Exclude and rule: Trust goes missing in Sri Lanka

"Currently, the Tamils are a target of extortion. Practically every day Tamil businessmen are being kidnapped and ransoms worth millions of rupees are being demanded. The Sri Lankan President has been given details of many such cases, but to no avail. The abducted have bargained on their own and paid the ransom. It is being suspected that an armed group, in connivance with the authorities, has come up with an understanding with the Karuna faction a breakaway group of the LTTE."
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by Kuldip Nayar

(February 11, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) In about a year, the duration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime after the November 2005 election victory, Sri Lanka has hardened its attitude towards the Tamils. Even some liberal Sinhalese concede that this has happened. But they tend to blame the LTTE for the hardening of attitude. The fact is that the Sinhalese who constitute more than 70 per cent of the 19 million population of Sri Lanka, are not willing to share power with the Tamils because they do not trust them.

Rajapaksa came to power on the promise of being tough with the LTTE. He has not changed his stand and he would not dare to do so because the fundamentalist Buddhist monks and the JVP, Sri Lanka’s RSS, are against any concessions to the LTTE. He has bridged the distance with Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe by signing an MoU. But even Wickremesinghe, with liberal inclinations, was not willing to commit himself to a federal structure. In fact, India’s minister for panchayati raj, Mani Shankar Aiyar has been so voluminous in his praise for the panchayati system that the Sri Lankan government seriously believes it has found an answer to its plans for the devolution of power. Most Lankan ministers I have talked to, including Opposition leaders, are sold to the panchayati raj system which they say will evolve into a federal structure. This, in a way, indicates that Sri Lanka does not want to part with real power. But the much-vaunted provincial councils cannot even have any legislation passed. It is for Parliament to do so. Something as trivial as a culvert or an electricity pole is decided by the minister in charge because every such thing is announced to the humiliation of the provincial council members.

Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE did not find any meeting ground in Geneva. The LTTE delegation had, indeed, expected some resistance on the part of the Sri Lankan government. The latter did not want to lift the blockade on the road joining the LTTE-controlled North with the rest of the country. At one time, Colombo sacrificed many soldiers to clear the road when it was under the LTTE. The opening of the road would have sent the message of conciliation and accommodation. This might have thrown up new possibilities. The LTTE negotiators were said to have been prepared to "move forward" and had even planned a short trip to Europe to rejoice. But they had to return immediately to explain to their people what went wrong. I was in Colombo at that time. That was the night when there was a knock on my hotel door in Colombo. Some 12 policemen were there to search my room. They examined my passport and looked inside the cupboard and then they went away, without offering an apology. "We were checking," one policeman said. My hotel was in a Tamil area and hence the search was conducted to find if some of the LTTE men were hiding there.

Currently, the Tamils are a target of extortion. Practically every day Tamil businessmen are being kidnapped and ransoms worth millions of rupees are being demanded. The Sri Lankan President has been given details of many such cases, but to no avail. The abducted have bargained on their own and paid the ransom. It is being suspected that an armed group, in connivance with the authorities, has come up with an understanding with the Karuna faction a breakaway group of the LTTE.

It is a dismal scenario. But some of us, NGOs, have spent five days in Colombo to bring the Sinhalese and the Tamils closer to each other. It is an effort to foster people-to-people contact. If it could work between Indians and Pakistanis, why can’t it work between Tamils and Sinhalese?

Even after the failure in Geneva, Rajapaksa could have picked up the pieces and reassembled them in Colombo. Instead, he went for the military option. This would only push the Tamils further into the lap of the LTTE which has become their shield, much to the disappointment of the liberals among them. "Where do we go?" asked an aged Tamil MP in Colombo. The Sinhalese blame the Tamils for strengthening the LTTE which has killed even moderate Tamil leaders — another Tamil MP was killed recently — and making it the only representative of the Tamil community. But the Sinhalese do not seem to realise that the LTTE is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is mistrust and the decades-old neglect of the Tamils. They have no jobs, no sense of security and no status in society which is dominated and dictated by the Sinhalese. Had the latter tried to retrieve them and given them back their pride which they lost at the hands of the chauvinists among the Sinhalese, the Tamils would have revolted against the ruthless LTTE and its fascist leader V. Prabhakaran. The shoddy treatment meted out to the Tamils is the grist to LTTE’s propaganda mill. It has only to point out how the Tamils have been edged out from practically every field. Even the language Tamil, supposed to be at par with Sinhala, is hardly used in the bureaucracy, the police or any official organ. For example, the police in Jaffna, a Tamil town, records complaints only in Sinhala although there is no Sinhalese in the police force.

This situation prevails almost all over Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese and the Tamils live in their own worlds, with very little contact. Muslims, nearly eight per cent of the Sri Lankan population, could act as a bridge between the two communities. But although they are Tamil speaking and of Indian origin, they tend to side with the Sinhalese. This is because, one, the latter are the rulers and, two, the LTTE has forcibly ousted the Muslims from their lands in the eastern province which the LTTE claims. (The Supreme Court has annulled the merger of the two provinces and has asked the government to implement its verdict.)

Although the hardliners among the Sinhalese are having their way, the general desire is to harness the support of the Tamils who are nearly 20 per cent. They are diligent, hardworking and ready to cooperate. But the price that they demand is participation in the affairs of Sri Lanka. Rajapaksa knows this. He has appointed a committee of experts to prepare a blueprint. Wickremesinghe said that after its approval by an all-party conference, it would be implemented even if the LTTE rejected it. The blueprint, it seems, is the document which Rajapaksa may bring to Delhi when he visits India in the last week of November.