by Prof. Asoka Bandarage
(This paper was originally written on the invitation of the South Asian Journal of the South Asian Free Media Association. It was declined for publication by the South Asian Journal on account of perspective).
(March 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE caused enormous suffering and devastation killing some 100,000 people, the majority of them Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim civilians. With the defeat of the internationally banned LTTE in May 2009 and the release of internally displaced people held in closed camps, Sri Lanka now holds the promise of reconciliation and development after three decades of war. The economy grew by 8 % in the third quarter of 2010 with tourism, investment and infrastructural development fast expanding. The World Bank recently designated Sri Lanka as a "lower middle income country" removing it from the "low income" category.
Terrorism has been defeated but Tamil separatism, which seeks an independent nation state in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, continues to threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. How well Sri Lanka recovers and develops in the long-term depends on the settlement of the separatist challenge. Careful policymaking on this issue is of utmost importance to long-term peace and security and well-being of people on the island as well as the South Asian region.
I have provided a comprehensive analysis of the origin and evolution of the island’s conflict in The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism, Ethnicity, Political Economy. This paper which is built upon that earlier work covers developments since the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. It focuses on the Tamil Diaspora’s separatist activism, transnational activism for Tamil regional autonomy and the Sri Lankan government’s efforts to preserve the unitary state. The paper concludes emphasizing that policymaking needs to move beyond competing ideological positions by taking into account concrete demographic and socio-economic realities. The needs and aspirations of all communities on the island must prevail over the interests of local elites and external political-economic and ideological forces.
Diaspora Separatist Activism
The large and influential Tamil Diaspora (about one million in the West) heavily lobbied the international community to stop the Sri Lankan government’s final military offensive against the Tamil Tigers in 2009. It conducted massive public protests in world capitals and campaigns on the Internet and other media outlets. In the final months of the war and immediately afterwards, there were "self-immolations by Tamil protestors, vandalism against Sri Lankan embassies, and increased communal tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese abroad". The International Crisis Group, ICG- an influential INGO funded by western governments and foundations, has noted that while such incidences have "become less frequent, risks of radicalism in the diaspora cannot be dismissed entirely". According to recent media reports, Tamil militants with ties to the LTTE are active in India and even suspected of plans to assassinate Indian leaders including Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh.
The LTTE and the Tamil Diaspora were never a single political entity. Many were either coerced into supporting the LTTE terror campaign or silenced by its totalitarian practices. As in other ethnic communities around the world, only a small group of individuals uphold extremist positions. Since the LTTE’s military defeat, some Tamil Diaspora activists in the West have regrouped forming new initiatives and organizations to carry on the separatist struggle through more non-violent means than the LTTE.
Using political savvy and ample funds and deflecting attention away from LTTE terrorism and atrocities even towards Tamils, Tamil Diaspora groups have brought wide international attention to the Sri Lankan government’s military offensive that defeated the LTTE. These efforts have influenced western governments and international human rights organizations to raise war crimes and human rights charges against the Sri Lankan government for ‘genocide’ against Tamils and to demand an international investigation beyond the United Nations Expert’s Panel already appointed.
Tamil Diaspora activists have influenced efforts to weaken the Sri Lankan economy through international boycotts of Sri Lankan goods. In July 2010, the European Union terminated its ‘GSP Plus’ trade concession on grounds of human rights violations. The Sri Lankan government refused to accept 15 conditions the EU laid down which would have amounted to extensive external intervention and erosion of Sri Lankan sovereignty. As a result, Sri Lanka may have lost $150 million dollars in trade and thousands of jobs, especially of female garment workers. Moreover, the loss of support from the West over human rights has pushed Sri Lanka more and more to seek support from China.
The Diaspora has conducted private ‘referenda’ in the Tamil communities in Norway, France, Canada, Germany and Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain since late 2009 to gain support to establish a separate state of Eelam. In addition to lobbying politicians and developing media support in the West, Tamil Diaspora activists have formed the ‘Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam’ (TGTE) consolidating the Diaspora and its resources into a virtual Eelam. A constitution has been drafted and a cabinet elected with V. Rudrakumaran as President. Another political organization, the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), ‘a conglomerate of elite personality driven pro-LTTE organizations,’ drawn from fourteen countries was formed in July 2009 to work for the separatist cause.
In late November to early December 2010 when the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was visiting the U.K. members of the British Tamil Forum (BTF) demonstrated openly waving Tiger flags of the banned LTTE. Lawyers from a prestigious firm working for the BTF tried but failed ‘to obtain a war crimes arrest warrant’ against President Rajapaksa and a member of his entourage. However, BTF was instrumental in stopping President Rajapaksa from addressing the Oxford Union. Soon thereafter, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox postponed his scheduled trip to Sri Lanka to give the Memorial Lecture in honour of Lakshman Kadirgamar, former Sri Lankan Foreign Minister and a Tamil who was assassinated by the LTTE in 2005.
Human rights charges against the Sri Lankan government have further intensified following on-going publications of Wikileaks cables from the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka. Recently, the Sri Lankan government acceded to international demands allowing the Experts’ Panel appointed by the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon to visit the island to look into the human rights situation. However, there is growing concern in Sri Lanka and around the world that human rights and war crimes charges are being used selectively as political weapons to justify intervention and to sustain global dominance of the West.
Opponents of Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka fear that United Nations intervention could pave the way for secessionism and that the objective of international pressure is not the welfare of Tamil civilians but coercion of the Sri Lankan government to concede Tamil regional autonomy. At a workshop on Sri Lanka organized by the United States Institute for Peace and the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. in August 2009, a leading Sri Lankan Tamil activist and a moderate asserted that Diaspora agitation will stop immediately when ‘13th plus’ or Tamil regional autonomy is conceded. He failed to mention that from the inception the ‘father of Tamil separatism,’ S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, saw federalism as a stepping stone to secession. The motto of his gradualist approach was: ‘a little now, more later’.
Transnational Activism for Regional Autonomy
Diaspora activists sought to uphold the LTTE as the defenders of Tamil rights until the end. In contrast, Tamil civilians struggled to escape from the LTTE which held them as human shields in the final confrontation with the Sri Lankan government’s armed forces. As the International Crisis Group has observed, the continuing commitment to establish a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka has widened differences between the pro-LTTE Diaspora pursuing its separatist goal and local Tamils who have borne the direct costs of war and who want to rebuild their lives desperately. Pointing out that there is no popular Tamil support for a return to armed struggle, an ICG Press Release argues that
‘…without the LTTE to enforce a common political line, Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka are proposing substantial reforms within a united Sri Lanka. The International community needs to press Colombo much more strongly for political and constitutional reforms. Donors should insist that money given to develop the north and east is tied closely to the demilitarisation and democratisation of the region. This should include giving Tamils and Muslims a meaningful role in determining the future of the areas where they have long been the majority. Donor governments and the United Nations must also insist on an independent investigation into the thousands of Tamil civilians killed in the final months of fighting in 2009’
With strong backing of western governments and India, local Tamil politicians are demanding a political settlement from the Sri Lankan government. LTTE proxy and largest Tamil political party in Sri Lanka, The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), originally supported Tamil separatism. However, in early 2010 it dropped the demand for an independent state agreeing to accept regional self-rule instead. On December 12, 2010, the TNA entered into a joint initiative with the Tamil Parties Forum consisting of the majority of Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka to engage in talks with the Sri Lankan government to reach a political settlement. The TNA has also offered party membership to youth in an effort to broaden its mandate.
While the regional power India is not offering to broker talks and a political settlement, it has been highly active in calling for a political settlement based on devolution of power to Sri Lanka’s Northern and the Eastern Provinces. On a recent visit to Sri Lanka, Indian Foreign Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna reiterated India’s commitment to ‘meaningful devolution’ to the Tamil majority areas. While in Jaffna, he is reported to have stated that devolution should be based on the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution.In addition, India has inaugurated an Indian consulate in Jaffna in the northern tip of Sri Lanka which is close to Tamil Nadu and where there is a large Tamil population and active support for Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka. Not insignificantly, India has also inaugurated an Indian consulate in Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka which is a major site of investment of India’s rival, China.
Informal dialogue has already taken place between the Sri Lankan government and TNA representatives on political decentralization. Reportedly, a preliminary agreement has been made to give the Provinces ‘exclusive powers over land …and fiscal powers including the power to receive foreign direct investments…with provision for the Centre to request and use lands necessary for other national projects.’ Agreement is yet to be made on police powers and the unit of devolution, possibly a compromise on the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
The ‘international community’ , the Indian government, Sri Lankan NGO peace groups and left-liberals (including some members of the current Sri Lankan government) espouse a change in the Sri Lankan constitution to decentralize authority from the center to the periphery as a compromise to both the separate state and the unitary state solution associated with Tamil and Sinhala nationalism respectively. However, sustainable peacebuilding cannot be undertaken a priori simply in accordance with the interests of politicians, be they local or international.
Policymaking must be based on the demographic and socio-economic situation on the ground. Even if ‘iron clad guarantees’ against eventual secession are introduced into a political agreement, a Kosovo type situation could be repeated in Sri Lanka. The fundamental problem, however, is not secessionism or devolution but justice for all communities on the island. To be just, a settlement whether it be the unitary state or separatism, outright secessionism or regional autonomy, must accord with social realities and needs of all groups rather than aspirations of elites.
Devolution: A Just Solution?
The preliminary agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the TNA is based on previously failed and rejected agreements, notably the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 and the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution. The 13th Amendment imposed by India was intended to resolve ‘Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem’ by devolving power to the Northern and Eastern Provinces identified as the ‘areas of historical habitation of the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking peoples.’ Instead of resolving problems, the Indo-Lanka Agreement and Indian intervention culminated in one of the bloodiest and most anarchic periods in the history of the island. It led to violent resistance by the Sinhala JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) in the south and the empowerment of the LTTE, one of several Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups originally funded and armed by India, as the ‘sole representative of Tamils’.
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