A
Preface To Peace In Sri Lanka:
Tamil Self-Rule? Part I
By BJ Alexander
26 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“All I have is a voice, to undo the folded lie”
WH Auden
Introductory
We
live in a world in which the imperium is constantly suppressing the
emergence of multi-polarity. The terms, if not clichés like ‘terrorists’,
‘anti-terrorism’ ‘War on terror’ etc; in spite
of emanating imagined or real security threats are, increasingly becoming
a text devoid of context. In the process, people’s hopes, aspirations,
human rights and civil liberties are dashed. In other words, the US
is finding persistent pretexts to becoming an authoritarian regime.
It is all done conspicuously.
On the one hand, at home,
claiming to be model democracies yet when crucial decisions are rushed
through the corridors of power, under the guise of national security,
the voting public has no power of sanction. Even the UN in these matters
has become a hapless instrument. What imperialism demands of us is consent
without consensus. Every thing unfortunately falls within the sphere
of spin doctoring: twisting of facts, falsifying ‘intelligence
and information’ dossiers – articulated with the clash of
civilisations rhetoric.
And on the other hand, the
spreading of “democracy” around the globe. The “gospel
according to USA” propagated through various disseminative institutions
– one of which is the corporate media. Such an insidious project
is undertaken in evangelical zeal with an apocalyptical urgency. While
this ‘moral crusade’ is launched; the masquerading imperialist
long-arm is equally active in promoting authoritarian regimes, state
terror, puppet governments and client states dotted around the world
– particularly in the global south. On one strict condition none
the less, as long as ‘you are not against us’.
In order to glean a best
understanding of the Sri Lankan conflict, we will have to locate it
within the current global “democratic” trend and it is from
this geo-political vantage point, one has to view the Tamil liberation
struggle. The government of the people, by the people, for the people
has become a façade in the ‘free world’. It is a
pretext and sadly, a mere distant cry from Gettysburg [1]. The corporate
giants nonetheless, roam and rule the globalised world. They strive
tirelessly for the monopoly of power. Nothing in this world is hanging
loose in a vacuum. Globalisation as we all know is a complete system
that is filling every nook and corner of this earth. Peoples, communities,
indigenous cultures, traditions, customs, their rights and liberty have
less or no value. Power and wealth – materialism, exploitation,
greed, profit-making, social control, manufacturing consent (Walter
Lippman’s catch phrase used by Chomsky) have all assumed currency.
The world is becoming like a spiritless body – a corpse. The power-holders
speak of the rights of people – the minority rights, human rights
etc. However, it is neither the rights of the poor nor the human rights
of the dispossessed. On the contrary, it is about “the minority
of the opulent” [2]. The developing world is dependant on the
crumbs that fall off the imperialist high table. One must take into
account the strategic location of Sri Lanka in the south Asian region
including geo-political and mercantile interests of Western powers not
forgetting the lion-share of profit revenue from wide range of investments
and both cheap human (modern slavery) and natural resources (Oil deposits
etc). We therefore must be acutely aware that the Sri Lankan conflict
is not simply a localised communal issue – perhaps the Sri Lankan
Government [SLG] would want us to believe a stereo-typing over simplification:
a ‘fall-out’ of the Tamils with the Sinhalas; ruthless terrorists
versus a democratic state; bad guys against the good ones…. There
are however, global powers (not forgetting Sri Lanka’s neighbouring
emerging economic-nuclear power India and its sworn enemy Pakistan;
and its competitor China) with multi-layered selfish economic interests
at work in the background.
Brief History
Before going any further,
one must refresh our memory by speeding through the history of Ceylon
(Sri Lanka) [3].
The Sinhalas are believed
to have arrived from Bengal in 544 BC. Tamils perhaps would have migrated
by foot, believed then to be just dry land, some 30 miles from the Southern
tip of India in times immemorial. In 2nd century BC the whole island
– a Tamil king ruled Eelam. There were times that the Sinhala
kings ruled the whole island when they conquered the Tamil kings and
drove them back to the North. The Tamils established an independent
kingdom in the North in 1240 AD.
It is futile an argument
now as to nitpick who came first and who has the rightful claim to the
island. Both, the Sinhalas and the Tamils are the original inhabitants
of the land and they both have birthright (not forgetting the rights
of all other minorities). The conflict arises only when the Sinhalas
claim to be the sole sons of the soil (Bhumi putra). As a result, instead
of holding arms together in harmony and sharing resources and building
the country, the situation continuously erupts into chaos and carnage
by holding Arms against one another.
The European Colonial imperialists
arrived on the shores of Sri Lanka in 1505. Portuguese were the first
to step foot.
The Sinhala kingdom by now
has split into two, the interior kingdom in Kandy and the coastal kingdom
in Kotte. The Maritime kingdom fell in to the hands of the Portuguese
in 1592. The Tamil kingdom disintegrated in 1620.
About the mid 17th century,
the Dutch took possession of the maritime kingdom. The British (East
India Company) took over control in 1796. The Sinhala interior Kandyan
kingdom lost its power, in spite of its courageous and ferocious battles
against the coloniser and fell to the British only in 1815. It must
be noted here that most Sinhala kings were from South India and they
inter-married into the Tamil Dynasty. Some scholars nonetheless have
opined that all these internal conflicts were based not on ethno-religious
lines i.e. Sinhala Buddhist versus Tamil Hindus per se; but the emphasis
then was laid purely on the expansion of dynasty.
A British administrative
device made the islanders a one nation state in 1833. After the crumbling
of the British Raj, Ceylon became independent without any significant
struggle in 1948.
It must be noted that the
Tamils had been in continuous habitation of a defined territory for
over thousands of years and posses a distinct language, culture and
religion. What is so threatening for the Sinhala nation to embrace the
Tamils as a nation is a mytho-ideology of supremacy. The struggle of
the Tamils now is for statehood [4].
Tamil struggle
We now give a cursory reading
of the Tamil liberation struggle. In the 1950s Mr SJV Chelvanayagam
QC., began to gather young men under Margosa trees, village after village,
recollects the late Bishop Kulandran [5], discussing the idea of Federalism.
As momentum gathered the Federal Party (Thamil Aracu Katci) was formed.
Chelvanayagam expressed non-violent agitation through the democratic
parliamentary system. The Sinhala state however responded by violent
attacks on Tamil legislators. Sinhala language was made the sole official
language and Theravada Buddhism the state religion. English language,
which served not only as a link-language between diverse communities
but also as the medium of instruction, was abruptly thrown out within
24 hours. Ceylon was indeed sitting politically on a sleeping volcano.
Just within 10 years of independence from Britain the first of many
anti-Tamil state-sponsored pogroms commenced. Many Tamils lost their
lives, livelihood and properties. Tamil women were raped. Tamils were
shipped as refugees to the north and east – considered their traditional
homelands. In 1958 the Sinhalas unconsciously sowed the first seeds
of armed Tamil struggle among impressionable young Tamils. It took until
the 1970s to take shape, activate, grow and mature as a Tamil politico-military
organisation called the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) popularly
known as the Tamil Tigers.
In the 1970s, Chelvanayagam
realised that the cry for Federalism and the passive resistance were
ignored. All the pacts he signed with the government were simply not
honoured. Tamils were discriminated in higher education, employment
and the Tamil homelands suffered without development. Perhaps as a disagreeable
necessity, Chelvanayagam made a pragmatic move. He had the over whelming
support of the Tamils. The Federal Party encompassed all the other Tamil
political parties and formed the Tamil United Liberation Front. This
formation was based on a paradigmatic policy change. The newly formed
party expressed its intent by passing a resolution called “Vaddukodai
Resolution” on May 14 1976. The following words encapsulate the
changed emphasis of the struggle:
"This convention resolves
that restoration and reconstitution of the Free, Sovereign, Secular
Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM based on the right of self determination
inherent to every nation has become inevitable in order to safeguard
the very existence of the Tamil Nation in this Country."
Self-determination now took
on a new meaning, with the gun rather than the ballot box as its principal
instrument. The fight for an independent state has shown the world the
resilience of the Tamil people. In 2007- 31 years later, one can look
back and realise that this conflict has killed nearly 80,000 people.
Thousands are suffering silently as war widows and fatherless children;
fractured families and orphans not forgetting the maimed and the mentally
affected. In 2006 alone nearly 4,000 have died. The fighting is growing
in its intense and in its ruthlessness. The 2002 Oslo inspired cease-fire
agreement (CFA) is in tatters [The 5 year CFA officially completed on
February 22]. The so-called peace talks or more precisely the talks
on the threadbare CFA has proved to be nothing but duplicitous, fraught
with subterfuge. It was during the CFA period the Sri Lankan Government
conducted a vicious ‘shadow war’ in which some Tamil Legislators,
community leaders, humanitarian workers and journalists were gunned
down. Sri Lanka has only a veneer of democracy.
It seems likely that the
Labour Government in Britain is willing to be of assistance –
even act as a possible peace-broker in bringing some form of reasonable
solution to the conflict. Dr Kim Howells, British Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, during his visit to Sri Lanka
on the 16th of February, 2007, said to the media that:
"The British Government
will do what it can to help Sri Lanka end this tragic conflict. But
I hope too that all the parties in Sri Lanka will work tirelessly to
enhance dialogue, stop the violence and human rights abuses, and put
Sri Lanka on the path to peace and prosperity” [6]
The US of course has voiced
its support of the Sri Lankan government in terms of dealing with terrorism,
in this case “native insurrectionists”. The following were
the words of the US under secretary of state:
"We also believe that
the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, is a terrorist group responsible for massive
bloodshed in the country and we hold the Tamil Tigers responsible for
much of what has gone wrong in the country. We are not neutral in this
respect." - Richard Nicholas Burns (Press Conference on Tokyo Donors
Conference in Washington DC. November 21, 2006)
The human rights records
on both sides, it must be stressed, are much to be desired. The obscenity
of keeping thousands of innocent children, women and men as human shields
is despicable [7]. Perhaps it was an act of desperation or even a sinister
design of the state to tire out the Tamil Tigers morally. Part of the
war is fought, one must not forget, through the media. Patriotism brings
out in a person complex emotion. In situations of conflict often, these
emotions can be abused, misused and even defrauded by power wielders
to meet self-fish ends. It can easily mean much more than a mere salutation
to a flag, or recitation of an anthem. It demands some times your whole
being: a matter of honour, willing to die for an emotive cause or for
the protection of a piece of territory etc. All these might be necessary
for the survival of a race of people, for building up of a nation. Yet
if we are not careful, these can turn out to be blind and unadulterated
fanaticism should ideology begin to eat up the moral fabric of a community.
Furthermore, in the process, it becomes frustratingly pointless when
the unarmed poor and displaced refugees, not opponents - but your very
own flesh and bones, the grassroots who eventually become just means
to an end, puppets in a project or pawns in the political goal. It could
be interpreted as an ultimate betrayal of ‘kicking the ladder’
on which you climbed claiming to protect and represent their interest.
More over it is a slap-in-the face for those generations, both the living
and the dead, believing the freedom cause to be noble and therefore
have given unstinting support and loyalty to the liberation movement.
Sadly, there are those “Yes men” in any community who are
adamant that “their side is infallible always” (This is
when the Movement risks its identity by becoming an Establishment. And
such protagonists are automatically recruited in as part of that edifice
as “Authorised voices” at the expense of critical thought).
With dehydrated conscience, within the security of their ivory towers;
without experiencing any blood, toil and tears, they instantly spill
vats of ink with a ‘wardrobe of excuses’ [8] in a pick and
mix fashion. They have hardly any option but to find intellectual acquiescence.
O, What a monstrous folly! It is here, there and then, one must pause
to think seriously whether one needs to first reflect on collective
self-reinvention rather than end up being compulsively self-destructive
and cow down to intellectual hypocrisy and moral imbecility. One need
not sell off the Cause yet, but must have the decency to point out that
some things have horribly gone wrong. If we don’t do it now; we
might live to regret. The precious right to life and its sanctity cannot
be misinterpreted or debased as an inalienable right to collective crucifixion
when push comes to shove. There is something morally repugnant about
such devious thought. How can one have freedom at the expense of another
person’s denial of the same? Scream
One cannot escape the thought
when one’s living is conditioned by continuous bloodshed; gruesome
reality of death and destruction then inevitably the value of humanity
slowly diminishes. One becomes desensitized; the flame of liberty flickers
to near extinguish-ion in the collective consciousness. The noble giant
killer evolves into that obnoxious killer-giant! That cannot be, as
far as one can see, a liberative potential. Evidently, all sides are
culpable of such atrocious behaviour. Sunshine proves still to be the
best disinfectant; light needs to beamed into darker crevices; there
ought to be the undoing of the folded lie.
Therefore, now what is the
most positive and practical move? Do we simply close our eyes to the
Sri Lankan ‘genocide in slow motion’? No would be the answer.
Nevertheless, what is the
point of having a right, right to self-determination, if one has no
right to actually use it?
One’s conscience will
be deeply troubled concerning appalling human rights abuses, worst of
all among the children in Sri Lanka. It is in distress and utter disgust;
I searched for an unpretentious voice.
A conversation was initiated
in the latter part of November 2006 with a modest public intellectual
– with a notable international profile. As the discussion progressed,
Professor Noam Chomsky began to gently raise some very interesting points
and asked some crucial questions. He was kind enough to grant me permission
to quote here some details of the discussion that is relevant to the
subject matter of this piece.
One of course hopes it will
engender a healthy public debate, pragmatic discernment, reflective
discussion and possibly even more.
*Revd BJ Alexander is a Methodist
Minister based in London, England.
[To be concluded
in Part 2…]
Notes:
1] Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address.
Ref: http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/
lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
2] Noam Chomsky, Profit Over
People (1999), Seven Stories Press, NY.
3] A J Wilson, Break-up of
Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict (1983) C. Hurst, London.
4] A J Wilson, Politics of
Ceylon (1997) Macmillan, UK.
5] Sabapathy Kulandran -
The former Bishop (1940 – 1970) Jaffna Diocese –CSI. He
wrote in 1977 for a memorial volume.
6] Foreign & Commonwealth
Office News release: http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket
/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=
1007029391629&a=KArticle&aid=1171449461954
7] Chandi Sinnathurai, Peace?
Rainbow High - http://chandi.eponym.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/26/2684447.html
8] WH Auden’s phrase from his poem: In Memory of Sigmund Freud
-
“Able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
a set mask of rectitude or an
embarrassing over-familiar gesture.”