‘Gulag Island’ is a grotesque caricature of Sri Lankan reality

“In the first place, the defining characteristic of the Gulag is that it was a system of forced labor camps. Sri Lanka is not and not even the IDP camps fit this description. The Gulags also had execution by firing squad.”
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By Dayan Jayatilleka

(September 28, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I am proud of my country, Sri Lanka, which has just been able to vanquish a formidable, ferocious and fascistic foe, despite its vast global network and in the face of considerable external pressure. I am proud that my country Sri Lanka has been able to restore its territorial unity and integrity and reassert its independence and sovereignty. I am proud of the Sri Lankan armed forces which have achieved that which the armies of major powers have been unable to in many parts of the world. I am proud that Sri Lanka has been able to defeat not one but two armed totalitarianisms, South and North, Sinhala and Tamil -- the JVP and the LTTE- while maintaining at least the rudimentary foundations of an electoral democracy.

The very fact that I am able to express my criticisms on TV gives the lie to the description of Sri Lanka as a Gulag Island.

In the first place, the defining characteristic of the Gulag is that it was a system of forced labor camps. Sri Lanka is not and not even the IDP camps fit this description. The Gulags also had execution by firing squad.

In the second place there were no multi-party elections in the old USSR - the Opposition was IN the Gulag. By contrast there is an election imminent in the Southern province of Sri Lanka , which would be actually competitive if not for the present state of the Opposition, which is cannot be blamed on the Sri Lanka state or regime but on the internal supineness of the UNP itself. (By the way my betting is that the UPFA will secure over 70% of the Southern vote).

In the third place there is nothing "totally" or "systemically" warped in a country which can be put right by restoring a basic political equilibrium, as can Sri Lanka, by a simple substitution of the current leadership of the opposition, which one that resonates more with mainstream opinion. There is nothing more irrational in this country today than the non-replacement of an individual who has caused the meltdown of the UNP's earlier irreducible mass base to the point that the Opposition is in electoral and social free-fall, and looks like a tribe facing (peaceful) extinction.

Appalled and amused as I alternately am by the proliferation of critiques of Sri Lanka today which abound with absurd analogies either with Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany or both, I conclude by recommending a trenchant critique of current trends made by an academic more eminently qualified to make the necessary analytical distinctions and definitions than most who pontificate on the subject. I refer to Sri Lankan born Razeen Sally, who is Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels and is on the faculty of the London School of Economics (LSE). Writing a no holds barred, yet utterly un-hysterical piece in the Far Eastern Economic Review this July, his summation of the crisis is worth quoting for its objectivity:

“…The opposition, on the other hand, led by the previously-governing United National Party, is weak, divided and demoralized. Its leadership comes from the Colombo upper-class elite, which seems utterly cut off from, and unable to communicate with, ordinary Sri Lankans, especially outside Colombo and the Western Province. Most likely, Mr. Rajapaksa will call parliamentary and presidential elections later this year, with every prospect of winning handsomely. The danger is that Sri Lanka, shorn of institutional checks and balances, will veer—not for the first time—in the direction of a Caesarist elective dictatorship.”

As a political scientist of some modest ability, I find this conceptually sound.

Related Article: Sri Lanka, the Gulag Island (2) – Zero Status of Citizens- Dayan’s problem

-Sri Lanka Guardian