Comment: Sri Lanka - and so it continues
Protests in Westminster echoed around the world
Also In The News
|
A penalty miss from Jermaine Beckford proved costly for Leeds United as they were beaten 2-1 on aggregate by Millwall in the League One play-off. |  |
Friday, 15, May 2009 04:18
By Charlie Sammut
For the last month the daily routine of those working in Westminster has been accompanied by the Tamil protests on Parliament Square, their plaintive calls for ceasefire framed by placards attesting to the Sri Lankan government's complicity in genocide. Above it all, the flags of the Tamils flutter - scenes echoed in Toronto and the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The scale of these demonstrations indicates the position the Sri Lankan conflict has begun to occupy in the global political consciousness. This position is given not just because of large Tamil diasporas in many nations or the unfolding humanitarian crisis, but due to the worrying reassertion of realpolitik inside many nations, a reassertion that sits alongside the continual undermining of the UN, EU and G8. Like Sudan before it, the ramifications of the conflict in Sri Lanka resonate far beyond the local.
The incongruity of the demonstrations is stark. Calls for freedom from violence and assertions of LTTE innocence from the Tamil protesters are jarringly juxtaposed with the knowledge that LTTE invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of female suicide bombers. The moral assertions at the heart of the protests ring hollow, a dishonest missive for a shameful conflict.
Yet the incongruity of the conflict is even starker. There is no innocence to apportion in this debate, except to those civilians now trapped between two inhuman protagonists on the ever-narrowing Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka. The actions of the Sri Lankan government under President Rajapaska represent a coldly calculated decision to annihilate an enemy, regardless of the consequences to its own civilians or its own international standings. Indeed, recent actions indicate that it is a decision taken in spite of the consequences.
The clearest expressions of this indifference are the recent shellings of established safe zones for Tamil citizens in Mullaitivu, the deliberate ignorance of international calls for ceasefire and the persistent withdrawal of visas from foreign journalist (domestic dissent is, with the notable exception of the Sunday Leader, extremely tepid - Sri Lanka is already rated the seventh most dangerous country in the world for a journalist). Rajapaska's government has taken repeated steps to control the presentation and format of the conflict, a conflict which they now realise may be nearing completion. No ceasefire will be called again. The concerns of the domestic and international community will remain unheeded.
The conflict has been exacerbated by the actions of the LTTE, not just over the course of the last few months, but for the last 25 years. The leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabakharan, has been accused of violently suppressing any other form of Tamil political mobilisation. Despite being held up as a heroic freedom fighter by the vast bulk of Tamils, even those waving flags in Parliament Square, his actions have crushed any form of non-violent political expression. For Tamils in Sri Lanka the choice is simple: LTTE or nothing. More recently, despite the almost total media blanket surrounding the region, it appears increasingly certain that the LTTE have proved as complicit in the deaths of civilians as the Sri Lankan government: perhaps more so, as they used them as human shields in intense shelling. Human Rights Watch was scathing in its criticism of the conflict, arguing: "Since January, both sides have shown little regard for the safety of civilians. The [Tigers] have violated the laws of war by using civilians as human shields. The Sri Lankan armed forces have indiscriminately shelled densely populated areas, including hospitals." Though short, the facts present the most damning critique of the conflict.
Most worrying for the international community, the situation in Sri Lanka represents a hardening of the precedents established in the Sudan and Congo. There is a worrying re-emergence of extreme nationalist politics and realpolitik within many nations. For those nations that do not represent a pressure-point in international affairs (ie any country outside the Middle East) the ability to perform atrocities inside their borders is becoming sacrosanct. In Sri Lanka, Rajapaska's government has simply decided that it is within its right to utterly exterminate opposition to it, a decision echoed in the chilling words of Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the defence minister. "There is no need of a ceasefire," he said. "They must surrender. That is it." These actions bear worrying repercussions for the international community. International institutions have again been systematically undermined. Calls for ceasefire and aid from the UN, the G8, the EU and the US have been consistently ignored and, to many, were responsible for the catastrophic final push into the Jaffna peninsula, a push that most recently resulted in over 400 civilian casualties.
Tamil civilians have been failed, by the LTTE and by Sri Lanka as a whole. Most experts agree that the initial reasons for the formation of the LTTE - political, social and economic discrimination against Tamils - have not diminished. The LTTE, like so many organisations before it, has not improved the situation of Tamils an iota. Indeed, the rise of Sinhalese nationalism on the back of this conflict is likely to worsen the situation, especially with the forthcoming elections in 2010. The sad truth appears to be that, for all the international outrage, Rajapaska's calculated decision may come off. Soon he will have crushed the LTTE, and international attention will surely move elsewhere, to some other pressing crisis.
Despite this, the conflict will weigh heavily on the future. Rajapaska may win the war, but he will not win the peace. Discriminated and oppressed Tamils will always have cause for grievance and it is unlikely that the terrorist attacks that have scarred Sri Lanka over the last 25 years will fade away so easily. Furthermore, one prescient analyst has argued that Rajapaska has stolen political defeat from the jaws of military victory. This argument needs more articulation, particularly by the international community. Rajapaska has delegitimised a democratic government, crushing internal dissent, destroying the lives of many of his citizens and lowering himself to the same depraved tactics as the terrorists he sought to crush. The future is bleak for both Tamils and Sinhalese, realpolitik has triumphed within Sri Lanka's borders and the country is becoming an increasingly dangerous place for dissenters. Sri Lanka is heading towards an uncertain economic future with tumbling growth rates, export prices and tourism. What price an increasingly restrictive future?
Shortly before the darkest hours of this conflict Lasantha Wickramasinghe, the editor of the noted Sunday Leader, was murdered outside his house. In an editorial published days before his death he foretold this occurrence, and indicated that people in government would be complicit in his murder. For many, it was the death knell of democracy in Sri Lanka, but the bell is still ringing. The impotent chorus of international indignation appears to do little to silence it.