Praxis And Pragmatism In Sri Lanka
By Chandi Sinnathurai
11 March, 2007
Countercurrents.orgThe international community, in short the West – Both the US and UK in particular, do not have any single reason to commit the sin of omission by evading the urgency of ‘direct’ humanitarian intervention in Sri Lanka. The sole interest of the West, aside the geo-political reasons, is to recover the lost paradise of investment. To do so, they are going for cosmetic fixes on the peripheral problems by not addressing the perennial grievance between the Sinhalas and the Tamils. In the mean time, the human rights abuses on both sides – the terror state and the Tamil Tigers are appalling. This conflict has already gobbled up nearly 80,000 lives. Additional thousands of “living dead” have been traumatized as a consequence of this conflict: War widows, fractured families, orphans, abducted children for conscription, starved and malnourished walking skeletons, maimed human shields, psychologically tortured and mentally disabled humans…the list grows each day! Food, medicine, water, information and other basic needs that we take for granted have become convenient tools of war in Sri Lanka.
The blame-shifting game in any conflict is not unusual. The insidious hubris of war ruins common sense and decency. The Oslo-inspired Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was the greatest conjecture. The impulse of the CFA, as one would perceive, with the benefit of hindsight, was to place the Sri Lankan state and the Tamil Tigers (as sole representatives of the Tamils) on an equal footing. In essence, the CFA was a sort of an “international confirmation” (possibly in time to become a recognition) to the division of the island - at least that is how it was viewed and conveyed between the lines not only by the Tamils. CFA recognised in paper that now there were two territories: Territory under the governance of Tamil Tigers [In the North and East]and rest of the island under the governance of the State. So the argument ran that the Tamil Tigers should no longer be considered as an armed group. On the contrary, Tamil Tigers were seen as the standing Army powerful enough to engage the state Armed forces in conventional warfare. Effectively, the CFA subtly revealed there is a functioning Defacto Tamil state within Sri Lanka. Tamil Tigers successfully engaged in state fortification and nation building. Oslo gave much hope – perhaps a misplaced one to the Tamils. Most Tamils were given the impression, that it is only a matter of time – perhaps in the 5th year of the CFA (February 2007) the crucial decision has to be “automatically” made whether the self-determination of Tamils ought to come to fruition within a united Sri Lanka as part of a two-state solution. In juxtaposition, it was also believed, should the Sinhala state do not agree to power-sharing structure, Tamil self-determination will be realised by exercising the right to secede.
Hence the arguments of both the internal and external self determination were promoted. This was deemed to reveal to the international community the flexibility of the Tamil Tigers. And it was put to the Tamils, that it will also reveal to the world the intransigency of the Sinhala hegemony.
The Sri Lankan state having signed the CFA flagrantly breached the CFA at will. The state-sponsored paramilitaries (Which also included the Karuna faction – a defected Tiger group from the East) alongside the State intelligence forces engaged in an aptly named “Shadow War”. They systematically liquidated any one who cared to put their head above the parapet, as it were. Tamil community leaders, parliamentarians, intellectuals, humanitarian workers – in short, any unarmed civilian, who can articulate cogently the ground reality with the international community was silenced.
In my discussion with Professor Chomsky a few days ago, he pointed out in general terms, as to how only in totalitarian cultures, where the state is identified with the people, the culture, the society. Dissidents in the old Soviet union were denounced as “anti-Soviet”. Nazi crimes, as we all know, were considered as the standard Nazi practice: simply following orders! No room for debate or dissent. Such a concept is no doubt, ridiculous in a democratic culture. Some one who criticises the State Foreign policy or the policies of a totalitarian regime is not anti-state or against any other out-fit but, really pro-people. In essence, if the rights of the people are compromised either by invoking the “infallibility” of the state or by citing lofty ideals - then there is indeed an engagement of concealment and somewhat a shadowy and brutal practice. Praxis seem to short circuit ideology.
The fundamental human rights and civil liberties of the people have to be restored urgently in Sri Lanka. Whether the person is a Sinhala or a Tamil. Whether it is the Tamil Tigers or the Sinhala State: both sides have to be held accountable for human rights breaches.
The international community – the West has to intervene and recover the principle of common humanity. People are sick of duplicitous CFAs; false starts and false hopes. What the people want is for all killings to cease.
The integrity of truth and justice have to be recovered; the dignity of every human person has to be re-established. The concerns of People: no matter whether peasants or self-proclaimed elites, have to be put before cheap and puerile politics.
People want an honourable and pragmatic and humane solution within which they can live with the dignity of difference as part of the global human family.
To that end they look to the international community for help.
Chandi Sinnathurai is a Christian Priest trained in the West. He has written extensively on the Sri Lankan conflict. Fr Sinnathurai maintains a Blog: http://chandi.eponym.com/blog
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