(May 22, Hong-Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Following the killings of the entire LTTE leadership there is a strongly expressed feeling among Sri Lankans, within the country or outside, that their deaths particularly that of the leader, Prabakaran, should not be a matter for mourning. I beg to differ!
That there were the most extreme forms of violence practiced by both the rebels and the state forces is the issue of real concern. That the political and legal systems of Sri Lanka have not developed to an extent that it is possible to deal with any conflict, particularly a conflict between the communities living within the country, is a matter that cannot be separated from the way in which all actors in the present conflict have behaved. The test of civilisation in modern times is the nature of the political and legal institutions within which people live and not their so called traditional cultures. If the situation of Sri Lanka is such that no such civilised political and legal systems exists, the actors for the state and those citizens who have taken to violence must be judged within the framework of this total situation.
Moral and legal responsibilities
This does not remove the moral responsibilities of those who have acted with barbarism either on behalf of the rebel groups or on behalf of the state. Each must answer morally for their actions despite the colossal defects of the political and legal systems within which they have acted. For this each must answer separately. It is not exculpatory for anyone to claim innocence on the basis that such actions were done on behalf of the rebel group or the state if the acts themselves, are immoral or illegal even in the situation of a 'war'. However, those who have made moral decisions which are wrong and which may have brought them to the ultimate loss of life due to these very wrongs, do not forfeit their human status and therefore they still deserve to be mourned. Prabakaran was a citizen of Sri Lanka and a human being and there is no way of saying in an ultimate sense that he was not 'one of us.'
I am a Sinhalese by birth and as I reached my adulthood I told myself that this should in no way affect my judgement on anything. In the latter part of my life in particular, I have lived with many races and nationalities belonging to all continents. At no stage the fact of whatever race or nationality these people belonged to has been a matter affecting any judgement, though the ethnic and cultural differences of people have played an important role in the enjoyment and enrichment of each other. And I have asked myself, if this be the case, why should my judgement regarding the communities of my own country be any different to this?
Angulimala
In terms of the strongest cultural tradition of Sri Lanka which is Buddhism, perhaps the story of Angulimala is to the point. Angulimala, a bright student, was treated badly by his guru because of a misunderstanding created by jealous and rival students in the mind of the guru about him. The guru instructed Angulimala to bring him a chain of fingers. The finger hunt resulted in Angulimala having the reputation of being the worst murderer in the region because he killed everyone he met to take their fingers. One day however, the Buddha confronted him, facing the risk of assassination himself. In the process Angulimala was brought to his knees, made to understand his predicament and changed his ways. The moral of the story is two-fold. That Angulimala's behaviour was conditioned and that despite of his atrocious criminal acts he was still a human being to be dealt with.
In the Christian tradition there is the story of the stoning of an immoral woman where the Christ told the crowd, those who are without sin, throw the first stone.
This does not imply that the moral and legal wrongs done by the LTTE under their leader should be forgotten or forgiven. All the moral and legal issues of atrocious crimes need to remain the top priority of the national discourse until such time as the whole nation understands the implications of all these issues, so that measures will be developed in order to avoid their repetition in the future. In the case of the rebellions of the JVP in 1971 and 1986 to 1991 no such discussion took place and, in fact, attempts at all such discussions was deliberately suppressed. Therefore the repetition of similar and even worse behaviour happened again through the LTTE.
The problem of dealing with moral and legal issues is that no one can take a holier than thou attitude. It is not possible to discuss and resolve and the moral and legal issues of rebels without discussing the legal and political responsibilities of the state. If the state itself avoids criticism of its own behaviour and has no will at all to change that behaviour with the improvement of political and legal institutions, then the criticism of the rebels become a farce. Such a refusal to discuss state responsibility can only be a ploy to continue with the defective political and legal systems for the benefit of some persons.
The threat of more repression on everyone
Thus, out of the fight against rebels there is the real possibility of the emergence of a state with greater powers of repression which would be used against the entire population. It was the campaign against the communists in Germany which was utilised by Hitler to build one of the world's worst authoritarian systems. It was the fight against the bourgeoisie and the internal party groups of the left opposition lead by Trotsky that was utilised by Joseph Stalin to create an authoritarian system which was even worse than that of Hitler.
In the aftermath of Prabakaran's death the exhibition of his body and the jubilation that was shown reflect badly on the sort of 'headhunter mentality' of some tribes who kept the heads of their enemies, captured in battle as trophies of their strength and glory. When the political and legal institutions fails to live up to required standards a sub-stream of consciousness that remains from the past can surface, as Hannah Arendt in her extensive studies of various authoritarian regimes in the recent past has demonstrated. It was the surfacing of such tendencies which made even the concentration camps possible. Thus, it is not only in countries with less developed political and legal systems that this can happen but even stronger systems can degenerate under certain circumstances. The sub stream of consciousness from the past in south Asian societies, including Sri Lanka is conditioned by the unwritten laws of the repression of the caste system in which disproportionate and collective punishment is an integral part, as amply demonstrated by the recent popular novel, the White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga.
That there was such violent conflict in our own country is a matter for regret and sadness. That there are no attempts to improve the political and legal systems so as to be capable of dealing with the differences and the conflicts is a matter for even greater sadness. That the defeat of the LTTE is being manipulated so badly as to further destroy whatever remains of the political and legal system evokes even worse premonitions for society. How the workers, farmers, the middle class, those who represent dissent and opposition and those who are engaged in providing public information and creating public opinion through the media will be dealt with in the future in Sri Lanka is even more frightening to think about.
Celebrations of a failure
There is no real victory to celebrate, but instead tremendous failures to worry about. And if the artificial celebrations that are organised are meant to fool the people again then these celebrations will, in fact, be glorifications of failure. The last thing that human beings can rely on is their common humanity and the last thing that the citizens of a nation can rely on is citizenship. The fallen rebels as well as fallen soldiers are, in fact, bound by the bond of humanity and citizenship. They all need to be mourned. That is the least bit of decency that anyone can demonstrate. I mourn for all of them, including Prabakaran.
The writer, Executive Director, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
I NEVER MORN TERRARISAM AND THEIR LEADERS.PRABAKARAN DESTROIED TAMILS BY TAMILS.IN THIS PROCESS LOT OF SRILANKANS HAD SACRIFIES THEIR LIVES
I beg to differ from the authors point of view. I am a practicing Buddhist and dead against violence. I don’t think the culture, the religion and the humanity has any bearing when you are dealing with people like Hitler, Polpot and Velupillai Prabakaran. I could not believe the stress that the government relived from its citizens by eliminating this ruthless individual who butchered over 70,000 people and held the country's development and over 20 million people’s lives on a ransom for last 30 years.
Angulimala story has nothing to do with Prabakaran. We don’t have Lord Buddha to change Prabakarn's mind of training teenagers for killing machines and using innocent women as suicide bombers etc. People can talk about religion and theories and philosophies. But the real world does not follow the theories as we wish. I feel sorry for the author's impractical observation about the situation in Sri Lanka. There were many offers made for a negotiated settlement in Sri Lanka for last 30 years. And there were very genuine offers for him to surrender the arms and relieve the people. President even invited Prabakaran to have a face to face dialog to bring a fair solution. The President has a moral responsibility to bring peace, and relieve the people from the psychological trauma that they were suffering for the last 30 years. President has a moral obligation to bring the country to the 21st century, which was suffering economically and developmentally for last 30 years. He did the right thing to save the country from becoming a fail state. It is true that Sri Lanka has a long way to go to become a true democratic country with total transparency and good governance. Path to this was on hold for 30 years due to the JVP issue as well as the LTTE issue.
USA took over 200 years to elect an African American as their President. 30 years ago a Black man could not share the same water fountain for a drink with a white man. I could write pages on these issues. Tamil people were never treated differently in Sri Lanka. Our respect for the Tamil individuals was same as for Sinhalese, whether they were teachers, doctors, merchants or coolies. We treated Sinhalese and Tamils as humans.
I think the author has very little practical experience in Sri Lanka. I am sure the author has no problem in mourning for Hitler and Polpot either.
My comment is that what is desirable may not happen all the times, the history of mankind demonstartes it very clearly. While in terms of academic interests or for moral satisfaction what is desirable can be presented it will remain as such and a different stream of events would follow.As what religions have contributed in a limited way for diciplining the human society such academic excercises would help to keep in record and for future interests the good and bad of behaviour of communities.
Often I feel that unreasonableness of human communities follows the way the nature evolves on a geological time scale. We can explain what is happening in the nature but we cannot understand the reason why it is happening. The humans have developped ways and means of meeting the challenges offered by the natuture and to a certain extent contol or manage it. Same approach would be a useful guide line in addressing the issues heighlighted in this article.
Yasapala Nanayakkara
May be you are near to Arhatship but am not.My nephew was caught by Tamil Tigers while he was visiting farmers in the north to instruct them with 8 of his colleagues.Their hands were tied and thrown on to hay and petrol poured over their bodies and burnt to death alive just because they were Singhalese.Then my cousin and her daughter were blew up to pieces by the train bomb of Dehiwala.I dont want to mourn this ruthless and selfish killer who killed more Tamils than anybodyelse.People like you can mourn Hitler and Polpot too and we dont mind.Prbhakaran is a man who destroyed thousands of families and education of their kids and everything they had, made millions of dollars for his own benefit simply deserved death sentence. Even Buddha said "Dushtaya balayen damanaya kalayuthuya".Go ahead and mourn killers and you will go to Nirvana!
Obviously, Mr. Fernando wants to tell the rest of us, mere mortals, that he is much holier than us. He should speak to thousands of innocent civilians in the NW province whose families were massacered by Tigers. There is a sanitized image of the Tiger leader portrayed on the web by various proTiger folks all over the world. Perhaps Mr Fernando has fallen for this ruse.
A true Buddhist does not feel happy about murder, however ruthless the killer was. When I heard of Prabakaran’s death, I felt relief and then felt ashamed of myself. Most of us are far away from attaining Nirvana, including the author, so please let us not bring Buddhism into this. We will only dilute its essence.
But, please do not bring culture, lack of proper judicial system etc into this. US is one of the biggest killer machines in the current world and they dare point fingers at poor countries and seem to be above UN enquiry. Having lived in 3 of the G-7 countries, I have seen how things are done in the so called civilized countries.
After criticizing quite a few people about their deeds myself, I came to realize it is easy for me to do that since I am not a head of state or part of an armed force.
It is human nature to feel relief in this scenario, but please let us not rejoice because we still have a lot to do for the people in north and east and the rest of the country.
Dear Author,
YOU ARE LIVING IN Hong Kong and you do not fell the effect on terrorism and most of the western nations. No body told the Sri Lankans to celebrate, it was spontaneous. yOU aRE A COLOMBO elite(Colombian not sri lankan) who does not care for the common man.
Any man with a little amount of brain knows there is a big difference between theory and practice depending on the ground situation.
You are a person who is living on other peoples suffering that is why you want to mourn for the terrorist.
Our priorities in rights are;
first is life
second is food
third is plce to live
all the other rights come after that
sorry you may loss some of your income as we have defeated the terrorism.
You should definitely mourn for Prabhakaran. If there are no Prabha's in this world, how could Basil & HR clique could earn their living? One gone and prey for another one. Before long you will have another one ... But, definitely NOT from you motherland that is called Sri Lanka.
Hi, Prabhalaran is not Angulimaala. Angulimaala had his own cause to kill people. He never committed mass murder. Prabhakaran had no class. He only had a killer mentality and madness to bocome a king of his dreamland Ealam.
On the other hand President Rakapakse is no Lord Budhha. He was a great leader. He only could tame this brute by eliminating him from the world. He salvaged us from the hell created by Prabaharan.
Unfortunately, this is the mentality in Sri Lanka right now. Brought to you courtesy of the brainwashing MR has done to the people.
Are the LTTE not people of Sri Lanka as well? Didn't they take up arms because all other avenues were closed to them? If the many "heroes" we have in Sri Lanka (and mentioned in MR's victory speech) didn't take up arms, where would we be now? Would they not be considered "terrorists" as well?
Saying
Mr. Fernando,
Seems like u don't no much about Buddhism.
1.) Do u knw tht Angulimala's First name is Ahinsaka?
2.) Do u knw why Angulimala had to collect those fingers?
3.) Do u knw thts why he was called Angulimala?
4.) Do u knw tht Angulimala was a Educated person initially?
5.) Do u knw tht there were people like Devadaththa who Buddha couldn't do anything to?
There is many more Mr. Fernando...
And please don't write cheap article like this in public place.
If u so much need to write articles like this pls write it on ur diary keep it for ur self. cuz Prabhakaran is the enemy of all religions and all races.
And one thing too Mr. Fernando "Api Thama Rahath Wella Ne" so we can celebrate wht we want.
And if we think we eradicate the deadly Virus (Prabhakaran) tht killed soo many innocent civilians in the past 30 yrs..
Why not we Celebrate it????
Why not we Applause all the Doctors (ARMY) who cured the Virus frm Sri Lanka???
Dhanusha Soysa
Dear Basil, You are comfortable living in Hong Kong and were fortunate enough to send the children to good english schools in Kowloon. You or your children never suffered the fear or the effects of ruthless tiger terrorism. The eradication of tiger maniacs have released Sri Lankan people from the 30year old curse. You never had any financial worries because you people are well taken care by christian charities who indirectly supported tiger terrorism for the sake of so called 'human rights' - the reason for few individuals to live in luxury and write others misery. Have you ever worried about 1)whether your children return home after a days work without getting caught to a bomb
2)how to meet the ends -money in the pocket
Now, Sri Lankans can celebrate because the 'fear' is gone (of course, SL needs to eliminate KP and other sleepers). You may not celebrate because you did not suffer.
Comment from the author
Should Hitler and Pol Pot be mourned? This is the question posed by in two comments above. In fact, the key point of the article seems to say that they should be. The history of Germany since the defeat of Hitler is a continuous attempt to understand why it was possible for Hitler to rise in Germany. Many outstanding authors in many fields, such as psychology, history, political science, law, and in particular constitutional law, have spent their entire lives trying to understand and to explain this, with the view to educate Germany on how to avoid a reoccurrence.
In fact, the entire legal system of the country was reshaped after Hitler. Some of the most sophisticated developments included a hitherto unknown type of constitutional court outside the normal judiciary, bringing in not only lawyers but statesmen and others of proven capacity to discuss all socially important issues constantly, and to guide the nation in resolving them.
If Hitler was dealt with purely as an evil individual, and various forms of revenge rituals were the only ways that his death was dealt with, Germany would not have been able to overcome its own past, out of which Hitler emerged. The very point in the article that clearly appears is that revenge rituals are not the way to deal with Prabahakaran. Serious attempts in every possible way to understand what made the rise of Prabahakaran possible should lead to many changes in the law as well as in the attitudes of people for the future.
To mourn means to come to terms. In the famous book 'The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior' by Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich noted the problems faced by German people after the Second World War due to their inability to understand and to deal with the problems of their evil genius, Hitler. Prabahakaran likewise is a product of the political and the legal system of Sri Lanka. If comprehensive attempts are not made to change the legal system and the political system as Germans did, then it means that we have learned nothing from the tragedy that Sri Lanka faced in the recent decades.
Basil Fernando
Rajapaksa is not Buddha or Christ. Within his limitation he did what he did. Atleast there is some positive feeling in Sri lanka unlike the rest of the world in economic depression.
Angulimala is different from Prbakaran because the latter did his acts willfully than Angulimala. Perhaps even Buddha would not be able to deal with Prabakaran. Prabakaran is more like Ajasaththa who tortured his father to death. Buddha could not help him.
Basil, where were you when LTTE slaughtered pregnant women, children, innocent villagers, buddhist monks and devotees in the broad daylight in Anuradhapura, killing muslim prayers in the mosques, suicide bombs in public transports, commercial buildings, almost destroying entire "Temple of The Tooth", child soldiers, killings Tamils who did not wish to join them and the list goes on. Over 80,000 perished in the past 25 years. You have a comfortable life in Hong Kong but you never had taste of suffering like people in Sri Lanka. How often do you travel to Sri Lanka? I bet my dollar, not even once a year. We have tears of joy for the elimination of the most vicious and ruthless killer while you shed tears for loss of your commission. Angulimala has nothing to do with Praba. Don't make any assumption without knowing what buddhism truly is. we gave Praba 3chances to stop killings but he ignore all our plea.
Go ahead and mourn for Praba but You forgot to mourn those who perish under the hand of LTTE.
Hi Basil,
Tell me the secret of how people like you achieve such exalted states of consciousness? You are trying to sound like Lord Jesus Christ who told 'forgive them for they do not know what they are doing' but unfortunately unlike Jesus Christ you and your so-called Human Rights Gang has nothing, absolutely nothing, to show anything in action. If you had the least bit of concern, empathy for the people affected, you guys would get down from your ivory towers and help those who are affected but instead all you can do is to quote the sayings of the saints, write papers till all the virgin forests are destroyed. If you have an iota of empathy go to Sri Lanka and help those who need help or help the silent majority do their work to alleviate suffering of people. If your lobby cannot do that at least shut up and stay inside your ivory towers and enjoy the comforts offered by your job.
Sybil Fawlty
Why should basil or anyone be asked to shut up. It is such attempts to shut up others that led to the very tragedy that we speak about. Basil expressed his point of view. Others who may disagree may express their points of view. Each reader can decide for his or herself as to what view he can agree or disagree. If some Sinhalese can not tolerate some other Sinhalese who think differently, that prove the criticism of the minority about intolerance. Any way, all that basil seems to say is that even worst opponent once dead, is no longer an opponent. Those alive must try to understand the reasons behind actions of even worst and try to learn lessons. One man's wrongs are always related to wrongs of others. This is more so when the wrongs we speak about are political ones.
Rahula
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