The cultural capacity to tolerate cruelty

This article is related to my previous articles on Sri Lanka, the gulag island
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By Basil Fernando

(September 29, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) The degeneration of mind that can place in the midst of extraordinary forms of repression is unbelievable. One demonstration of that is the way in which forced disappearances are treated by some parts of the population in Sri Lanka. They not only support but are overjoyed to see such things happening. When the family members cry about it, they are told not to be hysterical or emotional about it.

Accepting cruel treatment silently is considered rational. To protest against it is considered hysterical, over emotional and irrational.

How has such an ugly mentality become part of the heritage-urumaya-of Sri Lankans?

From 1971 up to now, in all parts of the country, we have seen the worst form of cruelties. We have also seen so many who enjoy seeing and remembering such cruelties as triumphs. The causing of such cruelties is even seen as heroic.

Every attempt to express human reactions to such cruelties is talked about as hysteria.

There is hardly any commonly shared mentality about what is cruel and what is not. Even the causing of forced disappearances is not considered as outrageous or inhuman.

Those who manifest such mentalities are mostly are among the educated and affluent classes. Among the ordinary folk, there is overflowing of compassion and anger against injustice. Such compassion is seen by those others as a simpleton’s mentality and the hysteria of the masses.

Our academics and researchers have not done much by way of studies into the kind of cruelty that creates such a mentality. Research into any locality in the country will reveal histories of cruelties by the more powerful families on the weaker ones. However, many young people from poorer families have been killed or otherwise seriously harmed simply because of jealousy and other petty reasons.

If all this is well documented the people of this country will have quite a different view of themselves.

However, even this would not be an easy task. They also may face serious repercussions.

There is a culturally imbedded tradition of blackening the reputations or names of the victims. This may be discussed more clearly with an example. We now know that there were over 30,000 disappearances during the late 1980s. (We still do not know any reliable figure of the disappearances in the north and east during the recent decade). Whenever a discussion on this issue comes up there are many who will dismiss the subject out of hand by saying they were JVP terrorists. With the use of the word ‘terrorist’ a picture is painted of 30,000 people with guns, bombs and other weapons engaged in causing havoc. However, out of these 30,000 people are there even a few hundred against whom there was evidence of being in possession of guns, bombs or other weapons and of causing havoc?

According to the evidence that emerged through the commissions into forced disappearances there is overwhelming evidence that the vast number of those who were made to disappear were taken from their homes and that there was no evidence of any sort of being involved in any use of arms. However, this has remained an irrelevant fact as far as public discussion is concerned. With the one word, terrorist, the names of all these 30,000 people are blackened and such blackening is quite effective.

Out of the 30,000 disappearances 15 %, according to the reports of the commissions, were young people between 16 and 19-years-of-age. Adults acting as police, military or paramilitary took these young people from their homes and in cold blood assassinated them and disposed of their bodies. No national scandal was caused by such actions or by later revelations of the magnitude of such actions. It was a sufficient explanation to silence the conscience of the people that they were JVPers or terrorists. Surely in any society there would have been an ethical discussion about adults killing young people of 16 to 19 in cold blood. But, this did not happen in Sri Lanka. Why? Or is it hysterical to raise such questions?

Take also the question of nearly 300,000 internally displaced persons. When questions are raised about them the immediate response is about the LTTE and the remaining LTTEers. That desensitises the whole discussion. The actual lives of these people who have been pushed into wretched conditions is forgotten. Whatever suffering they have to go through is made to appear to be justified by using those magic words about the LTTE and terrorists. The cultural habit of blackening any discussion and driving out of the actual concrete realities into an abstract sphere, within which only black reality exists, enables disregard for any kind of cruelty.

-Sri Lanka Guardian