A Preface to Peace in Sri Lanka: Tamil Self-Rule? Part І

                                                           by ~ BJ Alexander

                              “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 2^nd 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 17^th 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 16^th 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 DonorsConference in WashingtonDC.November 21, 2006)

Human Rights 

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 depletes its identity by becoming an Establishment. Such protagonists, at the expense of critical thought, devoid of all ethical and intellectual conviction, would automatically be part of that edifice as “Authorised voices” or mouth pieces).  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