,” said Chitharaval Somasundara, 55, who was once a farmer.

“For us Tamils, this is the way it is,” he said. “For Sinhalese this would not happen.”

Though it appears to be on the verge of crushing the insurgency on the battlefield, diplomats and other analysts say, the government's military offensive may only be causing more resentment among the Tamils and sowing the seeds of future unrest.

And many say the government, by using fear and violence to quash a free press and civil liberties in what it says is part of its war effort, is undermining democratic freedoms and transforming Sri Lanka into a more repressive and intolerant nation.

To end the violence and secure a more stable peace, political analysts say, the government must do more than it has to address the long-running grievances and ethnic antagonisms that lie at the heart of the conflict.

Its first challenge is the endgame, they say: a military offensive that spares civilian lives and a resettlement program for tens of thousands of displaced people that will not breed further resentment.

The government must fill a power vacuum in the north, the Tamils’ base, with a credible local administration that can keep the peace while overseeing huge reconstruction projects after 25 years of war. And, some say, Sri Lanka must fully put into effect a largely dormant law on regional autonomy that would allow Tamils and others a degree of flexibility in meeting local needs.

“It is yet unclear how the government and the Sinhala-dominated military will deal with these issues,” wrote Nadeeka Withana, an analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, in a commentary last week. “Confidence-building measures will take years to be effective and requires resources and a strong political will.”

Most broadly, the analysts say, the government must find ways to ease divisions between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, who make up 12 percent of the population of 21 million and have been marginalized by laws on language and religion and by ethnic preferences in education and government jobs.

The war, which began in 1983, has taken an estimated 70,000 lives as the government has battled a brutal insurgency by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or L.T.T.E.

“My hope,” said the United States ambassador, Robert O. Blake, “is that with the end of fighting the president will really reach out to the Tamil and Muslim communities and give his vision of a united Sri Lanka that will include a measure of dignity and respect and a level of autonomy for them in the geographic areas in which they predominate across the country.”

“The concern is that with military success there is a growing Sinhalese chauvinism and certain hard-line Sinhalese elements in government that say the government does not need to devolve any power to the Tamils,” Mr. Blake said. “Essentially, to the victor go the spoils.”

Batticaloa, a city on Sri Lanka’s eastern shore, was freed from Tamil control two years ago and is an example, in the eyes of the government, of postwar reconstruction.

Infrastructure is being rebuilt and central government control has been restored. But it is a cold peace, with police checkpoints in the town center, armed thugs prowling back streets and continuing reports of abductions and disappearances.

A largely Sinhalese police force patrols a Tamil population, often unable to communicate in a common language.

“The fear is there,” said a woman who owns a guesthouse and insisted that her name not be used. “Even now I am scared to speak.”

In the short term, at least, it appears that the government will keep Sri Lanka on something of a war footing, guarding against possible violence by remnants of the insurgency as well as against opposition by the press and civil society.

The Defense Ministry announced this month that no public gatherings could be held without its approval.

“Once this terrorism problem, which lasted for 30 years, is completed, we have to enter the next episode of it,” Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said March 12. He is a brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

“The war is like a cancer,” Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said. “Even after curing a cancer, there is a period for radiation treatment. It is same with the war on terrorism. After crushing terrorism, we have to embark on the next mission of creating a situation where incidents such as the one that occurred in Akuressa should not happen.”

He was referring to a suicide bombing two days earlier in southern Sri Lanka, far from the conflict area, that killed 15 people and wounded at least 40, including a cabinet minister. It seemed to show that even with their fighters under pressure in the north, the Tamil rebels continued to be able to mount terrorist attacks elsewhere.

The fear among many people here is that the government’s “radiation treatment” will become permanent.

“It would be against all known norms of human nature to put the gun down when it’s the easiest way to curb dissent or alternate views,” said Lal Wickramatunga, the managing editor of The Sunday Leader, an English-language weekly newspaper.

Two months ago, six former American ambassadors wrote to President Rajapaksa, urging him to pursue democracy and national reconciliation as the country builds a postwar society.

“We fear that, even as Sri Lanka is enjoying military progress against the L.T.T.E., the foundations of democracy in the country are under assault,” they wrote.