Peace & Suffering

by Radhika Coomaraswamy

(February 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is a spectre that haunts Sri Lanka; the spectre of peace. But for a people mired in a history of distrust and antagonism, peace is a deeply disturbing phenomenon. It challenges once learnt but now naturalised habits of antagonism, hate and fear. It unsettles assumptions. The peace process itself makes many feel insecure, fearing a loss of control, suspicious of decisions that are being made outside one’s sphere of influence. There is a constant and insatiable demand for certainty, transparency and security. For some it resembles Chamberlain flirting with Hitler at Munich. For others it is a sellout, a refusal to accept the imperatives of the right to self-determination. For peace activists, the present historical moment poses the greatest challenge since the beginning of this terrible conflict. Branded as traitors and the targets of hate speech, they have to continue their work in a murky environment of suspicion and fear. Sinhalese peace activists have to face a daily barrage of epithets and hate speech, the possibility of grenade attacks and a government and community hardened by years of betrayal and conflict. Tamil peace activists have the task of convincing both parties that it is in their interest to talk to each other even as they have to come to terms with the ideas and emotions that constitute the concept of the "Tamil nation".

Tamil political leaders in the twentieth century from Arunachalam onwards have insisted that there are two nations inhabiting the island of Sri Lanka, one Tamil, one Sinhala. Influenced by nationalism in Tamil Nadu, they have insisted on distance and difference from the Sinhala nation. Recently, Sinhala nationalist polemicists have also pointed to this phenomenon, arguing that this stance proves that Tamil racism is the primary cause of the ethnic problem. However, in terms of electoral politics a different reality emerges. When Mr. C. Suntheralingam first mooted the idea of Tamil Eelam in the 1950s, he received less than a handful of votes. In the 1950s, the Tamil community regarded Tamil Eelam as a joke, the eccentricities of an elderly but much loved Tamil politician. Though the ideas of Tamil separatism existed, no one took them seriously. In 1976, exactly twenty years later SJV Chelvanayagam resigned his seat and contested on a platform of a separate state. He received overwhelming support with over 70% of the electorate voting for a separate state. Something very radical happened between 1956 and 1976 in the Tamil community. Understanding that transformation will help us come to terms with the major obstacles we face in bringing the Tamil community aboard "the peace train".

Between 1956 and 1976, the Tamil leadership did become more aggressive and separatist in its advocacy. History will judge their actions accordingly. In addition the Tamil community was faced with a great deal of overt discrimination. The Sinhala Only legislation, the refusal to guarantee physical security to Tamil people living outside the North and East, standardization of university admissions which discriminated against Tamils, perceived discrimination in employment and the refusal of successive governments to honour their commitments with regard to negotiated devolution agreements are now the standard litany of discrimination that Tamils recite when asked to justify the call for a separate state. Discrimination and articulate leadership by Tamil politicians fuelled a deep sense of grievance among the Tamil community. The lack of economic and educational opportunities due to the slow growth of the economy also added to the sense of frustration and isolation. In this despairing reality for young Tamils who were Tamil speaking, the idea of "the nation" finally captured their imagination. The nation became the panacea for all their problems. Like an opiate, it lulled them into the belief that everything will be alright once they get their own nation. The idea of fighting for the nation made life more bearable. Benedict Anderson introduced the idea that the nation is not only a political/economic construct. It plays with our imagination, highlighting the romanticism of an imagined community. Val Daniel in a recent article shows how the concept of nation state "promises to soothe and heal. . . the modern nation has promised to provide refuge to those whose lives have been rendered chaotic by catastrophic events..." By the 1980s, the concept of a Tamil nation had become the mainstream idea in vernacular Tamil writings and articles. A whole generation of young Tamils has grown up taking this nation for granted.

The other decisive moment in Tamil construction of recent history is July 1983. Once J. R. Jayawardene told a group of Tamil leaders that they speak of 1983 as if it is the demarcating line between BC and AD. In many ways it is. Until 1983, the champions of Tamil nationalism were primarily parliamentarians and democratic political leaders, who may have flirted with violent groups but who were generally committed to non-violent agitation. After 1983, that radically changed. The LTTE had less than seven hundred members in June 1983. By January 1984, their cadres were in the thousands. Along with other Tamil militant groups, the greater part of Tamil youth in the North and the East began to be implicated in armed struggle. A whole generation of young Tamil men exist who have had to negotiate with the call to armed insurrection. They have made their peace in different ways but they have all been touched by the rhetoric, ethics and discourse of armed struggle. Violence as the means of furthering the nation became the dominant tactic of Tamil nationalism after July 1983 with devastating consequences for the Tamil people and Sri Lankan society.

Since the Vaddukodai Resolution of 1976, Tamil politics of Sri Lanka has been integrally linked to the concept of "The Tamil Nation". It is this concept that has driven thousands of Tamil boys and girls to willingly or otherwise commit suicide in pursuance of what they perceive is a heroic death. Reveling in the life of the imagined community, they are inspired by tales of matyrdom, bonding and brotherhood. The intoxicating combination of heroism and self sacrifice, the building blocks of nationalist ideology, has inspired young Tamil men and women to commit unbelievable, and terribly brutal acts of violence. Dousing the passions associated with this way of life will be a major future challenge of the peace initiative. It is also this concept of nationalism that may eventually prevent Tamil political and military leaders from making a honourable peace with the Sri Lankan government. Unless the Tamil community and Tamil political leaders revisit the concept of nation, think of it differently, and see the possibility of viable pluralist alternatives within the framework of a united Sri Lanka, the peace process cannot move forward.

Where has nearly thirty years of the relentless, violent pursuit of the nation and nationalism got the Tamil community? What has it meant for the every day lives of ordinary persons? Professor Val Daniel in his recent work and writings has spent a great deal of time speaking to Tamil victims of violence. As we think of peace and the possibility of a peace process, it is important to revisit his work. The voices of the people he interviewed are the voices of silence that must be heard. They tell a different story. A story of so much pain and suffering that it is a testament to the need for peace in its own right. Peace is not only the problem of the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka. Peace is about the every day life of people.

When Val Daniel asked a young Tamil refugee in the United Kingdom what he thought of Tamil nationalism in the context of today’s world, this was his response.

"You ask me about Tamil nationalism. There is only Tamil internationalism. No Tamil nationals. Never was. Never will be. This is Tamil internationalism. Being stuck in a windowless room in Thailand, or a jail in Nairobi or Accra or Lagos or Cairo or America. Or being a domestic servant in Singapore and Malaysia for a rich Tamil relative. Being part of a credit card racket in London. Crossing Niagara Falls into Canada. I am told that there is even a Tamil fisherman on a Norwegian island near the North Pole. All internationals. And don’t forget the briefless barrister at Charing Cross who tries to hawk his specialty as an immigration lawyer to anyone who is gullible enough to believe him. He is a Tamil too."

The relentless fight for the Tamil nation and Tamil nationalism through war and violence has basically resulted in Sri Lanka being cleansed of Sri Lankan Tamils. Mr. N. U. Jayawardene has gone on record stating that the war should continue since at the present rate of attrition Tamils will soon become numerically so small that they will be a "manageable minority". History then will provide us with the greatest irony. The call for a Tamil nation may have actually resulted in the decimation of the Tamil people. Internationally the image of who is a Tamil is also changing. Tamils who once nationally were considered to be civil servants, accountants and professionals are emerging on the international radar screen as smugglers, drug couriers, arms dealers and members of organized crime. The attempts to outlaw "terrorism" in western countries are very much a result of this new "Tamil internationalism". Tamil internationality is an outgrowth of Tamil nationalism but it is also a different phenomenon. Tamil internationality through life in the western underworld confronts Tamil nationalism and invests it with a great deal of cynicism.

Heroic death at home does not always sit well with human smuggling abroad. While there is this standard picture of the Tamil diaspora funding and fighting a proxy war, this is true primarily of the early immigrants. Val Daniel’s interviews with recent immigrants to the West paints a picture of young Tamil people, disillusioned with nationalism, often ex militants themselves, learning new habits and negotiating how to become members of the British working class. In their lives criminality and normalcy intermingle, as is the case with all those who are marginalized from the western political system. Their life at the borders of western society gives them a different identity, the identity of the subaltern on the fringes of western civilization. In this incarnation they make alliances with working class movements, other immigrants and the world of criminal gangs and drug couriers. The Tamil nation is not always integral to their survival.

While Tamil nationalism faces international challenges, Tamils who remain in Sri Lanka often find themselves without a voice and without agency. Political leaders speak for them but somehow they do not portray the full reality. What of ordinary people, how have their lives changed because of this persistent armed conflict? Can we speak of Peace without taking them into account? Val Daniel’s work consists of so many portraits that challenge our indifference. Tale after tale of enormous pain and suffering contrast with the strident tones of competing nationalisms. There is for example Kamalam. In 1985, the army took her son away and he never reappeared. She then worshipped his photograph and prayed for him daily until her house went up in flames when a gasoline bomb was dropped by a helicopter gunship. She now sits in a refugee camp in India and every morning she goes to the ocean and sits there staring out to sea.

Whenever people ask her why, she says poignantly, "tomorrow my son might come". Then there is Karunaharen, a sixteen- year-old boy. The Indian Peacekeeping Force stopped him and his sister. While he waited on the road, his sister was taken into a house. He heard her screams. He ran to the window to watch her being raped and then killed. He fled in terror to his home. His parents worrying for his safety just bought a ticket and put him on a plane to Canada. When he reached Seattle in the US, he was taken off the plane and put in a detention center with a criminal gang from the Seattle area. There he was gang raped and beaten by members of the gang. He was finally saved by a sympathetic prison guard who handed him over to a Tamil lawyer living in Seattle.

In retelling stories recounted by Daniel, there is also Shanmugham, aged twenty-eight. He escaped the July 1983 riots and went to Jaffna. There one day he was interrogated and tortured by the security forces. After that he was picked up by the LTTE who according to his own words "relentlessly tortured him" to find out what he told the security forces. When he was released by the LTTE, he was picked up by the EPRLF and tortured about what he had told the LTTE. Finally he escaped, went on foot to Mannar and then took a boat to India. Then there is Punitham.

She had lost her father and brothers to the war. She had only a son and daughter. She wanted to save the life of her son and send him to safety. She sold all her possessions and bought a ticket for her son to go to Germany, She then handed him over to "uncles", human smugglers engaged in the trade. She has not heard from him since but still feels that she has given him the gift of life. She told the interviewer, "There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t pray for him and weep for him. He was my only son. He is my only son. I am glad he did not die for Sri Lanka or for Eelam. Maybe he will remember Tamil. That is enough. He will be a German-Tamil. That is enough."
In my work I have spent a great deal of time with women victims of violence. And yet we cannot forget the expectation and suffering of sons and boys. Because of the armed conflict, young Sri Lankan males, both Sinhala and Tamil have different role models for being "masculine". Gone are the images of the schoolteacher in Arya Sinhala or the young Tamil accountant/engineer. Increasingly being masculine in both communities, means wearing camouflage and carrying an AK 47. Increasingly being masculine means fighting, dying and shedding blood. Violence has become a central element of Sri Lankan masculinity. Being male in Sri Lanka is to be aggressive, violent and fearless. Punitham put her son on a plane to save him from this ideal, of having to fight and die to live with dignity. The repercussions of these habits of masculinity, of these ways of being male, will haunt Sri Lanka long after the war is over.

It is not only the Tamils who suffer. Unfortunately there is not much scholarship on actual case studies of Sinhalese and Muslim direct victims of ethnic violence, written by those who are concerned with what has now come to be called "the anthropology of pain", even though there has been some recent scholarship on the JVP period. However, there are many fact-finding reports and third party accounts of the horrendous violence that Sinhalese and Muslims have had to suffer during the course of this conflict. A recent spate of Sinhala films by young and brave filmmakers capture the fate of the rural young men from Sinhala areas who have to actually fight this war. They show families and villages devastated by loss, grief and violence resulting from this war. Survivors of LTTE attacks on border villages have also spoken about the brutality and violence they face. Their constant fear of being attacked in the night from forces emerging from the jungle haunts their every action. A report on the attack in Boatte shows the indiscriminate, barbaric nature of the violence with the obvious and deliberate aim of intimidation and cleansing. Psychologists working in the South of the country are overwhelmed with the issues of grief and loss resulting from bomb explosions in Colombo, not to mention the sheer loss of life. There are also the stories of the Muslim families who have been driven out of their homes in the North and the East. NGOs working with these families in Puttalam have a great deal of evidence about the trauma and suffering of these victims. Internecine warfare was once common in the East and in certain parts of the East an uneasy equilibrium exists reflecting a very fragile peace between the communities. In the refugee camps and the welfare centers, Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims, one million strong, wait for handouts from the state. Homeless and displaced they have only one thing on their minds, how to survive the very next day.

Whatever the future hold for Sri Lanka, the time must come when we must courageously take stock of the violence that we have suffered both individually and collectively. Veena Das defines "social suffering" as "the devastating injuries that social force inflicts on human experience" People can suffer because of the normal grief associated with the life cycle, or because of natural disaster. Or they can suffer because of social and political strategies that target them. They can suffer because someone else imagines a life for them, or feels that they can be sacrificed in pursuit of abstract principles or passions of honour. They can suffer because others can make decisions for them, decisions often affecting their life, death and survival. Violence in pursuit of preserving the nation by the Sri Lankan state and violence in search of a new nation state by the Tamil Tigers has resulted in unimaginable social suffering. The injuries from this confrontation have been so devastating, destroying human beings, extracting enormous pain and suffering and creating a totally traumatized population in the North and East and in some parts of the South. All this suffering has been justified in the search of elusive and imagined goals of victory and glory.

"Social Suffering", then must be centerpiece concern of the peace process. The voices of those who suffer most should not be ignored in pursuit of abstract goals of conflict resolution or military victories a la Clausewitz. Negotiators in Oslo cannot just sign away the rights and concerns of the civilians of these areas in any formal agreement between the combating parties. Humanitarian and civilian needs must be a cornerstone of any lasting agreement. It is time that we think of those who have borne the brunt of this war the civilians living in the North and East.
Patricia Lawrence in her work on the eastern province tells us of a place where the secrets of this armed conflict are revealed in hushed whispers. In the eastern province, the oracles of the Goddess construct a sacred space where the army and the LTTE do not venture. It is the ordinary citizen who comes there to ask the oracle to plead with the Goddess to intercede on their behalf and relieve their suffering. Sitting next to the oracle, Patricia Lawrence was able to hear the stories and thoughts of ordinary people, thoughts and stories they would not dare tell others because of the fear and pain they feel when they relive them. Stories are told to the Oracle in hushed whispers of rape, of torture, of extortion, of fear, of anxiety, of mental illness, of physical pain, of suffering so terrible that the Oracle herself bends in two when she hears them.

All these stories relate to the war. The Oracle plays the part of healer, intervenor and counselor. She absorbs the pain within her body and speaks to the Goddess. She is often overwhelmed. No one who has been privy to what is told in the whispers to the oracle in the Eastern province would be able to justify even one more day of this terrible war.

Veena Das, Valentine Daniel, Patricia Lawrence, all the South Asian scholars who have engaged closely with victims of violence point to the fact that silence is the common reaction of those who suffer violence. In my work as Special Rapporteur, I have found the same thing. When you speak to those who suffer unmentionable violence and ask them to tell you their story, they are often speechless. Some may never speak. Others claim that "words don’t come", or that ideas do not form. I have often thought that for victims of violence, the pain is so deep and the anger so fierce that words fail them. Das and Daniel claim that it is even more than that. Being human inevitably entails communication and relationships, and therefore, the refusal to communicate, or the inability to communicate, is a refusal or an inability to be human. The silence is then a withdrawal from participating in humanity. Silence is before thought, before imagination. It is the void. It is terror. If peace talks are to begin, the victims of this war, both Sinhala and Tamil have to move beyond the terror of silence. Negotiators must be forced to remember that there is more to this conflict than the political resolution of constitutional boundaries.

In conclusion, I have memories of this old Tamil lady in her eighties from Jaffna who boarded a Sri Lankan Airways flight to London. She wore a white sari, a sign of her widowhood and a large pair of spectacles. I offered to help her with her immigration forms. She sat next to me and would not say a word. During take off, landing and moments of turbulence, she held my hand tight for reassurance. She had never been on a plane. Throughout the flight a steady stream of tears poured down her face. When I asked her what was wrong, she brushed me aside. She refused to speak. Like Kamalam, she would just stare into space. Her silence was laden with so much pain and suffering. It is her voice that we must capture. It is her anxieties and insecurities that we must address. Any peace process to be fair, effective and just must give her center stage.
(The article first published in 2001)