Riding high on his battlefield victory against the Tamil Tiger rebels and his landslide re-election, Sri Lanka’s president appears under little pressure to tackle the deep ethnic tensions that fueled a generation of conflict here.
Any effort to empower the marginalized Tamil-speaking minority could only anger Sinhalese nationalists, and many observers fear that an opportunity to bring a real peace to this country will be squandered.
With general elections coming later this year, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has indicated he will wait until the next parliament is in place to deal with Tamil demands for greater rights and self-rule in areas where they form a majority.
Analysts warn that without addressing the minority’s fear of domination by the Sinhalese, the conflict will be forced underground from where it could potentially spark renewed violence.
“Now that the (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is no more, there is no justification of terrorism for the postponement of the political process,” said Sakthivel Balakrishnan, an analyst with the research group Center for Development Alternatives.
For more than a quarter-century, this Indian Ocean island nation was consumed by the conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the ethnic Tamil separatists who were fighting for an independent state in the jungles of the north and east.
Last year, the rebels were defeated in a massive government military offensive, bringing peace to the country and glory to Rajapaksa, who last week was re-elected in a landslide victory.
But for those living in former rebel-held areas, the war brought death, destruction and misery. The U.N. says 7,000 people perished in the final months of the fighting. More than a quarter-million Tamil’s were interned into government-run camps, where some 100,000 still remain. More than 11,000 are being held on suspicion of rebel links.
The results of last week’s presidential election underscored the great ethnic gulf that remains between the country’s Sinhalese majority and its Tamil minority. Despite a resounding victory across much of the country, Rajapaksa lost in areas hit hard by war and where Tamil’s constitute a majority.
“He should resist the temptation to feel that he was elected by the Sinhala Buddhist majority and can therefore overlook the aspirations of the minorities who did not vote for him,” The Island newspaper wrote Saturday.
Suresh Premachandran, an ethnic Tamil lawmaker said that Rajapaksa must understand that the Tamils voting against him was a rejection of his policies.
“The Tamils have said that they are a different people and that they need a political solution,” Premachandran said. “They must be prepared to share power with Tamils.”
The country’s existing constitution has a provision that allows for a level of autonomy for the country’s nine provinces, but critics say even those rights in the north and east are stifled by heavy-handedness from the central government.
After his re-election Rajapaksa said he wanted to be the president of all Sri Lankans. He pledged to seek reconciliation, and a find a “homegrown solution” to the Tamil’s problems. But that, he says, will have to wait until after the general election, planned for later this year.
However, Rajapaksa’s election manifesto suggested an autonomous Tamil-run region was not an option. “A unitary state, not to be divided,” was one of the key promises.
The government has indicated it plans to pursue reconciliation as part of a countrywide attempt to spur economic growth through development projects, suggesting it sees the problems afflicting the north and east not as ethnic but economic in nature.
The formerly rebel held areas have suffered disproportionately from the decades of war. The infrastructure is decrepit. Tamil civilians complain that military camps, large and small, have mushroomed, sometimes occupying private land. Their immediate needs, however, remain humanitarian: resettlement in their old home districts, food aid, and basic shelter.
Access for international aid groups to former rebel areas is restricted and even lawmakers must get defense ministry clearance before visiting resettled villages.
To rebuild and prop up this region will take time, government officials said.
But Rajapaksa’s public comments since crushing the Tigers “suggest little recognition that there is a serious problem of ethnic justice or power sharing that needs to be solved,” according to a report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.
“The Rajapaksa government has shown no interest so far in constitutional or other reforms to address the ethnic tensions that gave rise to and were deepened by nearly 30 years of civil war,” the report said.
Whatever the proposed solution may be in the future, Rajapaksa said it must be accepted by all.
Sinhalese nationalists, who form the core of the president’s support base, get irked by any notion of additional rights for minorities.
Dharmasiri Rajapakse, a 50-year-old accountant and Rajapaksa supporter, said no additional powers should be granted to Tamils.
“Equal facilities should be provided to all areas so that there is no need to give special powers to north and east,” Rajapakse said.
-washingtonpost-
The positive contribution of the brutal Rajapakse genocide (2004 – ) liberated Eelam Tamils of the dated thinking that for over six decades paralaysed progress on the Tamil cause seeking a historically logical solution. This involves Tamil Eelam acceding to India via Tamil Nadu.
“In view of these the Tamils need more reliable solutions …to guarantee Tamil survival in an Eelam as part ..of TN/India.. returns the Tamils to India…(of the past). The accession..would confer Indian citizenship automatically guaranteeing Tamils lives and Tamil identity, strengthen India’s own regional supremacy and secure India’s south underbelly. TN opinion is bound to bounce back strongly in support of the Indian/TN/..model as SL moves stridently Sinhalising SL totally.” (‘Sri Lanka trauma – Rajapakse’s village level/Indo-SL Accord/Cyprus devolution models?’ Groundreport of 10 February 2010).
For Eelam Tamils today the top most concern is survival that the standard panacea (devolution, elections, development) that is debated is meaningless. The truth that the British left the Eelam Tamils as an orphaned defenseless people in the step-motherly care of the likes of Rajapakses with a vision of a united Lanka- ‘a Sinhala land’ cleansed of ‘para demalas’ or Tamils only dawned gradually.
In the pre-Rajapakse period for ethnic cleansing the state used mobs and police to assault, kill, destroy homes, assets and livelihood that thousands were displaced internally and thousands fled overseas as refugees. Almost every Eelam Tamil was a victim. The world outraged over these atrocities then was too mild for SL to successfully continue it with impunity. Yet an over stretched international community humanely accepted and generously provided for the 1.2 plus million Eelam Tamils (the ethnic cleansed victims) to successfully rebuild their lives.
The greatest tragedy occurred in the Rajapakses (2004- ) period when ethnic cleansing of the remaining ‘para demalas’ turned deadly. With no country in the world with capacity to absorb any more refugees SL’s ethnic cleansing assumed a vicious and monstrous character. Physically eliminating the Eelam Tamils emerged as the preferred method. A Harvard estimate puts those killed at .4million two years ago. Hence the recurrent massacres were not in hundreds as in the past but in tens of thousands. Heartless herding into camps for interning was not in thousands but hundreds of thousands. These were possible only with a dense militarization or military occupation of the North and East. Though the world conscience stirred, but a curious axis comprising China (of Tiananmen fame), Israel, Dharmic India/Delhi, Russia, Islamic Iran and Pakistan collaborated with the SL genociders to kill off the war crimes initiatives meant to deter SL’s war crimes in the May 2009 UNHRC meeting. A novel ‘geo-politics’ entered the lexicon of the Delhi South Block to justify India’s active support for the SL genocide; the contents of which changed with the personal whims and prejudices of those sectarians ‘in the (SL) loop’.
The John Kerry report (Senate Committee on Foreign Relations US) is candid on the geo-politics of the China factor in US-SL relations to formulate US policy responses to overcome the loss of the critical LTTE leverage. Curiously to policy makers in Delhi in such close proximity and with regional role the loss of the LTTE leverage did not emerge as a major concern. Despite Anil Athale’s ‘Threat to India’s soft underbelly’ (Rediff Jan 2008) and Bhadrakumar ‘loss of the LTTE leverage’ thesis in ‘Blood in our hands’ (Rediff May 2009) Delhi’s Indo-SL policies drifted rudderless unchanged for TN/India to plunge into a catastrophic security debacle (another Bombay debacle) while the US was addressing the same issue with an urgency. Undeterred the Delhi trio under the Narayanan supremo persisted with policies that effectively brought the China peril the closest ever to the Indian/TN shores. Narayanan’s strange geo-politics drastically changed direction from the Delhi’s Dixit military (IPKF) style intervention to an ‘over appeasing’ Rajapakse diplomacy. In justification, the South Block apologists downgraded the tragedy of the genocide massacres whose only worth was as a cheap trade off for the peanut commercial benefits accruing from the far fewer commercial projects SL awarded to Delhi than to China. The Kerry report points out how SL conscious of its clout without the LTTE deterrence is using the ‘strong bargaining platform in global rivalries’. Here Kerry poses ‘If the LTTE had succeeded, the US would have gained control of two thirds of Sri Lanka coastline. (to) …interfere if and when the need arose, with the flow of…resources … interfere with free trade in the Indian Ocean and undermine stability in India …Rajapakse..was responsible for the country’s drift towards China..one of the biggest challenges to US ..’. When the loss of ‘control of two thirds of Sri Lanka coastline’ and ‘the country’s (SL’s) drift towards China’ on the LTTE defeat alarms a super power like the US how could Delhi under the Narayanan trio spell be ‘in the (SL) loop’ collaborating actively in the very dismantling of the very leverage thus facilitating ‘the (SL) drift towards China’. A curious Narayanan ‘geo-politics’ decoction!.
China that in the pre Rajapakse/Narayanan period was nowhere close regionally except in Burma and Pakistan cheaply gained a firm foothold in SL (Hambantota) under terms that contractually allows China to employ only its own labour (an euphemism for combat cadres; China projects with similar labour provisions led to brutal civil strife in several African states). An assertive SL without the LTTE deterrence launching Israeli style forays into TN from the heavily militarized North and Katchchativu facing the TN coastline with sensitive security assets are grave risks to India. SL regularly puts TN/Delhi on notice of its new clout with its navy carrying out frequent outrageous attacks on unarmed TN fishermen in the Palk Straits. LTTE navy kept the SL navy moored at all times within the few naval ports in the North that the TN fishermen were well protected. Likewise The LTTE kept the SL armed forces in the North within their bases.
To counter these emerging threats Delhi needs to pursue on the Tamil Eelam accession to India/TN initiative. The relevance of the Indo-SL Accord devolution was long lost more so after the painful experience of the Rajapakse May 2009 brutality for Tamils to actively seek for internationally guaranteed security for their lives. Tamil Eelam’s accession also provides a security buffer between TN/India and China/SL. Further penetration of the China threat to India via SL needs to be addressed urgently.