Improving Human Rights in Sri Lanka

There is growing interest in the USA over human rights issues in foreign countries, with the torch being carried by numerous NGOs which are specialising on this subject. The small island of Sri Lanka, about which the average American knows very little if at all, where a terrorist war has been raging for 15 years, has also become a focus of attention. Americans often sympathise with an underdog and the Tamil terrorist is seen as the plucky underdog fighting for the basic human rights of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. This is despite the description by the US State Department, in its annual survey of worldwide terrorism, that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is one of the most dangerous and ruthless terrorist movements in the world today. A recent publication in the UK Times, listing the ten most dangerous international terrorists of this century, featured Prabhakaran, the LTTE warlord, in this list, with the highest number of killings among the infamous ten.

The United Nations General Assembly has recently resolved that terrorism is not justified even where a grievance exists. Be that as it may, three questions need to be asked: (1) Is there no political mechanism in Sri Lanka which will guarantee equality for the minorities? (2) Is the government and the Sinhala majority systematically oppressing the Tamil people and depriving them of their human rights? (3) Do the Tamil people in Sri Lanka have acute grievances which the LTTE is trying to resolve successfully?

The first problem for an American is the perception of a minority racial problem. In the American perception, a racial or religious minority with a grievance belongs to an underclass that has been exploited in the past and is discriminated against by society at present, even covertly, despite the presence of legal remedies. This was the basis of minority problems in North and South America, with which we are all too familiar, and it still remains a problem in many countries. Such a situation never existed in Sri Lanka, even in historical times. Tamils, Arab-descended Moslems, North Indian Sindhis and Gujeratis, Eurasians, have lived in Sri Lanka as prosperous communities with generally a higher degree of affluence than the majority Sinhalese. Even the last Sinhala Kingdom was ruled by a South Indian royal family from 1750 till it was taken over by the British in 1815, a monarchy that was offered to the Malayalam royal family by invitation by the Sinhalese, whose royal line had died out. Since ancient times, Sinhala Buddhist temples have had Hindu shrines within the premises. Today, forty percent of the Tamils live in majority Sinhala areas by choice, when they have the option to live under the LTTE in areas controlled by them.Tamils and North Indian business people still have a preponderant share of the trade and industry in the country. The social elite of Colombo society is still mainly comprises of these minority communities.

Politically, Sri Lanka is not an authoritarian dictatorship, as are most of the states where minorities are brutalised. It has the history of being the oldest democracy in Asia. Universal adult franchise (including women) was introduced by the British in 1931 when it was a crown colony, before it was given to any of its other colonies in Asia and Africa. The country is a healthy democracy, with an unbroken record of selecting governments based on the peoples= vote through periodic general elections, from 1931 to date. Minorities have always had positions as senior cabinet ministers in every government since 1931.

The constitution of 1978 guarantees that the fundamental rights of the people will be respected, defining the following: (1) freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; (2) freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention and punishment and prohibition of retroactive penal legislation: (3) right to equality before the law and equal protection; (4) freedom of movement; (5) right to private and family life; (6) freedom of thought, conscience and religion; (7) freedom of speech and expression, including publication and freedom of information; (8) freedom of peaceful assembly; (9) freedom of association; (10) freedom to enjoy and promote culture and use of language; (11) freedom to engage in any lawful trade, occupation, profession, business or enterprise; (12) right to ownership of property; special rights for children. Every person is entitled to apply to the Supreme Court for redress of fundamental rights. The Supreme Court has thousands of petitions awaiting hearing and hundred of decisions have been granted in favor of the petitioners.

The history of modern Tamil grievances has two phases. Initially, when the British colonial power proposed popular representation based on universal adult franchise in 1930, the Tamil leaders, representing 12% of the population, demanded equal representation in the legislature for the majority and minority communities. The reason for AFifty-fifty@, as it was called, was based on the premise that minorities would not have adequate political influence if universal adult franchise prevailed. At the time, social and political life in the capital of Colombo was dominated by educated and sophisticated Tamil families who constituted the elite.

When this claim for AFifty-fifty@ was rejected by the British, they next campaigned for a federal union, with one Tamil state for Tamils and another state for the rest which would also include a major portion of the Tamils. The argument for a federal state was the assertion that, historically, the North and East of the country, which had mixed populations in modern times, was part of the traditional ATamil homelands@. This theory traces its justification to the time of Tamil kings who invaded Sri Lanka from South India from ancient times till the middle ages and set up kingdoms in the North, with varying boundaries at different times. The new LTTE theoreticians go further, tracing Tamil presence in the whole of Sri Lanka to pre-historic times, based on the mythical Indian legend of Ramayana which refers to a demon king named Ravana who ruled Lanka. Ravana, in the legend , abducts Sita, wife of the North Indian prince Rama, and sets in motion an epic war which ends with his defeat. The theoreticians claim that Ravana and his people were Dravidians (Tamils), maligned by the North Indians in their struggle for power with the Southerners. The political rationale for the revival of a Tamil homeland is today based on two main stated grievances: (1) colonisation of lands in the Tamil homelands by other races, (2) discrimination in admissions to the universities.

Let us consider colonisation. The revival of irrigation and land settlement for landless peasants has been a cornerstone for poverty alleviation by successive governments. In a country with a history of subsistence agriculture from colonial times, land hunger was a major threat to social stability. Land hunger was greatest in the South among the Sinhalese. The land was available mainly in the North Central and Eastern provinces which were principally forested areas which still had the ruined ancient irrigation works built by ancient Sinhala kings for large-scale rice cultivation. The Tamil politicians claimed that the settlement of people other than Tamils was a violation of their traditional homelands. Interestingly, land in the nothernmost district of Jaffna, which is exclusively Tamil, is not available by customary law to non-Tamils, while Tamils and other minorities hold land in all other parts of the country. The second grievance arose when the government embarked on affirmative action in education to give some preference in university admissions to people from depressed provinces. The preference is not based on race but on poverty levels and educational facilities available in the areas. Thus students in the urban areas which have better facilities had to score more for admissions than those rural areas. Tamil leaders, who are mainly in better provided urban areas, regarded this as a threat against Tamils. Affirmative action, to provide opportunities for the under privileged, is a universal democratic instrument, enshrined in the Indian constitution and practised for many years in the USA. To counter criticism, the government has additionally opened universities in the Jaffna and Batticoloa, essentially catering to Tamil students as non-Tamils feel insecure in these areas.

Finally, it is worth examining human rights violations committed in the war between the government and the the LTTE. War is a fertile ground for grievances by both sides as modern warfare kills more civilians than soldiers. War also dehumanises the participants and, even in the best trained armies, errant soldiers will wreak their vengeance on civilians, as we are all too familiar with our own American experiences in recent wars. Criminals are found in all professions in every society. Modern warfare employs remotely controlled weapons and, even with the most sophisticated guidance systems, we know from the American experience that mistakes have caused civilian casualties. Criminal elements in the armed forces take the law into their own hands to impose summary justice. But it is clearly not the policy of the government of Sri Lanka to cause hardship on the Tamil people. Even when the LTTE captured the Northern district of Jaffna and ruled it for a decade, the government maintained the salaries of Tamil government officers working there and sent food aid worth Rs.2.0 billion annually to the oppressed people. Even now, the government spends a disproportionately high level of investment to reconstruct the damage done in these areas during LTTE occupation. It has recently investigated cases of crimes by the military against civilians and is probably the only government in the world in recent times to pass the death sentence on soldiers accused of such crimes through the civil courts. It has investigated allegations of mass graves and excavated sites in the presence of UN and other foreign observers only to discover that these contained only a few bodies. The government is at war with terrorism, not the Tamil people. But misdemeanors by the police and service personnel will always exist in every society and the present government is doing its best to control such criminal actions.

But what of the LTTE? Its avowed aim is to set up a ethnically pure Tamil state in the North and East, comprising one third of the country and most of its coasts. It ruthlessly murders all non-Tamils in these areas, employing the maximum brutality, using machetes and knives to kill sleeping unarmed villagers to drive terror and persuade them to abandon their homes and lands LTTE cadres machine gunned and killed 150 pilgrims at a Buddhist shrine, killed a bus-load of 40 Buddhist priests who were ambushed while travelling. They have exploded huge truck bombs in Colombo, bombed the main Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka and continually place bombs in buses, trains and public places. Over two thousand civilians have been killed in this way. It wages a campaign of terror against other Tamil leaders, having killed virtually every other prominent Tamil political leader. It assassinated the incumbent President of Sri Lanka and the Prime Minister of India and scores of other politicians and government officials. It extorts money from Tamils abroad and at home. It runs a massive illegal immigrant operation to Europe, North America and Australia, supplies guns to other terrorist movement through its international buying network and its own cargo fleet. It relies heavily on suicide bombers and child soldiers for its most violent actions. It has truly re- created the Demon Empire.

These same terrorists then use their smooth propagandists to persuade NGOs and political figures in America that they are an oppressed political movement which needs sympathy and assistance.

The issue then, for well wishers of Sri Lanka in the USA, is How to Establish Peace in Sri Lanka? The easiest answer is to say that the parties, the government and the LTTE, must negotiate, preferably with a third party adjudicating. This has been tried and failed. The Government of India sponsored negotiations in Thimpu, Bhutan, but the LTTE had only one claim and this was not negotiable: AWe want a separate Eelam State.@ In short, it wants a racially cleansed Tamil-only state for itself, alongside a multi-racial state in the south where about 40% of the Tamils will continue to live as respected citizens. Such a situation has the potential from increased volatility in future. The Indian government sought to impose a peace settlement by sending its military to the North of Sri Lanka, only to be attacked by the LTTE which ensured the failure of the project. The government of President Premadasa enter into a peace agreement and suspended military operations. The LTTE used the time to build up its military and launched

a massive surprise attack. The government was so naive that it asked the police in the Eastern Province to surrender to the LTTE without defending themselves. The LTTE took 600 police personnel and shot and buried them in mass graves. When President Kumaratunga ceased military operations as a gesture of goodwill after she won the presidency, the LTTE again rebuilt its military and launched heavy surprise attacks against the government forces. In such a situation, sensible people will agree that there is no compromise with the forces of evil.

It is not for us, as outsiders, to advise the Government of Sri Lanka on how to establish peace in that country. But we will concur with it if it regards force as the only language that unredeemed terrorists understand. And we will agree that, for all its efforts to secure peace, the government is in a difficult situation, which is aggravated by the efforts of well meaning outsiders who think they have the answers. We, in America, understand the helplessness we feel about international terrorism, with the bombing of US embassies in Africa fresh in our minds. Can we comprise with such terrorists and allow them to go unpunished? Can we reach an understanding with terrorists who do not respect basic civilized practices and are bent on causing havoc for their private ends? I think our answer will always be A No.

Pictures depict some of the 54 villagers hacked to death in their sleep by the LTTE in Gonagala village, Ampara District, Sri Lanka, in October 1999.