A Plea For Help From The
Tamil-Speaking People Of Sri LankaBy Rohini Hensman
12 January, 2007
Countercurrents.orgRecently, there has been mounting pressure on the Indian government to intervene in Sri Lanka in order to help the Tamil population of the North-East. It is absolutely true that these people are facing horrific violations of their human rights, and that they need all the help they can get. The question is: what form should that help take?
Lessons from the Past
It is worth looking at the recent history of India's involvement with Sri Lanka for clues on how to proceed in the present. After the island-wide anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983, India trained and armed militant groups fighting for a separate state of Tamil Eelam. One of these, the LTTE, later succeeded in wiping out most of the other armed groups as well as unarmed critics by liquidating them physically. In July 1987, when the government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) was on the verge of defeating the LTTE, the Indian government intervened again, and signed the Indo-Lanka Accord with President Jayawardene. The Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) occupied the North-East with the intention of keeping the combatants apart.
India was to pay dearly for engaging with the LTTE in this manner. There was mayhem in Tamil Nadu as the LTTE carried its war against Tamil rivals onto Indian soil. Just months after the Indo-Lanka Accord, the LTTE started fighting the IPKF. As a result, not only did the Indian army lose thousands of soldiers, it also lost credibility with the Tamil people of the North-East as it struck back with indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the same way as the Sri Lankan army. Tamils who had welcomed the IPKF with garlands now began calling it the 'Innocent People Killing
Force'. The army was forced to withdraw, and shortly afterwards, the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi.The nature of the LTTE is now much clearer than it was in the early 1980s. The group is a fascist one which does not tolerate dissent internally or externally. It has used every ceasefire, including the most recent one signed in 2002 with the mediation of the Norwegians, to kill its opponents, including unarmed civilians, although Prabakaran's policy of crushing internal dissent went badly wrong when his attempt to wipe out Karuna failed. In 1990 the LTTE ethnically cleansed the Tamil-speaking Muslims of the North, and to this day they live in refugee camps or with relatives. More recently, the LTTE has attempted to drive Muslims out of areas in the East. It has killed numerous Tamils elected by the people of the North-East, such as the popular Mayor of Jaffna Sarojini Yogeswaran. As it lost popularity and adult recruits became scarce, it stepped up its policy of conscripting children by force. Abroad, it used threats of violence to compel Tamil refugees to contribute to its war. There can be no doubt that the Tamil Eelam the LTTE seeks to establish would be a fascist state in which Prabakaran would have absolute power and ordinary Tamil civilians would have no democratic rights whatsoever.
Given the character of the LTTE, bans on it in India, the US, EU and Canada have actually helped Sri Lanka Tamils to begin building a democratic movement to fight for their rights. Since this movement is opposed to terrorist attacks on civilians and ethnic cleansing of Muslims, and calls for democratic rights like freedom of expression and association and the right to elect representatives in free and fair elections, it can easily win support both in Sri Lanka and internationally. Thus far, this movement remains scattered and weak, because the LTTE has killed or driven into exile all Tamils who oppose their totalitarian agenda. But it has the potential to be in a far stronger bargaining position than the LTTE vis-à-vis the GOSL because of its democratic credentials. Strengthening this democratic movement for the rights of Tamil-speaking people in Sri Lanka is an important way for the government as well as human rights activists in India to help Sri Lanka's Tamils, and this would rule out lifting the ban on the LTTE.
Changes in Sri Lankan Government Policy
Another important factor is the stance of the government in Colombo. Discrimination against Tamils, starting with the hillcountry Tamils of recent Indian origin, started immediately after Independence in 1948. It escalated thereafter, encompassing anti-Tamil pogroms after the Official Language Act made Sinhala the only official language in 1956. The massacres of 1983 seemed to indicate that Tamils could never be safe in a Sinhala-majority Sri Lanka.
Yet Tamil refugees speak with great affection of Sinhalese friends and neighbours, and there are many cases of intermarriage. Important areas of the country are ethnically mixed: the population of the capital Colombo, for example, is more than 50% Tamil-speaking (including Muslims). In the absence of political parties or governments stirring up ethnic hatred, these multi-ethnic populations live together peacefully. Since the mid-1990s, when Chandrika Kumaratunga and the People's Alliance came to power, the majority of the Sinhalese population has consistently voted for peace. However, hard-liners have once more gained ascendency under the Rajapakse presidency, especially after the LTTE's unilateral attacks on the armed forces in 2005.
So what prevents a resolution of the ethnic conflict? First and foremost, it is the Sinhala nationalists on one side, who do not wish to give people from minority communities equal rights, and the Tamil nationalists on the other, refusing to accept anything short of partition. Secondly, there is bureaucratic lethargy in implementing policies that would benefit Tamils. For example, Tamil has now been an official language for decades, yet it is common to find government offices and police stations where no one can speak Tamil, even in areas like Colombo where there is a concentration of Tamil-speaking people. So marginalising the extremists on both sides, along with putting in place and implementing policies that assure parity to the Tamil language and equal rights to the people who speak it, would be necessary measures if the conflict is to end.
A New Development
A recent development makes this a very real possibility. Under pressure from the international community including India, the government of Sri Lanka set up a panel of experts to advise an All-Party Conference on constitutional change. Predictably, the panel split. But the majority submitted a proposal (available on the internet at http://transcurrents.com/tamiliana/archives/244 ) which could, if elaborated, satisfy the aspirations of the majority of Tamils and Muslims.
Of course it is, as yet, only a draft; it would need to be revised in consultation with the people most affected by the measures it proposes before it can be finalised. With respect to the North-East, for example, one option out of the four suggested would have to be chosen and fine-tuned through discussion with the people currently living in that part of the country, as well as refugees and Internally Displaced People who wish to return to their homes there. And the proposed Bill of Rights would have to be elaborated to guarantee that the human rights and civil liberties of people of all communities are protected in all parts of the country.
However, even in its present form, with the points in the Annexure on protection of human rights, humanitarian measures, and promoting the use of Tamil as an official language with immediate effect, the document could be presented to the public for discussion. If the GOSL were to accept it as the basis for a solution to the long-standing grievances of the Tamil-speaking minority in the country, an end to the war could be in sight.
The importance of this report, authored by six Sinhalese, four Tamils and one Muslim, is immense. It proves that the war that has plagued Sri Lanka for decades is NOT a war between Sinhalese and Tamils. It proves that where there is a commitment to democracy, people of all communities can work together for a common cause. It shows that the primary struggle is one between democracy and fascism, and then there is a secondary struggle between Sinhala fascists and Tamil fascists. While the latter are locked in struggle against each other, they have united to reject the majority report.
In this context, where the GOSL is under fierce pressure from Sinhala chauvinists to scrap the majority report or dilute it so much that it no longer satisfies the aspirations of the majority of Tamils, pressure in the opposite direction from the Indian government could be critically important. And this pressure needs to be applied immediately, before the GOSL concedes to the Sinhala chauvinists, because it would otherwise feel it was losing face if it changed its stance. There is no quick fix for the problems of Sri Lanka's Tamils, but prompt action at this juncture by the Indian government and human rights activists in support of the majority report could save them decades of displacement and bloodshed in the future.
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