by Brian Senewiratne, MA (Camb),MD(Lond),FRCP(Lond),FRACP(Lond), Consultant Physician, Brisbane, Australia , August 16, 2004
A group calling itself “The World Alliance for Peace in Sri Lanka” is meeting on 20 August 2004 in Oslo to attack the Norwegian peace initiative in Sri Lanka. The behind-the-scenes hand of the Sri Lankan Government is clearly visible. If the flyer is anything to go by, the meeting is a blatant Sinhala racist propaganda effort to mislead the international community of the problem in Sri Lanka. It is essential that this misleading information be corrected.
I am a Sinhalese from the majority community in Sri Lanka. However, I strongly support the demand of the Tamil “minority” (better referred to as ‘the Tamil people who are less numerous than the Sinhalese’) in their struggle to have a separate administration for the Tamil areas (the North and East). I do so because the Tamils have a strong case which I will briefly set out. I also think that such a separation will benefit the whole country since there will be a marked increase in the productivity of the area in question, which will flow on to the rest of the country. It makes more sense to separate and develop than to fight and destroy each other in an attempt to keep an inappropriate British colonial construct together.
The Sri Lankan problem is complex, involving historical, geographical, ethno-religious, linguistic, geopolitical, and economic factors, complicated by British colonial constructs, and compounded by local power politics. It is not a problem of ‘Tamil Terrorism’ which is what the Sri Lankan government would have us believe.
The bottom line is a problem created by the colonial British to address an administrative problem of their making. This has been compounded by a succession of Sri Lankan governments which have discriminated against the Tamil minority to obtain the support of the Sinhalese majority (74% of the population) as a means of getting into, and remaining, in power. Discrimination against the Tamils has been in language, education, job opportunities and, most importantly, in the developmental neglect of the area in which they live. There has also been an attempt to decrease their parliamentary representation by Government-sponsored relocation of Sinhalese into the Tamil areas.
Sri Lanka is a multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, and multireligious country. Despite this, Sri Lankan governments since 1956 have declared that the island will be a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. This the Tamil minority has justifiably opposed. Tamil protests initially took the form of Gandhi-style non-violent protests. These were met by Government-sponsored Sinhalese hoodlum violence. With non-violent protests having failed over a prolonged period, in 1972 Tamil youths decided to take up arms to achieve a separate administration for the Tamil areas. The Government responded to this by unleashing massive violence on the Tamil civilian population using the Sri Lankan armed forces and the police.
The State has a right to defend itself against armed groups. However, it has no right to do so by unleashing State terror on civilians. The State has a responsibility to protect all its subjects, not just the majority, which is what has happened in Sri Lanka for several decades.
What the government has been waging is not a war just against Tamil militants, but against the Tamil people. Indiscriminate bombing and shelling of the entire Jaffna peninsula over several years, and an embargo on many items for daily living, such as food, medicines and fertiliser, to the Tamil areas, have made civilian life impossible. This is State Terrorism against an entire people.
In July 1983, over 3,000 Tamil civilians living in Colombo and the South were butchered by Sinhala hoodlums whose leaders were Cabinet Ministers. The government did nothing to stop the massacre. This was the watershed in ethnic relations. This is State complicity in the mass murder of civilians whose only crime was that they were Tamils. The current Sri Lankan President has recently apologized to the Tamil people for what happened in 1983. She does not need to do so since those responsible for this blot on Sri Lanka are still there, now in Opposition. The apology has to come from them.
In the Tamil East, entire Tamil villages have been bull-dozed and Sinhalese settlers moved in. This is ethnic cleansing and State terrorism of the worst kind. The perpetrators who should be facing a war crimes tribunal have instead been sent abroad as Ambassadors!
Thousands of bombs and shells have been dropped on the Tamil areas and civilian property, businesses, schools, markets, hospitals and even places of worship destroyed. Some 65,000 people, mainly Tamil civilians, have been killed, a million made refugees and hundreds of thousands of children made orphans or homeless. 75% of the population in the Wanni (North) live below the poverty line.
In 1995 the Armed Forces launched a particularly irresponsible assault on Jaffna. More than 500,000 civilians had to flee Jaffna dragging their children, the elderly and the sick to escape the onslaught. The scale of the human tragedy was such that the then UN Secretary General called on international governments to assist the uprooted Jaffna population. When the displaced people returned, there were mass arrests of an arbitrary nature. Some 10,000 people were taken into custody without a charge. 900 of them ‘disappeared’ while in custody, their bodies later found in mass graves.
If the Sri Lankan President wants to apologise to the Tamil people, it should be for this and subsequent acts of barbarism done when she was not only the all-powerful Executive President, but also the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. To promote the criminals responsible and send them abroad as diplomats is more like hypocrisy than an apology.
The atrocities committed by the Government Forces on the Tamils are too numerous to detail here. They have been amply documented in a vast array of publications by international human rights organizations for the past three decades. Arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, killing, torture and rape are common. In year 2000 and 2001, Sri Lanka had the 2nd highest incidence of ‘disappearances’ in the world. Almost all were Tamils. Human rights organizations across the world have repeatedly expressed concern about these violations of basic human rights.
What the Tamils are asking for is an administrative set-up where they can run the area they live in (North and East), and where they can exist with safety and without discrimination. This is not an attempt to divide and destroy Sri Lanka, but to dismantle a flawed British colonial construct. For hundreds of years before the British arrived, and even after they did, Ceylon – as it then was called – consisted of 3 separate Kingdoms – a Tamil Kingdom in the North, the Kandyan Kingdom in the center, and the Kotte Kingdom in the South. For administrative convenience, the British unified these three separate kingdoms and centralized administrative and development power in the Sinhala South (Colombo). This disastrous set-up resulted in the developmental neglect of the periphery, which included the entire area where the majority of Tamils live. This type of British ‘colonial construct for convenience’ occurred in India, Malaya, and several other colonies. In India and Malaya these colonial constructs were dismantled as soon as the British left, or shortly thereafter. Unfortunately the dismantlement did not occur in Sri Lanka, with disastrous consequences. It is imperative that it be done now, if the continuing chaos is to be settled.
One of the results of the developmental neglect of the periphery is that this large area has made little contribution to the economy. There are enormous untapped resources in the Tamil areas, including the world’s 2nd largest natural harbour. If developmental power is given to this area, with the well-known ability of the industrious Tamil, the increase in productivity of this area will be spectacular. What is necessary are fundamental structural changes, and an abandonment of ethno-religious chauvinism and empty rhetoric. This is what the Tamil struggle is all about.
The right of self-determination for a nation has been accepted since World War II, a beneficiary being Sri Lanka. More recently, the right of self-determination for a people has also been accepted. Where the right has not been accepted, the result has been some of the bloodiest and destructive conflicts of the past half-century. Sri Lanka is a glaring example.
Decentralisation of developmental power to the Tamil areas is not an option, but mandatory if there is to be peace and prosperity in Sri Lanka. It is up to the international community, in particular the crucial aid-givers, to see that this happens. What is necessary is not just ‘Peace,’ but ‘Peace with Justice.’ To portray the Sri Lankan problem as Tamil Terrorism is not only incorrect, but will prevent the correction of the fundamental problem of a centralisation of power in Sinhalese hands in Colombo. Unleashing State Terrorism to force the Tamil people to abandon their right of self-determination will only make a solvable problem unsolvable.
Those who have supported the struggle of the Tamil minority to exist with dignity, safety and without discrimination, have been branded as ‘Anti-Sri Lanka’, traitors or even terrorists. It is dangerous to cede to the Sri Lankan Government the right to define what Sri Lanka ought to be. That is for the people of Sri Lanka to decide. Where the Tamil people are concerned, they decided in the 1977 General Election when they overwhelmingly voted for a separate Tamil State, Eelam. For the Sri Lankan government to attempt to crush this decision by unleashing State terror is an exercise in futility and must be condemned by the international community.
A succession of so-called ‘Peace-Talks’ between the Tamil Tigers and the Government over a protracted period have come to nothing. The current peace has held since December 2001. It is everyone’s responsibility to see that the peace is not just a pause in conflict, which it could well become if the international community does not act. Norway has played a crucial role despite impossible odds to maintain the cease-fire and to help the two sides to arrive at a political solution. Norway’s sustained effort must be applauded and supported by the international community, ethno-religious extremists and fanatics not withstanding. If these destructive elements succeed and fighting breaks out again, what the Tamil people will face the possibility of ethnic oblivion or physical extermination. The international community cannot let this happen.
The Sri Lankan government’s aim is to unleash State terror to intimidate and crush the Tamil people and force them to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. This will not succeed. Similar attempts in other theatres of conflict across the world have failed. It is unlikely that Sri Lanka will be the exception. If the Sinhalese people and their government are determined to make Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-Buddhist State, there will be no option to the establishment of a Tamil State, by force if necessary. State terror will only generate Tamil terror and increase the resolve of the Tamil people to free themselves from Sinhala domination and brutality. It is this type of ethnic chauvinism and extremism masquerading as ‘nationalism’ that has been responsible for most of the atrocities of the 20th century. Martin Luther King said that there is no force more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The time has come for a change in the administrative set-up of Sri Lanka.
16 August 2004