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[Editors note: This article was published in The Sunday Island on 28 June 2009. Groundviews does not usually reproduce content first published elsewhere in print or online. In this case however, given that the Island's website has no mechanism to feature reader generated comments and because Rohini Hensman's article was exclusively published on this site, Malinda's response is republished with the expectation of continued dialogue between the two principal authors and comments from a wider readership. Those familiar with Malinda's initial trenchant comment to and critique of Rohini's article are also strongly encouraged to read Visit to ‘concentration camps’ in Cheddikulam published in The Nation, also on Sunday.]

Rohini Hensman is absolutely right when she asserts (in an article published in www.groundviews.org titled ‘Why are the Vanni civilians still being held hostage?’) ‘If there are elements in the government and armed forces working to destroy the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, it is incumbent on all of us who love our country to resist’.  I would not limit the resisting to ‘elements’ in the government or the armed forces though.  We know that the LTTE was not ‘government’ and not ‘armed forces’, for example. And we know that a lot of NGO personalities and even free media advocates were vociferously trying to destroy Sri Lanka, even though people like Nimalka Fernando of failed-state fame and Eelam-speak now unabashedly utter the word ‘motherland’.  They were resisted and that resistance played an important role in defeating the LTTE. They will be resisted today and tomorrow as well.

I don’t know about how ‘socialist’ Sri Lanka is, but it is certainly more of a republic than it used to be. Is it democratic?  Well, we are living under the violent shadow of the 1978 constitution and therefore ‘no’ is certainly a legitimate answer.

Rohini takes legitimate umbrage at certain statements made by high-ranking officials and politicians.  Whether such statements reflect official policy is of course not clear, especially since other officials and other politicians have made statements that contradict these.  If ‘official policy’ is best reflected by what the President says then I believe there is no reason to get worked up. Being alert, though, is important and for this I do applaud Rohini.

But as I said getting carried away is not useful.  For example, she calls the regimes of J.R. Jayewardena and Ranasinghe Premadasa ‘Sinhala nationalist’, never mind the fact that they were jointly responsible for the massacre of some 60,000 plus ‘Sinhala nationalists’, helped considerably by another ‘Sinhala nationalist’, Rohana Wijeweera.  Then she conjures up images of tyre pyres, mutilated bodies on the roadside, on waterways and so on.

She reduces the war to a product of alleged discrimination against and persecution of minorities, the PTA and Emergency Regulations.  No word of extremist Tamil nationalism, no word of terrorism here, strangely.

The ‘going overboard’ is nicely laced with the by not utterly boring ‘horror stories’ of the IDP camps. Rohini is so ‘overboard’ that her rant warrants full quotation:

Around 280,000 of the civilians who have suffered so much already have been kept prisoners behind barbed wire in camps where conditions are in many cases abysmal. It is clear that the government is unable to provide for them adequately, yet those with relations outside who would willingly look after them are being denied the right to join their families. If others want to check up on their homes in the Vanni or start rebuilding them, no one on earth has the right to stop them. This denial of the fundamental right to freedom of movement is especially cruel for families which have been split up, and are thereby denied the possibility of reuniting, or even finding out what has happened to their loved ones. It is lethal for those who are physically vulnerable; senior citizens were supposed to be released after a court found that many had died of starvation and more were dying daily, but the sick and injured, pregnant women, and mothers with babies are also vulnerable. With the monsoon, it is likely that gastrointestinal diseases will kill thousands. Why, then, are these unfortunate people being penalised like this?

I spent most of last weeks in these camps.  The conditions therein are certainly not luxurious but they are a far cry from ‘abysmal’.  If providing facilities that ensure 3 full meals a day, more than enough drinking water and water for bathing, medical services, toilets, schools, banking and postal services, and the influx of all manner of relief items courtesy the general public, business undertakings, INGOs, NGOs and UN agencies amounts to something that can be described as ‘abysmal’, then Rohini should check the dictionary meaning of the word.  They even have electricity and television, things that thousands living in formerly threatened villages did not have, do not have and are unlikely to have in the near future.

This is not the United States of America. This is Sri Lanka.  A third world country.  Given all this, the performance of the Government, I found quite contrary to what I expected considering the comparison of these facilities to Hitler’s concentration camps, startling.

It would indeed be cruel if split families are not allowed to reunite.  Reunification is a process that the Government is pursuing with utmost energy.  It is indeed lethal for those who are physically vulnerable, i.e. the elderly, the children, the sickly and pregnant mothers.  Lethal, yes, if there was no sympathy to their situation and if adequate measures are not in place.  The truth is, they are being looked after to the best of ability.  As for what the monsoon may or may not do, those in charge of these facilities are taking all precautions possible, including the shifting of camps to better locations, constructing better housing facilities and making sure that all amenities mentioned above are also available.

Rohini believes that one day would suffice to screen people.  Well, I suppose she has the brains to detect an LTTE cadre at the snap of a finger. Or the knowledge. I don’t know.  All I know is that it took two years to identify those responsible for the assassination attempt on the Defence Secretary and that two of the suspects were found in one of the camps.  It is better, given history, for the Government to be cautious.

The Government has already decided to allow those over 60 years of age to leave these camps, to go live with someone who undertakes to care for them or to enter a home for the elderly set up by the Social Services Department.  I think the Government could do better and give such people the right to leave, to live with friends or family, to take up residence in a home for the elderly or end up on the street if that is what they wish.  Perhaps the Government will.

Rohini asks ‘Why can’t camp inhabitants go out to look for missing relatives, or receive visits from friends and relations, or their homes if they want to?’  Well, just imagine close to 300,000 people leaving their camps and walking all over Cheddikum looking for friends and relatives!  Imagine the chaos.  Imagine the fallout of such an exercise.  Imagine what it would do to the logistics of feeding these people, attending to their medical and other needs?  Easy to say.  And as for receiving visits from friends and relations, this is happening Rohini. Everyday.  In all camps, except of course in those facilities where LTTE surrendees are being held.

The Government cannot treat children as suspects either. I don’t believe the Government is. On the other hand, this does not mean the Government can open the gates and ask all children to leave. It would be easier for the officials because it would halve the IDP population. Things don’t work that way. Children stay with parents.  Even under the harshest conditions and in this case, these are not abysmal conditions and they are not the harshest conditions imaginable.

There are security concerns and these naturally shape the diga palala of democracy, Rohini ought to understand.  Just because the LTTE leadership is no more, this does not mean that a brainwashed LTTE operative will not blow up a bus if given half a chance.

Rohini believes ‘democracy’ is about allowing people to go wherever they like, check out their homes, live on the streets if they so wish and so on.  Just imagine what would happen if the Government allowed such a thing.  The Government would be blamed for Ramalingam Rasiah losing his leg in a landmine explosion. The Government would be castigated for violating human rights because little 2 year old Meena Kumari died of hunger.  Our bleeding-heart I/NGO personalities would have a ball with the story.  They would roll out reams of commentary lamenting the state of affairs.  Nimalka Fernando would drop ‘motherland’ like a hot potato and take up the failed-state cry.  Others would re-activate the R2P agenda.  And Rohini Hensman would take up new cudgels for the restoration of ‘democracy’.

So let us keep perspective.  Let us not go overboard, if not for any reason, because it compromises our ability to resist real threats to democracy, whatever the sources may be, government, military or anti-Sri Lankan elements masquerading as political commentators, free media advocates or humanitarian workers.

The onus is certainly on the Government to make sure that the resettlement process is brought to a speedy conclusion, that those who are resettled have all the facilities they need, and that they are able to elect the representatives of their choice.  I believe the Government is doing most of what is possible.  We should agitate for the Government to do its best. We don’t help our cause by being dramatic, being disingenuous, by being uneducated about what is happening or by letting our imaginations run riot. We are hardly the democracy that we deserve, but we will remain where we are if we are not honest and if we prefer the dramatic to sobriety.

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The island belongs
to centipede, rat,
butterfly,
lots of species
each with
their own habitats,
and supervising
all arable
and fallow land
the president king.

Minorities
may enjoy
clean living
in freshly cleared
forest patches,
welfare villages
with amenities
such as latrines
and tents,
gated communities.

June 28, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here.

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We have a once –in-generations chance to re-found Sri Lanka, to build Sri Lanka anew. To do so, we must be both hard and soft; and vigilant as hawks and as conciliatory as doves. We must be hard enough to obliterate what is left of the LTTE as an organization and surgically pre-empt any attempts at re-emergence, be they local or Diaspora-based and originated. We must be soft and malleable enough to arrive at a consensus with the non-Tiger Tamils as to the shape of the Sri Lanka we wish to build and live in.

Where do we start? With renovation, I suggest. The only available starting point is modest and realistic reform, namely the implementation of the 13^th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution, because it represents the broadest available consensus between the Sri Lankan state and a section on non-Tiger Tamils as well as the Sri Lankan and Indian states. It represents the triangular intersection of the anti-Tiger elements of the “Tamil armed resistance” (as Kethesh Loganathan used to call it), and the Colombo and New Delhi governments.

The day after our Thirty Years War ended this year, a top level Indian delegation paid a call on the President and the joint press statement that ensued ( May 21^st) not only contained a commitment by the Government of Sri Lanka to implement the 13th amendment but to explore possibilities of a further movement through dialogue.

The why of it is that 70 million Tamils will not go away from the demographic makeup of India; a significant percentage of them will always be concerned about the fate of their ethnic kin in Sri Lanka, constituting a political factor that no government at the centre will ignore. Furthermore, no government at the Centre will risk a significant degree of alienation of Tamil Nadu, on the basis that the latter does not care about the fate of Sri Lanka’s Tamils. We Sri Lankan Sinhalese could very well argue that it is none of their or anybody else’s business but our own, but that is just not the way the world works. As Mervyn de Silva wrote “in the age of identity, ethnicity walks on water”. Look at the intervention or counter-intervention of Russia on behalf of the South Ossetians in the face of a Georgian military offensive. (The Indian conduct of 1987 was a perfect precursor of this). The 13^th amendment is the concrete expression of the Indian concern balanced off with Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. Several scholarly texts, from different viewpoints, shed light on this nexus and its evolution. I refer to those by KM de Silva, Shelton Kodikara, John Gooneratne and Urmila Phadnis.

Sovereignty not only has to be asserted, it has to be defended and defensible. Sri Lanka cannot defend its sovereignty against all comers from all points of the compass, North and South, West and East. It can defend its sovereignty only by power balancing in a multi-polar world. Starkly put, if we lose India, we even lose the Non-aligned Movement, and (as we saw in 1987) we are left naked.

Any attempt at erasure of the 13^th amendment will only open the door to greater not lesser concessions because we shall be dealing with a globalized world and the Obama factor as well. Between 1987 and today falls the breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the dawn of the new century and the information age, the emergence of Obama etc. In short, it is better not to re-open the issue of the 13^th amendment because we could find that the point of equilibrium stops above and beyond it.

There are minority grievances and there are minority aspirations. The latter are neither imaginary nor unwarranted. That which Virginia Woolf asserted on behalf of women writers is true of human beings in general: A Room with a View. It is part of the human condition that every individual requires an irreducible minimum of space in which to assert one’s distinctive identity and grow, without domination or interference from others. Every civic group needs political and cultural space. That is the bedrock argument for some measure of self rule or autonomy. It is rather different in the United States or France, where the Constitution does not privilege the culture or religion of any community, and there cannot be said to be – nor are there claims to being – a dominant ethnic, or ethno-religious community. The US is a melting pot, a classic case of cultural fusion and change, while the French Republic is sternly secular, with neither veils nor crosses allowed in schools.

Some states and societies are a hybrid, such as India, which has a secular Constitution, a pluralist society (the Prime Minister is a Sikh, the most powerful politician is of Italian origin, the most powerful political family is mixed race) but also provides sufficient space for its constituent communities in the form of a quasi federal system and linguistic states.

Tamil grievances remain from 1951, (if not from DS Senanayakae’s Pan Sinhala Cabinet) when Senator Nadesan voiced his dissent over the National Flag. We are far from a situation in which society is integrated, discrimination is aggressively tackled and the state is neutral between communities. In such a context, where one individual is not the equal of the other and one community has more privileges than the other, it is the case the world over, that collectivities with their distinctive identities and inhabiting recognizable geographic areas over long periods, tend to seek some political space and measure of self rule/self governance.

I cannot think of any state in the world, and I work among 193, that does not hold that Sri Lanka’s Tamils deserve and require equal rights in practice, as well as some autonomous political space, be it devolution of power to autonomous regions or provinces ( as in Britain or China) or something more. I repeat, the 13^th amendment is the most modest and economical of these arrangements as far as the majority goes.

The 13^th amendment may not solve grievances, but certainly addresses them. Does the Parliamentary or Presidential system solve the grievances of the Sinhalese or the majority of ordinary people or the poor? Obviously not, but this does not lead to the conclusion that these institutions and practices should be dumped in the trash-can because they simply devolve power to politicians and Ministers. They must be retained because, as Churchill said of democracy, they are the worst, save all others.

Political accommodation and reconciliation are not possible on the basis of majoritarian unilateralism. It requires a consensus, a common denominator between the communities. It would be difficult for the Sinhalese to find any of their fellow Tamil (and Muslim?) citizens who could be accommodated short of the implementation of the 13^th amendment at the very least. If someone could name a single Tamil political party or leading personality who is willing to settle for anything short of the 13^th amendment, I would be pleasantly surprised. What he or she will discover is that even purely domestic political accommodation between the communities/ethnic collectivities is impossible other than on the basis of the 13^th amendment at the minimum.

There is a major distinction between Sri Lankans being at the centre of sorting out Sri Lankan problems, and Sri Lankan problems being capable of sorting out exclusively by Sri Lankans. That is the kind of isolationist position I have never held. My unit of analysis has always been the world system taken as single whole, a complex unevenly structured totality, and this is all the more relevant now that we are faced with the threat of a global protracted struggle with Tamil secessionism. If the battlefield is global, our analysis cannot be purely local. Sri Lanka’s sovereignty must be defended mainly by our efforts, but cannot be defended solely or exclusively by them, and must be defended by a broad united front or concentric circles of alliances. Full if graduated implementation of the 13^th Amendment, i.e. the fullest possible devolution of powers within our Constitution, is an essential part of the minimum political programme on which such a global united front can be built and sustained.

Narrow nationalism is an inadequate basis for the defense of the national interest, which is why the greatest of nationalists or more correctly, patriots, were also the greatest of internationalists. An example would be Fidel Castro who never tires of quoting Cuba’s 19^th century national hero, Jose Marti as saying “Homeland is humanity”. And Ho Chi Minh, (the Vietnamese nation’s beloved “Uncle Ho”) who reminded us that “Nothing is More Precious than Independence and Freedom” but also recalled (as a founder of the French Communist Party and the Communist International) the correctness of Frederick Engels’ dictum that “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”. I commend the full implementation of the 13^th amendment at least as a tough-minded Engelsian recognition of necessity as both prerequisite and corollary of freedom.

Prof Senaka Bandaranaike discerns a pattern in ancient Sri Lankan history of being ahead of the rest of the subcontinent on occasions, but never being able to achieve a decisive breakthrough and sustain it. This happened at least three times, he once said in a lecture I attended. We now have another chance. It is as if we have obtained a second Independence, when we were ahead of the game in the rest of Asia but we then blew it. Let’s not blow it yet again.

These are the strictly personal views of the writer.

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The end of the conventional war in the north and the east of Sri Lanka witnessed the almost total annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) including its leadership. However, the Government forces are still carrying out clearing up operations throughout the island. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered; many thousands wounded; hundreds of thousands expelled from their habitats and many hundreds of thousands interned into camps. The deaths of the militants have been celebrated by the overwhelming majority of the Sinhalese and some of the Tamils and Muslims. The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) is allegedly engaged in destroying any incriminating evidence of its culpability in war crimes. The fate of three doctors, who were earlier praised by the UN for their heroic services to the wounded during the war, serves as an example.

History
The LTTE commenced as a guerilla force and over time developed its own conventional fighting capability by having a ground force, a navy and a rudimentary air force. It had a strong local and diasporic base and a vast fund raising network. The LTTE targeted attacks on civilian, political, security individuals, religious symbols and civilian groups, particularly in the south. Its initial aim was to fight against the Sinhala discrimination and the government security forces. In the process it began to kill members of other Tamil groups and repress its own Tamil community. The LTTE was ruthless in removing diversity of opinion within the Tamil community by armed force, not by political means. Thus many leaders of the Tamil bourgeois parties[1] and left parties and groups[2] were eliminated. The ruthless repression of any political opposition to it alienated many working people in the areas under the LTTE control.

I believe that the LTTE’s defeat was brought about by its military strategy and tactics based on terror and over reliance on conventional force, its violent attempt to become the sole representative of the Tamil people; misreading of the international balance of forces and a lack of progressive economic or political policies. It simply believed that imposition of a separate Tamil state was the only response to the discriminatory policies of the successive governments against Tamils. It substituted ethnic struggle for class struggle. As a nationalist movement it could have survived by either compromising with the capitalist class or resorting to mass struggle, but it did not do either. The political support of the Sinhala workers and the other oppressed people for the nationalist struggle of the Tamil people gradually diminished. The methods of the LTTE enormously helped the Sinhala ruling elites to whip up anti-Tamil chauvinism to protect the privileges and interests of the ruling elites.

War Preparations and the LTTE
When the security forces of the GoSL went to war in 2006, they were well-trained and enjoyed superiority in firepower and mobility. They built up their force levels on land, in the air and at sea en masse to ensure success against the LTTE. Evidently, the LTTE failed to read this turnaround taking place in the capabilities of the Security Forces and adapt its military line of action accordingly. Instead, it stuck to a conventional warfare mode that was doomed to fail although it inflicted many casualties on the advancing government troops.

When the LTTE floundered in the Eastern Province in 2006, offering only limited stiff resistance, the regime made up its mind to go all the way against the LTTE.

Is the war over?
Elimination of the top leadership of the LTTE with many of their cadres assassinated or dead may not represent the total end of the LTTE. The post-Pirapaharan era of the LTTE may represent a departure from the strategy and tactics of terror previously adopted by the LTTE.

The GoSL and the LTTE have declared that the war is over. Does this mean that the GoSL will devolve political power to the North and the East? Those who lean towards the left and Tamil groups within the GoSL believe it will devolve power at least to the extent granted by the 13th amendment to the Constitution^[3]. Those who lean towards the right within the GoSL believe it will not devolve power at all. Those who are outside the government are similarly divided. Given the sorry history of devolution in the country it is hard to believe that the optimists will succeed. The extreme nationalist forces within the GoSL have already commenced their campaign against any power devolution.

The GoSL has stated that the state of emergency and Prevention of Terrorism Act would remain in force for some time to come. The eastern province has been firmly under army control since mid-2007. There are army checkpoints in the town centre, armed thugs prowl the back streets and reports of abductions and disappearances continue. To quote the Defence Secretary, “The war is like a cancer. Even after curing a cancer, there is a period for radiation treatment. It is the same with the war on terrorism.” Meanwhile the President in his victory speech has adopted a new doctrine following on the path of Bush doctrine. While inviting investments in the north and the east, while talking of a home grown solution to the political situation, there are no minorities in the island, he said. He branded the population into two categories: those who love the country and those who don’t.

Media Freedom
The GoSL’s vendetta against anyone critical of the war, particularly in the media continues. Targeting journalists for “treason” indicates a broad offensive against human rights bodies and non-government organisations, which have been branded as “terrorist sympathisers”. The methods used are not limited to arrest and prosecution as evident from the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of the Sunday Leader, who was posthumously awarded UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize 2009. As in numerous other cases, the police have made no arrests yet. Most of these threats seem to target international organisations that exposed to a limited extent the exterminationary tactics used by the GoSL. Only three days back, the Centre for Policy Alternatives[4] received a 1989 type of threatening letter demanding compliance with the GoSL programs. Disappearances seem to continue. On June the first, Poddala Jayantha, General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association was abducted by a gang who came in a white van, severely assaulted and later released.

Access to camps and war ravaged areas
Despite many requests by the international community, the GoSL has continued to refuse full access to the areas destroyed by the war and to the hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamil civilians interned in the so-called welfare villages encircled by barbed wire and security forces.

The Economic repercussion
Sri Lanka spent and will continue to spend a significant part of its gross domestic product on the war effort, thus exacerbating its dependence on the world capitalist system. The very high military expenditure has significantly contributed to a weakening economy, rising cost of living, inflation, unemployment and an impending economic collapse. The GoSL hopes to survive by relying on massive foreign loans. It is using the “war victories” as a mechanism to divert attention from the crises the country is faced with. The next pretext will be in the form of “an emergency” caused by the rapid deepening of the country’s economic crisis and an eruption of working people against the imposition of new burdens. The broader fear in Colombo ruling elite is that the military defeat of the LTTE will be followed by a wave of political unrest and social struggles. The GoSL has mortgaged the Sri Lankan state to the hilt to finance massive military spending and imposed the full burden of the war on the working class. Now, confronting the impact of an unprecedented global economic crisis for which it has no answers, the regime has no alternative but to use police state measures to stamp out opposition, particularly by working people.

Key political decisions are made by a military cum political unit rather than in parliament or cabinet. Unelected bureaucrats can make outrageous threats against diplomats and journalists. GoSL operates with complete contempt for the law, the constitution and the courts. Elements of the Sinhala majority in the south now want the President to be treated as the King of Sri Lanka. The government will boost its armed force, already one of the largest per capita in the world, from 200,000 to 300,000 within a population of around 20 million. The navy and air force each have around 30,000 personnel and the home guard another 35,000. All of the above will be used against workers, peasants and youth seeking to defend their rights and conditions.

The role of China, India, Pakistan and the US
The Global political and economic balance of forces has played a significant role in what is happening in Sri Lanka. All the major powers, with the United States in the lead, have backed the GoSL while turning a blind eye to its abuse of democratic rights. Britain and other EU countries also assisted the GoSL by selling military equipment in the last three years of the war, it was reported. If the US is now raising concerns, it is only because instability in Sri Lanka threatens broader American economic and strategic interests in South Asia, in particular the growing influence of China. This is of major concern to the Indian Government also.

The US and India are intent on countering China’s strategy. Thus under the guise of humanitarian concerns, India has sent a military medical team to Sri Lanka. Earlier the US proposed to send a Marine Expeditionary Brigade to northern Sri Lanka to evacuate refugees - an offer that appears to have been turned down. None of these moves is motivated by concern for working people in Sri Lanka who have born the brunt of 25 years of war. Rather the island is being drawn into the international rivalry that is intensifying as the global economic crisis deepens and foreshadows far more catastrophic conflicts.

Military defeat and Political defeat of the LTTE
Yet, the difference between defeating the LTTE militarily and destroying the LTTE politically does not seem to have been completely understood by many.

The GoSL would require enormous amounts of human, material and financial resources to be spent on maintaining its forces in the north and the east. The psychological effects caused by the war on society as a whole, including the Tamils and armed forces of all sides to the conflict will continue to be challenging and daunting, which will make the dream of political unity an ever receding mirage.

The Tamil psyche is hurt as never before. Their feeling of subjugation has multiplied with the end of the conventional war. Most Tamils perceive this war as an invasion to grab ‘their land’. Their sense of anger and resentment will remain for a long time. The war and its aftermath have accelerated the tensions and distance between the majority of the Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil diaspora. This has also brought the Sri Lankan national question to the forefront of international discourse, second only to the questions of Palestine and Darfur. It has become embedded in the maelstrom of conflicts that are currently inflaming large parts of Asia. The desperate and deadly situation faced by the many thousands of Tamil civilians interned in the camps will become a serious international issue.

These developments do not bode well for the GoSL or the Sinhalese, though Sinhala nationalist groups and the GoSL will try to put a positive spin on the situation. Almost all Sinhala nationalist groups seem to see this phenomenon as of a transient nature, which they believe would go away when the ‘massive’ infrastructure development programs for the north and east are jump started.

My simple question is: How could the capitalist ruling elites of the island, who have never been able to engender and sustain such development in the South of the island, be expected to undertake such a development in the North and East of the island?

Link to Class Struggle
From its very origins, the war has been bound up with the class struggle. At every point of crisis, the weak Sri Lankan bourgeoisie has whipped up anti-Tamil chauvinism as the means of dividing the working class and shoring up its hold on power. The war was launched in 1983 by a United National Party government amid a horrific wave of anti-Tamil pogroms. These were being carried out in response to a growing rebellion by the working class against the impact of the government’s free market agenda. Over the past three years, the GoSL has repeatedly accused striking workers and protesting students of being accomplices of the “Tiger terrorists”. Having been strengthened by the defeat of the LTTE, the most reactionary sections of the ruling elite will soon be calling for the crushing of the new enemy, the working people.

The LTTE’s defeat is primarily a political, not a military question. Its perspective of a separate capitalist state of Eelam has proven to be a deadly trap for the working people. Its sectarian outlook and attacks on Sinhalese civilians has only deepened the communal divide and played into the hands of the Sinhala extremists in Colombo. The LTTE’s plans for a separate state represented the interests of the Tamil bourgeoisie, not the Tamil masses, and always depended in the final analysis on the support of one or other of the imperialist powers.

The atrocities committed in Sri Lanka will serve as a warning to working people anywhere in the globe. As capitalism plunges into its worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the ruling elites around the world are reaching into the tool bag of political reaction to secure their rule. Anti-Tamil chauvinism in Sri Lanka finds its parallels in anti-immigrant xenophobia, various nationalisms and numerous forms of chauvinism based on religious, ethnic and linguistic divisions. These can also become the starting point for local and international wars. The only alternative to such barbarism will be to explore the path towards socialism.

Conclusion
In Sri Lanka, as elsewhere, cultural diversity and tensions were manipulated to divide and weaken the working people to preserve the interests and privileges of the ruling elite. In the process, the fundamental democratic and social aspirations of the people have been crushed. The military defeat of the LTTE has not resolved the fundamental issues that underpinned the conflict. It has shown that the territorial unity of the capitalist state can be maintained only on the basis of ruthless repression of the people using military force. Through such repression it has reinforced its defence of Sinhala nationalism. The socio-economic problems of discrimination based on language and nationality and poverty linger on.

The LTTE’s military defeat clearly confirmed that the struggle against imperialism and the fight to secure democratic rights can only be advanced on the basis of a program relying on the support of the working people of the world. The answer to discrimination and racial oppression lies not through a separate state, but through the broad unification of the oppressed people in a common struggle against it.

As I have indicated many times before, our stand in defending the democratic rights of the Tamil people against all forms of chauvinism and racism, was neither an expression of political support for the LTTE nor for separation, nor to bring about a Tamil capitalist regime in the north and the east. Rather it is an expression of our acceptance of the right of the Tamil people for self-determination and the necessity for building unity of the Tamil and Sinhala working people to defend their interests against exploitation and repression by the ruling elite which divides diverse communities along racial, religious and caste lines.

I believe that the way forward lies in the paradigm change Sri Lanka needs to go though, which is alien to its current political traditions of exploitation through repression and subjugation. Firstly the equitable distribution of the fruits of economic development and participatory democracy are essential for the society to progress, especially, when the majority of people are surviving from one meal to the other. Internationally, there is a widespread demand for a refashioning of the world economic order, an end to the unconscionable arrogance of the wheelers and dealers and a call for governments to be more accountable for the welfare of its people. Sri Lanka needs to understand this reality and act accordingly. Secondly, while recognizing the specific problems facing the Tamil community, the injustices faced by the Sinhalese, and Muslims and challenges they all face due to capitalist globalisation also need to be recognised and addressed.

Lionel Bopage is former general secretary of the JVP and former member of the District Development Council, Galle.Associated with the JVP since 1968, he resigned in 1984.He is currently a member of the Executive Committee, Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka, based in Canberra, Australia.

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[1] Such as Neelan Thiruchelvam and A Amirthalingam.

[2] Such as PLOTE, EPRLF and TELO.

[3] The Indo-Sri Lankan Accord of July 1987 led to the 13th amendment to the constitution under which the GoSL agreed to devolve some authority to the provinces. Provincial councils are directly elected for five year terms. The leader of the council majority serves as the province’s Chief Minister with a board of ministers; a provincial governor is appointed by the president.

[4] CPA is an independent, non-partisan organization which receives funds from international and bilateral funding agencies and foundations.

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