Sri Lanka: A classic example of a classic statement

From Mail Box

(September 26, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Addressing the Human Rights Council, 08 September 2008, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethen Pillay (Navi Pillay) stated: “Genocide is the ultimate form of discrimination”. So succinctly put, this will go down as a classic to posterity for its stark truth and pith to be often quoted. While calling for the focus on the prevention of genocide she stressed the need to “break the cycles of violence, the mobilization of fear, and the political exploitation of difference—ethnic, racial and religious difference”. Having grown up in Apartheid South Africa as a coloured second class citizen and experienced racial discrimination first hand there is none more qualified than Navi Pillay to make those comments.

In the current context of genocide internationally and the progression of discrimination leading to it, there is no greater example to illustrate Navi Pillay’s observations than the case of Sri Lanka, not only for the genocide rapidly progressing now, but also for the factors deeply entrenched in racial discrimination and cycles of ethnic violence that have led to it. So that Genocide in Sri Lanka is both the ultimate form of discrimination and also the culmination of a series of discriminatory measures adopted by the state. At the very moment she was talking of preventing genocide, the Sri Lankan state was busy carpet bombing Tamil settlements killing innocent Tamil civilian men women and children including infants in the de facto state of Tamil Eelam (Vanni), besides individual killings. Children in the North are not only being physically incapacitated there is strong medical evidence to show that children in increasing numbers are also becoming mentally disabled due to the trauma and fear of continuous bombing and malnutrition, with basic essential food denied to them due to the supply lines being cut or severely restricted.

With medical facilities deliberately destroyed, the idea of the government combating terrorism in such manner is to completely decimate the Tamil people branding them all terrorists. This accounts for members of the international community being painted as terrorists or being in the pay of the LTTE, when commenting on the sad plight of the Tamil civilians. At this alarming rate of genocide, Tamils who survive will be permanently displaced and this will mark the genesis of a new subservient nomadic race, if the illusionary victory over the LTTE was to take place. In the north there are more than 200,000 people already displaced within the last two months alone, and the east is a veritable political jungle with its administration in the hands of a puppet of a clueless nincompoop, with tens of thousands still wondering where they will end up with their traditional homes hurriedly made parts of security zones made inaccessible to them. The idea is to bring the Tamils to their knees and implement the farcical devolution as formality, just to show the world.

According to the government, all Tamil civilians killed and maimed both by aerial attacks and by the ground forces are said to be LTTE cadres. Ground forces, as they move leave a permanent trail of destruction and desolation, slashing all plantations, rice cultivations, dwellings and shooting at anything that moves. Fishers have not gone out to sea for months on end. Tamils in their own homeland have to explain why they are at a certain place at a certain time to the satisfaction of a third grade army officer who at their discretion would decide if they could to go back home or be arrested.

The plight of the displaced persons in the north has been further aggravated by the Government ordering the moving out of the UN agency and other NGOs for the frivolous cynical excuse offered by the defence secretary that there should not be a repetition of the massacre of the 18 aid workers as at Muttur, an embarrassment to the government, with callous disregard to the plight of the 200,000 displaced people. Consequently, the refugees have to endure conditions that prevailed in the Nazi concentration camps. The IDPs want the NGOs to remain for fear of further military atrocities, torture, arrests, extortion and rape in the hands of the most undisciplined military in the world.

Let us very briefly look at key aspects discrimination: Tamils have been systematically discriminated ever since Sri Lankan independence. Within one year of independence, by an Act of Parliament the Tamils of Indian origin who were British subjects prior to 1947 were denied their citizenship. This was soon followed by another Act which deprived them of their right to vote which they had already exercised at parliamentary elections in 1931 1935 and 1947. This also applied to their children including those who were to be born. While their counterparts in the Caribbean, Guyana and Fiji enjoyed opportunities of rising to the highest positions in their lands of adoption, the plight of the Sri Lankan Indian Tamil was worse than that of those in Apartheid South Africa. The most powerful section of the working class lost their political power. Having also lost all opportunities of economic advancement they had to continue to remain enslaved within the confines of the plantation sector as stateless labourers. The State by its action shed all responsibility to protect them as its citizens.

As far back as in 1935 even before independence, haunted by xenophobic fear prevalent to this day, DS Senanayake who was to become the first Prime Minister in 1947, while being the minister for agriculture and lands in the Crown Colony of Ceylon, surreptitiously introduced a provision in the Land Development Ordinance, preventing Tamils of Indian origin from being alienated land by the government for fear of the Sinhala nation becoming “extinct”. This meant that even if the Indian Tamils were not disenfranchised they would never have been entitled to any government land as others would be.

In 1956 the passage of the Official language Act, making Sinhala the only official language, leading to the minorities losing their national identities was intended to keep them out of employment and education. They lost their right to use their own language in the affairs of the state .The Tamils opposed this and their peaceful protests sparked the “cycle of violence”, state sponsored, to recur in 1958, 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983, every time with greater severity.

1962 saw the beginnings of the militarisation of the traditional homelands of the Tamils in the guise of preventing the influx of illegal immigrants from India and the smuggling of contraband. Actually the army and the navy personnel, proved to be excellent couriers of contraband for handsome fees, for big time smugglers in the north.

With a new Constitution introduced in 1972, even the meagre provisions contained in Section 29 in the 1947 Constitution relating to the enacting of any law which would make persons of any community or religion liable to disabilities or restrictions were done away with, giving the state a free hand in completely marginalizing and oppressing the Tamils.

With the policy of standardisation in University entrance introduced in 1973, the open competition to the university entrance on merit was abandoned to pander to Sinhala chauvinism which enabled Sinhalese students to enter universities with much lower qualifying marks than the Tamil students. Thus some of the best brains who could have contributed to the national advancement of the so called Sri Lankan nation, in frustration opted to fight the state through militancy thus accounting for the intellect, talent and skills within the LTTE making it a formidable world force of resistance. It is a criminal waste, that some of the brilliant persons in their sheer dispair, continue to choose to be in the suicide cadres. These cadres also come from those who had experienced torture, rape in the hands of the security forces and or witnessed their parents and siblings tortured massacred and or raped.

The current 1978 Constitution centralizes power in the executive President with such power enhanced by the provincial councils. It was tailor made to fulfill the boyhood dreams of a megalomaniac JR Jayewardene who fantasised himself to be a British colonial governor of Ceylon, sometimes Napoleon Bonaparte, whenever not playing Adolf Hitler (never Dutu Gemunu). Like its predecessor, the 1978 constitution vested the judicial power of the state in parliament subjecting the judiciary to political control with no provision for any checks and balances. It also makes Sri Lanka a theocratic state. With the state in the hands of maniacs, this constitution is a lethal weapon.

The individual crimes against Tamils in unlawful arrests, torture, killings, and unlawful detentions begun in 1970 have progressively escalated with increasing severity, bigger dimension and greater impunity in abductions, disappearances attacks on churches and temples, attacks and killings of priests and journalists.

The rapidly progressing genocide of the Tamils and their decimation offers one of the greatest challenges to the international community. We wait holding our breath, as to what Navi Pillay would do next having brought out some profound thoughts in her recent speech. The UN secretary general Ban ki Moon, who was recently critical of Sri Lankan state action, though lukewarm, has already been called a supporter of Tamil terrorism, encroaching into Sri Lankan sovereignty. We hope Navi Pillay’s speech was meant for the immediate present and not for some future action. - Sri Lanka Guardian