China is recreating its Africa story in Sri Lanka. Little China enclaves are sprouting up in the Buddhist majority island nation in the Indian Ocean as President Mahinda Rajapaksa has spread the red carpet all the way from Colombo to Jaffna. Already he has ‘gifted’ projects worth US$ 6.9 billion in railways, ports, power plants and military cantonments by way of saying thanks to the ‘Comrade Capitalist’  flush with yuans and greenbacks for all the help provided in eliminating the LTTE scourge with over one billion worth arms on cash discounts, deferred payments and liberal credit.

 

Significantly, most of the Chinese works are located in the areas dominated by the Tamil Tiger guerrillas till they were wiped out in May last year.  These are high cost projects with interest rates above international norms, and inflated bills, which are hurting Lanka economy, according to Daily Mirror and Sunday Times, two Colombo publications.

 

Clashes, as witnessed in African countries, have begun in Sri Lanka between ‘imported’ semi-skilled and unskilled workers and local labourers. The entire Lanka project business is farmed out to four Chinese companies associated with relatives of senior leaders of the Communist regime.

 

China is the fourth largest trading partner of the island nation. Imports (to Lanka) have surged to $1.4 billion mark from a low base of 0.70 billion in 2004.  But exports are stagnating at $ 46.08 million thus tilting the trade balance heavily in favour of the new global ‘imperial’ trader on the block, as a Sri Lankan exporter remarked in Colombo on the sidelines of a business meet, while preferring to remain anonymous. ‘Ours is a quasi-police raj. We cannot afford to ruffle anyone’s feathers’, the businessman in his early fifties said, by way of elaboration for his preference.

 

A Special Economic Zone, a 1000-acre Tapioca farm, Hambantota port, 900 MW coal fired Norochcholai power plant, Colombo-Katunayake Expressway, Pallai-Kankasanthurai rail-line, Jaffna housing complex for army and a host of other projects make the Chinese portfolio envy of export economies in the meltdown.

 

Beijing is underwriting most of these ventures with liberal credit. The Axim Bank of China has agreed to provide a preferential credit facility of over $ 1 billion for roads and rail projects and construction of military housing projects in the predominantly Tamil speaking Northern Province where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had held sway and conducted their bloody war for close to thirty years.

 

Sri Lanka’s north is separated from India’s Tamil speaking province in the south of the country by narrow Palk Straits. Ostensibly for this reason, India under Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady, as she was known during her rein, had played the role of mid-wife at the time of LTTE’s birth in mid-seventies.

 

Real help to LTTE, however, came from China and Pakistan through gun running rackets and opium cartels. It continued even during the last phases of the war President Rajapaksa and his brothers successfully waged against Tamil Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. All this has been well documented. Yet, the Lanka President today is ignoring recent history. ‘Well, it is because unlike India, both countries helped him also materially and it tilted the scales in the War last year’, says a Colombo based foreign journalist.

 

IN IMPERIAL FOOTSTEPS

 

There is difference in help during war and after the war. While the war time supplies came with concessional prices or deferred payment facility, most of the Chinese projects for reconstructing the war ravaged economy are neither gratis nor liberally aided. ‘These are highly inflated commercial ventures’, the Daily Mirror reports. The outlay on a China project is sometimes twice the size of investment over similar projects undertaken by other countries. 

 

Here is an illustrative example.  China pegged the per kilometre cost of re-laying the rail track from Pallai to Kankasanthurai at more than four million American dollars. This is almost double the cost of similar projects being built elsewhere in the country mostly with local labourers.  In contrast, China is bringing its own labourers for building the 56- km long rail line with $ 245 million loan. This is not an exception but the norm.

 

China justifies ‘importing’ its own labourers. “Our workers are experienced; they are familiar with working processes; there is no language barrier”, said a Chinese manager on a rail project. He put the number of Chinese personnel on duty at various sites at around 25,000. ‘It is not a significant number. Look at our work volume’. 

 

 Analysts are not convinced though.  A parallel is drawn between the Chinese practice and the indentured labour system practiced European powers particularly the British in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Most Indians found today in Africa and Far East were transported between 1834 and 1920 to provide labour for the (mainly sugar) plantations, under the indenture system.

 

There are already fears in Sri Lanka that China is implementing the communist version of the indentured system. Many analysts aver that the imported Chinese labourers would not return home as a case would be made out on their continued relevance to a project in its implementation stage. Like it happened at the 36 MW power plant at Chunnakam in Jaffna. More than 50 Chinese personnel who were brought there did not go back. They along with their families are still living at the complex, ‘as their presence is needed to run the power plant’. 

 

Mirigama Special Economic Zone is a China venture dedicated to Chinese investors.  China is the sole authority to decide who will be allowed to set up their units in the zone. So far 29 Chinese manufacturers received the green signal to bring their investment, machinery and blue-collar workers. 

 

Another project for China made in Sri Lanka is a Tapioca Farm spread over 1000 acres. It will come up either in central or northern province depending on the final site selection.  The farm is backward integration for Chinese chip makers. Tapioca will be taken to mainland China where it will be made into chips and brought back for sale at stores in Sri Lanka. 

 

Chinese farmers cultivate Tapioca in Sri Lanka. Their compatriots make the chips at home. And Chinese companies laugh all the way to their bank as Lanka consumer feasts on the Chinese chips. Like in the good old days of East India Company registered in the British Isles with limited liability. 

 

In the entire chain, Lanka stands to gain a pittance – its land is taken on long term concessional lease; its labourers are engaged in low paid peripheral jobs; and its exchequer loses customs revenue as the tapioca export and chips import are allowed at concessional duty.

 

CHINA INSENSTIVE

 

China’s greed and insensitivity to local concerns is at full display at Hambantota Port, which serves its strategic maritime and security interests. Two companies, China Harbour Engineering Company and Sino-Hydro Corporation are pumping life at a cost of a $1 billion into the port, which Sri Lanka hopes will give a boost to its earnings from merchant navies passing through the Indian Ocean. For Chinese navy, it will be useful as a refuelling and docking station.

 

When completed in three phases (first phase will be ready by November 2010) it will be the biggest port in South Asia with facilities for ship-building, ship-repair and warehousing. As many as 33 vessels will be able to get berth at any given time.

 

It is stated that over 400 Chinese prisoners are brought to work as semi-skilled and unskilled workers at the Port site. They are being paid half the normal wages.   For them the only hope is the promise of ‘freedom’ once the work is over.  The port site is also witness to frequent labour unrest as the demands of local Sri Lankan workers for increase in lunch time and over time allowances are not accepted.

 

Two cantonments are coming up in Killinochi and Mullaitivu, both in Northern Sri Lanka under an agreement signed by Basil Rajapaksa, head of Presidential Task Force for reconstruction with China. About 500 acres have been acquired for the purpose.  China will also take up a housing project, costing $ 110 million, for about 60,000 families of armed services personnel in Jaffna, Kankesanthurai, Mullaitivu and Pooneryn.   Chinese Defence Ministry has offered a loan of $ 20 million loan for purchasing equipment needed for building military related installations, again in North Sri Lanka.

 

There is no official word on urgency of beefing up military installations in North Sri Lanka. And on the continued involvement of China in the war like preparations in the post-war period so close to the Indian shores. The war with the LTTE has ended and there is no danger of another LTTE clone appearing on the scene in the foreseeable future. 

 

Talk of a `sweet’ revenge against India for its initial support to the LTTE is a short sighted venture. It ignores the long term problems from increased presence of Chinese work force with their families.  And it is a refusal to read the writing on the wall when the African experience is there to see.

 

Policy Research Group brings together people from diverse backgrounds and fields to look at today and tomorrow of Asia and to offer an Asian perspective.

 

Executions of Tamil civilians and surrendered LTTE fighters and their families were carried out under orders ‘from the top’, Sri Lankan Army soldiers have claimed.

 

"Yes, our commander ordered us to kill everyone. We killed everyone," claimed on frontline soldier.

 

"Definitely, the order would have been to kill everybody and finish them off,” a senior Sri Lankan army commander said.

 

"I don't think we wanted to keep any hardcore elements, so they were done away with. It is clear that such orders were, in fact, received from the top."

 

The allegations were made in a report on Britain’s Channel 4 TV station, which broadcast two interviews with Sri Lankan Army soldiers.

 

The soldier confirmed he took part in the killing of innocent civilians. Surrendering LTTE fighters and their families were also tortured and executed, he said.

 

Several photographs were shown on the extended segment shown on Channel 4’s news programme.

 

Pictures were taken by soldiers on the frontline of the war zone and showed piles of bodies, lines of corpses and civilians in ditches with their hands tied behind their backs, including children.

 

They also broadcast pictures of the bodies of young women who had their hands tied behind their backs, suggesting that they were detained and executed.

 

The program quoted a soldier as saying that Pirabaharan’s youngest son, Balachandran (13), was shot dead after surrendering to the forces with his bodyguards.

 

One of the civilians in the photographs was subsequently identified by his wife, a displaced person currently living in Jaffna, TamilNet reported.

 

The unidentified woman claims her husband was a former member of the LTTE but was staying with his family after leaving the organisation.

 

He disappeared in April 2009, and has since been reported dead by villagers who saw his body together with bodies of LTTE fighters massacred by the Sri Lankan forces.

 

This raises the question whether all those who were pictured as detained by the army have been executed, said local reports from Jaffna.

 

Louis Arbour, head of the International Crisis Group and former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, who was also interviewed by the program, slammed the impunity Sri Lanka enjoyed throughout the conflict.

 

She said there was no possibility of Sri Lanka holding a proper inquiry into the war crimes, noting that since the conflict began there had been impunity.

 

A senior Amnesty International official told Channel 4 News his organisation had this week launched a world-wide campaign to highlight the need for an independent international investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka.

 

London-based Amnesty International and New York-based Human Rights Watch have joined Brussels-based International Crisis Group in this regard, Channel 4 said.

 

The Sri Lankan ambassador to the UN, Palitha Kohona had agreed to appear on the show to do the increasingly difficult task of defending his government, but news anchor Jon Snow revealed, despite desperate efforts to locate him, he failed to show up.

 

The Sri Lankan High Commission in London meanwhile issued a statement totally rejecting all accusations.

 

“All internationally accepted standards and norms of such operations were followed in the prosecution of the humanitarian operation by the security forces which were under strict orders to follow a zero civilian casualty policy,” the High Commission statement claimed.

Tamils, members of one of the oldest nations of human civilization living in their historical homeland now divided between India and Sri Lanka, as well as living in many parts of the world as diaspora, observed with trauma the first anniversary of the genocide committed and continued to be committed on their nation in the island of Sri Lanka.

 

While the Sinhala state in the island openly and officially celebrated the occasion as its victory, Tamils experienced the phenomenon as a vicious unprecedented trial on human civilization by an international system that has been working against them.

 

Even after one year, the response of the international system is its refusal to recognize the gravity of the national question in the island and to recognize the structural genocide that is taking place.

 

The international system has still not accepted its failure that its paradigms about terrorism, tactics of counter insurgency, approaches to peace-building and development have only paved way for unchecked genocide by the Sri Lankan state.

 

Sections in the international system is attempting to dilute the crime of genocide as war crimes on both sides so that the matter could be twisted and diffused ultimately saving State in the island. But, for countries including India and China, no case for even war crimes exists in Sri Lanka.

 

‘Either the genocide should be complete and conclusive, or let the Tamils organize another resistance if they can,’ is the attitude with which the Sinhala state is operating.

 

So far, the response of the international system is that with the paradigm of ‘multi-culturalism’, 'development' and ‘some accountability’, the national question of Tamils in the island can be resolved.

 

In the meantime, the Sri Lankan state has accelerated systematic colonisation of resourceful coastal and agricultural Tamil lands, and has been building infrastructure aimed at changing the demography, all in the name of 'development', which is abetted by a competing race by the powers engaged in the corporate colonial conquest of the island.

 

The international system fails or refuses to see that humiliation and structural genocide of Tamils by the Sinhala state have become ever more intense after the war, mainly assisted by the paradigms under which the international community is operating.

 

The Sri Lankan state and some members of the international system, mainly India, do not envisage significant constitutional changes in addressing the national question in the island. With the help of mobilizing a few ‘apologetic Tamils’ in the country and in the diaspora, they think the matter could be resolved with minor amendments in the constitution. A publicity campaign is already underway to emphasize that only such minor amendments are practically feasible.

 

The corporate colonial system is continuing to deny all space to Eezham Tamils for the negotiation of overlapping interests, but at the same time the system prefers to deal only with the Sinhala state which it finds more advantageous to its interests.

 

Denied of this direct negotiation space with the international system, the Tamils are forced into becoming ‘slaves to the slaves’, which means all options other than confrontation is closed for them, even one-year after the war.

 

To change this situation, much depends on the diaspora and on the people of Tamil Nadu in proving new geo-political realities, which the corporate colonialists of India as well as the international system, cannot ignore.

 

Further, the policy makers, peace-builders, development experimentalists and the NGO actors of the West, will likely be evaluating their failures in bringing productive changes to good governance in Sri Lanka, and will be driven to design a policy that incorporates having active dialogue with the grassroots of the Tamil diaspora.

 

The policy makers and the development experimentalists should realise that forging reconciliation with their own Tamil citizens of the grassroots in their countries, still caught in trauma, is of paramount importance, before embarking upon manipulating and 'educating' the Tamil elite on 'reconciliation' and 'development' with the exclusivist Sinhala Buddhist state in the island.

 

The Sri Lankan state has been using set of paradigms to shape its roadmap and conduct the State's programme against the cause of Eezham Tamils. These include, ‘War for Peace’, ‘Eliminating Terrorism’, ‘Post-LTTE scenario’, ‘Sri Lanka free from minorities’, ‘Co-existence as Sri Lankans’, ‘Development of East’ and ‘Development of North.'

 

Paradigms adopted by various actors explain the way these actors wish to perceive the world of their own and the tactics they deploy to advance their objectives.

 

‘War on Terrorism’, ‘Counter Insurgency’, ‘Peace-building’, ‘Post-conflict Reconciliation’, ‘Development’ and the shade of NGO-culture promoted in recent years are some examples of how the International Establishment, blamed for 'corporate colonialism', has chosen to perceive and act on its world.

 

The Sri Lankan state, playing the geopolitical card, has enjoyed the flexibility of these readily available paradigms that have enabled confluence of Colombo’s interests with those of the powers. The net result of this confluence of paradigms is nothing other than Colombo sustaining a politico-military environment in its favour to effect a systematic programme of Tamil subjugation, a continued genocide in the island.

 

At this juncture, the Tamil diplomacy of the future should be shaped, by understanding the paradigms, and by finding ways to address the conflicts between the Tamil perspectives and the perspectives of the forged interests resulting from the paradigms of Colombo and the International Establishment.

 

Tamil polity's duty is to address the concerned global community and enlighten this community on the Tamil perspectives on reconciliation, development, peace-building and its aspired independence. An attitudinal change is urgently needed in the way the international system is approaching the Tamil national question.

 

In the changed context of the modus operandi of Tamil struggle, the Tamil nation now needs to adopt strategies for ‘alternative development’ and building ‘social capital’ with carefully designed networks at home, in the diaspora, and in Tamil Nadu to enable the Tamils in the island to resist subjugation.

 

At the same time, Tamils should focus on concrete actions at country, regional and alternative levels, exposing Sri Lankan state’s objective and plans of continued genocide.

 

Proving genocide is a long and hard process. Modern and technologically powerful approaches are available in our times to document the genocide. The Tamil polity has to be systematic, strategic and engage in result-oriented projects, building and documenting evidence of genocide.

 

New and energetic resources from Tamil diaspora should emerge, as the activists engaged in the old paradigm are increasingly succumbing to sectarian politics, old tactics and 'surrender diplomacy'.

 

Tamils should be diligent to avoid interference and exploitation by agencies of vested interest in diluting diaspora's determination to pursue genocide documentation project . They should be particularly aware of the institutions that have been part of the War on Terrorism baggage of the past.

 

The Sri Lankan state has demonstrated to the world that genocide is possible under the camouflage of Counter Insurgency and the ‘War against Terrorism’.

 

Colombo has used large sums of money on PR agencies and disinformation networks to carry out a systematic disinformation campaign against the Tamil struggle. Tamils world over have been systematically targeted and projected as supporting a ‘terrorist cause’.

 

The democratic Tamil institutions, currently being built at country level and at a trans-national level, now bear the responsibility to demonstrate their capacity, by organizing evidence collection to establish genocide, building the needed global awareness, and in seeking concrete legal results.

 

The Permanent People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka, which held investigations on War Crimes in January 2010 in Dublin, highlighted the conduct of the European Union in undermining the Ceasefire Agreement of February 2002 to list the Tamil resistance movements as terrorist organizations in 2006. The Tribunal observed further that the EU had acted under pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom, despite being aware of the detrimental consequences to a peace process in the making.

 

The PPT has raised awareness on an important theme: Peace Crimes.

 

During the previous paradigm, the Tamil aspiration of independent Tamil Eelam was interpreted falsely as an exclusivist and 'terrorist' demand. The LTTE was made a legal target of proscriptions in various countries, even while the movement was engaged in a peace process and remained de-proscribed in Sri Lanka. As a result the concept of Tamil Eelam was made a political taboo in some quarters.

 

Meanwhile, some academics and long-term activists associated with the LTTE in the West, were exposed to a given shade of the 'NGO culture', which was operating within the paradigm of ‘peace-building by engaging the spoilers’ and abetting the Peace Crimes.

 

That the NGO agenda was carefully designed to weaken both the Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms in the island, became clearly evident later.

 

The international system chose to view the Tamil diaspora as a 'spoiler' to its 'peace-building'. It failed to view the Tamil diaspora as a partner with a positive integration experience in its own system.

 

The diaspora Tamils were viewed as ‘LTTE sympathisers’. Addressing the LTTE was addressing the diaspora, it was thought, and not the opposite.

 

The international system viewed the political mobilisation in the diaspora through the paradigm of Counter Insurgency of the War on Terrorism, making Tamils wonder whether the approach of peace-building being promoted was a subordinate tactic of a counter insurgency warfare at a global level. The Tamil diaspora was made the subject for model studies on how the diasporas were sustaining the 'insurgencies'.

 

Instead of effecting an attitudinal change in the exclusivist Sinhala Buddhist nationalism during the peacemaking, the international system sought to effect peacebuilding by seeking to weaken the inclusive and positive Tamil nationalism, which was also benefiting from the integrated Tamil diaspora.

 

The international system is now aware that the result of its approach was counter-productive.

 

The Sinhala Buddhist nationalism destroyed the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam and its conventional fighting force.

 

Immediately after the war, Colombo stepped up its counter-insurgency warfare in Europe and Asia by appointing military commanders who were in service as Ambassadors to the countries of Malaysia and Germany.

 

The Tamils in the diaspora, despite all the trends running against them, unanimously voiced for their aspiration within the last one-year, leaving no room for doubts or manipulations by re-mandating the main principle of Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam, through referendum in 10 countries.

 

The diaspora has come forward in creating democratically elected representatives at country level and in safeguarding the polity at trans-national level, transforming the struggle for Tamil Eelam into a politico-democratic struggle supported by the intellectual, political and financial capital of the million strong Tamil disapora which has assuredly matured into an independent force.

 

The Sri Lankan state and its abettors did not anticipate this organizational capacity of the Tamil diaspora.

 

Even today, a systematic campaign is directed against the three-tier efforts of Eezham Tamil Diaspora, the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), the democratically elected country councils in countries like Switzerland and the emerging Transnationational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) as “LTTE threat against Sri Lanka from abroad."

 

Still affected by trauma, Tamils are undertaking a peaceful democratic transformation of their cause. International community must be cognizant that diaspora is sufficiently resilient, and possess national memory and archived knowledge to carry the struggle forward to posterity, if necessary, until a fair and just solution is reached. Unjust application of paradigms, to make Tamils victims again, will only be counter productive to world order.

 

The State Department, Foreign Ministries, Development Ministries, the shade of NGO culture promoted by them and the Counter Insurgency agencies – all have a moral responsibility to look at the crisis also through the Tamil point of view if they want to really resolve the problems of Tamils. 

The Rajapaksa government has appointed an eight-member Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission “to probe what happened between February 2002 and May 2009 (and) …whether any persons, groups or institutions directly or indirectly were responsible for what happened during the period and to recommend measures to be adopted to prevent the recurrence of such incidents and to promote unity.”, according to media reports from Colombo.

 

The Commission, approved by the cabinet at its first meeting, would comprise intellectuals representing all communities with a proven track record, according to cabinet spokesman and Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella.  

 

The commission will look into the causes of ethnic strife in the 1980s between the majority ethnic group, the Sinhalese, and the minority Tamils in the north, Rambukwella said.
 

“The Commission will be asked to probe the very roots of the longstanding ethnic conflict and the circumstances that led to the 30-year bloody armed struggle that devastated the country,” Rambulwella said.

 

"The Commission will be asked to recommend a mechanism to pay compensation to all those who were affected by the conflict."

 

“The main task of the Commission is to recommend ways and means of changing the mind set of the people in a post conflict era,” the Minister further added.

 

According to Rambukwella the Commission would be given a time frame to complete its findings and for a report to be submitted to President Rajapaksa. At the end of six months, the Commission would recommend "institutional, administrative and legislative measures needed in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation."

 

The recommendations are to be taken note of when the government drafts Constitutional reforms that would be tabled in parliament soon.

 

 

 

Whilst the name and the terms of reference sound noble, many remain less than optimistic.

 

Local and international rights activists have expressed doubts over the effectiveness of a commission established by the Sri Lankan government,  citing several short-lived and failed commissions in the past two decades.

"There has been a big gap between the words and deeds of the government where it concerns issues of human rights, good governance and accountability," Jehan Perera, director of the National Peace Council, an NGO in Colombo, told IRIN.

"There is no reason to believe this is any more serious than the previous commissions set up by this government that have simply perpetuated a culture of impunity," Robert Templer, Asia programme director for the International Crisis Group (ICG), told IRIN from New York.

"Nobody should have any faith that this government is capable of investigating its own actions."

The Brussels-based group on May 17 released a report calling on the UN to launch an international inquiry into alleged war crimes during the last year of the conflict.

According to the report, there were repeated violations of international law by both the Sri Lankan security forces and the LTTE.

Interestingly, the commission being set up by Sri Lanka will not look into any alleged war crimes committed by its forces. The government has always denied killing any civilians during its military onslaught. With no war crimes committed by Sri Lankan forces there is no need for a war crimes investigation.

 

This stance by Sri Lanka will not be accepted by many and calls for an independent investigation is growing. New evidence by ICG suggests that from January to May 2009 tens of thousands of Tamil civilian men, women, children and the elderly were killed, countless more wounded, and hundreds of thousands deprived of adequate food and medical care, resulting in more deaths.

In the past two decades, various governments in Sri Lanka have set up short-lived commissions that did little to reveal the truth behind human rights abuses, said Ruki Fernando, who heads the Human Rights in Conflict Programme at Law and Society Trust, an NGO in Colombo.

 

In June 2009, a Commission of Inquiry was disbanded before it could complete its mandate. Various presidents have also ordered that reports from that and other commissions not be released publicly, according to Amnesty International.

However, government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella declared that  criticism of the latest commission even before it got to work was simply "premature and very unfair".

Although the name of the commission being set up by Sri Lanka sound very similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that performed a landmark function in post-Apartheid South Africa and the commission that came into being in Northern Ireland at the cessation of the open warfare there, Rambukwella denied it will be modeled on these commissions of the past or based on advice from foreign countries especially Norway on how Sri Lanka’s ethnic question should be resolved.

 

New evidence of human rights abuses committed by the Sri Lankan government during the last stages of the war last year have been uncovered by the New York based global rights monitor Human Rights Watch (HRW).

 

The evidence lead HRW to call for “an independent international investigation into violations of the laws of war” in a report released on its website.

 

HRW obtained evidence for these allegations of war crimes through first hand witness accounts through video and photo evidence obtained from Sri Lankan Army soldiers.

 

The organisation claimed it received over 200 photographs taken on mobile phones by members of the Sri Lankan Army’s Air Mobile Brigade on the frontlines of the battle zone in 2009.

 

One incident documented is the killing of a man, identified by independent sources as a member of the LTTE’s political wing from Jaffna.

 

In the sequential photos the man is shown first sitting and tied to a palm tree. His chest is covered in blood and his arm is in a sling, suggesting serious injury.

 

He is surrounded by men in military uniform, one of whom is brandishing a knife in the victims face.

 

In other pictures the victim is now seen in a ditch, clearly dead, covered in more blood. He is draped in a blood stained flag of Tamil Eelam.

 

There is material visible on his neck, which appears to originate from the back of his head.

 

This is “consistent in colour with brain matter which would indicate an injury to the back of his head, as nothing is visible which would cause this on his face,” said an analysis by an independent forensic analyst.

 

“This would indicate severe trauma to the back of the head consistent with something like a gunshot wound or massive blows to the back of the head with something such as a machete or axe," the expert said.

 

The evidence all but proves that the victim was tortured and then executed, said the HRW report.

 

Further pictures show several women in LTTE uniforms with their clothes partly removed, raising concern that there may have been sexual abuse or mutilation.

 

HRW states that these pictures don’t give conclusive evidence but highlight the necessity for an independent international investigation into alleged war crimes.

 

The report further describes witness accounts describing indiscriminate artillery barrages on civilian gatherings, including the shelling of a queue of women and children waiting for food distribution.

 

The report also documents witnesses who described forced recruitment by the LTTE.

 

HRW further highlights the failure of the government of Sri Lanka to investigate human rights abuses and war crimes allegations, and challenges the delay by the UN to launch its own investigation.

 

"[UN Secretary General] Ban's inaction is sending a signal to abusers that simply announcing meaningless commissions and making loud noises can block all efforts for real justice. The only way to ensure accountability in Sri Lanka is to establish an independent international investigation," Acting Asia director of HRW, Elaine Pearson said.

Tamils across the globe commemorated the first anniversary of the end of the Mulliyavaikkal massacre and marked 18 May as ‘War Crimes Day’.

 

In the US, more than four hundred Tamils held a remembrance rally in Washington D.C. "We had the event at the very heart of the Nation built on promise of freedom and justice; we demonstrated first in front of the White House, and after a one mile procession, at the reflecting pool adjoining the Lincoln memorial to symbolize and demonstrate our resolve that we will never forget this atrocity, and that until we bring the perpetrators of this dastardly crimes, we will not rest," Dr Jeyarajah, the main organizer of the event said.

 

"Today we stand united as one community remembering the Tamils of Sri lanka who were massacred by evil. What kind of evil murders over 40,000 civilians in one weekend? Over 100,000 Tamils in the last 20 years," Dr. Ellyn Shander, a key member of the US Tamil Political Action Group (USTPAC) who spoke at the event asked.

 

"Before their deaths, many of the murdered people begged, "Help us, save us, tell our story.”

 

"They sent their messages out in eyewitness videos, through the brave doctors during the siege, and through the occasional Tamil who escaped from the fighting. They wanted the world to know about their suffering, their horror and their sacrifice.. They held the hope until the very end that the civilized world would somehow come to their rescue. The truth of the premeditated genocide was inconceivable.

 

"They believed that the United States or India would stop the carnage.. But sadly no one came.. No one helped. No one responded to their pleas. And no one stopped the Sri Lankan government from burning their bodies and hiding the evidence," Dr Shander said.

 

Jan Jananayagam, British representative of US-based group "Tamils Against Genocide (TAG)" and who contested as an independent candidate in the the 2009 European Parliament, speaking to the attendees, noting that Vanni has represented to Tamil people "hope and freedom," said: "[i]n the final years as the Sri Lankan army came North, tens of thousands of Tamil people fled to Vanni, converging from every direction into this symbolic centre of Tamil Eelam.

 

"They too chose the hope of freedom over the certainty of repression. But the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been cruelly betrayed,” Jananayagam said.

 

Dr. Ilangkovan, a retired physician, also appealed to Tamils in Tamil Nadu to join in masses to take the struggle forward.

 

While the conventional war has ended, the next phase of struggle has just begun in the many lands across the seas from the shores of Sri Lanka where the Tamils were treated worse than animals, Jeyarajah told TamilNet.

 

"The psychological trauma of witnessing their own relatives, friends and neighbors suffering, will linger for generations in Tamils' psyche and, the State's attempts at erasing the physical evidence will only firmly imprint the horrific images in expatriates' minds. We hope, this will propel all expatriate Tamils to unite and work towards exposing Sri Lanka State to international justice.

 

"Tamil expatriates should shun talks of development and reconciliation, which some of the powers are attempting to do, until accountability for the genocidal crime is established," Jeyarajah said.

 

In Norway, representatives of political parties participated and spoke in the gathering organized by the Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamils (NCET). The commemoration event took place on 18 May in Oslo, beginning at 18:00 with silent prayer in remembrance of those killed in the war on Vanni, followed by speeches on behalf of NCET on the needs of Eelam Tamils, the victims of an ethnic genocide.

 

In Canada, more than 15,000 people gathered in Toronto in front of Queens Park Parliament, where representatives of several humanitarian organizations pledged their support to the Tamils’ cause.

 

In Italy, a 25 km demonstration march commemorating the massacre began around 8:00 and ended at 17:00. More than 10,000 handbills were distributed during the march, which was organized by Italy West Region Tamil Youths Organization. Representatives of UN humanitarian organizations, Amnesty International, political parties, unions and other humanitarian organizations participated in the meeting that followed the march.

 

In France, a similar march organized by France Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) started at 15:30 and terminated at Humans Rights Square around 17:30. In the public meeting which followed the march political leaders Vovard Jacques, Jacques Fabres, Capitano and TRO coordinator spoke.

 

In Switzerland, more than 1,500 Tamils took part in the remembrance event named "Chivantha" May (Blood-soaked May), organized by the Switzerland Council of Eelam Tamils (SCET).

 

Switzerland representative of the Sudanese political movement voicing against the genocide in Darfur and Green Party politician Zefari Zidun, explained how his people experienced the genocide in Darfur and said there was no struggle that has been won without experiencing major political setbacks. Mr. Zidun underlined the significance of the awareness work engaging the global community in solidarity action.

 

A dance theatre presented the geopolitical injustice experienced by Tamils, depicting how the war against Tamils was abetted by the powers of the world.

 

Christoph Wiedmer, the project director of the Swiss based international human rights organisation, Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), addressed the gathering.

 

Twenty-six democratically elected members of the SCET took oath in front of the masses, who gathered at Helvetia in Zurich in an emotional remembrance event. The president of the SCET, Tharsika Pakeerathan, a computer science student coordinated the joint remembrance and inauguration event, concluded emotionally with the reggae song by Bob Marley: "Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights."

The Sri Lankan government's suggestion that a newly announced commission will provide accountability for laws-of-war violations during the armed conflict with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is yet another attempt to deflect an independent international investigation, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch urged United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to take steps to ensure accountability through an independent international investigation into the alleged laws-of-war violations.

 

The announcement of a commission on "lessons learnt and reconciliation" came after a months-long campaign by the Sri Lankan government to prevent Ban from establishing a panel of experts to advise him on accountability in Sri Lanka. In May 2009, after the war ended, President Mahinda Rajapaksa signed a joint communiqué with Ban promising that "the government will take measures to address allegations related to violations of international humanitarian and human-rights law." But no substantive steps have been taken.

 

"Every time the international community raises the issue of accountability, Sri Lanka establishes a commission that takes a long time to achieve nothing," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Ban should put an end to this game of smoke and mirrors and begin a process that would ensure justice for all the victims of Sri Lanka's war."

 

The government has yet to publish the findings from a committee established in November 2009 to examine allegations of laws-of-war violations, despite an April 2010 deadline. When the committee was announced, Human Rights Watch warned that it was just a smokescreen to avoid accountability.

 

According to conservative UN estimates, 7,000 civilians were killed and more than 13,000 injured from January to May, 2009. Other estimates suggest that as many as 20,000 were killed. Government officials, including the president, have repeatedly insisted that no violations by government forces took place, and the government has taken no meaningful steps to ensure accountability.

 

On May 6, 2010, the Sri Lankan government announced that it will establish a commission to report on the lessons learned from the conflict and reconciliation efforts. In a statement posted on the government's website, the government announced that "there will be the [sic] search for any violations of internationally accepted norms of conduct in such conflict situations, and the circumstances that may have led to such actions, and identify any persons or groups responsible for such acts." The statement said nothing about holding such persons accountable under Sri Lankan criminal law or what other steps would be taken against those found to have been acting in violation of Sri Lankan or international law.

 

According to the government statement, the committee will consist of seven Sri Lankans, located in Sri Lanka and abroad, but will have no international involvement.

 

"Genuine government efforts with broad participation to promote reconciliation should be supported," Adams said. "But this cannot succeed without genuine and good faith efforts at accountability."

 

Sri Lanka has a long history of establishing ad hoc commissions to deflect international criticism over its poor human rights record and widespread impunity, Human Rights Watch said. Since independence in 1948, Sri Lanka has established at least 10 such commissions, none of which have produced any significant results.

 

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry appointed in November 2006 to investigate serious cases of alleged human rights abuses by both sides was a complete failure. A group of international experts, appointed to ensure the investigation was being conducted according to international norms and standards, resigned in 2008 because it had "not been able to conclude...that the proceedings of the Commission have been transparent or have satisfied basic international norms and standards."

 

In June 2009, Rajapaksa dissolved the Presidential Commission of Inquiry, even though it had conducted investigations in just 7 of its 16 mandated major human rights cases. The president has not published its report.

 

This week's announcement of a new commission came after weeks of attempts by the Sri Lankan government to prevent Ban from establishing a panel of experts. After Ban informed Rajapaksa on March 5 that the secretary-general intended to establish an expert panel to advise him on accountability in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan government fiercely protested the decision, denouncing it as "uncalled for" and "unwarranted."

 

Ban has yet to appoint any members to the panel or announce its terms of reference.

 

"Secretary-General Ban should not let Sri Lanka bully and manipulate him into abandoning justice for Sri Lanka's war victims," Adams said. "It is time for him to demonstrate that he is squarely on the side of the victims of Sri Lanka's long war."  

The Sri Lankan government has issued furious denials against allegations of war crimes committed by their forces during the final phase of the war last year.

 

After a week which saw various reports released by multiple sources with evidence of war crimes against security forces and individuals further up the command structure, senior representatives of the Sri Lankan government have denied any wrong doing.

                      

The testimony by two members of the Sri Lankan forces, broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4, in which they claimed that civilians and surrendering LTTE fighters and their families were tortured and killed, were dismissed as “fabricated” by Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella.

 

“They [Channel 4] have once again brought up this sordid story just when a Sri Lankan delegation is to attend crucial trade talks in Brussels with the European Union. I categorically deny these allegations of war atrocities said to have been committed by our armed forces,” he said.

 

Rambukwella stated that legal action would be filed against Channel 4.

 

Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the UN, Palitha Kohona had agreed to appear on the Channel 4 news program, but despite repeated, desperate attempts by the Channel 4 team to contact him, he failed to uphold his commitment to attend. However, the Sri Lankan High Commission in London

 

Meanwhile, the International Crisis Group (ICG) report which called on the international community to push for an independent international inquiry  was also dismissed.

 

Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Canada has dismissed claims her government committed war crimes.

 

“…there were no war crimes. We have been handling this conflict, so let us handle this,” Chithranganee Wagiswara said, speaking to The Globe and Mail.

 

She claimed that any concerns about the war will be addressed by the commission set up by the President Mahinda Rajapakse.

 

But the ICG report states that any investigations spearheaded by the Sri Lankan authorities are not going to be impartial, “given the entrenched culture of impunity” in Sri Lanka, which expelled foreign journalists and aid workers during the war’s final months.

 

That impunity, Ms. Arbour said in an interview, was bolstered by an international community eager to see the end of the ruthless Tiger movement and happy to look the other way “to give [the Sri Lankan government] a chance to finish it off for good” last May.

 

Meanwhile in Sri Lanka outrage is growing at what is perceived as western interference in domestic matters.

 

Accusations of human rights groups such as ICG, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International being on the payroll of the LTTE have been made in several Sinhala media outlets, including newspapers and on blog-sites.

 

“It would have been surprising indeed if there were no such moves to mark the end of terrorism in Sri Lanka, and the restoration of peace after 30 long years,” claimed the state run Daily News newspaper.

 

“It is a trend in some quarters of the West, that help keep the LTTE flag flying after the rout it suffered in May last year, and keep finding new evidence to suit their ends,” the paper reported.

The detention, trial, imprisonment and subsequent pardon of the journalist Tissanayagam reveals that the rule of law no longer applies in Sri Lanka. Tissanayagam’s almost two and a half year ordeal by law sets out the extent to which the law in Sri Lanka has become an instrument of political and ethnic coercion rather than the guarantor of justice, rights and stability.

After months of mounting international pressure, it appears that Tissanayagam will finally be pardoned by Presidential decree - an outcome that does little to restore faith in the system whilst revealing that Sri Lanka’s legalised capacity for violence and coercion can only be restrained by international intervention.

The conditions of Tissanayagam’s detention as well as the charges that were laid against him violated all the fundamental principles that guarantee the law’s compliance with the principle of the rule of law. Despite all of this Sri Lanka’s legal system delivered a verdict of guilty and in accordance with its own distorted principles sentenced him to twenty years of imprisonment.

Kept in detention for months without charge Tissanayagam and the other Tamil journalists were subject to abuse including the extraction of forced confessions. They were denied proper access to defence and police officers supervised the few meetings the defendants were allowed with their lawyers.

Not only was Tissanayagam finally convicted and sentenced on the basis of a forced conviction, the charges of ‘inciting communal hatred’ were also a clear violation of universally applicable norms regarding the reasonable expression of political dissent.

He was charged on the basis of articles and editorials that appeared in the English language North East Herald that reported on Sri Lanka’s military campaign from a Tamil perspective as a fundamental threat to Tamil lives, security and integrity of the Tamil polity.

Although there was nothing in this that could reasonably be interpreted as inciting communal hatred, it was of course fundamentally at odds with the mainstream Sri Lankan media’s depiction of the war as an epic struggle against terrorism which would finally liberate the Sinhala motherland from the clutches of LTTE separatism.

The legal system’s ability to convict Tissanayagam on the basis of a confession obtained under torture on charges that amount to accusations ‘thought crime’ reveal that Sri Lanka has fully departed from the principles of the rule of law.

The Sri Lankan president’s reported decision to pardon him does not restore legality or a sense of fairness to the conduct of this case. A presidential pardon is not the same as a legal acquittal and Tissanayagam’s life and freedom has ultimately been decided by presidential whim rather than the normal operation of an impersonal but just set of legal mechanisms.

The Presidential pardon echoes medieval forms of justice dispensed as royal patronage and is in keeping with Sinhala leaders’ proclivity for styling themselves as mythical Sinhala rulers.

Rajapakse associates himself with the fabled Duttugemunu, his predecessor Chandrika chose to mark the Sinhala military’s capture of Jaffna in a ‘royal’ style ritual in which she received the Tamil city that was renamed in Sinhala as ‘Yappapatune’. Meanwhile Sri Lanka’s first executive president Jeyawardene penned a treatise entitled ‘Golden Chains’ in which he presented himself as the latest in a 2,000 year line of Sinhala chieftains.

Not only does the pardon fail to exonerate Tissanayagam of the chilling charges of ‘thought crime’, it also fails to address the sinister provision of Sri Lanka’s anti terrorism legislation that leaves Tamils at the mercy of an ethnically biased legal system.

In June 2009 a report by the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association found that Tamils were left ‘unprotected’ in Sri Lanka’s legal system as the legal aid system, funded by the UN, operated a policy of not providing assistance to cases involving terrorism legislation. This has left many Tamils incarcerated for years at a time without hope of legal redress.

In October 2009 for example a Colombo based human rights group found a twenty nine year old Tamil youth in Welikada prison who had been detained for fifteen years, since the age of fourteen, under the terrorism legislation. He had not been charged or brought before a court and had been deprived of fifteen years of his youth for no apparent reason except that he was Tamil. There are possibly countless others in a similar situation.

Tissanayagam’s freedom was finally assured by his international profile which led to sustained pressure on his behalf. Tellingly it was Sri Lanka’s external affairs minister, G. L Pieris, who announced the pardon to the gathered international media. The pardon is clearly an act of Sri Lanka’ international diplomacy, an act made possible by the complete absence of the rule of law as an operating principle in its legal system.

Sri Lanka may hope that pardoning Tissanayagam will ease the international pressure, perhaps reversing the European Union’s suspension of preferential tariffs on the island’s key export, garments. However, the international community can no longer afford to be bought off with such superficial gestures.

Royal pardons have no place in a state that must now grow up and become a stable, inclusive and constitutional democracy. Sri Lanka’s legal, administrative and constitutional systems require a radical overhaul. As the outcome of Tissanayagam’s legal ordeal demonstrates, the only way this can be achieved is through sustained and ongoing international intervention.

Most of us are here today not only because of a connection to Sivaram, but also because we are engaged, in one form or another, in Sri Lanka’s protracted and deepening ethnic crisis.

 

In the next few minutes, I’d like to make some observations on Sri Lanka today, drawing on an analytical approach favoured by Sivaram. In other words, always seeing events as inevitably situated in long running trends and processes.

 

The conventional understanding of Sri Lanka is that after the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers last May, the country is in a post-war or post-conflict scenario. In this understanding, the path to peace is one defined by reconstruction, development, reconciliation and so on.

 

However, this is based on a very narrow understanding of war, as merely the clash of arms. Wars end when armed clashes end. In fact, the clash of arms is a manifestation of vehemently contradictory politics that have already been underway.

 

To quote Carl von Clausewitz, one of the theorists Sivaram was most influenced by, “war is a continuation of politics by other means.”

 

In this logic, even the most casual observer of the Sri Lankan state’s conduct can see that the situation today is the continuation of war by other means.

 

By war, I am referring to the systematic and ideologically coherent practices of the state against the Tamils and other non-Sinhalese. What we see today is the intensification of structural violence against the Tamil people that began from independence.

 

By violence I do not mean just disappearances, abductions, murders, rapes and torture, although these are continuing, as we know. I mean more the structural practices of the state, aimed at limiting and suppressing the thriving of non-Sinhala people. We are familiar with some of these: colonization, erasing of Tamil usage in state practices, and the efforts to limit and destroy the socio-economic possibilities for Tamils.

 

None of this is new. It is part of efforts of the Sri Lankan state, since independence, to break down all resistance to the Sinhala national project. What is this project? To turn Sri Lanka into a modern day realization of an ancient myth that the island belongs to the Sinhalese and in which the minorities have a subordinate existence. As such, anyone who stands in the way of Sinhala majoritarianism – including principled Sinhalese who are not supportive of that project – are destroyed. This, as we know, is also why Sivaram was killed.

 

The recent parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka have once again brought to power the southern party that most aggressively espouses a Sinhala majoritarian view. It is a case of history repeating itself. It is a carbon copy of the 1956 elections. Then, as now, as the Tamils sought a political arrangement between Tamils and Sinhalese, the Sinhalese voted into power a party that vehemently rejected any compromise with the Tamils.

 

While constitutional changes are almost certainly in the near future, as the President’s party almost has the required two thirds majority, only the blindest of optimists see these changes as possibly positive towards addressing even basic Tamil grievances. Those who suggest this do so with no regards to either the historic evolution of the Sri Lankan state or the contemporary realities of Sinhala power today. 

 

Let us be clear, change in Sri Lanka cannot come from within.

 

The last elections prove how overwhelmingly the structural bases of power serve Sinhala nationalism. The JVP for example lost several seats purely because its core platforms of Sinhala nationalism and anti-market economics were more convincingly taken up by the UPFA and President Rajapaksa.

 

In a contest between the UNP and the SLFP – both of which are essentially Sinhalese entities despite the token Tamils – the party that more aggressively pursued the Sinhala national project has won convincingly.

 

What we see now is another phase in the further entrenching of the Sinhala people’s dominance over the non-Sinhala.

 

It is not merely a question of human rights abuses, or lack of media freedom, or lack of governance. Rather, it is a specific kind of governance. This is why the Sinhala people – as in 1956 – are with Rajapaksa and his party.

 

To repeat, the core driver of Sri Lankan politics continues to be this Sinhala majoritatian nationalism.

 

This mass ideology predates independence and has now been entrenched in the mechanisms of the state. It is now carried forward in the state bureaucracy, the composition, practices and strategies of the military, the directing of international aid and state investment to some places and not others, and so on.

 

This Sinhala majoritarianism remains the central obstacle to the constitutional recognition of the Tamils, and other Tamil speaking peoples, as having a rightful place, equal to the Sinhalese, on the island.

 

And until it is confronted and checked, a truly democratic and peaceful Sri Lanka, one which treats all communities as equal, will remain an impossible dream.

 

 It is worth noting that the ascendancy of this Sinhala majoritarianism has taken place while the country has been in the close embrace of the international community. After several decades of ‘engagement’ by the liberal West there still isn’t a hairsbreadth of liberal space in Sri Lanka. Indeed, it can be argued that Sri Lanka has headed successfully in the opposite direction.

 

Thus the war continues in Sri Lanka through politics. And as long as the war continues, there will be resistance. Some of us focus on media freedom, others are more driven by human rights concerns, or the humanitarian or developmental needs of the oppressed. But unless all of us recognize that the problems we are opposing stem from a strategic logic embedded in the state, we cannot succeed in our objectives.

 

We do not believe the course of Sinhala majoritarianism will change from within. Every effort by the Tamils to negotiate or reason with this majoritarianism has resulted in further violence. Look at the history of constitutional change since independence, for example.

 

Sri Lanka today is in a state of flux. As the Sinhala-dominated and supported state continues to wage war on the Tamil speaking communities, various forms of resistance will emerge, not only from within, but also from without. Today, the Tamils problem is being assessed and reflected upon in far more spaces across the world than ever before in our history.

 

I have of course not forgotten that we are here today to mark the fifth anniversary of the Sri Lankan state’s murder of Sivaram. In closing, I would like to say a few words about him.

 

The Tamil Guardian has had a relation with Sivaram almost since it began. He was instructor and mentor to the longer-serving volunteers on the paper. He taught us not only how to write, but how to think through the complexities of politics; to go beyond a surface analysis of a problem and explore the underlying structural movements. For this we are grateful.

 

As long as the oppression of Tamils continues, so too must the struggle for Tamil rights. Most of us knew Sivaram through our engagement in this struggle. I think it behooves us all to continue to remain committed, in whatever field we are in, to continue his resistance.

The outcome of Sri Lanka’s latest parliamentary elections, in which the ruling Sinhala party secured a near two-thirds majority, are held by some to make possible the constitutional changes that would attenuate and address the island’s acute ethnic divide. No such thing will happen. The central driver of Sri Lanka’s politics has, since independence, been Sinhala majoritarianism, a reality simply ignored by proponents of the arguments presented for such optimism (arguments which, in any case, ring utterly hollow given the politics and events of recent years). The point is strikingly underlined, moreover, by how 2010’s elections are a replay of 1956’s.

 

That President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led coalition would convincingly win this month’s elections was never in doubt. The fait accompli was already reflected in the feeble campaign run by the main opposition United National Party (UNP). The focus on whether the UPFA gets a two-thirds majority in the 225 seat house turns on this being the threshold to change the constitution.

 

What is ignored in this logic is, had they wanted to, the SLFP and the UNP could have at any point in the past six decades made some changes, no matter how trivial, to accommodate the basic Tamil grievances. They never have. Instead they have consistently sought to pursue Sinhala nationalist goals more stridently than the other, a dynamic that has been succinctly labeled ‘ethnic outbidding’. It is worth remembering that when then President Chandrika Kumaratunga invited Norway to facilitate peace talks with the Tamil Tigers, the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was amongst the first to denounce it in Parliament.

 

The UPFA almost secured the two-thirds majority, and it did so on the basis it has defeated the LTTE and, therefore, seen off the Tamil demand on the state to share power. The UNP had nothing to say on the ethnic question, let alone power-sharing. These dynamics are identical to 1956. The then SLFP-led MEP coalition came to power on a single pledge: to replace English with Sinhala as the official language. Then too the UNP had no reply - it belatedly joined the anti-Tamil bandwagon, but most Sinhalese had rallied to the SLFP.

 

Conversely, the Tamils voted overwhelmingly in 1956 for the Tamil-led Federal Party, which was insisting English be kept as the official language. (Out of 95 seats, the SLFP-led MEP took 51 seats, the FP 10 and the UNP just 8). In this month’s election the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) secured 14 seats. It did so, moreover, campaigning explicitly on a federal solution.

 

The comparison between 1956 and 2010 is not some inane exercise in pattern matching. Rather, it is to argue that central dynamic in Sri Lanka’s ongoing crisis is majoritarianism facilitated by electoral democracy: the Sinhala vote is swayed primarily by anti-Tamil sentiment. (That the JVP lost several seats this month should be no surprise: its core platforms of Sinhala nationalism and anti-market economics have been more convincingly taken up by the UPFA and Rajapaksa.) Moreover, every attempt by Tamil leaders, ever since the fifties, to negotiate a solution with their Sinhala counterparts have come to naught in the face of Sinhala public pressure, often vented through the Sinhala opposition.

 

These dynamics are recurrent and will not change from within. While the past few decades have been marked by processes of globalization, Sri Lanka’s greater integration with international spaces have not produced an enlightened liberal politics. Indeed both this and globalization itself have been strongly resisted, not only by the mass of Sinhala voters, but by the main Sinhala parties. Even the UNP, understood as a market-friendly, and thus liberal party, has followed a stridently Sinhala nationalist path when in government. President J. R. Jayawardene’s regime led other developing countries in liberalizing the economy, but was explicitly Sinhala nationalist. It also oversaw the July 1983 pogrom. Ironically its legacy was a cynical attempt to secure Indian support for the war against Tamil militancy: the 13^th amendment. President R. Premedasa’s idea of governance speaks for itself.

 

In short, any expectations that President Rajapakse’s regime is going to pursue a path of ‘reconciliation’ or even the slightest variant of power-sharing are wholly misguided. The core driver of Sri Lankan politics is Sinhala nationalism, a mass ideology that predates independence, and which has since been entrenched in the state. It is the central obstacle to the constitutional recognition of the Tamils, and other Tamil speaking peoples, as having a rightful place, equal to the Sinhalese, on the island. And until it is confronted and checked, a truly democratic and peaceful Sri Lanka integrated into a global liberal order will remain an impossible dream.

There is little doubt the war crimes issue would have any impact on this parliamentary election. The April 8 election has nothing serious on its platforms. It’s all about athletes, film stars, cricketers, journalists and also lumpens, and more about these “wonderful” personalities.

What is nevertheless important is how the Rajapaksas would avoid facing war crimes investigations. This leads to the question whether General Fonseka would play a role in complicating the situation. The issue of war crimes and crimes against humanity is up again with UN Secretary General (SG) Ban Ki-moon deciding to appoint a panel of experts to advise him on Sri Lanka.

“I made clear to President Rajapaksa that I intend to move forward on a group of experts which will advise me on setting the broad parameters and standards on the way ahead on establishing accountability concerning Sri Lanka,” Ban Ki-moon told the media in New York. He qualified his reference on Sri Lanka by saying, “I had a frank and honest exchange of views with the President.”

That accountability Ban Ki-moon talked of, concerns possible breaches of international humanitarian law or abuses of human rights carried out during the final phase of the war against the LTTE. The worst affected in this war were women and children. A sneaked camera by British Channel Four into the wired IDP camps in Vavuniya in August 2009 that then held over 250,000 displaced Tamil people, revealed the agony and humiliation young girls and women underwent with interrogating male security persons. Channel Four again topped that story with the now controversially famous video clip they aired which claims, stripped and unarmed youth were shot to death at close range. Certified as authentic footage by three international experts, the case against Sri Lanka on war crimes gained a new impetus.

What Ban Ki-moon politely wraps up as “accountability” is all about those war crimes touted once more in international human rights circles and by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navenetham Pillai.  Yet the SG is considered as lacking “a moral voice and authority.”

“Another example of weak handling from the Secretary-General’s side is the war in Sri Lanka. The Secretary-General was a powerless observer to civilians in their thousands losing their lives and being driven from their homes……..the Secretary-General’s moral voice and authority have been absent,” says a Norwegian diplomatic report in 2009 August, stamped “highly confidential” by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, but “leaked” to a leading Norwegian news paper, the Aftenposten.

Written by Norwegian deputy ambassador to the UN, a senior career diplomat Ms. Mona Juul, the highly confidential but damning report notes with a dry tone, “at a time when solutions by the UN and multilateral agencies are more necessary than ever to resolve global conflicts, Ban and the UN are conspicuous in their absence.”

It was obvious therefore the Sri Lankan government and the President would reject the SG’s decision on Sri Lanka and its accountability. President Rajapaksa was reported as having told Ban Ki-moon that the SL position on the proposed advisory panel would be sent in writing. Now it is said, by no other than the SG himself that the proposed advisory panel will only be appointed after Under Secretary General of Political Affairs Lyn Pascoe makes an early visit to Colombo, a visit he was expected to make in February, but never did.

The UN and its SG are an important factor in taking Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as Sri Lanka is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In fact, none of the SAARC member countries except Afghanistan have signed the Rome Statute that has 110 state parties. The ICC can only initiate proceedings against citizens of state parties that have signed the ‘Rome Statute.’ Therefore the Sri Lankan case has to be referred to the Hague based ICC by the UN Security Council.

The Indian “People’s Union for Civil Liberties” (PUCL) argued this position in its in early May, 2009 addressed to all members of the Security Council (SC) requesting the SC to refer Sri Lanka to the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is often said and the French diplomat at the UN, Gerard Araud had gone on record telling “Inner City Press” that the UN and the SG have been slow in taking up Sri Lankan issues due to pressure from member countries. First is India and then China.

The Indo – China rope could be strong enough for President Rajapaksa to hold tight in the UN. But the issue of war crimes and crimes against humanity does not stop with UN and other international lobbying. The Rajapaksa regime has created its own “devil” at home by targeting their former Army Commander turned common opposition presidential candidate against Rajapaksa. The two have gone beyond any possibility of compromise with General Fonseka now detained and investigated upon, for breach of army law and possible indictment on other issues in a civil court.

This egoistic conflict may not end the way the Rajapaksa regime would want it to end, if on April 8, a sizeable number of Colombo voters decide to elect Fonseka to parliament. While his image as a war hero and as a man with integrity had been badly chewed up with regular news reports to the contrary, he still has a sympathy vote that may elect him to parliament. That would not be something the Rajapaksas would be able to handle to their advantage with media campaigns.

If elected, his bitter animosity frothing in continued detention, may prompt him to use parliamentary privileges to make statements against his former friends adding more fuel to international lobbying. His statements on war related crimes if made in parliament, would not be  retractable as those made to the media. What then would this government do as damage control?

Accusations and counter accusations for sure would provide more ammo for international lobbying against Sri Lanka. But what purpose, what satisfaction would it be for all those innocent Tamil people, who lost all things dear to them in their hard earned life? To at least those 300,000 Tamil civilians who were herded into barbed wire camps, without basic facilities and with no privacy and safety? For how long would they have to wait for any justice to be meted out, as the world calls for war crimes investigations?

Sri Lanka violated human rights last year as it dealt a final blow to Tamil Tiger insurgents the US State Department said in its annual human rights report.

"The government's respect for human rights declined as armed conflict reached its conclusion," the 2009 country report, released by the US Department of State on 11^th March 2010 said.

 

The report adds that young Tamil men accounted for an "overwhelming majority" of victims of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings.

 

The report highlights the concerns surrounding the estimated 11,700 LTTE combatants held by the government in detention centres near Vavuniya, especially with regards to the use of torture by the Sri Lankan army. including ‘beatings, often with cricket bats, iron bars, or rubber hoses filled with sand; electric shock; suspending individuals by the wrists or feet in contorted positions, abrading knees across rough cement; burning with metal objects and cigarettes; genital abuse; blows to the ears; asphyxiation with plastic bags containing chilli pepper mixed with gasoline; and near‑drowning’.

 

The US Department of State’s report adds significant weight to the international calls for war crimes investigations. Examining what is described as the Sri Lankan government’s declining respect for human rights, all aspects of liberalism, including freedom of expression, press, religion and movement, are analysed, with extensive coverage of the latter stages of the conflict. Alleged human rights abuses by the LTTE are stated. 

 

Acknowledging that extrajudicial killings were the carried out by those ‘working with the awareness and assistance of the government’, the report describes the disappearances and murders of activists, ‘armed attacks against civilians’ and the practice of torture, kidnapping and extortion. The disappearances, abductions, physical abuse and killings within the IDP population features highly, with sources said to include several international NGOs.

 

The unequal treatment of Tamils by the Sri Lankan state through the ‘longstanding systematic discrimination in university education, government employment and in other matters controlled by the government’ is unequivocally stated.

 

The requirement of all Tamils wishing to move within the country to obtain a special pass from the security forces is highlighted, with a poignant reminder of the law, which grants ‘freedom of movement and of choosing his residence’. The compulsory registration of any Tamil tenants by all landlords and reporting of their presence to the police is also mentioned.

 

The unequal access to legal proceedings was specifically stated. The lack of availability of Tamil language hearings, court appointed interpreters and legal textbooks in Tamil was argued to restrict the ‘ability of Tamil-speaking defendants to receive a fair hearing’.

 

The country’s rule of law was repeatedly brought under question with specific examples of crimes inadequately investigated such as high profile political assassinations and the killing of prominent journalists. The COI (Commission of Inquiry) set up in response to the growing criticism of Sri Lanka’s lack of justice and culture of impunity took a particular battering. The COI was slammed for its ineffectiveness, having investigated only seven of the seventeen cases it was asked to review, and for blaming the killing of 17 French NGO workers on the LTTE. An allegation, the report describes as ‘contrary to many independent analyses of available evidence that pointed toward involvement in the killings by police, Muslim Home Guard and Special Task Force members’.

 

The annual country reports on human rights are compiled by the US department of state and sent to the Congress, in accordance with US legislation which dictates that US foreign policy and trade policy should consider a country’s human rights record. Information gathered is said to be assessed ‘objectively, thoroughly, and fairly.’