SRI LANKA AND THE QUEST FOR PEACE

by Olga Yoldi

Fifty-two years after independence Sri Lanka has yet to master the fine art of nation building. Stuck in a war of attrition for the past 18 years there is still no foreseeable hope of peace. Broken pledges, militarism and peace plans that never saw the light of day, have so far prevented a negotiated settlement. But can Sri Lanka afford an endless war? OLGA YOLDI writes.

Kumar was just 12 years old when he smashed the head of a Muslim baby against a wall during an attack on a village. He later described how he felt no remorse about killing the child and then hacking to death the mother. In fact he said they deserved to die. The attack had been organised by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the armed Tamil opposition group fighting against the Sri Lankan army for an independent state called “Tamil Eelam.”

Such incidents have been all too frequent during the violence and counter-violence that have torn Sri Lanka apart along ethnic lines for the last 2 decades.

So far the conflict has cost more than 60,000 lives, produced over one million internally displaced people, 11,000 disappeared and 800,000 Tamil refugees and more than 20,000 permanently wounded are languishing in silence in many corners of the country.

The war has contributed to the ecological destruction and depopulation of the traditional Tamil homelands (northern and eastern areas) and has made a pauper of the Sri Lankan economy.

Last October the People’s Alliance led by Chandrika Kumaratunga, won more seats in the parliamentary elections than the United National Party (UNP) opposition, but lost the one-seat majority and now requires the support of minority parties. Chandrika, who was forced to withdraw her Devolution Bill from Parliament, promised she would reintroduce it again. However she is facing bitter opposition from the Sinhalist majority, particularly from the powerful Buddhist clergy.

The Devolution Plan, which caused a great deal of controversy, was to give Tamil speaking areas of the north and east more control over their affairs. Unfortunately it was never implemented because protests by Buddhist monks forced the President to withdraw it from Parliament.

Tamil Tigers separatists’ leader Velupillai Prabhakaran announced that his group was finally ready for unconditional peace talks with the Sri Lankan government to end the conflict. In his annual Heroes’Day speech last December, Prabhakaran called on the government to create a climate of good will by ending its economic blockade of Tamil controlled areas of Sri Lanka and scaling down the war.

But the government has not responded, President Chandrika Kumaratunga not only distrusts Prabhakaran but has rejected offers of mediation made by Norway, Palestine and Australia. “The government has no interest in a cease-fire because only when it was weak did the Tigers want one.” Prime Minister Ratnasari Wickremanayake said. He was quoted by the New York Times as saying that the government planned to carry on the war “until the enemy is totally eliminated”.

In a polarised nation such as Sri Lanka compromise and cooperation are rare. The question is, how long can they prolong an unwinnable war?

TWO NATIONS ONE PEOPLE

Ceylon (the country bore its name until 1972 when it became Sri Lanka) once consisted of different kingdoms. The island was inhabited from time immemorial by two peoples who spoke different languages, belonged to different faiths, had different cultures and lived in exclusive areas.

According to Historian S. Pathmanathan, Tamils have lived in Sri Lanka since pre historic times. They originated from Dravidian South India and crossed the island by foot before it became separated from the mainland by the Ocean.

The Sinhalese, who constitute a Buddhist majority (74%) describe themselves as being of Indo Aryan stock, who originated from northern India and regard themselves as the legitimate people of Sri Lanka - a belief that feeds a disastrous attitude towards the Tamil minority and lies at the heart of the conflict.

Tamils and Sinhalese once called themselves communities now they describe themselves as nations, emphasizing their rival claims for nationhood Ceylon was occupied by the Portuguese, who arrived in 1505 in search of cinnamon. Through a treaty with the Kandian king they gained control of most of the ports. From the late 1660s it was occupied by the Dutch. The Portuguese and Dutch administered the Tamil and Sinhalese areas as separate entities, but the British, who conquered the island in 1815, fused them into one crown colony for their own administrative convenience. This resulted in the Tamils becoming smaller in numbers compared with the Sinhalese in the unified country.

As long as the British rule lasted, Sinhalese and Tamils had reasons to believe that they were equal. The British used a system of communal representation. British governors themselves nominated representatives from Tamil and Sinhalese elite families to the Legislative Council (introduced in 1833).
In the first decades of the 20th century however, English educated Sinhalese began to agitate for territorial representation, demanding that members of the legislative council be elected by their constituencies, rather than nominated by British governors. But the sheer disparity in numbers provided the Sinhalese with the monopoly of power and Tamils began to feel apprehensive about Sinhalese domination.

Tamil leader GG Ponnambalan conducted a one man campaign to protect Ceylon Tamil interests. He pushed for a balanced territorial representation of 50-50, half of the seats in the legislature and executive for the minority communities (Tamil, Muslims, Indian Tamils and Burghers). He did not succeed.

The problem was temporarily resolved with the formation of the Ceylon National Congress in 1919. It was agreed that despite the introduction of the territorial principle, a communal ratio in representation would be maintained in some form, assuring the Tamils of their fair share in territorial constituencies in the area.

When independence was being negotiated in 1946 the British did make some provisions in the proposed constitution for the protection of the minorities, and demanded that the Sinhalese obtain the consent of the Tamils for the complete transfer of power to the people of Ceylon. It was relying on these safeguards that the Tamils accepted the unitary Constitution and agreed to Britain transferring power to a unified Ceylon. Unfortunately no real constitutional mechanism provided for Tamils to share power at the centre as a matter of right, and this fundamental flaw would haunt Sri Lanka for years to come.
In November 1945, D.S. Senanayake, the so-called architect of Sinhala independence, leader of the State Council told the Tamils: “I give the minorities the sincere assurance that no harm need you fear at our hands in a free Sri Lanka. Do you want to be governed from London, or do your want, as Ceylonese, to help govern Ceylon?” But his promises were never to be fulfilled and Tamils soon found themselves shifting from the centre to the periphery of society.

KM de Silva writes in his book The History of Sri Lanka: “The situation changed fundamentally when instead of two majority communities and the minorities, there was one majority community- the Sinhalese, the Tamils now regarding themselves as a minority community.”

MAJORITY VERSUS MINORITY

In 1948 Ceylon boasted the most powerful economy in Asia after Japan. Ana Pararajasingham in his book Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations, writes: “the island certainly possessed many of the attributes to evolve into a successful modern state. It had the highest literacy rate in the whole of Asia, had enjoyed universal franchise since 1931 (longer than any of the other colonies) and possessed a healthy economy.” Now it squanders 20 per cent of its meagre income on war, depends on economic aid for its survival and most people struggle against poverty.

The departure of the British was amicable and uneventful, unlike the horror of Indian independence, but as soon as independence was gained Prime Minister D.S. Sananayake disenfranchised one million Indian Tamils. He then proceeded to enact the Council Amendment Act, which reduced Tamil representation in Parliament by nine seats. The ratio was further reduced in the 1950s by state aided settlement of Sinhalese peasants in traditional Tamil provinces, in a deliberate attempt to change the ethnic composition of those areas.

The one calamitous decision that led to ethnic tension was the Sinhala-only Legislation of 1956. In the face of a storm of protest from the Tamils, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party under the leadership of SWRD Bandarainake enacted the Sinhala-only Act, making Sinhala the only official language in Ceylon. Sinhala replaced English as the country’s official language. This made the entire Tamil population illiterate overnight and served to keep the Tamils away from education and professional employment.

The Sinhala-only Act had been Bandaranaike’s election manifesto. As soon as he was in power he wasted no time in fulfilling his promises. “It proved to be a potent vote catcher…his victory sent a clear signal to the Sinhala politicians that an anti-Tamil stand was a powerful platform to win votes,” Pararajasingham writes.

Tamils staged a campaign of civil disobedience but their peaceful protests were crushed by military action, resulting in hundreds killed and thousands escaping to the Tamil homelands.

In the face of so much opposition Bandarainake sought to mitigate the rigors of the Sinhala Only Act by signing a Pact with SJV Chelvanayakan, Leader of the Tamil Party. The B-C Pact provided for Regional Councils with powers in agriculture, education as well as the use of Tamil as the language of administration in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. But the Pact was rejected by the mounting Sinhalese opposition led by J.R. Jayawardene and by the fierce resistance of Buddhist monks. As a result it was finally abandoned. Bandarainake was assassinated by a Buddhist monk two years later.
District councils were presented as a solution to the Tamil problem and formed the basis of a new Pact signed in 1965 between Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake (nephew of the first Prime Minister) and Chelvanayakam. But once again mounting opposition by the Buddhist clergy forced Senanayake to abort the Pact. Buddhist monks have had a long history of opposing any proposals made by the government to appease Tamil Aspirations. “For Buddhist monks any weakening of the central state is a weakening of Buddhism in Sri Lanka”. Dr Jehan Perera from the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka said.

The rise of Tamil militancy took a decisive turn in 1972 when Mrs Sirimano Bandaranaike (SWRD Bandarainake’s widow and the world first woman Prime Minister), leader of the SLFP introduced the Two Systems of Standardisation of marks for admission to university. Tamil students would need to score higher grades than Sinhalese to gain university entry. This policy inflamed the wrath of Tamil youth who by that stage had become impatient with the government’s policies.

1972 also saw the birth of a new Constitution. Sri Lanka was proclaimed a Buddhist Republic. Buddhism was made the state religion and the amendments proposed by the Tamil members of parliament were rejected, compelling them to walk out of the Constituent Assembly.

Ethnic tensions were aggravated when the Jaffna Public Library with a collection of over 95,000 invaluable and unique Tamil manuscripts was burnt down by the police. This was the worst possible attack on Tamil culture.

In view of the increasing military repression and marginalisation of the Tamil community, Tamil political parties now under the banner of Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) committed themselves to the restoration of a separate state of Tamil Eelam based on the right of self determination inherent in every nation. This was formally endorsed at the TULF’s Convention in Vaddukoddai in 1976. One year later the TULF secured the highest number of seats ever in the general elections of July 1977. Their mandate was to establish Tamil Eelam by peaceful means or otherwise, but the road to Jaffna would prove long and difficult because the same general elections had also returned to power Junius Jayawardene, notorious for his anti Tamil stands, with a huge majority.

Open hostilities between the military and the Tamils began in July 1983 when 3,000 Tamils were murdered by Sinhalese, in retaliation for the killing of 13 Sinhalese soldiers by Tamil Tigers. Sinhalese mobs went on a rampage burning, looting, killing Tamils and destroying their properties, in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the history of Sri Lanka. It later appeared that some government officers had been involved in instigating the rioters. Thousands of Tamils fled from Colombo to the north. One hundred and sixty thousand people left Sri Lanka as refugees. At least 139,000 of these crossed to Tamil Nadu in South India, where they remain until now.

To make matters worse the same year Jayawardene decided to declare Sri Lanka a unitary state with the passing of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which made it an offense to espouse the creation of a separate state. This required Tamil members of Parliament to take an oath of allegiance to the unitary state of Sri Lanka. But TULF MPs refused to sign, quit Parliament and fled to India.
The leadership vacuum left by their departure was soon to be filled by Velippillai Prabhakran and his Tamil Liberation Tigers, who seized the opportunity to establish his leadership in the Tamil areas. As A. Jeyaratnam Wilson writes “Parliamentarism would soon be replaced by the gun in the freedom struggle and moderates would soon be displaced by the militant movement of Tamil youth.”

A low intensity conflict was to develop into a full-blown civil war, a war that neither side would manage to win.

NOTHING BUT PROMISES

Writer Robert A. Heilein once said that Politics was the most important invention of the human race, because it is the only way to solve disputes without killing people.

This has certainly not been the case in Sri Lanka. Politics have repeatedly failed to bring an end to the war. As the conflict escalated and while the country was torn by violence, hundreds of public and secret meetings took place between the government and the LTTE or the TULF. Researcher Rohan Gunaratne observes that between July 1983 to 1987 the President must have held at least 136 meetings. Throughout the years all attempts to find peace through accords, peace plans and negotiations failed.

This was the case at the All Party Conference in 1983 where the Tamils first put forward their demand for Provincial Councils that ended in a fiasco.

The peace talks in the Himalayan city of Thimpu in 1985 did not achieve anything. “They ended with bitterness on both sides and mutual recrimination,” writes Jeyaratnam Wilson. Tamils wanted three basic principles to be accepted. That they were a nation, the right to self-determination and their right to equal citizenship. The government refused to accept these principles. The talks were abandoned when the Tamils received news of an army massacre of Tamil civilians.

India offered its assistance as a mediator to negotiate peace between warring parties when the conflict came to India’s doorstep after the July 83 riots. India also feared that Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee harbour would become available to the US government as a naval base. The Indo-Lanka Accord was drafted by Prime Minister Jayewardene and Rajiv Ghandi in 1987. It committed India to provide military assistance to Sri Lanka for the implementation of a number of measures that would create peace, such as the disarming of the LTTE; the union of the Northern and Eastern provinces into a single administrative unit, with a provincial council; the return of Sri Lankan military to their barracks and the official use of the Tamil language.

The Accord was signed amidst severe opposition and violent protest. Tamils believed it to be an agreement between India and Sri Lanka, aimed at securing Indian interests in the region, having little to do with the rights of Tamils. On the other hand Sinhalese were not happy either as they saw it as a potential threat to the unity of the country.

The Indo Lanka Accord called for the deployment of Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF). Eight thousand Indian troops moved into Sri Lanka soon after the Accord was announced. Initially they were welcomed by the Tamils but soon resented their presence, particularly when the IPKF launched an offensive against LTTE bases in Jaffna and attacked Tamil civilians. The IPKF returned to India in 1991. The LTTE occupied Jaffna and the Indo-Lanka Agreement was never implemented.

Much hope was placed by the Tamil community in the 1995 Peace talks. This time between Chandrika Kumaratunga and the LTTE. The government offered a package that became the basis for the negotiation, but there was little substance to it and the LTTE gave up. Historian John Powers said in a conference: “In walking out of the negotiations they [LTTE] showed the world that they were unwilling to negotiate. Even if the government was not offering much it would have been better for their public image to have stayed in the negotiations. The Tamil leadership has become so radicalised that it is very hard to imagine that they are going to be able to agree to anything that any Sri Lankan government can propose.”

A MILITARY SOLUTION TO A POLITICAL PROBLEM

Intransigence seems to be the norm in Sri Lanka. The most uncompromising player in Sri Lanka is believed to be Velupillai Prabhakaran, who has a reputation of being ruthless and inflexible. “It was the plight of the Tamil people that compelled me to take up arms. I felt outraged at the inhuman atrocities perpetrated against an innocent people. I felt that an armed struggle was the only alternative left to our people, not only to ensure our survival but ultimately to free ourselves from the Sinhala oppression.” He said to a BBC journalist in 1986.

Prabhakaran believes that the Tamil problem will never be resolved through parliament: “The Tamil people have been expressing their grievances in Parliament for more than three decades. Their voices went unheard like cries in the wilderness. In Sri Lanka there is no parliamentary democracy where our people could effectively represent their aspirations. What passes as Parliament is an authoritarian rule founded on the tyranny of the majority. Parliamentary politics not only has failed but it was through Parliament that several discriminatory and oppressive laws have been directed against the Tamil people,” he added.

But the Tigers have systematically decimated the entire Tamil democratic leadership, accusing them of being collaborationists and infiltrators. “The opportunistic politics of the TULF is retarding the liberation struggle. They have never taken any concrete steps to further the struggle. On the contrary they give false hopes, create illusions, and try to keep our people in perpetual bondage...They never had any sincere intentions to liberate our oppressed people nor did they ever put forward any concrete programme of political action” he said.

Ana Pararajasingham explains: “Prabhakaran has been demonised by the media constantly but he is very committed to his cause. Most Tamils support the LTTE quite strongly. The types of leaders we have had in the past were not strong enough, that has been our problem.”

Prabhakaran now leads a band of more than 5,000 indoctrinated and committed guerrillas with a reputation of being the world’s deadliest. Every soldier must swear an oath of loyalty to Prabhakaran and must wear a deadly suicide capsule around their necks that will be swallowed if they are caught by the military. A young Tiger explains their philosophy: “The thought of certain death is a great trial, but to whom? Certainly not to us because we are married to our cyanide. Yes, our death lives with us. It sleeps with us. We carry it in our shirt pockets and around our necks. This makes us clear headed and purposeful.”

Many sources said that the power of the LTTE lies essentially in their cause. The Tamil community perceives them as the only ones capable of defending the Tamil cause, therefore, recruitment and mobilization, especially after any heavy LTTE casualties, are massive. Tigers are recruited from schools and villages. Most of them belong to a generation that have known nothing but war. They have joined the LTTE because of their direct experience of oppression. After they die, their portraits join those of other martyrs at the LTTE headquarters in the Wanni, the Tigers’ traditional forest stronghold.
Prabhakaran has kept the fight going against a demoralised army for nearly two decades in his quest for independent statehood. Lately however he has announced that he would consider other options. Prabhakaran explains “Revolutionary Socialism is my political philosophy. By philosophy I mean the construction of an egalitarian society where there is no class contradiction and exploitation of man by man; a free, rational society where human freedom and rights are protected and progress enhanced. Che Guevara is the guerrilla leader that inspires me most”

Most commentators say that the Tamil Diaspora is the only single factor that sustains the LTTE in its war. According to Parajasingham, the Tigers secure huge amounts of arms and ammunition from the Sri Lankan army. “The money from the Tamil Diaspora goes to refugee rehabilitation projects, orphanages and things like that. Tamils abroad simply don’t have the financial power to sustain an organisation such as the LTTE,” he adds. Christopher Kremmer wrote in his article ‘Fortunes still being build on a war without end’: “Tigers’ income comes partly from a worldwide chain of businesses, including shipping lines, travel agencies, shops and money changers, augmented by weapons and drug smuggling.”
The Indian Tamils’ support for militancy diminished especially after the assassination of Rajiv Gandi supposedly by a Tamil suicide bomber.

President Jayewardene sought military assistance from many countries. “We are prepared to align ourselves with the devil of terrorism,” he said. Around $US2 million per day is being provided to the Sri Lankan government by the Aid Ceylon Consortium which consists of Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Japan. The USA has also helped Sri Lankan military in counter terrorism, as well as China and Pakistan. India no longer provides military assistance to Sri Lanka.

A WAR BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

There are no television cameras showing the world the atrocities being committed in Sri Lanka. Unlike the Bosnian and Kosovar conflicts that were fully exposed to the world, in Sri Lankan television cameras are not showing the humanitarian crisis the war creates, or the human rights violations it produces or the sheer suffering experienced by civilians. Independent press coverage of the war remains difficult if not impossible.

Human rights violations have been committed on both sides and both sides have suffered as a result of the war. According to Human Rights Watch, discrimination against Tamil civilians by members of the security forces (attempting to root out the LTTE) and large-scale arbitrary arrests of Tamils, continues in many parts of the country. In the north and east residents have been subjected to continuous harassment, routine beatings, torture, systematic rape of Tamil women and public humiliation. There has been summary prosecution of detainees and detainees being used for forced labour by the army as well as indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilians. This is increasingly complicated by the actions of Tamil paramilitary groups, often working alongside the army as auxiliary forces, but sometimes at odds with them and with each other.

The LTTE has also been responsible for gross human rights violations in Jaffna and elsewhere, including indiscriminate killings of civilians during attacks on checkpoints or army patrols and summary executions of suspected informants, for harassment of other noncombatants and intimidation of political opponents.
The Tamil people have been subjected to enormous suffering as a consequence of the economic embargo, fishing bans and the blockade on traffic imposed by the Sri Lankan army. Tamil people continue to leave the Jaffna peninsula where landholders are taxed by LTTE and other groups and cultivation is hampered by shelling and strafing. Many fields have been abandoned because of land mines.

But peace is sought desperately. As Rev Dr SJ Emmanuel, Vicar General of the Diocese of Jaffna said in1996 when he came to Australia: “We want peace because we are dying in war. We want peace because we have lost all our dear and near ones in this senseless war. We want peace because war is suffocating us into extinction. We want peace because that alone is the natural space for human life with dignity and self respect.”

For years Sri Lankans have felt forgotten and abandoned by the world. The reaction of the international community has been to treat the war as an internal conflict, and to adopt a policy of non-interference in Sri Lankan affairs. It seems as if the international community had decided to remove Sri Lanka from the international agenda and to relegate the armed conflict to the status of a forgotten war.

Tamil Lawyer VP Lingajothy in his book ‘Sri Lanka, The State against the Tamils’ writes: “the world seems to be preoccupied with countries that conform to certain predefined criteria: Countries that are populated by white Caucasians, that have valuable natural resources, or have strategic importance to larger world powers and countries with major religious influence”. Sri Lanka, according to him, does not seem to fall into any of these categories. Although it could be argued that Sri Lanka is strategically placed and that Trincomalee harbour attracts interests from the American Navy, the presence of naval base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has lessened the appeal of Trincomalee as a potential strategic military port. According to Lingajothy, Western interests in Sri Lanka for the purpose of trade have little appeal as there are other countries in the area such as Singapore, Malaysia and India which have a greater market potential than Sri Lanka.

This raises one major question: Will there ever be peace in that island?

Last year the Sri Lankan government raised military spending by US$358 million, taking the defense budget up to one third of Sri Lankan GDP. Although there is dissent over the cost of war, a macabre war dependency seems to have developed over the years. The army has increased and become a powerful player in Sri Lanka and even many have been making good profits from the war. Christopher Kremmer writes “although illegal commissions are believed to be paid on all big arms deals and bribery lets military supplies for the Tigers pass through Colombo port, there has not been a single successful prosecution of a senior military officer for corruption.”

Even the major parties in Sri Lanka continue to use the war not only to increase their power but to distract attention from the enormous economic and social problems affecting the country and from their failure to govern.

The paradox behind the tragedy that Tamils face in Sri Lanka today is that, more than a half century after attaining self-rule, they are worse off than under British colonialism! The reason being that in the process of leaving Sri Lanka, the British left behind a colonial legacy of democracy which meant the ethnic majority would always remain in power.

While the Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government cannot afford to continue this war endlessly she continues to refuse offers of external mediation. It seems that she will not solve the conflict but will not allow anybody else to help solve it. Her failure to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament for her devolution package was a lost opportunity.

The LTTE extended the cease-fire once again. This presents an opportunity to start negotiations and reach a settlement once and for all, but this time in the presence of a third party. The role of the international community is vital in the resolution of this conflict. It would have to be a settlement that enforces compromises on both sides and accommodates both Tamils and Sinhalese within the framework of one nation, ore under a new structure Only then can the government start to perfect the art of nation building.

Reference
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Sivanayagam S The State Against the Tamils Historical Overview, International Tamil Foundation UK June 2000
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