Photo courtesy First Post

During his recent visit to Sri Lanka, India’s External Affairs Minister, Mr. SM Krishna reminded that President Mahinda Rajapaksa was committed to a ‘13th Amendment Plus approach.’ This has been an old promise of the Government, one which was so prominently made in 2008-2009 as well. The timing of this promise seems perfect; the next session of the UNHRC in Geneva is around the corner.

13A: debate

The debate concerning the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka has now been revived. A useful contribution made in recent times which contains important suggestions regarding the full implementation of the 13^th Amendment is that of a principled advocate of federalism, Asanga Welikala (Groundviews, 12 Feb. 2012). Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka argues that the current deadlock can be broken by setting up an interim administration in the North (Transcurrents, 13 Feb. 2012).

We remember the numerous contributions made in the past too. One particularly striking and lucid contribution that comes to mind is that of Prof. Shirani A. Bandaranayake, who, writing as the Dean of the Law Faculty of the Colombo University (currently, Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice), made a strong case in favour of improving the present devolutionary framework by, inter alia: changing the Provincial Council (PC) structure (i.e. bringing down the current provincial unit from nine to five PCs), through a re-demarcation of territorial boundaries (i.e. 5 regions, in which, for example, the Northern and Eastern Provinces are merged – this was before the de-merger); and, as advocated by many, through a clearer definition of Centre/Provincial functions [see ‘Devolution’ in Sri Lanka Year 2000: Towards the 21^st Century (CRDS, May 1995), p. 132-142]. Similarly, much has been written about this topic.

Implementing 13A: practical

The voluminous literature on the 13^th Amendment offers valuable lessons. And yet we are faced with the question: what is to be done about the 13^th Amendment? Should it be fully implemented, should it be ‘13A Plus’ or ‘13A Minus’? Is it really useful, or, how useful is it, really?

The implementation of the 13th Amendment (especially in the North) does appear to be the most practical thing to do at the present moment. In this regard, we raise some famous arguments. One is that since it is part of our Constitution, the 13^th Amendment should be implemented. Another is that given the current political context, implementing the 13^th Amendment is the most reasonable or acceptable middle-ground that we can reach. It is the most practical thing to do, and without the implementation of the 13^th Amendment, one cannot even imagine how something more could be realized. Rejection of the 13^th Amendment is simply unacceptable; constitutionally, politically and diplomatically.

These are valid arguments, when viewed from a narrow legal and political perspective. But the upsurge in demands asking for the immediate implementation of the 13th Amendment does give rise to some problems. One is that this demand does lead to, perhaps inadvertently, a state of doggedness in certain commentaries whereby the message seems to be that implementing the 13^th Amendment is the only way out; any rejection of the 13th Amendment is thereby strongly critiqued. Secondly, the deep attachment to the 13th Amendment (and 13th Amendment only) could lead to the forgetting, or disregard, of the deep cultural and attitudinal problems that make devolution appear so difficult and deadly in Sri Lanka.

There is nothing sacrosanct about the 13th Amendment, and there are a number of reasons why one can and should entertain the idea of rejecting the 13th Amendment if necessary (based on the condition that there is commitment to better what already exists). This is not to say that the 13th Amendment should be rejected tomorrow. Rather, it is to point out that there are alternatives available if necessary, and that there is no reason why one should be starry-eyed about it. Why?

Indian intervention

It is necessary for Sri Lanka – especially at this ‘post-war’ stage – to think afresh about its most significant problem or challenge: devolution. The history surrounding the Indo-Lanka Accord is a critical factor which makes the 13th Amendment one of the most reviled piece of legislation which is part of the Basic Law of the land (even though it is also the most significant, in terms of providing devolution of powers to the periphery). A commitment to devolution does not mean the uncritical acceptance of all instruments that grant devolution. The search for a framework which is ours, and not one which has been imposed upon us, is a useful exercise. It is a point which needs to be made today, but one which we are reluctant to make; because we tend to consider this piece of legislation to be sacred, and advocating its implementation, the diplomatic thing to do.

Part of the Constitution

While the Constitution needs to be implemented in full, relying too much on the argument – that the 13^th Amendment should be implemented because it is part of the Constitution – appears, at times, to be unconcerned or uncritical about what is being implemented in the first place. It is a convenient argument, and can even amount to a dishonest one; one which can be conveniently used to shield yourself from strong Sinhala-nationalist criticism (‘look, it’s part of the Constitution, so why blame me for advocating devolution?’)

Also, one cannot, having raised the argument, also claim that some controversial provisions cannot or should not be implemented; such an argument will be met with the equally forceful argument that if so, there is no great difference between implementing part of the Constitution and implementing part of an amendment to the Constitution.

13A: a political ‘middle-path’?

It is questionable as to what amounts to the political ‘middle-path’ as regards the issue of devolution. What is to be remembered here is that there is no purely objective ‘middle-path’, especially in politics and political commentary. All things that come with that often comforting tag should be viewed with suspicion (like all political columns that appear with the tag ‘Middle-Ground’ ought to be considered with a lot of suspicion!). Importantly, middle-of-the-road positions appear useful only so long as they are not contested. But the moment such positions (roads and paths) are probed and interrogated, and the moment the advocate of such a road begins to clarify and explain, the broadness or narrowness of such paths begin to be exposed, and they appear to shift towards one extreme or the other and will in turn be the topic of great contention.

For example, given the current deadlock, implementing the 13^th Amendment appears to be a ‘middle-path’. But if you admit that there needs to be further improvement, it becomes a shifting, sliding, path. On the other hand, if you advocate 13^th Amendment as the only solution, it becomes useless from a devolutionary perspective, and one slides in the other direction, towards the position of an apologist for the anti-devolution camp. Furthermore, to be sure of the middle-path, can we be sure about the two extreme paths? On the one hand, the two extremes are: ‘no-devolution’ and ‘separatism’. But what if ‘federalism’ too is considered to be an extremist position by a majority of the people? If then how does one objectively figure out what the middle-position is: 13A or ‘13A minus’? In short then, there is no reason why one should uncritically accept all that appear to be ‘moderate’ solutions; especially if that ‘moderate’ solution is considered to be the implementation of the 13th Amendment.

13A: ‘incurably flawed’

More importantly, the 13th Amendment is in any case a flawed framework in terms of guaranteeing devolution of powers. It is precisely for this reason that some of the suggestions and studies mentioned above have been made in the first place. The TNA’s critique in this regard is not surprising, and the rejection of the 13^th Amendment is not limited to the approach of the LTTE or the TNA. Let’s revive our memories here.

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka (who is today the strongest critique of the TNA), writing a very interesting and useful piece recently, seems to be disgusted with the approach adopted by the likes of M.A. Sumanthiran (TNA-MP) towards the 13^th Amendment. Dr. Jayatilleka points out that Mr. Sumanthiran (like M.I.A flipping the bird in the US), has raised the middle finger at the 13^th Amendment (Groundviews, 12 Feb, 2012).

But here’s Minister GL Peiris, once upon a time, on the flaws of the 13^th Amendment (and showing the finger at it):

“There is some talk in certain quarters about the resuscitation, the revival, of the 13^th Amendment… I maintain that the 13^th Amendment does not deserve to be resuscitated, you cannot breathe life into it for the simple reason that its foundation is incurably flawed… there never was a genuine desire to devolve power through the medium of the 13^th Amendment. It was an exercise in insincerity. It was a response to external pressures that could not be resisted at that time… What is more, in my view, the 13^th Amendment has inflicted irreparable damage on the procedures and techniques of negotiating with regard to constitutional and ethnic amity. This is because the 13^th Amendment has bred a great deal of cynicism. This is so because there is a wide gulf between the appearance and the reality.” [emphasis added – as stated during the P. Navaratnarajah Memorial Oration delivered on 28 July 1997, contained in GL Peiris, Towards Equity (2000), p. 148. Interestingly, Prof Peiris reiterates this message in the exact same words (… ‘its foundation is incurably flawed’) in a speech delivered to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in New Delhi, on 18 December 1997. See ibid, p. 185].

The point here is that it is not difficult to understand why the 13^th Amendment is critiqued and even rejected by the TNA (it is rejected even by the likes of Mr. Anandasangaree, even though that rejection may not be articulated in the way it is done by the TNA). There is a reason why the TNA, and many others, show the middle finger to the 13^th Amendment. Yes, we may be in a ‘strange place, a time-warp’, but one in which Mr. Sumanthiran seems to be echoing, not only the words of Anton Balasingham, but also the words of Prof. GL Peiris as well. It is perhaps necessary, therefore, to take serious note of this constitution-making history when critiquing the TNA’s rejection of the 13th Amendment.

What does this amount to?

The resolute advocacy of the 13th Amendment then appears to be a both practical and useless. It is practical in that it breaks the deadlock. It is, however, useless when considering numerous different factors, the most important of them being the fact that it is ‘incurably flawed’ anyway. Also, once we take into account numerous other political factors, such as the unwillingness of the Government to devolve powers, the fact that the demands of the major Tamil political parties going beyond the 13th Amendment, and, as Welikala points out, the inability on the part of politicians to change the attitude on this issue of devolution, we soon realize that there is bound to be another serious deadlock even if the 13th Amendment is implemented today – especially if it happens (and how else would it happen?) due to some serious political/diplomatic pressure, and hence, with great reluctance and no conviction.

Beyond 13A: rebuilding trust

At the heart of the matter is a very serious question of trust; the absence of trust in certain groups that their demand for devolution is ultimately to create nothing but a separate state. One of the most critical challenges before us in this regard is the creation of a political culture which is more open to debate and discussion about devolution; which includes a commitment to listen to different and often conflicting perspectives about power-sharing. The challenge also is to build a political leadership which is more honest in its commitment to devolution within a sovereign and united Sri Lanka, one which is willing to share power, one which is more honest and sincere about its political promises (one which is sorely lacking, today).

What is required is not some artificial political culture or leadership which attempts to be overly objective, or neutral or one which proclaims to tread that often mushy political ‘middle-path’. Rather, it has to be a culture and a political society which is open to, and celebrates, the debate and engagement with conflicting perspectives, subjectivity, prejudices and biases, but with a view to ‘hammering out a compromise’, as the late Lakshman Kadirgamar once put it. That compromise has to be struck, for there cannot be absolute winners in this game.

Government-TNA: a ‘cold-war’

In this regard, what is most critical to note at the present juncture is the ‘cold-war’ that exists, especially between the Government and the TNA.

Going by some of the views of the Government and its representatives/supporters, the most significant problem is the attitude (the ‘LTTE-mindset’) of the TNA. The TNA was the proxy of the LTTE, and it is a very serious mistake if the TNA takes this criticism raised by many quite lightly. It needs to be mindful of, and whenever necessary critique, what the LTTE stood for, the kind of damage it did to a country, and to a population; especially to innocent men, women and children, belonging to all ethnic communities – as highlighted most forcefully by the likes of Dr. Jayatilleka.

The TNA should also try to win the hearts and minds of the Sinhala majority, and in that process, every single intervention of the TNA would be watched and read with care. For example, writing about the devolution of police powers recently, Mr. Sumanthiran begins a paragraph with the following sentence: “The myth that the devolution of police powers will lead to secession is as fanciful as it is ludicrous” (The Island/dbsjeyaraj.com, 9 Feb. 2012). What Mr. Sumanthiran would do well to remember is that secession will never be considered ‘fanciful’ or ‘ludicrous’ by a majority of the people and especially by the Sinhalese. First impressions do count and the initial impression a sentence of this nature creates is that the likes of Sumanthiran are not taking the fear of secession held by a lot of people in this country with the degree of seriousness that it deserves, even after a secessionist war. In that sense, the TNA needs to play a very careful role in their new political struggles within a united Sri Lanka. It also needs to come forward not only as representatives of the Tamil people (or of the Tamil nationalists), but also of the oppressed and marginalized belonging to all communities. That can be done if the TNA starts to voice its concerns more strongly about issues affecting the totality of the people of this country (economic, education, human rights not restricted to the North and the East, etc.).

But, on the other hand, it is necessary to move on with the TNA and to do so, one needs to, in the least, attempt to trust the TNA even though it may be a difficult task.  The Government and its ministers seem to be rejecting all that the TNA does today. This is not only because the TNA is perceived as a proxy of the LTTE, but also because it is strategically necessary for the Government to do so, as the TNA still has support within the Tamil community. Also, the critique of the TNA by other Tamil groups also amounts to, at times, a political gimmick. For example, Minister Douglas Devananda slams the TNA for advocating self-rule (even within a united Sri Lanka); and in doing so, the attempt is to single-out the TNA as an extremist party. But what goes unsaid is that while one can interpret ‘self-rule’ in different ways, what Minister Devananda wants as the final solution – i.e. a ‘13A Plus’ solution – does amount to a measure of self-rule as well. There is a point about the TNA pushing for more devolution with such loaded terms. But that cannot be necessarily critiqued by those who demand the same in different words.

Furthermore, it is necessary to take the TNA’s reconciliatory statements in a spirit of friendship. It has, in the past few months, issued some statements which should help build trust and confidence in the people, especially the Sinhalese (eg. statement about the problems in the education system, R. Sampanthan’s statement about not betraying the Sinhala people, and TNA’s recent acknowledgment of the good work done by the Government concerning rehabilitation). If the Sinhala majority is always going to point the finger at the TNA and state (however correct this may be) that the TNA was the proxy of the LTTE, then – let’s be clear about this – there will be no progress whatsoever.

The point is not to forget the LTTE/TNA’s past (to ‘forget’ is a mistake). Rather, it is to attempt to move on from here. This is not happening today at the (party) political level. But it should be possible. Take, for instance, the above sentence of Mr. Sumanthiran concerning police powers and secession. If necessary you can read it selectively and continue to be antagonistic. Or else, you can read the entirety of the passage, the remaining lines being: “There is no Tamil political party in Sri Lanka that is even remotely interested in dividing the country. For our part, we are clear that a durable solution to the ethnic problem must be found within the contours of a united Sri Lanka.” In doing so, one ought to take note of the political commitment made to live within a united country. But where is that effort being made, especially by those in Government?

Conclusion

A political culture in which there is a widening gap between what is being promised and what is being actually realized develops into a culture of extremely bad faith, of broken promises, of hypocrisy. It breeds cynicism, a leading to the embrace of an ‘anything-goes’ kind of attitude by the people, and by a minority, in particular. It is a culture which is also immature, which sends wrong signals to its people and to the wider world. This is not what Sri Lanka deserves. Its people deserve much better. A search for something more than the 13th Amendment should take place too; a search for what laws and constitutions cannot always guarantee.

• “Sound is no substitute for argument”: Exclusive video of TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran’s speech in parliament against 18th Amendment
• The 13th Amendment as a political solution
• Hansard on 18th Amendment debate, 8 September 2010
• Final text of TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran’s speech in Parliament opposing the 18th Amendment
• Going beyond the 13th Amendment: Newspaper coverage of the Sri Lankan’s President’s assurance to India

Photo courtesy CNN. AP/Getty Images.

There has been in recent weeks a revival of interest in the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment, as part of a broader on-going debate triggered by the publication of the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) about future constitutional reforms addressing the need for devolution and democratisation. As implicitly acknowledged by the LLRC, the salutary need for a new post-war constitution, or substantial reforms to the existing one, is a matter of pivotal importance in moving Sri Lanka from its ‘post-war present’ to a truly ‘post-conflict future.’ These fundamental reforms, however, will involve sustained negotiations among all stakeholders about details of process and substance, and are distinct from the set of issues with regard to how the implementation of the existing framework of devolution in terms of the Thirteenth Amendment might be undertaken.

Without in any way foreclosing the need for more substantial reforms, the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which all Tamil political parties from the EPDP to the TNA have demanded, can be seen as an important confidence-building measure. If undertaken with a sense of purpose and goodwill, it can demonstrate that the government is serious about addressing minority grievances, help consolidate an inclusive process towards agreeing further reforms, foster a culture of compromise and accommodation, encourage Sri Lanka’s friends abroad that there is hope for reconciliation and peace on a more durable constitutional footing, and provide at least some answers to its critics.

The critical point about all this is that the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment, as a starting point, is one of the few things on which both the TNA and the government can agree on without compromising either party’s core interests, and without pre-determining the possibilities of a future constitutional reform process. That is, it allows the government to maintain its position on the unitary state, while it also allows the TNA the space to negotiate for greater autonomy than what is provided under the Thirteenth Amendment. The exercise of full implementation, undertaken in tandem with government-TNA talks, or in deliberations in the proposed Parliamentary Select Committee, or in some other form, can strengthen one another and improve the chances of a successful agreement. Full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment can also possible be the springboard on which a potentially more broadly-based, inclusive and participatory process for future constitutional negotiations (and governance in the interim) can be constructed, with the involvement of other parties represented in all eight functional Provincial Councils, together with local government authorities, central institutions such as Parliament, and civil society.

Thus it would seem that full implementation makes imminent good sense, but it is the government’s ambivalence and prevarication that has given cause for scepticism, and strengthened the voice of its critics, especially in the Tamil diaspora. For this the government has no one to blame but itself, but it is still wholly possible if it so wishes, for the government to approach this with more sense than it has so far showed.

There were several implications of the government’s statement in 2008 that it was committed to the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment. Firstly, it was acknowledging the well-known fact that successive governments have not done so, and the announcement was welcome to the extent that, at least two decades after their introduction, these constitutional provisions were to be implemented and given effect in their entirety. In this of course the government was not expressing a policy choice but acknowledging the most basic of its legal duties to uphold and implement the supreme law of the land.

Secondly, when this commitment was originally articulated, it was in the nature of an interim measure – so as to implement the extent of devolution already provided in the Constitution in the North and East in particular – in anticipation of constitutional reform proposals by the APRC, and in the wider context of a new, post-war constitutional settlement for power-sharing. Since then, however, less and less has been heard from the government about the commitment to full implementation. Beyond the election and constitution of the Eastern Province (a process also expected in the Northern Province in the future), and where the experience of devolved governance has been less than ideal, no tangible changes signifying the necessary political commitment to realising devolution have been forthcoming.

Instead, not only has the central government taken a dominant role in the economic and development activities within the Eastern Province, supplanting the elected Provincial Council, but senior officials including the President have in comments made to the media subsequently averred that the government is in fact not intending to concede all of the devolved powers, in particular those over police and law and order, and state land. On the other hand, there has been no official or unequivocal withdrawal of the full implementation policy either. The governing paradigm of post-war reconstruction and development appears to be premised on the notion that only the central government can effectively deliver, and there is insufficient regard to the fact that devolution and development are not mutually exclusive concepts. In the light of these issues, there is a question mark as to what the government’s policy with regard to devolution actually is.

However, for the reasons outlined at the outset, it is to be hoped that a more enlightened policy direction will be taken, and if the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment is to be undertaken, the issues discussed in what follows would require to be addressed with a view to realising the fullest extent of devolution within its parameters.

In addition to the matters highlighted below, a more comprehensive review of the experience of devolution, akin to that undertaken by the Asoka Gunawardane Committee in 1996 is urgently needed. It should also be remembered that almost all of the issues identified by that Committee remain relevant, and much of its recommendations have not been implemented. A prospective review body therefore must be given a wide mandate to recommend necessary changes including the statutory framework of devolution, as well more generally central legislation impacting on devolution, the body of administrative rules and practices governing the operation of public administration at central, provincial and local levels, and the financial rules and procedures. In other words, a ‘comprehensive devolution audit’ must be undertaken with regard to all existing law, policy and practice, and recommendations made for amending, repealing and replacing anything that is inconsistent with the maximum level of devolution permissible under the Constitution. Needless to say, the sustained commitment of the government to introducing these wide-ranging changes is imperative. As it was observed at the outset, changes of this nature would be wholly consistent with the mandate of the President and the UPFA in terms of the Mahinda Chintana Idiri Dekma, as they do not impinge on the unitary structure of the state.

What are the structural changes that are required?

For maximising the extent of devolution within the parameters of the Thirteenth Amendment, changes need to be made to the statutory structure set out in the Provincial Councils Act, as amended (and consequential amendments to other central legislation).

Substantively, the main issue with regard to the Provincial Councils Act is the centrality that it accords to the Governor in the day-to-day administration of the Province. The main focus of change in this regard must be to establish a more even balance between the Governor, and the Chief Minister and the Board of Ministers. It is recognised that the constitutional framework requires that certain functions are performed by the Governor, and which therefore cannot be taken away by ordinary legislation. However, there is no reason why, in relation to many other functions, a more appropriate balance cannot be struck by either removing the functions of the Governor altogether, or by making the exercise of his powers expressly subject to the advice of the Chief Minister and the Board of Ministers. Amendments to the Provincial Councils Act require the following changes.

Many of the functions of the Governor and the President in Part of II of the Provincial Councils Act dealing with meetings and conduct of business of the Provincial Council including those of a symbolic nature are unnecessary, except those that are required for purposes of legal rights and liabilities of the provincial administration through the Provincial Council. The provision requiring the President’s approval for rules of procedure of the Provincial Council regarding financial matters and for prohibiting discussion on the conduct of the Governor in matters in which he acts in his own discretion is unnecessary and may be removed. There is no justification for prohibiting discussion of the Governor in the Provincial Council. There is also no reason why the Governor should make rules allocating business among the Ministers. This may be done by the Board of Ministers in consultation with the Chairman of the Provincial Council, and subject to the approval of the Provincial Council.

The powers and functions of the Governor in regard to provincial finance under Part III of the Provincial Councils Act are some of the main impediments to devolution and to the promotion of greater financial responsibility and accountability at the provincial level. These powers and functions must be transferred to the Chief Minister, who may be regarded ex officio as the Finance Minister of the Province. However, the present rule-making powers of the Governor with regard to the Provincial Fund and the Emergency Fund need not be conferred on the Chief Minister, but require to be embodied in provincial statutes (i.e., a ‘provincial financial procedure statute’). To the extent any oversight by the Governor is necessary, this is afforded by the requirement of assent by the Governor to the annual Appropriations Statute (and other ad hoc supply statutes such as supplementary grants and votes on account).

The functions and powers of the Governor in relation to the provincial public service and Provincial Public Service Commission under Part IV of the Provincial Councils Act are indefensible from a good governance as much as a devolution point of view. The concern about politicisation that seems to be part of the rationale for vesting control of the provincial public service in the Governor is misplaced in that the Governor’s impartiality cannot be guaranteed, and serves to undermine the authority and autonomy of provincial Ministers in circumstances where the Governor chooses to interfere in provincial Ministries by using his powers over public officers. Accordingly, the Governor’s powers and exclusive discretions under Part IV of the Provincial Councils Act should be removed, and those functions should be vested in the Provincial Public Service Commission, the Chief Secretary and Board of Ministers as the case may be.

Moreover, in addition to the overhaul of rules, practices, procedures and structures in relation to public administration and public finance (the details of which should to be recommended by a suitable body appointed for that purpose), a matter of specific importance that must be highlighted here is the sub-provincial level administrative structures that currently operate as direct agents of the central government. In line with the recommendations of the Asoka Gunawardane Committee, Divisional Secretaries and Grama Niladharis must be brought under the provincial public service.

What are the possible modalities of change?

Reform of the substance of the statutory powers relating to especially finance and the provincial public service in the directions suggested here would enhance the autonomy of the elected provincial executive substantially.

There are three possible modalities of introducing these changes to the underlying statutory regime of the Thirteenth Amendment. The first is by way of piecemeal amendments to the Provincial Councils Act (and other central legislation). This would address the most serious issues requiring attention, but would not disturb the established framework too much. Secondly, the Provincial Councils Act could be repealed and replaced with a new Act, which sets out a fresh approach and also may consolidate consequential amendments to other central legislation required by a new beginning. Thirdly, the most radical option is to repeal the Provincial Councils Act, and replace it with nine different Acts, negotiated between the central government and each Provincial Council according to the needs and preferences of each Province, and setting out, within the outer limits determined by the parameters of the Thirteenth Amendment, a greater or lesser degree of devolution depending on the democratic desire of each Province.

A further innovation that is possible (indeed this applies to the first and second options as well) is that any centre-provincial autonomy agreement embodied in central legislation be made susceptible to periodic review (for e.g., every ten years). The great attraction of this approach is that it has both symbolic and substantive importance in placing the relationship between the central government and each Province at a constitutional, and as close to a notion of equal partnership, as is possible within the ultimate hierarchy necessarily dictated by the unitary state. It may be that eventually, all Provinces end up demanding exactly the same or maximum level of powers, but the symbolism of the approach remains.

Addressing the political and administrative culture of devolved governance

As has been repeatedly affirmed, one of the enduring barriers to the meaningful realisation of devolution are not so much formal structures and the text of legal or constitutional provisions, as the attitudes and dispositions of the people who implement them, especially elected political representatives and public servants. As long as there is no interest or incentive to change these attitudes, very little can be proposed by way of institutional or procedural changes that have any chance of success. Even the most acutely designed system can be denuded by apathy, hostility or incapacity, and at least part of the experience under the Thirteenth Amendment testifies to that. Dependent on leadership and commitment to change, however, the following measures are worthy of consideration.

One of the most striking features of the experience of devolution in Sri Lanka in comparison to any other system of multi-level government elsewhere, is the near total absence of co-ordination mechanisms (also known as inter-governmental relations). No devolved system can work without such supporting mechanisms, which range from political bodies for the making and co-ordination of policy, to bodies that co-ordinate public administration, to highly specialised, technical bodies that support specific aspects of governance. A future review body needs to address the specific requirements in this area. The Asoka Gunawardane Committee made several recommendations on this which continue to have relevance.

Flowing from the absence of co-ordination and consultation mechanisms between multiple levels of government, is the absence of political and administrative arrangements and agreements, which may be informal or quasi-legal in nature, that form the basis of co-operation between these levels. It is neither possible nor desirable that every detail of the functional modalities of a multi-level system should be rigidly enshrined in legal instruments, and these arrangements provide the required structure and discipline to inter-governmental relations, at the same time as remaining sufficiently flexible and amendable in response to changing exigencies of government. While this is not the place to suggest in any specific way what these future agreements should be, it is nevertheless possible to identify broad themes on which such agreements are desirable.

A general ‘concordat on executive power’ between the central government and the provincial administrations seems advantageous for a number of reasons. First among these is that such a concordat can articulate broad principles in the exercise of governmental power as between multiple levels of government. These principles reflect political, not legal undertakings. Broadly such a concordat should seek to regularise and ensure mutual respect for constitutionally assigned spheres of activity by ensuring adherence to such principles as devolution (autonomy of the provincial sphere), co-operation, legality, transparency and democracy.

Within the broad framework of an executive concordat, it is possible to envisage further protocols or agreements between the central government and the provincial level on such matters as the exercise of concurrent legislative powers (for e.g., by the central government choosing not to exercise those powers except where there is a pressing necessity), the exercise of the discretionary powers of the Governor (excluding the transfer of other statutory functions to the Board of Ministers as proposed above), inter-ministerial working arrangements, budgetary procedures and allocations, and substantive policy areas including development, sectoral/industrial matters (for e.g., tourism, fisheries, agriculture, natural resources, etc.).

Concluding remarks

The experience of Provincial Councils in the past two decades demonstrates that the full constitutional extent of devolution that is possible by an innovative and flexible approach to the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment has not been realised. This is due to straightforward non-implementation of constitutional provisions, or because of attempts at clawing back the constitutional scheme through central legislation or administrative and political practices.

The full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment therefore requires a thoroughgoing review of these laws, policies, and practices. The possibilities and policy options that are available in this exercise have been suggested, albeit in outline, in the preceding discussion. In the final analysis, however, no amount of institutional reform is likely to succeed without the critical element of political will and commitment to making devolution work. That has been the experience in the past, and it remains to be seen whether this will change in the future. If undertaken properly, it provides both a convenient and a principled way out of the looming deadlock that seems to threaten constitutional negotiations in post-war Sri Lanka.

Note: This discussion draws on a more extensive assessment of the Thirteenth Amendment through the experience of the Eastern Provincial Council entitled Devolution in the Eastern Province: Implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment and Public Perceptions, 2008-2010, published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in 2010. This publication, available in English, Sinhala and Tamil, can be downloaded here.

• Devolution of powers under the 13th Amendment in Sri Lanka: Fact or Fiction?
• THE DISSOLUTION OF THE NORTH CENTRAL AND SABARAGAMUWA PROVINCIAL COUNCILS: THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
• DEVOLUTION AND THE CONCEPT OF CONCURRENCY: ABOLITION OR REFORM?
• THE APRC PROCESS: FROM HOPE TO DESPAIR
• The 13th Amendment as a political solution

Image credit Jeremy Suyker, via Foto8

The Government recently unveiled a policy regarding land in the North and East through the introduction of a Cabinet Memorandum (memo) titled ‘Regularize Land Management in Northern and Eastern Provinces,’ which was subsequently followed by a Land Circular (circular) titled ‘Regulating the Activities Regarding Management of Lands in the Northern and Eastern Provinces’ (Circular No: 2011/04) issued on 22^nd July by the Land Commissioner Generals Department in Colombo in order to operationalise the memo.

Since then, there have been reports of notices and forms being issued in areas of the North and East for people to register their land under the Bimsaviya project to ensure title registration of their property. At the time of writing, it was unclear whether this specific process was the same as the one set out under the circular. Contradictory information was received from the different divisional secretariat units (DSs) where the forms were distributed; increasing confusion regarding the process and the rights of those owning and claiming land in the North and East.

The memo and related circular mentioned above are the most recent policy initiatives undertaken by the Government with regard to land in the North and East. This current policy initiative if implemented will have far-reaching implications for key issues including how land claims can be decided, how land is to be alienated, and types of ownership and control that can be provided, which in turn will impact the process of post-war normalisation and development projects. The focus is on state land but the policy initiative will have implications for private land.

Given the complexity of land issues in the North and East and the fundamental importance of land to multiple processes including reconstruction of permanent houses, rehabilitation of war-affected families, return to one’s land, development and strengthening co-existence, there is an urgent requirement for the Government to provide a policy framework to deal with the issue of land taking on board the rights, vulnerabilities and needs of affected communities and in line with legal obligations and human rights standards. While some of the land issues such as lack of awareness relating to ownership, competing claims, loss of documentation, secondary occupation of land by other civilians or state actors, including the military, may not be unique to the North and East, the context of the war resulted in complicating and increasing the scale of these problems. This article will highlight key concerns relating to this current initiative, for more information on the process and recommendations please see our report here.

Key Concerns: Given the complexity of land issues in conflict-affected areas, the necessity to formulate policies and processes to address these problems is all too apparent. Hence, the overall aim of this current initiative needs to be welcome. However, this circular contains particular provisions, which are problematic and unclear and may exacerbate fear and apprehension among affected communities. Some of the key concerns include:

• The policy aims to advantage the land claims of those who left during the war, but the circular does attempt to recognise the rights of other civilians who secured control over these lands and have developed them land. In such situations the circular suggests that alternate land can be provided for the original claimants. However, given that the circular also recommends that land transaction taken during the period of the war be ruled void as it was under “terrorist influence” the status of these claims is by no means clear. Thus, there is a risk that landowners and claimants, including some of whom secured government documentation for ownership, may be dispossessed.
• The involvement of the military in the different committees set out in the circular is particularly problematic.
• The policy fails to reference the National Land Commission that has not yet been established as per the Thirteenth Amendment.
• The lack of information on this process, both among government officers who are meant to take this process forward and to the general public, is a fundamental problem. The Government’s failure to develop a public awareness program has intensified the confusion and apprehension among the general public in the North and East. The memo does make reference to the Diaspora; hence, the publicity strategy for the circulation needs to be both national and international.
• There is a lack of clarity on who needs to apply for this process or whether all land owners and claimants in the entire North and East should comply.
• Lands acquired for national security and development purposes are exempt from the process laid out under the circular. Hence, there is lack of clarity on how the land rights of affected families will be guaranteed and how they will be compensated and restituted.
• There are stipulated, brief time periods for applications of land claims and appeals, which may prove inadequate.
• There was limited consultation of actors from the two provinces during the planning stages, and mainly limited to government officers. It is not clear whether the process is flexible to address problems that may crop up during the implementation.

Way Forward

While there is a need for new policy initiatives to address issues related to land in a post-war context, there are many concerns with the present process. These concerns need to be addressed immediately by the Government, ensuring that any process established to decide land claims is fair, just and equitable and is not perceived by communities as favouring any particular group.

Efforts need to be made in order to ensure that this policy initiative does not exacerbate land-related tensions and that solutions are found to address land needs of affected communities. There is a likelihood that problems may come up in the future if such processes do not factor in concerns highlighted in this article. In moving forward with the present process and any other land related initiatives, it is paramount that the authorities implement existing constitution and legal obligations, take on board the needs of communities and be transparent and inclusive in the formulation and implementation of any initiatives.

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Both authors are Senior Researchers at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the institutional anchor of Groundviews.

• Dr. Devanesan Nesiah on post-war / post-LTTE Sri Lanka
• Daily Security Report from UN – The plight of the North & East
• Reply to the Rebuttal of my article by the SJC87 Initiative
• Rights, Return & Resettlement: A Critique of the TNA Report on Resettlement
• Human Shields In The Battle Of Sri Lanka

Sunday Times, Grease Devils Graphic. Until the 14th of August 2011.

Google Earth Area Photos of Concentrated Grease Devil Sightings
See Below: (1) Jaffna, (2) Mullaththivu, (3) Trincomalee, (4) Batticaloa & Ampara, (5) Puttalam, (6) Sabaragamuwa, Kurunegala & Up Country

Sources

• Statement by Women on the Attacks on Women, Impunity and the Lack of the Rule of Law, issued by the Women’s Action Network
• JAFFNA: BRUTAL ASSAULT OF CIVILIANS IN NAVANTHURAI, http://groundviews.org/2011/08/25/jaffna-brutal-assault-of-civilians-in-navanthurai/
• Grease Devils at Navanthurai: People with military-Confrontation, Author confidential

Internet News Sources

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14704906
• http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2011/08/21/grease-devils-busting-the-myth/
• http://sundaytimes.lk/110814/News/nws_15.html

Grease Devil Incidents via GIS (Google Earth)
Note that D Indicates Alleged Devil Sighting and V Indicates Violence or Vigilante related to Devil. Download these incidents as a KMZ file here.

Jaffna

Mulaththivvu

Trincomalee

Batticaloa & Ampara

Puttalam

Sabaragamuwa, Kurunegala & Up Country

• Post-war, is the Sri Lankan Army going on a rampage in the North?
• JAFFNA: BRUTAL ASSAULT OF CIVILIANS IN NAVANTHURAI
• De-greasing social speculation over “grease devils” in Sri Lanka: Part II
• Searching for Sri Lanka’s Anna Hazare
• De-greasing social speculation over “grease devils” in Sri Lanka

I just viewed a documentary produced recently by Al Jazeera titled ‘Civil war leaves Sri Lankan women vulnerable’. The film has left me deeply disturbed, shocked and ashamed particularly because as a woman, I am not doing my duty in protesting vociferously against such atrocities. Some sections of the documentary appear to have been deliberately blocked for apparent reasons.

We cannot continue to turn a blind eye against the neglect of vulnerable women who are struggling to rehabilitate themselves and their families, post war. Why is there a lack of concern by the state as well as society towards these war victims?

Many households in the north and east are headed by women as most males have died, been incapacitated or gone missing after the war. Several families have been located in areas that do not yet have the basic amenities and continue to live in flimsy shelters as they do not have the resources, income or capability to build secure houses for themselves. This poses the question of how many houses have been built utilising the grant provided by India expressly for this purpose soon after the end of the conflict.

In addition to destitution and neglect, many women and children suffer from post traumatic stress disorders due to the immense suffering experienced as a consequence of the ethnic conflict over the last thirty years and, particularly, during the final stages of the war.

The state has to be accountable for the safety and security of vulnerable women and children from stalkers of all types. However, the unnaturally extensive militarization strategy of the north and east maybe the cause for the breakdown in normal ethical and moral conduct. Also, the heavy concentration of power in the hands of those in authority in contrast to the financially, psychologically and emotionally affected majority of civilians leaves ample room for the abuse of power particularly towards the most vulnerable sections.

It is a disgrace to our nation that international media organizations should point out such atrocities to the entire world while we remain totally disinterested or in a state of denial.

The state and society need to act urgently to address the problem and restore our credibility to the world as a nation that cares and protects its citizens irrespective of their gender, social status or ethnic origin.

• Searching for Sri Lanka’s Anna Hazare
• Sri Lankan Women Human Rights Defenders: Linking Past and Present Challenges
• How hard is it to admit fault, Ambassador Wickramasuriya?
• No respite even after war: The rape, execution, torture and disappearances of IDPs in Sri Lanka
• Importance of psychosocial interventions in post conflict Sri Lanka

Whispering campaigns in Sri Lanka are the most speedy and penetrating campaigns that product promoting advertisers have not been able to make use of. Often in Sri Lanka these whispering campaigns have been political. They have also been on “negative impact” mode, socially. The latest is on the very sensational “Grease Devil” that is said to be after young women.

Opening for a “grease devil”

This has many stories making rounds and each round making it more bizarre than the previous round and the previous day’s. Worst is when media outlets use such stories for political interpretations of their own. The controversial “LankaeNews” (LeN) a not so professional web site carrying Sri Lankan news, reported on 12 August, 2011 a long story that gave life to gossip, captioned “Deadly flame of ‘Grease devils’ spreads: curfew in Samanthurai –King Dutugemunu’s sword vs people’s word”.

The report said, the so named elusive stalkers are on the prowl to abduct 14 breast feeding young mothers for a ritual to dig out the sword used by King Dutugemunu.  Justification of this fiction comes with the final paragraph that says, “no matter what…” the North Central Province reservoir dams are being dug by a powerful politico in search of King Dutugemunu’s sword and has pushed the archaeology department also into a quandary. Implied sub text of the whole story is that, it is for Mahinda Rajapaksa.

LeN’s “14 mothers” since August 12, have multiplied making rounds in Colombo and suburbs to 500, then to 1,000 and the last heard this morning (19 August) as 50,000 mothers. Most stories don’t talk of abductions now. Most now talk of night stalkers who come wearing well pointed “white iron” finger nails, that make scratching of  female breasts easy, to collect blood. Again the blood is said to be for a ritual that would release President Rajapaksa from a very bad astrological influence.

There are many deviated versions too that extend from saving Mahinda Rajapaksa from bad planetary effects to critical illness and to gain life long rule of the country that King Dutugemunu’s sword, (sometimes the crown as well) would guarantee.

Tracking the “grease devil” through media and gossip 

A very cursory glance at all the media stories, community stories told and retold over and over again with spicy alterations, the fear that has gripped society in very many areas and actual incidents that provoked people’s angry reactions in some parts of the country as acknowledged by the police and recorded in Courts of law, reveal a confusing pattern of social conflict that has evolved quite fast and has many unanswered questions. Its  the unanswered questions within this unexplainable social conflict, which makes the “Grease Devil” story worthy of dissection.

1. The whole “grease devil” phenomena had a pre event in Kahawatte, in  Ratnapura district, where an “elusive” serial killer was on the prowl for over an year. After his arrest, the man was identified as an army deserter. At the time of his arrest on 07 July, 2011 he was said to have killed 07, all elderly women, but in his interrogations he had accepted only 02 killings. The next day, 8 July, another army deserter was arrested from Kahawatte for the killing of another elderly woman. This murder spree of 03 women being killed within 03 months, and the killer(s) being elusive, came to be reported especially in the Sinhala media with spicy captions and the killer given an alias as “Bhoothaya” (Ghost or demon). Over months, the rural social psyche was being rooted in this mystic and elusive “Bhoothaya” with stories of villages around Opatha estate freezing in fear and some resorting to rituals seeking relief from Gods to rid their village(s) from ghosts. These rumours with more and more speculative media coverage, established the “Bhoothaya” story with fear, suspicion and frantic interpretations. During May – June period, “Bhoothaya” news got promoted to the front pages in Sinhala media. Meanwhile, the village Civil Defence Force (CDF) that was virtually disbanded almost 02 years ago, though some were still on the pay rolls, was reactivated to keep vigil in the night. While it is not known as to who initiated the CDF, villagers were not sure of the CDF that had many volunteers doing night rounds. Two days before the arrest of the first suspect, villagers came out on the streets in protest over police inactivity, with demands that the police be replaced by the army for their security. This brought the army and the STF to Kahawatte, reported in the media as a decision taken by the new IGP, on instructions from the defence ministry.
2. Thereafter, rumours were afloat in Colombo and suburbs, especially among the Sinhala middle class, about “Boothayas” in other remote areas, that gradually was given a twist, with the old fiction of “greased robbers”, turned into “grease devils” now hunting for young mothers. The Daily Mirror (DM) on 02 August reported that 07 youth alleged to have frightened women in the night and made homes in Ambagolla and Dodamgolla (Moneragala district) close doors and windows early evening, were produced in Courts. The news item was titled “Drunken grease devils scare women”.
3. Interestingly, the Police Spokesperson, SP Prishantha Jayakody was reported by the CDN on 05 August, 2011 as saying, “The grease yaka or the bhuthaya is a myth.” He was reported to have told the CDN, “The stories started when seven women were killed at Kahawatta. But all suspects are now in custody. All grease devils and other suspects arrested from various parts of the country(emphasis added) are in custody. No more grease yakas roam the country now.” His explanation on these new stories making rounds was that, “….some women had caught some `super natural forces’ and grease devils and found that they were from their own neighbourhood. Some women admitted that the persons who attacked them were not grease yakas but their own husbands who were under the influence of liquor. They had lied to the police to prevent their husbands from getting arrested,”
4. Just one week later, the IGP deploys the STF to track down “Grease devils” (emphasis added) not just in one village, but in more than half a dozen areas spread across 03 provinces. They included Hatton in CP, Badulla, Mahiyangana, Girandurukotte, Siyabalanduwa and Bibile in Uva Province and Rambewa in NCP according to DM (“STF on the lookout for grease devils”) of 12 August.
5. By then the “grease devil” scare had gripped more villages. In Haputale, 02 young men were hacked to death by estate workers who thought they were “grease devils”. Sunday Times (ST) of 11 August, had already passed judgement on the two who were killed by reporting they were caught “while intimidating women tea pluckers”. They had come from Moneragala on a motor bicycle wearing black said the ST report, but, was never proved so, in later investigations. There were also reports of villages in Galewela, Nuwara Eliya, Kandy and Ottamavedi getting into the grip of the “grease devil” syndrome. Quoting police sources, the media had counted 03 deaths by then.
6. On 11 August, the DM again reported that 06 youth from Halpe, who entered a tea estate in Uduwara, Badulla and tried to molest women were handed over to the Ella police, and that Ella police had taken into custody, a 3 wheeler they had used. Police were quoted as saying investigations are under way, but there were no reports of the youth being produced in Courts. The source of this whole story was also the police. In a second DM report the same day, the IGP is quoted as having deployed the STF in tracking down men who pose as “grease devils” to rob women (emphasis added). Yet police maintained there were no such issue as “grease devils”. Contradicting themselves, police were providing information about “grease devil” issues in different parts of the country, such as arrests in Alawathugoda, Bibile and Mahiyangane, where the police claimed persons posing as “grease devils” were arrested and investigations are continuing. But no reports of any being produced in Courts.
7. The second week of August ended with the “grease devil” issue gripping  Eastern Province more than in all other areas. The first was from Valachchenai where a woman was reported to have been attacked on Wednesday 10 August by a “grease devil” and warded in hospital, with deep scratches on her breasts (ST 14 August). Thereafter large uprisings were reported in Pottuvil where civilian population claimed they handed over 02 men suspected to be “grease devils” to the police, but the two had been released by the police. Large protests by the people who surrounded the police station, were first tear gased and then shot at, killing a protesting youth said to be a SLMC member. People claimed the two suspects handed over to police, were military intelligence men. Thereafter, Thirukkovil, Kinniya and Urani, were hot spots with very similar stories. Kinniya the difference was, instead of the police, the Navy camp became the target. People claimed again, 02 suspected “grease devils” were provided refuge in the navy camp.
8. Sinhala media also carried similar stories, with almost the same information, but the language and tone used, adding more speculation and a sense of desperation among villages. Yet the stories making rounds in Sinhala middle class circles were getting more political but on divergent lines.

• The more spicy and sensationalised of the two political versions, were getting more and more fixed on President Rajapaksa and when challenged for accuracy, were justified by saying even President Premadasa resorted to such awkward rituals, to avoid bad patches in his life and rule. “Leaders are that” was a stock answer.
• The second version argues that rumours were designed to bring disrepute on the government and disrupt public life. The unnamed but pointed reference is on the JVP. The CDN of 15 August in a news report titled “Political movement behind monster canard” said, “investigations conducted by the Police Intelligence Unit had revealed that the aim of spreading rumours about grease devils by this political group, is to disrupt peace in the country.”

First impressions on media reports

Of all news reports, the only confirmed cases of some tangible incident(s), comes from the East in Valachchenia, Pottuvil, Thirukkovil, Kinniya and Urani. In all cases except in Valachchenai, there is some involvement with the police and the security forces that the people had reason to get agitated for.

With little trust on the police, people in most areas had taken the responsibility of guarding their own village during nights, forming their own village “vigilante” groups.

Where people had taken the law unto their hands and deaths had occurred, was only in Haputale with 02 persons getting hacked to death. In Wellamboda Kandy, 01 had died from electrocution, trying to chase after a supposed “grease devil”.

All other deaths reported, were due to police firing at protesting crowds, that too in  Eastern protests.

All other news reports from very many areas that cited names of places – Ottamavedi, Galnewa, Rambewa, Wellamboda, Hatton, Nuwara Eliya, Alawathugoda, Mahiyangane, Girandurukotte, Siyabalanduwa, Bibile, Uduwara, Badulla, Ambagolla, Dodamgolla – mostly from Uva, have no clear proof of any incident, other than the police telling the media of incidents they claim, they are investigating.

What is most conspicuous was that, even the English media, generally accepted as more responsible than others, was not that responsible in their coverages. They too were taking the easy way out, carrying what the police had to say, using village gossip as dressings. For a very speculative issue that kept gripping more and more villages in fear and the rule of law and social order being compromised, there were no efforts to dig deep, with investigative reporting.

Speculations, realities and possibilities

1. Stories of “grease devils” stalking Tamil and Muslim areas spread quite fast with most Eastern Province villages getting agitated. Therefore minorities are feeling more insecure than the Sinhala people. Even in Kompannaveediya (Slave island) Muslim vigilante groups kept guard in the nights.
2. Rajapaksa regime is implicated in most instances. Many theories are gossiped around. (i) Blood in drops from breast feeding mothers collected for a ritual to bless President Rajapaksa (ii) Blood collected for a ritual to dig out King Dutugeminu’s sword/crown for President Rajapaksa
3. Political interpretation gossiped around, claim the whole “grease devil” story was used by the Rajapaksa regime to prove the military and the STF has to be deployed in all areas for security, even if the Emergency Regulations have to be lifted. This regime can not exist without the military, the argument goes, that also says the government is under pressure from international financial agencies to lift emergency regulations.

Summing up, it seems there is space to hypothesise that somewhere up the ladder, some brain(s ?) was trying to use the Kahawatte serial killing to justify the deployment of the STF at least, as most stories that were in the media, looks more like “plants” from the police. Perhaps the whole project blew beyond the expected size and went out of hand. Or was it ? This also coincides with the “hot news” that says, STF camps would  be established in every district. A news that was not contradicted nor denied by any in the regime, including the defence establishment.

Yet, what can not be clearly explained is, how such sensational stories wrapped with speculations, reach grass roots in remote areas so fast and with conviction. Also, how they provide or provoke social energy for spontaneous mobilisation of people. This perhaps needs a social psychiatrist to de construct the whole social narrative of the “grease devil”.

• The ‘Grease Devil’ Phenomena in Sri Lanka: A Brief Collation of Reports
• De-greasing social speculation over “grease devils” in Sri Lanka: Part II
• Post-war, is the Sri Lankan Army going on a rampage in the North?
• Reconciliation, a Political Settlement and the “Grease Devil”
• Women and Media Collective Press Conference on Violence Against Women

Image released by Police Headquaters which was saved allegedly in the phone of a 16 year-old who was arrested for a number of robberies in the Uva Province.

As we post this article, there is a tense situation in Kinniya, spilling over from yesterday on the issue of ‘grease devils’. A Daily Mirror SMS update notes that,

As this Reuters report notes,

“Historically, a “grease devil” was a thief who wore only underwear and covered his body in grease to make himself difficult to grab if chased. But lately, the “grease devil” has become a nighttime prowler who frightens and attacks women.”

The news reports are as bewildering as they are increasing in number, especially from the East. People are being killed, for no apparent reason. ‘Grease devils’ have been arrested, vigilante justice has been meted out (ironically leading to more deaths), curfews imposed, the STF is on the look out, but the mass panic persists. Well-known columnists have flagged these incidents as ‘an unbelievable collapse of confidence in law enforcement‘. Mainstream newspapers last Sunday covered this disturbing story (What the devil is going on?, The Grease Yaka Sightings: Fact Vs. Myth), but there’s generally confusion amongst the public that is fuelling anxiety and fear.

We received a report from a source in the East on this issue in Tamil and English, with the content in Tamil translated by him into English. We reproduce this content not as verified fact, but for open debate and discussion as dire markers of tension on the ground that we are very concerned can contribute to large-scale unrest and more deaths.

With verification of incidents extremely challenging given the context, law enforcement itself sans public legitimacy and many, rightly or wrongly, who believe that the ‘grease devils’ have links to the Sri Lankan military, it remains to be seen how the government will deal with this emergent threat to public order and security.

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இன்று அதிகாலை செங்கலடி பொலிஸ்பிரிவிற்குற்பட்ட சந்திவெலிபிரதேச திகிலிவெட்டையில் வீடொன்றினுள் புகுந்த மர்ம மனிதர்கள் வீட்டிலிருந்த இரு பிள்ளைகளின் தந்தையான இளையதம்பி புலெந்திரன் – (35) என்பவரை வாளினால் தாக்கிவிட்டு தப்பிச்சென்றுள்ளனர். இச்சம்பவத்தினையடுத்து சந்தேகத்தின்பேரில் சந்திவெலி இராணுவ முகாமில் கடமைபுரியும் இராணுவ சார்ஜன்ட் ஒருவர் பொதுமக்களால் மடக்கி பிடிக்கப்பட்டு இராணுவத்தினரிடம் ஒப்படைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளார். நாடுபூராகவும் ஏற்பட்டுள்ள மர்ம மனிதன் தொடர்பில் பல உயிர்கள் காவு கொள்ளப்பட்டுள்ளதுடன், பலர் காயமடைந்துமுள்ளனர். இதன் பின்னனியில் உள்ளவர்கள் தொடர்பில் பல கருத்துக்களும் வெளிவந்தவண்ணமுள்ளது.

1. துட்டகைமுனுவின் தங்க கிரீடத்தினயும், வாளையும் பெறுவதற்காக இளம்பெண்களின் இரத்ததை தேடி சிலர் செயற்படுவதாகவும் இவர்களுக்கும் அரசுக்கும் சம்பந்தம் இருப்பதாகவும் பாராளுமன்ற உருப்பினர் விஜித ஹேரத் பாராளுமன்றில் தெரிவித்தமை குறிப்பிடத்தக்க ஒன்று.
2. இதேவேளை ஜனாதிபதியின் ஆட்சி நீடிக்க வேண்டுமாயின் 1000 இளம் பெண்களின் இரத்தபிசேகம் செய்யப்படவேண்டும் என ஒரு வதந்தியும் உலாவருகின்றது.
3. அரசியல் ரீதியாக கருத்து தெரிவிக்கும் சிலர் நாட்டில் அவசரகால நிலைமையினை நீக்கவேண்டிய நிலையில் அரசு சர்வதேச அழுத்தங்களை முகம்கொள்வதால் இவ்வாரான நடவடிக்கைகளினால் மக்களிடம் பீதியை எற்படுத்தி அவசராகால சட்டத்தை தொடர்ந்தும் தக்கவைப்பதற்கான நடவடிக்கையில் அரசு இராணுவத்தை பயன்படுத்துவதாக கருத்தும் தெரிவிக்கின்றனர்.
4. இன்னும் சில ஆய்வாளர்கள் அண்மையில் இலங்கை சர்வதேசத்தில் எழுந்துள்ள போர் குற்றச்சாட்டுகளை எதிர்கொள்ள பெரும்பான்மை சமூகத்தின் ஆதரவினை பெற்றுக்கொள்வதற்காக இவ்வாரான நடவடிக்கைகளின் மூலம் இனக்கலவரங்களை உருவாக்கி கொண்டு அதன் மூலம் அரசியல் பலத்தை பெற முனைவதாகவும் தெரிவிக்கின்றனர். இதன்காரணமாகத்தான் மர்ம மனிதன் தொடர்பான பிரச்சனைகள் கூடுதலாக தமிழ் முஸ்லிம் பிரதேசங்களில் இடம்பெருவதாக குறிப்பிடுகின்றனர்.
5. மத அடிப்படையில் சிந்திக்கும் சிலர் கடந்தகால வன்செயல்களின் போது வன்மையாக கொல்லப்பட்டவர்களது ஆவி உரிய முறையில் அஞ்சலி செய்யப்படாமையினால் அவை அலைந்து திரிந்து மக்களுக்கு தொல்லை கொடுப்பதாகவும் கருத்து தெரிவிக்கின்றனர்.

இது இவ்வாறிருக்க இதேபோன்ற நிகழ்வு சுமார் 3 வருடங்களுக்கு முன்னர் கலாவத்தை பிரதேசத்தில் இடம்பெற்றதாக தகவல்கள் தெரிவிக்கின்றன. இராணுவ சிறப்பு பயிட்சி பெறும் படைப்பிரிவினர் வன்முறைகளின் போது எவ்வாறு தப்பித்துக்கொள்வது என்ற பயிட்சி நடவடிக்கையின் ஒருகட்டமாக பொதுமக்களது வீடுகளை தட்டிவிட்டு தப்பிச்செல்லும் பயிட்சில் ஈடுபட்டிருந்தமை பின்னர் தெரியவந்தது. ஆனால் தற்போது மர்ம மனிதனால் சிலர் காயங்களுக்கு உள்ளாக்கபட்டுள்ளமை கேள்வியாகவே உள்ளது.

எது எவ்வாறுரிந்தபோதும் இவ்விடயத்தில் பொலிஸாரின் கடமை சரிவர மேற்கொள்ளப்படவில்லை என்ற குற்றச்சாட்டு எழுந்துள்ளமை குறிப்பிடத்தக்க அம்சமாகும்.

Whatever the motive behind is, the victims and mass strongly believe that there are strong links between government, security forces including police and grease men, they point to the following as evidence of this;

1. When these grease men have been caught they were carrying military/army identity cards
2. Irakkamam, Pottuvil, Otamavadi, Valaichanai and in a few other places where people did manage to catch some of these “grease men” and people believe that they were not brought to justice and the police or security forces released them.
3. When people tried to catch “grease men” in Samanturai and some other parts of Batticaloa they enter the police station or army camps of the respective village and the forces protect these “grease men” and blame public.
4. Last not the least, the government is blindly refusing to put in place any security measures in order to restore law and order in the affected areas and instead are blaming victims and demoralizing them.

###

English translation of Tamil content provided by author (we have not checked for accuracy. Readers are kindly invited to cross-check)

This morning, “grease men” have entered a house in Thihilliverdhai in the Chanthivelli area which falls under the Chengaladi Police division and attacked Illaiyathambi Pulenthiran (35) a father of two with a sword. Soon after this incident, civilians in the area overpowered and apprehended a military sergeant from the Santhivelli camp on suspicion that he was one of the “grease men” and handed him over to the military.

Similar incidents took place three years ago in the Halwata (Chilaw) area. It was later learnt that escaping from civilians houses was a stage in the Special Forces training designed to help them escape when engaging in attacks.

Many lives have been lost and many people have been wounded in several parts of the country due to the presence of grease men. Many facts have also been revealed about the background to this incident.

1. MP Vijitha Herath stated in Parliament that some are attempting to get female blood in order to obtain the legendary gold crown and sword from Dutugemunu and that there is a connection between the Government and these incidents
2. At the same time there is another rumor spreading that a blood offering of 1000 young women is required for the reign of the president to continue
3. Some political commentators have stated that since the government is being pressurized by the international community to get rid of the emergency rule, the government is using the military to create a tense situation to justify the continuation of emergency regulations
4. Other researchers are of the opinion that this is an attempt to gain the support of the majority community and create ethnic disharmony among the communities in the light of the immense international pressure against the government on war crimes and gain political power. This could be the reason why the incidents relating to grease men are prevalent in Tamil and Muslim areas in the East.
5. Those who think on religious lines say that these are the spirits the dead coming to haunt us, particularly the spirits of those who faced violent deaths in the past.

Some of these “grease men” have also suffered injuries. Whatever the reasons may be the police have been accused of not carrying out their duties. 

• Chaos in Colombo: Mêlée over jobs indicates a serious economic problem in Sri Lanka?
• Photographic evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka, or not? (Updated)
• Milinda Moragoda: The gap between promise and reality
• The ‘Grease Devil’ Phenomena in Sri Lanka: A Brief Collation of Reports
• De-greasing social speculation over “grease devils” in Sri Lanka: Part II

We used the web service Tweet Book to capture all our tweets over the past year in a single PDF. We’ve tweeted thousands of times over the past twelve months and have covered,

• The media fallout of the farcical fast of senior government Minister Wimal Weerawansa in front of the UN HQ in Colombo.
• Praise for our model of journalism on C-SPAN video in the US, captured from an event at the United States Institute of Peace.
• Key statements by world leaders like Desmond Tutu on post-war reconciliation and accountability for war crimes
• Bell Pottinger’s sickening relationship with the incumbent government, largely hidden from public scrutiny
• Key reports on Sri Lanka from, inter alia, HRW, AI, ICG and the US State Department, including responses from senior Ministers and the Foreign Ministry
• Foreign relations and the tussle in Sri Lanka between India and China
• The court proceedings on Sarath Fonseka
• The UNP’s perennial leadership crisis
• Key updates on the LLRC, including additions to our media archives, the most comprehensive available on the web
• Key submissions to the LLRC, including holding mainstream media accountable for highly selective and erroneous reporting of certain submissions.
• The most comprehensive coverage of the 18th Amendment’s passage in Parliament across any media in Sri Lanka including in-depth analysis, articles and video interviews, plus video of submissions by the TNA in Parliament and the racist responses of fellow MPs.
• Visualisations flagging the hypocrisy behind promises to abolish the Executive Presidency, and the utter farce of the President appearing before Parliament after it was passed into law.
• In-depth and sustained coverage of the Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary General
• Unique use of web platforms to contextualise the first leaks from the UN Panel’s report and visualise key findings
• In-depth coverage of the Cablegate / Wikileaks affair, with the first and best visualisation to date of how it impacts Sri Lanka
• Unique use of Google Maps to visualise the extent of the devastating flooding in Sri Lanka in early 2011
• The bizarre boycott appeal by RSF against the Galle Literary Festival and the response to it
• The desecration of LTTE graves in Jaffna
• Coverage of the Cricket World Cup and its impact on post-war reconciliation, including a poll taken by hundreds, and flagging the surreptitious increase of fuel and essential items the day of the Finals.
• The launch of Moving Images – Sri Lanka’s first high definition short video productions – and media coverage around it
• Leading web investigations into utterly bogus newspaper advertisements against the UN report taken out by those closely embedded in the Army
• In-depth coverage of the leadership training programme, including the exclusive publication of the syllabi
• In-depth coverage of Channel 4′s video documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields including exclusive interview with its producers
• In-depth coverage of the recent Katunayake FTZ clashes, including exclusive video and photos from our affiliate, Vikalpa
• In-depth coverage of the recently held defeating terrorism seminar in Colombo, including flagging the bizarre statements of the US Defence Attache, which led to an official State Department press release just two days after

In addition we’ve covered the challenges facing and often, the failure of mainstream media including homophobic editorials and plagiarism, self-censorship, tragic example of racism and Sinhala chauvinism in post war Sri Lanka, war crimes allegations, rehabilitation, breakdown in democratic governance, human rights violations, censorship, clamping down on the freedom of expression, corruption, nepotism of the Rajapaksa family, compelling reviews of culture and art, news articles and information on contemporary events and issues in Sri Lanka.

Read the full book of our tweets below, or view full screen here. The book contains all the web links we’ve flagged and all the public exchanges we’ve had with our readership over Twitter.

• A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society
• LLRC: Interim report to Government
• Launch of Moving Images: Stunning documentaries and photo essays from Sri Lanka
• Archive of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) submissions and media reports
• Sinhala and Tamil translations of UN Panel’s report on accountability

Great controversy and concern surrounds the ‘leadership’ training programme designed by the Ministry of Defence for under graduate students, conducted in around 28 military installations around the country. As the Young Researchers Collective recently noted on Groundviews,

“Although the government has stated that this will be a leadership training program rather than a military training program, it has conceded that the military will be involved in a number of aspects of the program. Students have also been informed that this training is “mandatory” for university entrance, though there now appears to be a great deal of confusion with regards to this provision as Government officials have issued a series of contradicting statements. These decisions have also been challenged by many students, rights groups, student unions, teachers’ unions and academics who have raised a number of concerns about the way in which this program has been conceived and implemented. This issue has also exacerbated a worsening crisis in local universities as the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) are also in the midst of trade union action.”

Other civil society groups have also raised grave concerns over this training which is essentially the indoctrination of a militaristic Sinhala Buddhist ideology. The Friday Forum for example notes,

“The curriculum of the training programme obtained by the Friday Forum after some effort reveals extremely problematic aspects. No mention is made of the authority responsible for the curriculum but a prominent photograph of the Defence Secretary on the cover of the study guide suggests authorship by the Defence establishment.”

The Friday Forum goes on to say,

“What is more problematic is the content of the module on history and national heritage. The topics are, in order, the arrival of the Aryans, foreign invasions, (who the foreigners are is not clear) and the development of Sinhalese kingdoms. “National heritage” focuses exclusively on prominent cultural symbols of the majority Sinhala community such as Sigiriya, the Temple of the Tooth and the Aukana Buddha statue with none from other communities. Subjecting new university entrants who may well become future leaders of this country to a course which focuses exclusively on the majority community, undermines all the official statements on national reconciliation after three decades of civil strife. If this is an officially sanctioned method of national reconciliation what hopes do we have for a peaceful conflict free future in this country?”

In a cogent essay on the training course, Lemek notes on this site,

“The political motivations of the leadership programme are quite clear when we consider that it is essentially a retributive reaction to the student protests that occurred in October and November 2010. It also provides an opportunity for the government to restrict the political influence of opposition parties within the university system and student politics, which presents a potential force of mobilisation against the government.”

Responding to the justification of the programme by those opposed to ragging, Lemek goes on to aver,

“The other issue that has received much attention is the problem of ‘ragging,’ which has developed into an institutionalised practise within a majority of universities. Perhaps a greater tragedy is the complicity of lecturers and other university officials who in complete indifference accept ragging as a ‘rite of passage’ within a hierarchical system of senior dominance over freshers/juniors. It is sufficiently amusing – in consideration of the egalitarian pretence of boot camp society – that the instruction of an alternative hierarchical system with a similar call for subordination is the solution to ragging. Is it exceedingly ambitious to request the chancellors and senior lecturers of universities to set about establishing intelligent administration in order address the issue by expelling students who are guilty of physical abuse? “

This is not just a domestic issue anymore. Capturing the concern over the substance of the leadership programme and the manner in which it is conducted, the Hindustan Times notes,

“Be it Mahinda Chintanaya, or what the government’s policy doctrine is know as, or name stadiums after the President or print currency notes with his photo, there is worrying trend to blitzkrieg the Lankan population with images and words about the ruling family. If his brother is having some fun, why should Gotabhaya miss out? Secondly, to focus only on one community in history is manipulating it. Though I haven’t seen the history module, it’s clear from Friday Forum’s statement that the module will far from help in reconciling the country emerging from years of civil war.”

To date, no one outside of the students who have undergone this training have seen the course material. We were emailed copies of the manuals and timetables in all three languages, plus copies of the covering letters the students received, which clearly state that the training is compulsory, with no exceptions. On the issue of mandatory participation and the confusion that arose due to contradictory statements issued by the MInistry of Higher Education, Lemek notes,

“There is a certain degree of confusion apropos to whether participation in the leadership programme is mandatory and essential for entrance into university. The Secretary to the Ministry of Higher Education, Dr. Sunil Navaratne, was kind enough to inform the public last week that the programme was ‘not compulsory contrary to popular belief.’ One would expect Dr. Navaratne to be aware of what occurs at the ministry, particularly when the Minister for Higher Education, S.B Dissanayake, appears to have been the source of this ‘popular belief.’ It is possible that incorrect reportage and miscommunication resulted in this inexcusable error, but then how would Dr. Navaratne and Minister Dissanayake explain the fact that the letters dispatched in Sinhala, Tamil and English by the Ministry emphasise mandatory participation? The second and tenth paragraph of the letter informs the students that the ‘certificate,’ which confirms the completion of the programme, is ‘required for entry to the university…’”

Leadership Training – English Covering Letter

See this letter in fullscreen here.

Training Manual (English Version)

See the manual in fullscreen here.

Leadership Training Covering Letter (Sinhala)

View the covering letter in Sinhala fullscreen here.

Training Manual (Sinhala Version)

See the Sinhala version of the manual in fullscreen here.

Leadership Training – Tamil Covering Letter

See fullscreen version of the letter here.

Leadership Training Manual (Tamil Version)

See fullscreen version of the Tamil manual here.

Leadership Training Timetable – Detailed Version

See fullscreen version of detailed timetable here.

Leadership Training Timetable – Concise Version

See concise version of the timetable here.

• Sinhala and Tamil translations of UN Panel’s report on accountability
• A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society
• An elephantine gestation: UN Panel’s report on accountability in Sri Lanka released
• Launch of Moving Images: Stunning documentaries and photo essays from Sri Lanka
• Mojo for mayhem or source of serendipity? Sri Lankan Army’s model to defeat terrorism

The map above identifies the main flood-affected regions, sites where relief and rescue operations have been conducted and specific DS divisions where IDP camps have been setup. Please click on the link below the map to view it on a larger screen. You may click on individual markers for detailed information and zoom in to view the location of specific shelter camps located in the east. 

Please note that this map is continuously updated as soon as the Editors of Groundviews receive detailed information and reports from the ground.

Between the 11th and the 18th of January, heavy rainfall led to severe floods and widespread destruction in several provinces across the island that affected over 1 million people. 43 people were killed and over 300,000 were displaced. The districts of Ampara, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa and Anuradhapura were severely affected in January and at present with heavy rainfall once again causing severe flooding, these districts have been the worst affected. The problem has been compounded by the fact that several tanks in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa have been inundated and as a result the spill gates have been opened. This has exacerbated the flooding of surrounding villages. Several minor irrigation tanks have been breached as well according to the Daily Mirror,

During the previous floods in early January, 408 minor tanks, 308 anicuts and 760 irrigation canals were damaged.

Agrarian Services Director General Ravindra Hevavitarana told Daily Mirror that three more tanks had been breached this time in the Batticaloa District and another three in the Trincomalee District. Besides, Mr. Hevavitarana said that the water level had risen in at least 50 other minor tanks placing them at the risk of being breached.

“If the rainy weather continues, they will be damaged. The situation is serious,” he said.

Numerous IDP camps have been setup to provide temporary shelter and relief to over 80,000 IDPs.

The Daily Mirror notes the following in a news report:

The flood situation in the country reached dangerous levels with the number of affected families increasing by over 100,000 within hours, bringing the total of affected families to 230,000, causing six deaths, official (sic.) said.

The number affected stood at 100,000 late Thursday evening. Bad weather took its toll in 17 districts while it was reported that those affected were kept in 322 camps.

Spill gates were opened in all tanks in the Anurdhapura, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa, Ampara, Vavuniya and Trincomalee Districts as almost all the tanks reached spill levels.

Director General Department of Irrigation G. G. Godaliyadha said that the Anurahapura and Polonnaruwa Districts posed the most danger as gushing waters of Nachchiduwa, Padaviya and Rajangana  and several other tanks inundated all low lands in Anuradhapura while many areas in Polonnaruwa was also submerged. Medirigriya area was also submerged as the gates of Kavudulla tanks were opened.

The Navy and Air Force have been deployed to deliver flood relief and conducted rescue operations. According to news reports on 4/2/2011, 20 people have been rescued so far by the Air Force. News reports that quote the DMC also indicate that six people have been killed.

Another Daily Mirror news report notes the extent of destruction to paddy lands in various districts:

Meanwhile, 125,000 acres of paddy land had been inundated in the Ampara District, 50,000 acres in Anuradhapura, 28,000 acres in Batticaloa, 16,000 in Polonnaruwa, 10,000 acres in Vavuniya, 7200 acres in Mullaitivu and 50,000 acres in Trincomalee.

Mr. Hevavitarana said paddy of some of these lands which were flooded last time, were salvaged after the water level subsided.

“They have again been flooded.  In the districts like Batticaloa and Ampara, some paddy lands which were not affected last time have been submerged this time,” he said.

Last time, altogether 200,000 paddy acres were totally destroyed.

The DMC have released their situation report for Friday (04/02/2011).

Please view the map and watch this space for further updates.

• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• The ‘Grease Devil’ Phenomena in Sri Lanka: A Brief Collation of Reports
• BATTICALOA CONSORTIUM OF HUMANITARIAN AGENCIES FACILITATING TO THE BATTICOLA IDPS

Photos courtesy Batticaloa Facebook Page

I haven’t been reading the news much lately. I heard about the floods in the East and North Central Province and thought abstractly to myself, ‘how awful’. I watched the downpour in Colombo itself and complained about the shivering cold of that one day during which temperatures fell to 18 degrees – the lowest in over 60 years.

I never really fathomed the extent of the destruction until I happened across a 3-line post on a blog, linking to some footage by the airforce of the flooding in Batticaloa. I didn’t pay much attention to the article on the airforce site, but those pictures stunned me. Water up to treetops. Acre upon acre of paddy land totally destroyed. All I could think was, ‘haven’t they been through enough?’

War. Tsunami. Floods. Would it ever stop? Would they ever have the luxury of having normal lives again? Would there ever come a time when they would stop having to start over? I felt an immense tiredness for them as well as an odd admiration for their unending resilience and ability to survive disaster upon disaster. This post was a result of those feelings – a grossly inadequate but well-meant tribute to their struggle.

###

When the skies rumbled, angry and blistered with grey clouds, we were happy. Rain has mostly been our friend – a welcome drink for thirsty fields; a muddy playground for restless babies.

I myself have always loved the rain. As a child I would run out whenever my mother’s back was turned and spin like a runaway firework in the moving, liquid soil. Brown would squelch up between my toes and ooze onto my feet and the cooling sensation would make me swoon. My country is often hot and in those days, rain meant relief.  I would open my mouth to it, my mother’s distant scoldings unheeded, and drink with an eagerness than frightened me. As if I was trying to drink in the secrets of all of nature. And the water would not only quench my thirst; it somehow made me stronger. My feet always stomped harder after that first drink; mud would explode outwards, all around me, and I would feel invincible.

Even as I grew up and learned that explosions were not always joyous, I never stopped loving that rain. In the most bitter times, it would still taste sweet, and remind me of younger, happier days, when nothing ugly seemed to exist. When my world was solely and selfishly my own. I had no real worries then. If I cried I would be fed; if I couldn’t sleep my mother would stroke my back until the feel of her fingertips on my skin numbed me into unconsciousness. And if I was thirsty, I always had the rain.

My father was a farmer and so we lived by the rain. When it didn’t come, we, along with our crops, were devastated. Money was short, food scarce, tempers dark with hunger. Rain for us meant green, growth, abundance, food in our stomachs. As I grew older, when I ran out into the rain, it was to give thanks.

“You love the rain more than me” my lover accused once when my eyes were drawn one too many times to the streaming water outside and away from his dry, smooth skin. “No” I had replied, forcing my gaze away; but I was lying.

If someone had told me then that rain would one day be one of the many strikes against my family, village and people, I would have defended my friend. Even then I knew of horror. The horror of being trapped in a battle I was not fighting; where each side was as deadly as the other; where there was no such thing as winning. I knew about bullets and shrapnel; the cries of wounded men and grieving children. Later, I would learn the horror of the sea – its deadly reach and house-ripping force. I would learn about loss when searching for my lover in the wake of the surge – a search that would come to nothing.

Long ago, I had stopped feeling betrayed. I used to feel as if the Gods were punishing us until I stopped believing in them. Invisible and conveniently absent deities – deaf to the wailing of the mourners and the tears of orphans – passing out judgments of life and death didn’t seem very God-like to me.

Besides, where is the point in berating these blind Gods? When living with such horror, there is no need for Gods – only survival. And survival takes up all your strength. To piece together shattered nerves, stem the bleeding of wounded hearts; to simply be normal again takes up all your strength until there is none left, even to pray.

But the rain…! From the day it began until the day it ended, it felt like a stranger. I looked outside at the heavy, angry water beating itself into the earth, and for the first time, felt fearful. Our young paddy drowned in hours. Mud stopped being a plaything and became an insidious trap for careless, panicked feet. And when I ran outside, the water felt like hail on my skin. I did not feel refreshed as I usually do, but soaked through and too waterlogged to move. It was as if even my hair was weighing me down. What rain was this, that was more an impediment than a joy? It was no rain I ever knew.

When my father rushed into the house, the water making rivulets in every crease and hollow of his thin body, we knew immediately that we had to run. No words were exchanged; we all grabbed what we could reach and bolted from a home we knew we would never see again. It took several minutes of running to realize the only object I had taken was half a loaf of bread, now soggy and melting into the fast rising water at our feet. I threw it away and it was lost in an instant.

I don’t know how long we ran, or how far. I could only hear the tired encouragements of my father, urging us desperately onward, and the hoarse panting of my mother as I pushed her in front of me, terrified she would fall if I didn’t. My face was pouring with sweat despite the onslaught from above and for the first time I felt the rain pull the energy out of me instead of pouring it in. My panicked sobs ripped out of me in short, panted gasps; the ugliest sound I’d ever heard; worse somehow than distant shelling.

And the rain went on, long after we reached shelter and even as we received news of more and more devastation in the place we once called our home. I watched my parents suddenly age a hundred years; too old now to start over as they had done before. Turned ancient in a matter of days, they looked at me with expressions I had used on them before; but never them on me – dependence. The rain had rendered them old and me, suddenly, their parent.

*

Eventually, the sky ran out of tears; and the soil began to soak up the flooding. In a while, I would be able to leave this shelter and go back… to what? I have no home; I must rebuild it. My parents have done so before for my sake and I will do it today for theirs. I know now that their resilience was a lesson I learned without realizing it; that even throughout my carefree days of running in the rain, I somehow absorbed this miraculous skill. Did it seep into the pores of my bare feet as they splashed through the mud? Or did the rain feed my open, laughing mouth with reserves of strength that I would need to counter its future betrayal?

I walked outside a while, reveling unfamiliarly in the dryness of my surroundings. The grass at my feet waved innocently in the breeze, looking refreshed and reborn and I wondered at the resilience of nature itself. Entire villages like mine were destroyed; houses like mine were swept away in a drowning tide; but this grass with its shallow network of roots survived – growing only fatter and greener as a result of the downpour.  Its triumphant dance in the wind that day mocked me, but at the same, gave me strength.

I would put down my roots again, but they would be shallow. My naïve trust in the rain had vanished forever: I had lost a friend, but in doing so, had been taught to be ready for the next time. Ready to run. Ready for my world to end but also to begin, yet again.

• The Fear of Peace
• Focus on Badulla: Landslides
• Barbed Wire
• What must it be like to live behind these Kovil gates?
• “Oya Sinhalade? Demalade?” – Questioning a question in post-war Sri Lanka

Groundviews is pleased to announce the launch of two archives covering media reports on and submissions to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The archives are now live here.

At the time of the launch, there are over 220 media reports and over 100 English submissions to the LLRC featured on the site.

The archives respond to a numerous requests we got for a single-window access to this content. The content included in the archives are generated by a trusted source outside the country by going through information on the web, including the LLRC’s official website. New submissions and media reports, once sent to Groundviews, are uploaded to the archive and curated by us.

Hosting this content on Google Docs makes it a cinch for readers to search for and access the submissions and reports online, print them, download them as PDFs or subscribe to updates via RSS feeds.

• Who really supports reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka?
• LLRC: Interim report to Government
• LLRC: Testimony by Ferial Ashraff
• Launch of Groundviews 2.0: New features, enhanced readability, comprehensive search
• Recommendations for ICT and Research Supported Enhancement of the Effectiveness of the LLRC

The map above identifies the main flood-affected regions, sites where relief and rescue operations have been conducted, areas prone to landslides and specific locations that are at risk.  Please click on the link below the map to view it on a larger screen. You may click on individual markers for detailed information and zoom in to view the location of specific shelter camps located in the east. Please note that this map is updated as soon as the Editors of Groundviews receive detailed information and reports from the ground.

After our last updated post on 12 January 2011, a Daily Mirror SMS update at 12:50PM reported that there were 21 deaths and over 1,000,000 people affected as a result of the floods and bad weather that continues to devastate these regions. The Eastern Province is the worst affected with over 860,000 flood victims according to the latest figures released by the Disaster Management Centre. There have been widespread reports that it has become increasingly difficult to access specific areas due to submerged or damaged roads and the prevailing weather conditions in the North Central Province and the Eastern Province. The Director General of Disaster Management Centre stated the following in a news report published by the Daily Mirror,

Batticaloa District is worst hit by the floods with 533,000 people belonging to 30,264 families have been displaced. He said eight deaths have been reported from the district and 225 displaced camps have been set up in the district.

He said the district is experiencing a rainfall of 113mm/day continuously (Emphasis ours.) Yesterday it had been 200mm. Major General Hettiarachchi said two air force helicopters had been deployed to distribute relief and to rescue the affected people but they could not be taken off the ground due to bad weather yesterday as well.

More than 200 tanks have been extensively damaged while nearly 20,000 acres of paddy land were also destroyed.

Overall 996,757 people have been affected by the floods with 1727 houses have been fully destroyed while 12,151 have been partly destroyed. Total numbers of deaths stood at 18 while 49 were injured as at yesterday afternoon. Some 52, 391 families who have been displaced have been housed in 502 camps.

The Daily Mirror notes that Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena has informed “officials about the necessity to repair the submerged roads as early as possible as it has hampered the relief supply to flooded areas in the country.”

We now face a real threat of severe food shortages due to the complete destruction of over 130,000 acres of paddy field. Agriculture Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardhana stated the following to the Daily Mirror,

“There is no doubt that we need an advanced strategy to face the food crisis that is inevitable. We can have a better picture only after the flood waters have fully receded. Therefore, we cannot say what kind of response we have to the crisis right now. What I can assure is that the government is going to face this with resolve and people must be prepared to it.”

Over a quarter of Sri Lanka is currently under water and 40 per cent of cultivated areas are submerged according to the Minister of Agriculture.

Update at 14:26PM: The death toll is now at 23.

Update on 15/01/11 at 4:13PM via JNW SMS update: “Total 1,053,718 persons affected by floods. 3744 houses fully damaged and 19,534 partially damaged. 37 deaths with 18 in Batticaloa – DMC – JNW.”

###

HOW TO HELP

The Editors of Groundviews appeal to all our readers to assist in any way possible and to spread the word. For more information on how to help the victims of flood-affected areas, please visit our previous post here.

• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• First images: The flooding in Menik Camp and the increasingly dire situation for IDPs
• Abandoned War Displaced People From Border Villages

Ada Dernana notes the following in a news story published today,

Director General of the DMC, Major General Gamini Hettiarachchi speaking at the media conference said that 11,338 homes had been partially damaged while 1,609 homes had been fully damaged. He added that around 200 tanks had also been damaged in the floods.

Meanwhile, P.B. Samarasinghe, Director General of the Meteorological Department said that rains are expected for the next three days while this was the heaviest rains that the country had witnessed in over thirty years. (Emphasis ours.)

R.M.S. Bandara of the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) said that landslide warnings had been issued in 10 Districts including Matale, Badulla and Kandy where besides the heavy rains, poorly planned constructions on sloped areas had also contributed greatly to the reported landslides.

According to sources on the ground, the SL Army, Air Force and Navy are working hard to deliver food items to flood victims. The World Vision office in Batticaloa and the Red Cross are assisting as well in the relief effort. There is an urgent need for assistance to those victims who are sheltered in schools. With reports that weather conditions could actually worsen over the next few days, it is of utmost necessity that as much relief is delivered as soon as possible to those affected.

At present, there are 295 families at shelters in Chetipalayam and another 156 families Theththatheevu. There are a further four shelter camps in Kaluthwalai with 200 families in Kaluthawalai Mahavidyala, 114 families in Ramakrishna Vidyala, 112 families in Vipulananda and 48 families in Pugalidam.

The relief items required include milk powder for children, sanitary napkins, other basic food items and clothes.

The office of Chief Minister Chandrakanthan released an official SOS call for immediate assistance. The letter highlights the ground situation in the Eastern Province,

600,000 (Batticaloa 232,571, Ampara 317,270, Trincomalee 57,020) people have already left their homes and are residing in safer places. Most of the houses have been submerged and people have lost their belongs (sic.) More than 5000 people have lost their housing utensils and clothes. Considering the plight of the flood victims, please give a helping hand by providing donations and assistance in whatever way.

A Daily Mirror update today noted that other areas are at risk of flooding due to heavy rainfall,

The Ariyamancheni-Neelapola area is facing the threat of floods as several leaks have been detected in the bunts along the Mahaweli River in the Ariyamancheni area. Troops, police and irrigation officers are also engaged in packing sand bags to minimize the damage.

A total of 125 families in Ariyamancheni have been moved to the Lingapuram Tamil College while 121 families in the Sirimangala area have also been moved to the Somadevi Vidyalaya.

Several leaks have also been detected in the stream from Mavilaru to Kalaru and the army is packing sand bags at the moment, the Serunuwara Divisional Secretary Chandana Piyadasa said.

An Ada Derana news update confirmed that President Rajapaksa had to postpone his flood assessment visit and was grounded due to bad weather. A BBC news update notes the following,

Those displaced by the floods have squeezed into 800 camps that have sprung up in school premises, many of which are surrounded by water.

The air force has helped evacuate people and drop food supplies to some cut-off communities.

The government has made an emergency appeal for ordinary people’s help in sending dry rations, mattresses and bottled water.

Clean water and food supplies have been sent by official and international agencies to the worst-hit areas.

But the deputy disaster management minister Duleep Wijesekara said some places, such as Mutur, have been difficult to reach.

Around 200,000 people have been displaced.

HOW TO HELP

The Editors of Groundviews appeal to all our readers to assist in any way possible and to spread the word. The following is a list of organisations and numbers that you can contact to assist the flood victims. This list will be updated as soon as we receive word of other agencies and collection centres.

STITCH – Youth Movement

Please contact:

Dehiwala – Call Prabu on 0774 377477 for details

Moratuwa – Call Prathibha on 0779 851851 for details

Colpetty – call Sabrina on 0777 751718 for details

Wellawatte – Call Divya on 0714 289869 for details

If you would like to volunteer for STITCH, please email them at ivolunteer@stitchmovement.com

SARVODAYA

Please contact Mr. Saman Algoda, the Executive Director (0774394577, saman@sarvodaya.org) or Mr. Chamindha Rajakaruna, Director-Programmes (0777710205,chamindha@sarvodaya.org), or call the general lines on 2655255 or 2647159.

Federation of Youth Club (COLLECTION CENTRE)

86, High Level Road

Maharagama

###

Update 8:57PM: “24 hour relief operation is in place by deploying tri-forces to ensure continuous supply of basic needs for the flood affected – Info Dept- JNW.”

This page will be updated as soon as we get more information.

Update 9:37PM: SMS’s from Chanuka Wattegama in Batticaloa we received throughout the day today, reproduced here verbatim.

• “rain continues, Flood levels increased. Relief distribution poor n disorganised. Mess. 4tos @ sarvodaya.org”
• “situation is worse. Raind since morn. Relief can’t reach ppl. Supply routes blocked.”
• “Heavy rains @ batty. Water level rapidly increase. Eravur town may be under water in few hrs at this level cutting off Batti from mainland. Expect worse”

Update 12:50PM, 13th of January 2011: “21 deaths reported, over 1 million people affected due to bad weather.” Daily Mirror SMS update.

• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• Breaking News: IDPs in Zone 3 and 4 in Menik Camp affected by flooding
• Messages by people in Manampitiya and Dimbulagala on flood relief

Photo courtesy www.facebook.com/battipeople

Over the last two days, torrential rainstorms in the Central and Eastern province have caused severe flooding, landslides and an overwhelming humanitarian crisis with 758,000 people affected island-wide (according to the latest update at 7:14AM today from the Disaster Mangement Centre [via JNW]) 809 houses have been fully damaged and 2948 houses have been partially damaged. There have been nine deaths; nine injuries and four people are still missing (last update Sunday evening.)

An article in the Daily Mirror details the extent of the crisis,

According to the Centre (Disaster Management) some 55,936 families belonging to 14,519 families have been displaced and had been housed at 138 camps that have been opened.  Several Divisional Secretariat offices in the East were also reportedly under water while Badulla District Secretary Keerthi Disasnayake was also reportedly marooned as a result of a land slide which occurred along the Badulla-Mahinyangana Road.

The following areas in the country have been affected by the floods: Batticaloa, Polonnaruwa, Nuwara Eliya, Moneragala, Badulla, Kegalle and Kandy.

The Sri Lankan Army, Air Force and Navy have deployed teams for immediate rescue and relief operations. The latest update by Daily Mirror reveals that the Air Force has rescued 22 people that were stranded in the Thoppigala area and 1500 SLA troops have been deployed in the east to assist with rescue operations:

An SLAF MI-17 helicopter was also engaged in distributing dry rations and other needs in the Thoppigala area in Batticaloa that was severely affected by rains. The SLAF was using MI-17 and Bell 212 helicopters to assist the flood victims, he said. The Sri Lanka Army has set up four camps in Wellaveli, Maduru Oya, Dehiaththakandiya and Valaichchenai to assist flood victims while 1500 troops have being deployed to the east to assist the ongoing distribution of dry rations and provide medical assistance, Military spokesman Major General Ubaya Medawala said.

In Wellaveli 1000 persons, in Maduru Oya 25 families, in Dehiaththakandiya 17 families and in Valaichchenai 2000 persons were provided with medical assistance, clothes and dry rations by the army.

Update: The Air Force and Army have stepped up rescue and relief operations. As of 11:00 AM today, the Air Force delivered 2.5 tonnes of dry rations in Batticaloa.

Update at 4:40 PM (via Daily Mirror Mobile Alert): “Three more bodies of landslide victims from Gatambe found bringing total to seven. Bad weather destroyed 132,000 acres of paddy in the East and NCP.”

There has been no confirmation on the exact death toll as yet.

Update at 4:45PM: Seven people have been rescued by the Air Force in Rambakanoya, Ampara (via Ada Derana.) The Daily Mirror has published aerial photographs of terrain affected by the floods and photographs from an air rescue by the Air Force.

The Editors of Groundviews received the following images of the flooding and damages to roads in Batticaloa.

Courtesy of www.facebook.com/battipeople More images can be viewed on that page.

The Disaster Management Centre and the Department of Meteorology issued a rather late ‘early warning’ message last night on their website, which points to the issue of the effectiveness of early warning mechanisms in place and how information concerning public safety can be disseminated to the public immediately in order to minimise possible risks. It is also the responsibility of the Ministry of Disaster Management for Safer Communities and Sustainable Development to issue road travel warnings and to ensure that police departments and other institutions have the capacity to deal with emergencies. After the severe flooding in the Western Province that affected over 70,000 people last year, one would have hoped that the Ministry had set about planning a more effective early warning system and emergency response system. With over 750,000 people affected, it is quite clear that the Ministry needs to focus more on the methods of disaster management and public safety.

• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated)
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• New censorship of SMS news in Sri Lanka

One of the more refined gratifications in my life is the friendship of a few renowned intellectuals like Richard Falk, Emeritus Professor of International Law and Policy at Princeton, and the occasional receipt from him of work in progress. The other day’s email contained three scintillating draft essays, two of which I have finished reading and one that I have commented on.  This time however, what is a guaranteed treat also gave me cause for sorrow. A closely and creatively argued piece on Threat Diplomacy contained an important segment on the World Court’s judgment on nuclear weapons and war, and made several references to Justice Weeramantry’s dissenting judgment.  I had known from conversations that Richard Falk had known and liked CG Weeramantry from encounters when they were much younger, but I felt a twinge of sadness that so fine a mind as to be acknowledged by so renowned an intellectual (almost a sage) as Prof Falk, has not, as far as I know, been consulted by the Sri Lankan leadership at a time that the Sri Lankan state is and has been facing complex challenges of international law. This is so despite several recommendations by me to that effect to the highest authorities, and prompt assent which was never followed up or implemented.

A prophet is without honour only in his own land, says the Bible, and this is true of Judge Weeramantry, whose stances, when taken together, constitute a principled and distinctly ethical ontology: anti-terrorist (Lockerbie), anti-nuclear war (dissenting judgment of ’96), pro-sovereignty and international law (critiques of NATO Kosovo bombing, Iraq War), pro-human rights (definitive three volume work) and inter-ethnic, multi-religious peace-building (UNESCO prize, Weeramantry foundation).  We have therefore, the best stance for Sri Lankan ‘being in the world’, what I choose to call (given their close friendship and intellectual congruency) the Kadirgamar-Weeramantry outlook, approach or model. We also have at least two paradigmatic choices for Sri Lankan engagement with the world order: Weeramantry or Weerawansa?

What pains me most is not that the Sri Lankan state has not availed itself of the counsel of Judge Weeramantry, but that it has gone in precisely the opposite direction of the counsel he has publicly given. It has ignored and contradicted the wisdom of this sagacious man on matter of the greatest national importance for this and future generations of Sri Lankans. In the post-war year, Sri Lanka has proceeded far more in consonance with the narrow views of raucous lawyer-ideologues than with the counsel of that greatest of Sri Lankan jurists.

Shortly after the victory over the Tigers last year, Judge Weeramantry wrote a two part essay which I read in the Daily Mirror.  He advised us that we were at a crucial turning point, and brought to our attention the lessons of history as represented by two contradictory models of post war policy architecture, which brought two enormously varying sets of consequences. The first was in the aftermath of World War I, when a punitive ‘victors peace’, the Treaty of Versailles, was designed and imposed on defeated Germany. The result ten years later was the emergence of fascism, in fifteen its triumph and in twenty a terrible new war. The second model was the post World War II peace. Though the destruction of Germany and Japan were the most awful (and in the latter case, unprecedented in human history), these two states became peaceful and firm partners of the Western alliance thanks to a generous and far sighted policy, based on the recognition of the mistakes committed after the First World War. The Marshall Plan and the creation of a free, prosperous liberal society with political freedom permanently pacified these countries and turned their citizens into firm partners of the West. This was the cement of the security alliances, pacts and network of bases that locked these areas firmly into the Western strategic architecture.

Judge Weeramantry warned us explicitly against the Versailles spirit and a ‘victor’s peace’, and urged us to adopt the post WWII model of sensitivity, liberalism, generosity, political freedom and alliance building. But have we done so? Are we doing so? Or are we heading in exactly the opposite direction?

In a critical review of my first book, Prof AJ Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick and son-in law of SJV Chelvanayagam, kindly ventured the opinion that “Dayan… is perhaps the last liberal thinker among the Sinhalese” (Sunday Island, March 23, 1997, p14, 16). If I am a ‘liberal thinker’ then I am a liberal Realist who supports the establishment of a sufficient and permanent Sri Lankan military presence on state land in the North and East. However, I am also wary of the establishment of permanent housing for military families and the acquisition of privately owned land for that purpose.

The reason for my support and opposition is security of the state and society. Sri Lanka is one country and the state has every right to establish armed encampments and deploy its armed forces wherever it sees fit. I have no problem with the exercise of that right. Yet, just as every other right it must be exercised prudently, because the unity of Sri Lanka as a single country is not the only aspect of Sri Lanka’s reality that must be taken into account. Ours is also a multiethnic country with a historically evolved and stable ethno-demography. The Tamils consider the Northern Province as their ancestral lands, the land of their grandfathers and great grandfathers.  I have met seventh generation Malaysian Tamils who are emotionally attached to Kokuvil as their native place, where their roots run back to.

The establishment of a strong military presence is necessary because the state and the citizenry can no longer be suckered. The Sri Lankan state must internalise the military lessons of all the wars it has had to fight in the North East and deploy troops in a manner that the area is strategically as impregnable as is possible to render it. The Sri Lankan military deployments in the North and East must never be vulnerable again, militarily or logistically. They must be capable of safeguarding our outer borders as well as preventing/pre-empting terrorism and low intensity insurgency.

The Sri Lankan military configuration in the North and East must be capable of deterring or fighting and winning future wars. But it must not be the cause or catalyst for future conflict.  That would be self-defeating because it would not enhance national security; it would undermine it.

Had Sri Lanka either been bereft of an internal ethno-national question (the Tamil question)  or had the Sri Lankan military been multiethnic in composition,  the acquisition of private land for high security zones and permanent housing for military families would not have been so serious a problem.  We are dealing with the reality of a mono-ethnic, monolingual, mono-religious military establishing permanent housing for their families in a differently mono-ethnic area with a high degree of sub-nationalist consciousness.

There would be those who argue that a mono-ethnic army was able, against all expectation, to win a war against terrorism and separatism on the home turf of the insurgents. This is not strictly true. The achievement of the Sri Lankan armed forces was both greater than that and different from it.  The Sri Lankan army defeated a rival secessionist army, a powerful militia, not a guerrilla insurgency or terrorist network. The Tigers had long outgrown those stages and hypertrophied to the socio-politically unsustainable level of a parallel armed force, fighting a quasi-conventional war.

Today, the state must deploy the armed forces in the North and East in a manner that deters and prevents future conflict and rather than sows the seeds for it, either in the forms of terrorism, guerrilla cells or unarmed civic resistance. The establishment of permanent military bases strictly within state (‘Crown’) land is doubtless imperative to guarantee the first objective, but the acquisition of private land and the settlement of military families could trigger the latter. The permanent settlement of military families means places of religious worship, schools, shops, cinemas, services, etc, and the first sign of protest would also mean widening the zone, narrowing access to the civilians of the area, perhaps new access roads and the proliferation of checkpoints. This may seem an excellent method of population mixing, but that works as a method o conflict transformation only if population movement is as a result of natural economic factors, not unilateral state policy.  The Tamils in Wellawatte were not brought there as part of state policy.

These ideas for the North and East are not new—and nor is the critique. A read through the Lanka Guardian and The Island’s ‘Kautilya’ column of the 1980s would show the repeated warnings by Mervyn de Silva, who was, among other things, widely acknowledged as the country’s leading expert on Israel/Palestine and the Middle East, about the ideas of a wing of the JR Jayewardene government of the time. These ideas, identified with then Minister of National Security but also shared by the President’s son and security advisor Ravi Jayewardene, located in and derived from an irrelevant external matrix, were dangerously inapplicable to Sri Lanka, would worsen the ethnic problem and generate a backlash from the regional power, warned my father. ‘In an age of identity, ethnicity walks on water’ he said, pointing to inflamed sentiment in proximate Tamil Nadu and the increasingly influential Diaspora, of which the Sinhalese had no equivalent or counterweight to.  As it turned out, it was not the Tamil Tiger insurgency which put a halt to Minister Athulathmudali’s and Ravi Jayewardene’s importation of ‘the West Bank model’ as the Lanka Guardian called it, but precisely the ‘geo-political realities’ – the absence or furling of a superpower umbrella in the event of an abrupt assertion by the regional power — that Mervyn de Silva had tried to drum home into the ruling elite, to no avail, until the external ‘seismic shock’ of mid-1987.

Realism tells us that the North and East have to be secure over the long term. It tells us that the Sri Lankan security forces will remain overwhelmingly mono-ethnic at least in the short term. Realism, which is drawn in large part from world history, further tells us that in such a situation, a policy of permanent encampments and fortifications must be accompanied by alliances with the local elites and a degree of local autonomy. That autonomy must not be so large as to be dysfunctional to security and strategy but must be sufficiently broad to pre-empt local disaffection.  This has been the policy of successful empires from Rome to Britain.

Having an intermediate structure elected by the local populace and positioned between itself and the local populace, provides the Sri Lankan security forces with a social shock absorber and vital adjunct in preventive counter-insurgency. Sadly, it would seem as though Sri Lankan policy projections do not involve this latter aspect of sufficient local autonomy, and that the security aspect is designed to overlook, override, bypass or undermine that local autonomy should it be implemented under external pressure or internal political compulsion. The great Asian strategic thinker-practitioner Mao Ze Dong advocated a policy of ‘walking on two legs’. We seem intent on marching forward on one. The increased alienation of the Tamil people of the North and a widening gulf between the collective psyches of our main communities cannot be a pathway to stable security and permanent peace. The so-called demographic solution is no solution, as has been proved even in its conceptual birthplace — and notwithstanding a superpower blank cheque that Sri Lanka will never have.

While ‘facts are being created on the ground’, if the elected representatives of the Tamil people remain divided, with some dreaming of self-determination and others of federalism, and still others refuse to talk to their erstwhile comrades who are in government, instead of collectively pressing for the reasonable demand of the ‘turnkey’ re-activation of the existing Constitutional provisions as reiterated in bilateral statements and international undertakings, then these Tamil representatives will have only themselves to blame for the continuing and perhaps irreversible Tamil tragedy.

As if the inter-ethnic gap was not bad enough, the dominant ideology seems intent on setting the stage for generations of inter-religious hostility as well. Spokespersons for the Catholic Church well known for their moderation such as Fr Benedict Joseph and Fr Cyril Gamini have raised their voices in protest against the religious prejudices and overt mono-religiosity of the new History text books currently in use in Sri Lankan schools. What I find particularly disconcerting is that there was an earlier series of History text books in the pipe-line prepared and/or approved by some of Sri Lanka’s highest qualified historians and archaeologists such as Profs Sudharshan Seneviratne and Nira Wickramasinghe. Those rational well founded and enlightened texts were scrapped at the insistence of the rabble-rousing dominant ideologues and replaced with those that the spokespersons of the Catholic Church are now protesting against.

Sri Lanka is today at a crossroads. One road leads to reconciliation and a fresh start which enables us to integrate with Asia’s march to modernity. The other leads to a new and prolonged cycle of conflict.  The right kind of security policy for the North and East, a policy which derives from the best practises globally, a policy which is scientific and professional rather than driven by wrong interpretations of history and ethno-religious motivations, will enhance and ensure security. The wrong kind of security policy for the post-war North and East in which Sri Lankan armed forces cantonments become interlinked oases embedded in a hostile local population, may turn the entire area into a high insecurity zone.

###

Justice C.G. Weeramantry was bestowed Sri Lankabhimanya, the highest National Honour of Sri Lanka in 2007. Justice Weeramantry also won the UNESCO Peace Education Prize in 2006 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2007, considered alternative Nobel Prize.

In this interview conducted several months ago, Justice Weeramantry talks about the importance of peace education in post-war Sri Lanka as a pillar of reconciliation. He also looks back at his career in law and experience as a Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1991 to 2000.

• Interview with Justice C.G. Weeramantry
• Land in the North and East of Sri Lanka: Concern and confusion over Government circular
• Rebuilding the East and Other Stories . . .
• Defense and Devolution
• Daily Security Report from UN – The plight of the North & East

This war has taken the lives of tens of thousands of men, women and children. Hundreds of thousands more are displaced, and the abnormality of the war and post war situation is fast and painfully becoming normalcy to most people, some don’t and didn’t even live to see that.

Hundreds of children are being born into such conditions, by virtue of the fact that the Muslim IDP’s displaced in the early part of the conflict are still languishing in Puttalam, I won’t be surprised if a decent amount of these children born would die (possibly as adults) in the same conditions to which they were born to.

Studies suggest that post war trauma is conceivably more painful than the emotional stress suffered during war. During periods of war and despite the aggressive conditions that ensue, people subjected to these live in pain and indescribable stress. However, the hope that these abnormalities will diminish and normalcy would resume lingers on and this is a solace of sorts to those who look for solace in the most difficult of times. In a post war situation, when there is no conceivable military conflict taking place and the people continue to suffer in difficult conditions it is inevitable that post war trauma will tighten its venomous grip.

Because of its brutality, this has become the paradigm for traumatic experience, with the constant need for psychological and psychiatric help for victims long after its end.

My father was the architect for a project called ‘Food for Education’ by an Italian NGO. Thus he had to make several site visits to seventy schools in the Trincomalee District. In addition to the war, Trincomalee was also severely affected by the tsunami of 2004.

Due to poverty, lack of infrastructure, the loss of hope that school education will achieve little and for fears of safety, school attendance amongst children was very low. It was also known that malnutrition was rampant amongst these children. The project aimed to build Kitchen & Sanitation facilities in these schools and free food was distributed to students who attended school.  Thus this incentive helped mitigate absenteeism of school children to a certain extent in the Trincomalee district.

I joined my father in several of his site visits and I remember going to Trincomalee at least ten times during 2005 – 2006.

In spite of all the pain and suffering that was around, the faces of the children depicted a remarkable sense of resilience to the pain they and their families endured. These children coupled with the ready and mischievous smiles in their faces disguised the very painful story many a parent I spoke to in my limited Tamil told me.

There is now an end to a military conflict, and a year has gone by. And yet, there is years of work to be done in these areas to rebuild shattered hopes, dreams and society in general. These photographs can only attempt to ask questions about and to do justice to the untold story of many a child.

If not of most, this conflict didn’t manage to wipe out the smiles of all children in conflict zones. We must ensure that they never are, at least by planned yet hastened resettlement of all affected men, women and children.

More photos by the author can be found at Tableaux of Aufidius.

• “I pray God that no one in this world should face the hardships, faced by my child and me”
• Forgotten IDPs from the North
• Christmas 2008 in Sri Lanka
• ‘I want a decent Education’ – A twelve year old’s plea
• Hear My VOICE: Bonsika Vadivel Vasanthan ~ “Please bring my father back to me”

We find the word condolences stunning in its insufficiency for past and future.

We evacuated our homes in the light; we vanished from our homes in the dark; we walked away from our families, toward the weapons, and wished that we could turn around. Our bodies entered the earth in places we cannot now identify, and so we are everywhere, blown to dust. By both dying in and surviving this place, we will live here long after your condolences become a ghost in your throat.

We joined others’ battles, willingly and unwillingly; we walked forward on paths not our own when the paths we would have chosen were closed to us. We were incidental; we were vital; we were enemies; we were friends; we were disputed; we were uncounted. In a small country, we felt far away from you. In a small world, we felt far away from you. We were your people and not your people.

We could not wait for you to remember us.

We perished and survived and were less and also more for it. Some of us had little money and little food; we had children. We lost our children willingly and unwillingly. They were torn from our hands; we fought to keep them with us; we pushed them away from us to save them; we held them close in the hope that we might take their bullets and thereby die before them.

Some of us did, but some of us lived, and so the memory of this will outlast even the children we fought to save.

In the rush to escape this bloodletting, which has been its own kind of war, our ears fell to the ground, and so we cannot now hear your condolences. To survive, we had to shut our eyes, with which we would have seen what was in yours. We closed our mouths against hunger and anger; we knew and did not know our families, friends, fellows, and leaders, who hunted us, ran with us, and died with us.

We faced ourselves from all sides. Some of us lived. We are still here. We regret to inform you that your condolences cannot be accepted at this time.

• Two testimonies from families released from Menik Camp
• July: Life after 25 years
• What must it be like to live behind these Kovil gates?
• Female ex-combatants of LTTE in post-war Sri Lanka
• We are nobody’s children…

December 01, 2006. A response to the failed attempt by the LTTE to assassinate Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse. The Ministry of Defence commissioned Triad Advertising to create the graffiti. It was removed in early January 2007 once the owners of the house repaired their wall.

Feb 21, 2009. Tracers over Colombo. Two LTTE Air Tiger planes were shot down over Colombo and Katunayake. One plane crashed into the IRS building and the other crashed in a field near Katunayake Air Base.

Below are some photos from a documentation of Swiss/Austrian Red Cross post-tsunami housing projects over 2006 and 2007. I coordinated the work of a writer and a photographer who were gathering data for a book, ‘Bringing Home Hope’. We travelled to six villages in the North and East photographing residents and spaces in and around the project areas. As I was not restricted to the images necessary for the book, I had the opportunity to take a broader look at the area in terms of not only the tsunami, but also the war.

• Tsunami and asbestos
• LTTE offers tax break to Sri Lankan businesses
• OBSERVATIONS: INDEPENDENCE
• Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated)
• Nurturing Public Trust in Times of Crisis: Reflections on April 11 Tsunami Warning

On April 12, 2010 the majority of citizens of the island’s two main linguistic communities celebrated the “Sinhala and Tamil New Year” and the categorical end of war and terrorism with considerable optimism, despite lack of a clear political solution to the ‘ethnic conflict’. The New Year celebrations, the first since the end of the State’s 30 year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were in the wake of recently concluded parliamentary elections that returned the ruling party to power. President Rajapaksa, who in January had already won the Presidential elections for another 6 year term, noted that the New Year brings into focus shared culture and kinship ties between the Sinhala and Tamil speaking communities in the island. There was not talk of ‘human rights violations’ or ‘war crimes’ or the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon’s plan to set up an Advisory Council on Sri Lanka. Members of the international community, particularly the west, congratulated the regime and seemed circumspect with regard to questions of reconciliation, reconstruction and the detritus of 30 years of war in Lanka.

The end of election season in Sri Lanka should see the beginning of sustainable peace, which is to be distinguished from the end of war. Although the war ended almost a year ago on May 20, 2009, and opened a space for dealing with its root causes, the country had been in transition in anticipation of elections. Now that the election season is over the challenge of winning the peace, demilitarizing democracy and governance for locally owned development, and integrating the minority communities to ensure reconciliation and lasting peace remains. The post-conflict challenges may be divided in two: immediate humanitarian and human rights issues and long-term political settlement with devolution of power to the conflict affected regions, restoration of democratic institutions and checks and balances, and recognition of and institution of multiculturalism. On both these counts the Government of Sri Lanka is under considerable pressure from India, the US and EU and the United Nations to speedily resettle internally displaced people and stem the tide of refugees.

The election outcome has made it increasingly clear that the island would be evolving its own model of post-conflict reconstruction, development and reconciliation with the help of mainly Asian neighbors and donors, principally, India and China, which tend to be less demanding than western donors on the human rights front. The ruling United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) was returned to power with a comfortable majority in the face of a divided and lack luster opposition, whose leader Ranil Wickramasinghe, would now be required to consider exit strategies, if the United National Party (UNP), historically, the country’s oldest and most inclusive political party which has been dealt a stunning defeat, is to pose a challenge to the hegemony of the emergent Rajapaksa dynasty. The low voter turnout – only 52 percent of the population is partly explained by this. The Tamil minority also seems to have been disinclined to come out and vote in numbers, and there has been an overall reduction in members of parliament from the minority communities. The ruling UPFA garnered 117 out of the 225-seat parliament, about 6 seats short of a two thirds majority required to change the Constitution. Rajapaksa has consolidated power with a hat trick of three victories if one counts the defeat of the LTTE, the victory at the Presidential elections and the parliamentary elections.

The April elections marked a new beginning for the people in the post-conflict zones of the north and east, who had been prevented from participating in previous elections by the LTTE. They were able to exercise their vote relatively freely and they voted for the Tamil National Alliance (TNA/ITAK). However, Douglas Devanandan an ally of the ruling coalition (UPFA), and former militant of the EPDP (Eelam Peoples Democratic Party), were able to secure almost a third of the votes in the north. Also noteworthy at the recently concluded elections was the defeat of the  hard-line nationalist Jathiak Hela Urumay (JHU) party and  JVP/ DNA (Democratic National Alliance) headed by the jailed former Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka (who nevertheless won a seat), signaling that the majority are not impressed by extremism. With a clear majority and needing fewer hard-line coalition partners, Rajapaksa should ideally bring down the number of cabinet members and work with the TNA which has promised to cooperate with him to find a solution for the minorities with the framework of a united Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lanka Model

Various international terrorism, conflict and peace building experts had predicted that the thirty-year war in the island, one of South Asia’s longest, would drag on for many years. The comprehensive defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), listed as one of the world’s deadliest terrorist organizations, by the Sri Lanka Government’s armed forces in the tiny multicultural and multi-religious teardrop island, strategically located at the cross roads of major trade routes in the Indian Ocean was viewed by some international peace and conflict experts as a test case. The Rajapakse government had after all argued that it was fighting a ”war on terror”, and capitalized on the diminished tolerance in the international community for political violence in the aftermath of 9/11, despite recognition that ”one man’s terrorist may be another’s liberation fighter” –depending on the context. Some terrorism experts even suggested that Lanka may constitute a model to fight “terrorism” in South and South East Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan (Guneratna). Others have been more circumspect about lessons to be learned from the Sri Lanka case, particularly, due to concerns about human rights and the need for a political solution to the minority issue.

Perspectives on the relevance of the Sri Lanka example for ending insurgent or terrorist conflicts differ depending on the commentator’s commitment to the spirit (rather than form), of democracy as well as recognition of the fact that rarely have such long drawn, low-intensity, globally net-worked and locally embedded conflicts come to so conclusive an end. Every conflict is different, and in other parts of South Asia “terrorism” and insurgency seems unlikely to wind down so efficiently unless the ”root causes” of violence such as poverty, underdevelopment and political and cultural discrimination are addressed.

The conflict in Sri Lanka had been termed a ‘terrorist’ conflict, an ‘ethnic conflict’ and a liberation struggle. It was arguably all three, having begun as an ethnic conflict that subsequently morphed into a liberation struggle for the Tamil minority in the north east, only to become highly militarized and a self-sustaining dirty war with its own war economy. In the final stages the LTTE which claimed to be fighting for the rights and liberation of the Tamil minority in northeast Sri Lanka had become a terrorist organization that was as brutal to its own constituency as towards the Sri Lanka State from which it sought independence. At the same time, ending the thirty-year war in Sri Lanka was difficult and happened with considerable damage to the country’s democratic culture and institutions. Democratic culture and traditions tend to check the State’s propensity for internal war against segments of the citizenry who may be fighting for ethno-religious self determination or economic and social justice, or both, as was arguably the case with the Tamil and Muslim minorities in the northeast of Sri Lanka.

Demilitarizing development, ensuring Human Security

Though the war in Lanka is over the identity conflict that preceded it may persist in different forms until issues of power sharing with the peripheral regions due to over-centralization of State institutions, and erosion of democratic governance are addressed. The current regime’s preferred model of reconstruction and peace building appears to be fast tracking economic development and reconstruction as a solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka along the lines of authoritarian democracy visible in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, where the state’s emphasis on economic development has trumped and muted ethno-religious identity conflicts. This strategy may work in the medium term, until a comprehensive plan for devolution of power to the north-east regions is worked out. In the longer term, there would be need for the implementation for devolution of power particularly to the regions where Tamil speaking minority communities predominate — in the north and east.

Often conflicts that have their roots in poverty and economic marginalization by political elites and majorities that control the modern nation-state tend to be articulated in terms of ethno-religious identity conflicts. In other words “ethnic” identity conflicts tend to have a resource base, and there is a need to de-ethnicize conflict analysis in order to address the root causes of the conflict in Lanka. The majority of ordinary people in the conflict zones are tired of promises of “liberation” by various politicians and ethnic entrepreneurs peddling ethnic identity politics and ethnic “liberation” particularly in the wake of the LTTE’s failure to secure any respect for the grievances of the Tamil minority. Many citizens in the north and east simply assert that they wish to rebuild their lives and livelihoods and look forward to a decent education and future for their children. By and large, ethnic out bidding for short term political gain has become a feature of Sri Lanka’s post/colonial political culture in the absence of visionary leadership conscious of the need for inclusive development policies.

Devolution for Equitable Development

Sri Lanka which has traditionally had a far more vibrant democratic culture, civil society and a social welfarist approach to development than Malaysia or Singapore will need to finds its own post/conflict economic development model, between neo-liberal laissez faire policies and over centralised government led development. Neither of these approaches really worked in the past and it would be necessary to strike the appropriate balance between open economic policies and excessive government control of reconstruction and post/conflict economic development.

Simultaneously, economic development cannot be a substitute for the devolution of power or for human security. Indeed, for equitable and locally owned development, devolution of power is essential so that local communities benefit and are better able to benefit from the end of the war, and harvest the local agricultural and fisheries wealth in the north east, and benefit from the large-scale infrastructure projects. The military mindset that led to the concentration of power in the centre in Colombo under the Presidential Task force for Reconstruction in the North and East headed by Basil Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, is counter-productive to locally owned and equitable economic development, public-private partnerships, and entrepreneurship by the local business community in peace time.

The Military Foot Print and Civil-Military Relations

The first step in getting post-conflict economic development right would be unraveling of the vestiges of the war economy of terror, taxation and rent-seeking by those who carry guns, and ensuring that development is planned, owned and implemented by local people and communities in the north and east. Clearly, the trend to promote military businesses in the post/conflict zone that economist Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvanandan has identified in the field of transport and small shops and businesses along the A-9 , coupled with the need for security clearance for traders and business persons going to the north is counter-productive to locally entrepreneurship and conflict sensitive post conflict economic regeneration.

There appears to be a new form of militaristic development ongoing in various parts of the country. In the heart of Colombo, poor and vulnerable people, mainly from the minority communities who were displaced and impoverished by the war are being displaced and many of the city’s old and beautiful trees cut down at this time in the name of city beautification, security and “development”. The Urban Development Authority of the city headed by the Defense Secretary has authorized destruction of “unauthorized structures” even as in other parts of the country land is being appropriated in the name of development.

What Sri Lanka needs at this time is people-centered development that promotes human security and reconciliation among diverse ethno-religious communities. Yet, the military footprint is heavy along the A-9 and armed personnel carry out various businesses which constitute mission and mandate creep, inappropriate for the military in a democracy such as Sri Lanka where there has never been such a precedent.  At this time there needs to be rethinking and down-sizing of the military and other armed forces rather than the expansion of military businesses similar to the Pakistan or Indonesian military model. Such a precedent would impact negatively on the structure and culture of the Sri Lanka armed forces and tarnish their reputation in the long run. The excessive security for political figures and Ministers and the check point culture in Colombo is also costly and detrimental to the image of the armed forces, many of whom are increasingly uncomfortable with their new role of policing civilians in the absence of a clear terrorism threat.  The militant model of post/conflict development may elicit a back-lash and make “terrorism” a self-fulfilling prophesy.

For proper economic development the remnants of the war economy that functioned on terror and taxation with those who carried guns extorting and taxing the population that was apparent in the north and east during the conflict years must be fully undone. Local private sector and entrepreneurs need to have the space to start their businesses and provide employment. Currently, though the A-9 is open public transport to and from Jaffna is not done by civilian or business community. Rather, the Air Force operates flights to Jaffna and the buses are controlled by a government allied Tamil politician who still has a paramilitary outfit. The High Security zones which in Jaffna occupy prime real estate in the centre of town as well as, prime agricultural land around Pallay need to be released for agricultural and urban renewal. Land appropriation for tourism development in the post/conflict zones in increasingly a feature of the current development push that would cause new conflicts and the return of old. The road constructed by the Navy through Willpattu national part for a proposed tourist resort on the northern border of the park at the behest of the all powerful Minister for Economic Development and Tourism, is a case in point. The practice of claiming prime lands for “high security zones” that morph into super-luxury tourism development projects, with little regard for the local populations who were displaced is apparent in other parts of the county, particularly the post/conflict zones where rent seeking behavior by some national and local politicians and associated crony capitalists is counter-productive to the government’s stated agenda of sustainable peace building through equitable development.

Learning from the Past:  Ensuring Local Ownership of Development

Unless development is demilitarized in northeast “terrorism” may ironically become a self-fulfilling prophesy in post-conflict Sri Lanka, as Basque Anthropologist, Joseba Zulaika has noted in his perceptive book on how the international “terrorism discourse” post 9/11 has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The current development trust, with emphasis on infra-structure and road is top down, rather than people-centric. Citizens have yet to see the peace dividend materialize, and funds spent on the war machinery may be diverted towards education and health sectors which suffered considerably in the conflict years. Post/conflict development must be done to defuse the old land and resource conflicts and forms of state-sponsored discrimination against minorities that were at the root of the 30 year old war in the north east. The right to development that was stymied when the Accelerated Mahaveli development scheme did not benefit the minority dominated Vanni regions is an example of the need to avoid skewed development and the reality and perception of discrimination in various forms.

The fruits of post-conflict development in Sri Lanka must accrue to local communities in the post-conflict zones and resource conflicts need to be addressed in a transparent manner to ensure that local communities benefit from development that enables reconciliation. This is particularly important for people who have been caught between, displaced and traumatized by the 30 years of war. In the context, post conflict reconstruction assistance provided by foreign donors must have good governance conditionalities and be conflict-sensitive. There must be provision to ensure transparent tracking, monitoring and evaluation of aid projects to ensure that funds reach their intended beneficiaries rather than politicians, paramilitaries, rent-seekers and crony capitalists that thrive in war economies and post/conflict scenarios.

In the medium term then, the following conflict transformation challenges are apparent:

1. Demilitarizing democracy and governance and actual implementation of the 13^th amendment to the constitution, particularly in the north and east. This requires restoration of development and reconstruction decision making, planning and policy to civilian administrative structures in the north and east, while enabling capacity building of local government institutions and decision making in the provincial and district levels in post conflict regions.
2. Divesture of the High Security Zones to enable internally displaced people (IDPs) to return and settle in their villages and urban centres, as well as, disarming of the Tamil paramilitary groups linked to the state now that the LTTE threat no longer exists on the ground.
3. Dealing with the Tamil Diaspora since Diasporas often tend to be far more intransigent and unwilling to compromise than those who remained at home. Sinhala and Tamil ultra-nationalism is most visible at this time from the respective Diasporas, and there is an emerging disconnect between the Diaspora leaders and those in-country who wish to compromise and co-exist with “other” communities.
4. Doing development right by ensuring good governance, and balancing a political solution for the minorities with economic development for all. Demonstrating that win-win solution is possible and that the progress and development of the minorities need not be a loss for the majority community.
5. Restoring the Institutions that ensure accountability to the people such as the Bribery Commission and the Human Rights Commission which have become defunct on account of the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution, and setting up of a special mechanism for resolution of resources conflicts in the North and East.
6. International aid donors will need to co-ordinate and target their assistance to maximize assistance to the people. In the context the EU may wish to revisit its decision to revoke GSP Plus concessions that would hurt the business community and poor women in the garment sector, while IMF would need to be clear about its aid conditionality to ensure greater accountability from the State.

Dr. Darini Rajasingham Senanayake

• Voldemort rising
• In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
• Post-conflict Transition and Aid Effectiveness: Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka – Part 2
• Ground realities in Jaffna and its environs: Two key perspectives
• A question to the government and the LTTE