Of civilians caught in multiple traps

By Malinda Seneviratne

(March 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There has been a sea change in the rhetoric of long time pro-LTTE groups. After many years of promoting the LTTE as the ‘sole representative of the Tamil people’, urging successive governments to negotiate with Prabhakaran, providing ideological back-up to the terrorist and on-the-ground logistical support by way of historical falsification, inflation of strength and wild conjecture about rights violation, these shouts have petered out to little more than whimpering about the safety of civilians. It is no longer about if the LTTE can be wiped out but when.

There is of course still a strain of silliness bordering on imbecility in some of these people; as shown in the repeated call for a ceasefire with the LTTE (not for negotiations now, and that’s significant) to give space for civilian movement. That’s a call that ill-informed and naïve men and women in Europe and of course not-on-the-ground pundits from outfits such as the Human Rights Watch have echoed in various fora. Note how this too is a come down from the vociferous call for sanctions against Sri Lanka not too long ago. A symptomatic reading of the changing rhetoric is possible, and I invite the good ladies and gentlemen who hobnob among formerly pro-LTTE ‘analysts’ and ‘scholars’ in Sri Lanka to go ahead and engage in that stimulating exercise. Western and especially European double standards in such things, by the way, is nauseating, to put it mildly. K. Godage, in an excellent article in The Island of March 14, 2009 titled ‘European Parliament’s Resolution on Sri Lanka’, demonstrates their hypocrisy.

The fact of the matter, as The Island points out editorially in the same paper, is that the LTTE will not let the civilians leave. One can open a door but if there’s a guy at the door with a gun insisting, ‘thou shalt leave at the risk of getting thy butt pumped with my bullets’, there is little that the would-be escapee can do.

How about doing the unthinkable a la Shanie (again in the same paper)? She wants third party mediation to evacuate the civilians. She is clearly operating with her eyes closed to history. Civilians, whether they are willing or unwilling co-resident in the LTTE’s considerably reduced circumstances constitute the water for the terrorist fish. The LTTE will open the floodgates only if they decide to surrender en masse.

She thinks it is unthinkable (on the part of the Government) to offer an amnesty to LTTE cadres. Well, there are hundreds who have surrendered and there’s an excellent rehabilitation programme in place. Many have actually returned to their original homes in liberated areas. There is nothing to say that others will be treated otherwise. The Government has repeatedly called for the LTTE to lay down arms. They have not, and anyone who believes they will, is daydreaming. Hanging the future of this country and the overall safety of the entire citizenry on the whims and fancies of a terrorist is a consideration that only those who are not responsible for such things can entertain. Governments don’t enjoy that privilege. We have paid dearly when Governments allowed themselves to be swayed by such misguided and misguiding advocacy.

Sadly, there is no easy answer. If the Government didn’t care two hoots for the civilians in the 40 odd square kilometers on the North-Eastern corner of our island, this war would have been over in early February. When it will be over is not clear, but over it surely will be unless we give the LTTE enough time to mis-educate those who arm twist us and win respite of a different order. The result will be yet another round of ‘talks’ and an even costlier war. That’s the lesson of history. We can’t afford it. It is as simple as that.

We must talk about civilians and do what is possible instead of ruminating on the impossible. I sincerely believe that the Government is doing that. The mouthings of HRW’s Charu Latha Hogg is hogwash of course, but those who have been on the ground know what the ground is like; the good, the bad and the ugly. It is not heaven on earth in IDP camps, but it is quite a distance from the hell on earth they left behind. As for those who are still resident in that hell, one can only hope. The unthinkable is not thought because, simply, it is beyond all logic.

I don’t think it is useful any more to talk about the LTTE. Well, even the pundits who did the talking on behalf of the LTTE, don’t venture to factor in the LTTE in post-conflict scenarios. What is important to talk about in a post-LTTE Sri Lanka is the return to democracy, and this is not reducible about holding elections in the Northern Province.

Shanie has made a list. It is not news. Whether we have Mahinda Rajapaksa as President or anyone else in that seat, the patently anti-democratic incidents she has recounted (the list is longer of course) will continue until such time that we have structures in place that prevent such things from happening. We have always had a serious lack of transparency and accountability, a gross aversion to correcting the obvious flaws in governance structures and of course a black-or-white political culture, conditions which became more pronounced and pernicious post-1978.

Shanie advocates democracy. I concur. That is a precondition for any serious articulation of grievance and a sober consideration of the same, in addition to correcting the multiple social, economic and political flaws that flow from undemocratic structures. Kumar David, in his piece in the Sunday Island of March 8, 2009 titled ‘What ails the Tamils?’ gives, by admission, an incomplete list of Tamil grievances. Regardless of the pre-Bandaranaike chauvinistic posturing of Ponnambalam Ramanathan, G.G. Ponnambalam and the mischief-making Malaysian Chelvanayagam, the blame for that violence cannot be pinned on these individuals alone.

The issue is this: ‘democracy’ is just a word, a wish. It makes sense only in relation to on-the-ground structures and practices. This is the logic of the need for constitutional reform on the one hand and a concerted movement from the either-or binary that has blinded and crippled our political culture. It is not a first one and then the other kind of proposition; the corrections are necessarily processes that feed each other.

Shanie says ‘13th Amendment and 17th Amendment’. David throws in ‘devolution’ and therefore points to the direction that the 13th Amendment symbolizes. However, nothing that either of these people list in their respective pieces this past week or what they’ve said in previous writings are grievances that warrant consideration of a territory-based resolution, even in part, to the overall issues of citizenship and minority rights. History, geography and demography simply do not support such a thesis. The 13th was thrust down our throats. It was embraced later by politicians not to sort out citizens’ grievances but for personal gain, financial and political. Resolving non-territorial grievances territorially would be worse than the hypothetical carving out a few states for African Americans.

No ethnic-based argument for the 13th Amendment, its implementation and enhancement stands scrutiny. Neither is the 13th an argument for better, more meaningful and more rewarding development in a context where there is no accountability or transparency and a manifest structural aversion to good governance. This is why the 17th Amendment refers to a far more compelling political project than the 13th. This is where, I believe, the post-LTTE political discourse should be directed. Absent the citizen from decision-making, supervision and implementation and citizenship anomalies will continue to thrive, whether the overall structure of the state is unitary, federal, confederate or some other form.

If Prabhakaran was the key protagonist around whom political discussion took place in the past 25 years, the post-Prabhakaran discourse should not focus around an individual. It should privilege, I believe, the citizen. The ball right now is in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s court. He has to name his nominee to the Constitutional Council (CC). The ball is also in the Speaker’s court since he is the ex-officio chairman of the CC. He could legitimately convene the CC since he has the quorum. We must make these people act. The ball, therefore, is in our court too. Let’s play. Hard. It is a national responsibility, I believe.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance journalist who edits the monthly magazine ‘Spectrum’. He can be contact at malinsene@gmail.com. -Sri Lanka Guardian