Sri
Lankan President’s “Peace”
Mask Starts To Slip Off
By Wije Dias
21 June, 2007
World
Socialist Web
During
a visit to the Middle East late last month, Sri Lankan President Mahinda
Rajapakse defended his government’s war against the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in an interview with Al Jazeera that was
notable for its crudeness, arrogance and incoherence.
None of Sri Lanka’s
country’s media, not even the state-owned press, have reproduced
the interview or commented on its contents. The embarrassed silence
reflects a deep unease in the Colombo political and media establishment
that the lies being used to justify the country’s brutal civil
war are beginning to unravel. The abuse of democratic rights, including
murders and disappearances, by the security forces is so blatant that
the Rajapakse government is confronting growing criticism internationally
and at home.
Al Jazeera’s “101
East” presenter Teymoor Nabil was certainly not a hostile interviewer.
He began by blaming the LTTE for restarting the war just weeks after
Rajapakse was elected in November 2005. Nabil then fed Rajapakse the
question: “Why has the LTTE suddenly decided to start attacking
again?” Quite comfortable, the president replied: “They
[LTTE] would have thought it was a weakness of mine, that I could be
defeated. That was a good opportunity for them to establish a separate
state.”
Rajapakse continued to posture
as a man of peace, but soon found himself embroiled in one contradiction
after another, even in response to Nabil’s lame questioning. Asked
about dialogue between the government and the LTTE, the president declared:
“We are always ready for talks. Always, even today. Even while
the fighting goes on, I am ready for talks.”
The answer is an outright
lie. Rajapakse has made clear that he is unwilling to hold talks on
the basis of the 2002 ceasefire and the terms agreed in discussions
in 2002-03. Under international pressure, he reluctantly consented to
talks at Geneva in February 2006, which all but collapsed when government
negotiators demanded a fundamental revision of the ceasefire agreement.
A second round at Oslo in April 2006 bogged down in wrangling over protocol
and did not even commence.
Asked about the ceasefire
agreement, Rajapakse declared: “The [LTTE] does not honour that.
We still honour that. We still do not send our police, our army to that
side.” Again in the light of the Sri Lankan army’s current
offensive operations to seize LTTE territory in the North and East,
the statement is simply false. At another point in the interview, when
bragging about the military’s performance, he declared: “We
have cleared the east from terrorism. Today, they [the LTTE] have been
limited to the Kilinochichi and Mullaitivu areas. We have weakened them.”
Tangled in his own lies,
Rajapakse increasingly contradicted himself. “Until the terrorists
are weakened, they will not come for talks. As long as they think they
are strong they will try to break up the country,” he said. Trying
to clarify the issue, Nabil asked: “So what you are saying is
that there must first be military victory and then peace talks?”
But no, that was not the case. “I said that even today I am ready
to negotiate very clearly. My argument is that terrorism has to be got
rid of. We cannot kneel down to that. I am not prepared to kneel down
to their arms capability,” Rajapakse replied.
At this stage, Nabil admitted
his perplexity: “I apologise, I am not really following you. You
say that terrorism must be defeated but [you] don’t want, you
don’t think that a military victory is necessary?” To which
Rajapakse replied: “Absolutely, a victory is essential against
terrorism. That is a different story. But because we need to meet the
aspirations of the Tamil people, I am prepared to go for talks, with
the terrorists.”
Nabil was unable, or unwilling,
to unravel the riddle, but there is an explanation for these absurdities.
For all his claims to be
a “man of peace,” Rajapakse’s 2005 campaign for the
presidency foreshadowed an end to the 2002 ceasefire and a rapid return
to war. He allied himself with Sinhala extremist parties—the Janatha
Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU)—on
the basis of an agreement that amounted to ultimatums to the LTTE. Rajapakse
insisted that he would revise the ceasefire agreement, dispense with
Norway as formal peace facilitator, and no longer recognise the LTTE
as the sole representative of the Tamil people—effectively destroying
the previous basis for peace talks.
Far from reacting aggressively,
LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in his annual “Heroes Day speech,”
a week after the 2005 election, made an urgent appeal for negotiations,
saying: “The new government should come forward soon with a reasonable
political framework that will satisfy the political aspirations of the
Tamil people.” Rajapakse responded by unleashing the security
forces in a dirty covert war of murder and provocation aimed at weakening
the LTTE and goading it into retaliating.
Just six weeks after Rajapakse’s
election, Joseph Pararajasingham, a parliamentarian for the pro-LTTE
Tamil National Alliance (TNA), was gunned down on Christmas Eve while
attending a church mass. While the government cynically blamed the LTTE,
it was evident that the assassination was the work of either the military
or an allied Tamil paramilitary. A week later, five students, celebrating
their success at the university entrance exam, were killed in execution
style in Trincomalee, in all likelihood by police special task force
commandos.
In July, after months of
provocations and LTTE retaliations, Rajapakse ordered the army onto
the offensive. The pretext was a “humanitarian disaster”
caused by the LTTE’s closing of the Mavilaru irrigation sluice
gate—a protest aimed at pressuring the government to fulfill a
promise to install a water purification project in the area. The government
was not interested in resolving the issue peacefully—Sri Lanka
Monitoring Mission (SLMM) personnel attempting to negotiate an end to
the impasse came under fire—but ordered a full-scale offensive
in open breach of the 2002 ceasefire.
Over the past 11 months,
the Rajapakse has been waging an offensive war. The military has not
only repeatedly broken the 2002 ceasefire and seized LTTE territory,
but is terrorising the Tamil minority. Hundreds of people, mainly Tamils,
have been murdered or “disappeared” in circumstances that
can only be explained by the existence of state-sanctioned death squads.
More are being detained without trial under draconian anti-terrorism
laws. In all of this, Rajapakse has had the tacit backing of the major
powers, particularly the Bush administration, which like Al Jazeera’s
Nabil, blame the LTTE for the renewed war.
The glaring contradictions
in Rajapakse’s replies stem from the following. On the one hand,
he has restarted a vicious communal war and is aggressively seeking
to destroy the LTTE’s military capability. His government is backed
by the military hierarchy, state bureaucracy and sections of business,
whose interests are bound up with maintaining the Sinhala supremacist
character of the Sri Lankan state. On the other hand, Rajapakse has
to maintain the pretence of being for peace, restraint and talks, in
order to deflect mounting criticism at home and abroad.
Nabil never asked the obvious
question: on what basis would the Sri Lankan president talk to the “terrorists”?
In 2003, the LTTE abandoned its longstanding demand for a separate state
and sought a power-sharing arrangement in the form of an autonomous
North and East that would allow the mutual exploitation of the working
class by the Sinhala and Tamil elites. Rajapakse has no intention of
negotiating on this basis. Current proposals for constitutional reform
rule out provincial autonomy, which has been the basis for all previous
attempts to find a negotiated end to the 24-year war, and allow only
for a limited devolution of powers at the district level. It is clear
that the talks Rajapakse has in mind are to discuss the terms of the
LTTE’s surrender.
The Sri Lankan president
brushed aside Nabil’s timid questions about the government’s
human rights abuses. “Actually, today I am not prepared to accept
that there are human rights violations as has been reported,”
he said. Pressed about a Human Rights Watch report of more than 700
abductions, Rajapakse contemptuously claimed that all the missing people
had gone overseas or joined the LTTE. “Many of those people who
are said to have been abducted are in England, Germany, gone abroad,”
he declared. Needless to say, no evidence was produced or cases cited
of abductees suddenly being found in Europe or anywhere else.
Rajapakse was particularly
sensitive to Nabil’s suggestion that growing criticism of Sri
Lanka’s human rights record might lead to an international intervention.
Standing on his high horse, the president emphatically declared: “Sri
Lanka is not a colony of England, America or any other country. Sri
Lanka is a sovereign state. So when they get involved it is important
that they do not interfere in the internal affairs of this country.”
In other words, Rajapakse
is quite content for the major powers to back his communal war as long
as they do not object to his methods, or interfere. He made an exception
for India, however, which was held out as the great hope for peace.
“To offer a solution to this problem [war] according to the present
situation, to help the Tamil people, India’s support is necessary.
India must work with this government.” The president obviously
calculates on using the Indian government to put further pressure on
the LTTE.
Taken as a whole, Rajapakse’s
interview reveals that the mask of peace is starting to slip, exposing
a communal warmonger who is directly responsible for the terrible crimes
being carried out by the Sri Lankan security forces.
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