Photo courtesy Reuters

Hey, MAN! Yup you. Got a minute? Because I would like to talk to you. Yup, to you.

Because you whistled out a love song in my honour from your guard-post on Bauddhaloka Mawatha as I was hopping out of a tuk-tuk to get into work this morning. You were on duty. You and I are not in love. And you can’t hold a tune if your life depended on it.

And so I am curious as to why you did it. Did the tune spring out from your lips and into your pants and give you the rise that eluded you earlier this morning? Did it score you points with your chums at the post? Did it make you feel good? Strong?  Manly?

Did it make you feel like a MAN?

Are you curious about how it made me feel? Well it didn’t make me feel too good to be honest. I felt small. I felt a knot of anger hurting my insides. I felt self-conscious, and so I focussed intently on looking left, right and then left again before crossing the road.

There. Does knowing that make you feel even better? More stronger? More manly?

Does it make you feel more like a MAN?

It doesn’t always make me feel small you know. Like late December buying string hoppers for dinner from Hotel Sealord I looked across just in time to see you put your ample tongue in and out and around your mouth slapping saliva about before mouthing an unmentionable in my honour.  On that day the knot of anger uncoiled and spoke up. In fluent ‘Captain of the Sinhala debate team at school’ Sinhala I asked you a) to repeat yourself; b) whether you had similar thoughts about your sister and c) whether you’d like to speak about it with my brother who was parked outside. On that day you were the one that felt small and self-conscious. You picked up your helmet and walked out quickly, as if you were choosing to be the bigger person.

MAN that you are.

On that day, I felt good.

The thing is I don’t always fight back. It depends on the time of day and place. Who I am with. Who you are with. Sometimes the Feminist just can’t let it pass, and so I confront it and take a hit for the greater cause. Sometimes the working mother who was up at 4.30am is just too tired, and I so walk past it pretending I didn’t hear, see or feel you.

Some of you are chivalrous and kind to me. Like you, my tuk-tuk driver. You’ve driven me about for years. You’ve had near fisticuffs on one occasion in defence of my honour. And yet I sit and watch as you drive me about, how your eyes leer at every other woman wearing anything above her knees and how you swerve into them so they won’t miss the leer in your eyes. You would never do that to me. You know me. Like you would never do that to your mother, sister, wife or daughter. In fact you’d probably beat-up any man who does. But the unknown woman. She is easy isn’t she? Easy on your conscience that is.

Right MAN?

I am raising a son you know. But wait a minute, you already know that. Because last week, as I was straining my neck to find him in the swarm of little boys at the school gate, you stretched out and firmed out your hand and laid your fingers splayed across my sari-clad thigh. This, while your wife was trying valiantly to hold onto your son’s hand to keep him from running onto the open road crammed with manic school vans.

Anyway, back to my son. I am doing my best to teach him to respect women. The ones he knows and the ones he doesn’t. The ones that will speak out and the ones that will keep their heads down. In time I will teach him that there are many ways to harass, abuse and violate, and that it starts and ends when he uses his body, his voice and his mind to make someone feel less than she or he is. I will do everything in my power to raise him to be a man.

A man.

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Two months ago I sat for my first year final exams at the Open University of Sri Lanka. Last month’s edition of the Hi Magazine showcased 3 pages of clothes from designer K.T Brown – modelled by me. And in December, I will be on Art TV – as a contestant for the Super Model of Asia Pacific 2011. I suffer from no grandiose illusions about myself. I am no super model. I am extremely uncomfortable in front of the camera and at age 26 have only just begun studying for my degree. Yet, every one of these steps is a huge achievement for me, for just over three years ago I was trapped in an abusive marriage. It was a marriage  that wore down every shred of confidence I ever owned – confidence I have struggled to take control of and own ever since.

It has never been easy for me to speak of what took place during those 5 years I was married, I don’t think I ever fully have. I mean to now, because I feel that my story, or some part of it, may resonate with someone out there – someone who may still be ignorant of her rights. It was youthful folly that led me to marry at the age of 18. It was ignorance that held me trapped for five years in marriage to a man who didn’t recognise me as an equal – a man who reflected attitudes and actions no different to many other men here in Sri Lanka. Don’t get me wrong – I am no feminist. I see no reason to burn the bra when all one needs to do is not wear it. I can only attest to what is true for me and to what is my reality.

I was recently at an event at which a Buddhist priest spoke. He told the audience that he ran a pre-school in Kalmunai and how he loved working with children. He mentioned that he was brought up in a Home for destitute children and said that when he saw children ‘ mahath dukak mata athivenava’ (a great sadness comes over me). It is this same ‘mahath duka’ I feel when I see women living lives they should not have to live. Sadness and anger. Anger at a system that makes it so hard for a woman to stand up for her rights, a system that doesn’t protect women, a system that discriminates against a woman and a system that casually accepts as normal all abuse against women.

I know what it is like to be beaten for having an opinion, beaten for answering back, beaten because he didn’t like what you just said, beaten because he was drunk, beaten because you felt you had rights and asked for them, beaten because you had values and you stood up for them, beaten because he felt you didn’t respect him. I have been beaten for less. I know what it is like to be told you don’t amount to anything, that you have nothing, that your parents are nothing, that you came from nowhere and that you will never amount to anything.

I know what it is like to believe these lies.

I know what it is like to stand waiting at a Police Station to make an entry (because my mother had the sense to push me to) and have the police laugh in your direction, look at you sneeringly and make you feel like it is you who is in the wrong. I know what it is like to stand there alone, holding a crying child, scarlet-cheeked and ashamed, like scores of other Sri Lankan women who have undergone a similar fate.  I know what it is like to want to leave an abusive man, but be too afraid to. I know what it’s like to feel like it is your responsibility to stay, for the sake of your child – even if you learn later that he has the bigger responsibility to treat his wife, the mother of his child, right.

I know what it is like to be locked out of the house, in the middle of the night, because he felt he could do that to you and to be crouching in fear and shaking with tears. I know what it is like when all the adults that surround you tell you that time will heal all wounds, or that he will change with time, or that you should be patient, when all you really want is for the abuse to stop. How many other women are in the same predicament today? How many women are being advised to be patient, to ‘bow’ their heads, to stay for the sake of the children? How many are being told to be careful with what they say to their husbands, to refrain from angering him, to pray, to go to church, to write in a diary, to ask forgiveness for sin, to put their lives right in the sight of God, to make pujas? How many women are – in addition to the beating they are getting from their husbands – beating themselves up by taking blame and responsibility for wrongs that are not theirs? How many women carry this guilt with them their entire life? And how many know that they don’t have to?

There is serious dearth of education and mainstream conversation on the topic of violence against women. And we that refuse to speak only contribute to it. Domestic violence is portrayed in images of black and white, in symbols and signage – but why do those of us with a voice not speak? We the middle and upper English speaking classes like to comfort ourselves with the idea that violence against women is a distant reality affecting only the uneducated and poorer classes. However, the harsh truth is that violence against women exists everywhere, in every class and in most homes. Yet many of us hide behind the cloak of shame and refuse to speak.

Young men reading this, ask yourselves if you have not seen your father make your mother cry, or your father hit your mother. Young women, ask yourselves whether, if you do not throw yourselves into a social life that keeps you away from home for as long as possible, you can deal with the way your mother lives or at how abusive the father you love can be to her? Yes, there are exceptions, but I speak not for them or of them, I speak for all those of you in the system – being abused now, today, to all those of you watching someone else being abused now, today. I speak even to men who speak of equality for the sexes and yet shun the idea of counselling, couple therapy, anger management and a host of other tools that can be used to create an equal platform that can be the foundation for the relationship you share with you partner. I speak to you – should you too not speak up? Should not this kind of behaviour and attitudes be labelled with a clear NO?

How many mothers stay in unhappy marriages for the sakes of their children and bring up children that can’t discern between the right and the wrong they see happening in their homes? How many women tell their sons that they must treat women right and then allow their husbands to walk all over them? Unless there is some bravery, some balls on the side of the women themselves, this cycle of abuse will continue. Sons will grow up to mistreat their women (whatever their true intentions may be) and daughters will grow up vowing never to marry. Marriages will fail and children (like mine) will have broken homes. But the question worth asking is – how much less broken is a home with an abusive father to a home in which there is no father at all? Not much less.

I am only coming out with parts of my story because I am today, older, wiser, stronger. But there must be more conversation, more acceptance, more support much less tolerance for domestic violence. Sri Lanka has a long way to go. The system of justice is marked with delays, administrative failures, bribery and corruption. It has been three years since my marriage ended and I am yet to get the justice I seek. The legal system needs to strengthen and we need lawyers with integrity – lawyers that will demand an end to the bribery and corruption that goes on within the courts. We need counsellors that will counsel with a conscience, we need women to understand that an education can get them a job that can give them financial independence. We need trustworthy childcare systems and a trustworthy police force. Yes, we are a long way away from it all.

But today, I spoke up. And tomorrow I hope you will. And maybe the day after tomorrow more people will speak up and in the next generation our children will benefit from it.

Being a young single mother in this country hasn’t been easy. I feel judged all the time! Not having a man ensures that I am an easy target to three-wheel drivers, baas’s, unscrupulous tuition teachers, dirty policemen, harsh neighbours, school principals – the whole lot. I have come to realise that the hardest thing a single woman or a single mother faces is social stigmatisation.

And yet, when I wake up in the morning and I know the day is my own, that the goals I have set are my own, that all achievements are my own, that the decisions I make are my own, and that my son is my own, I am happy.

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This is an edited version of an essay that first appeared in 16 Days Campaign Blog, a platform curated by the Women and Media Collective.

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It was less than 200 years ago that the title of “orator” or “navalar” was bestowed on Kandar Arumukam Pillai, by the grateful inhabitants of South India. Leaving his native Jaffna for a time, he had spearheaded a renaissance of the Tamil language and culture in South India preaching, printing and endowing educational institutions. Thus began a long history of Jaffna Tamil involvement in the renaissance of Tamil. Thamotharampillai, Winslow and Kanagasabai Pillai are but a few whose contribution to the Tamil renaissance that rushed through South India and Jaffna.[1]

Jaffna’s isolation from Sanskritic influence and its commitment to education has meant that it considers itself culturally superior to the natives of Tamil Nadu, it considers it language and culture purer and closer that of that Sangam ideal. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the blast of the trumpet against the now infamous “Kolaveri” song should be so strong in Jaffna. The day before yesterday SJ Stalin released a fascinating response to the song, entitled “Yarlpanathilirunthu Kolaverida”, a rough translation would be “Dude, Bloodlust from Jaffna”.  Its essence is a celebration of Tamil language and culture, a deploration of the bastardisation of Tamil and chastisation of those who are ashamed of their Tamilness.

At first glance, the music video appears to be primarily targeted at Dhanush. His mix of English and Tamil in the Kolaveri song has proved immensely popular with over 30 million hits on Youtube. Stalin considers his song a war on the Tamil language and describes his attitude toward it as bloodlust. He wonders why Dhanush chooses to use English – he asks why Tamil is scarce in its heartland, Tamil Nadu. He seems to imply that if Tamil gave sufficient creative freedom for Kamban, Valluvar and Bharathi it should be enough for Dhanush. Stalin thinks that Dhanush doesn’t give Tamil the respect that it deserves. As an ancient language, one which Stalin describes as predating the creation of stones and sand, Tamil has a rich literature and culture and Dhanush appears to ignore this and consider Tamil lacking. This is brought out by the poignant contrast between the focus on the keyboard in Dhanush’s work as opposed to the harmonium, perceived to be a more indigenous instrument, in Stalin’s video.

From a political point of view, the vehemence with which Dhanush is attacked is notable. In India, Tamil feels more secure now that the policy of replacing English with Hindi, popular in the 1960s, is dead. In contrast, the Tamils of Ceylon, whose numbers have dwindled considerably as a result of the war and migration, now feel that their language and culture are under attack –  just as when the first missionaries arrived in Jaffna in the 1800s. The reaction, as then, is one of Tamil pride and yearning for the glory days of Dravidian power and culture – the Sangam period.

The politics does not end there. The opening scene highlights an official government signboard, at the entrance of Jaffna, which has Singhalese at the top and an indigenous signboard where Tamil is above Singhalese. This juxtaposition highlights the vulnerability of Tamil and the divergence of official and popular sentiments toward language policy in the North. The continuous flow of buses from the South into Jaffna must demonstrate a concern with the increasing settlement of people from the South (read Singhalese). The police board in the corner (again Singhalese top, Tamil bottom) takes the mind down an associative track that ends in colonisation and cantonments. Another associative track is set in motion by the constant reference to bloodlust, intermingled with references to Ahimsa (non-violence) and revolutionary zeal – we all know where it leads.

It also highlights the threat to Tamil from within. After years of persecution some Tamils have chosen to hide or disassociate from their Tamil identities – especially in the metropolis of Colombo. The victory of the Sri Lankan Army, and the present occupation of sorts constantly reminds Tamils that they are second-class citizens. Stalin’s video is an exhortation for Tamil’s to embrace their culture; hence his parting cry to the Tamil is, “keep your head high”.

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[Editors note: The author was married to Dr. Rajini Thiranagama (née Rajasingham), a Tamil human rights activist and feminist murdered in 1989 by the LTTE. She was one of the founding members of the University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, which during the war, published some of the most hard hitting critiques and exposes of Government as well as LTTE atrocities and human rights violations. Since 2009, Dayapala Thiranagama's insightful articles to Groundviews have been amongst the site's most read and shared.]

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“Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means” (Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, London, 1940, Page 81).

On 27  December 1989 I arrived in Heathrow along with my two young daughters, aged 9 and 11 years. At  the Immigration Desk the  Officer asked me how long we intended  to stay.I replied ‘a couple of weeks’. My youngest daughter still hanging on to my hand and whispered  to me ‘Thaththa, don’t tell lies we are not going back to Sri Lanka’.  She  of course  was telling the truth. Now after more than two decades I had to return to  Sri Lanka alone, leaving them behind.

There were two main  reasons that made ending my  exile possible: the achievement of my personal  commitment to  my  children which was  to ensure that they were independent,  and the change in Sri Lanka’s political climate, which is the focus of this account.

By the end of 1989  when we fled Sri Lanka we left behind a country gripped by  seemingly insoluble political contradictions. They seemed to require a comprehensive military defeat  of one party over  the other for  the  resolution  of the crisis. The JVP was fighting   the Sri Lankan state which had sought India’s help and the LTTE  had taken on the mighty IPKF(Indian Peace Keeping Force). The JVP had  begun a ‘patriotic war’ accusing  that the Sri Lankan State of  capitulating   to Indian imperialism.They demanded that the people patriotically oppose the  devolution of any power to Tamils  just  as the UPFA at present defines its patriotism in order   to deny the possibility of granting of democratic rights to the    Tamil speaking people.  At the time the JVP had  begun  assassinating all those who supported the devolution of power to Tamils. Their targets  included  the activists and the leaders of the Left parties and groups,  as they were in the forefront of  the campaign in support of the 13^th Amendment, which allowed  for the devolution of power. The JVP  had become  cruel  and ruthless killers of  other political activists in the name of ‘patriotism’ and appeared  to be   knocking on the door of the state power.

I had joined the Vikalpa Kandayama (Alternative Group) and later organised the Movement for Socialism and Democracy uniting all the left groups ,democrats and some  prominent individuals in trade unions.The state also responded with equal cruelty and ruthlessness to the JVP rebellion. There were death squads acting with impunity  and  the roadsides in certain areas became open graves.  The LTTE was not any different from the JVP and they  also assassinated all those who were critical of them. With these murders there were personal sufferings within families  who experienced irreplaceable losses.

Rajani Thiranagama, my wife who was  brutally  gunned down by the Tamil Tigers  merely  because she was a vocal critic of their human rights violations. This was despite the fact that she had  given medical treatment to  leading LTTE cadres at the  very inception of their organisation. Her  assassination  was symbolic of  both the Tamil Tigers’ fascist nature as well as the  bleak future  that    the so called ‘Tamil liberation’ would have brought about in the North and East, if they were not  comprehensively defeated.

Rajani was brutally killed on 21 September 1989. My children lost their most stable primary carer who was their  great  source of love , stability and hope. Despite the fact that I took the full responsibility for their upbringing after her death, I feel that I could not replace fully the love and support  they should have had from their mother. Like them, thousands of children in Sri Lanka  have suffered the loss of their parents leaving them experiencing  a legacy of pain and vulnerability that  has continued long after the war   has finished.

When Rajani was assassinated I had to assure my children that I would be there for them.But unfortunately I could not carry out this  responsibility whilst being in Sri Lanka and having  an  underground  or semi -underground life . Sri Lanka had become very unsafe, as there was not  even  the  slightest regard for human life. All the parties who  fought their armed opponents threw away almost all  internationally accepted  norms  of warfare and when they had  audacity to kill their  unarmed critics or civilians they  also threw away unhesitatingly  all the civilised norms of  resolving  human  and political conflicts. The victims of the armed violence never had a chance to comprehend  or to know the specific charges against them  at the time when the gunman or the suicide  bomber appeared before them. Like many others, Rajani never knew the specific charges against her.  She only knew that the Tigers did not tolerate dissenting  views  and that  these  would be punishable by  death.

By 1989  the Sri Lankan state was in  grave danger of being defeated by the armed  groups  led by the Sinhala extremist JVP. It survived. In all three armed struggles , two of them led by the JVP in 1971 and 1987-89 and the Eelam war  led by the LTTE, the challengers to the state and parliamentary democracy has been  comprehensively defeated by the Sri Lankan state. It is ironic that that the defeat of the reactionary,violent and fascist forces of the JVP and the LTTE has been won at an unbearable cost for Sri Lankan society and its parliamentary democracy. The survival of the state in this fashion has posed difficult questions as well as presenting an opportunity to reform  the Sri Lankan  state political structures.

The  absence of   a commitment  from the current government to meet the democratic aspirations of all our communities and  the  lack of political will  for democratic reforms  appears to be the  main challenge facing Sri Lanka  at present. The massive loss of human life,legacy of the war,its effect on ordinary civilians and the imprint it has left on political activity has reshaped our future.Understanding and addressing what is felt on an individual level as a deep personal loss and what is felt by us collectively as a tragedy is fundamental to the creation of a different   country  and a different  politics,where such events cannot happen again.

President Rajapaksa enjoys a solid political support among the  Sinhalese rural masses, which hither to  no other political leader has been able to  command . His popularity is unassailable and the  recent  local election results show that it is not going to be any easier now  for  his political opponents. This    popularity is undoubtedly  due  to  the political leadership  he was able to provide  in defeating the LTTE separatism. This  will  continue to have  huge political significance in the country for generations to come.  Without the Rajapaksha brothers  at helm of the state power it would not have been  possible to defeat the Tamil Tigers. Whether we would like it or not as long as the West  pursues   the war crime allegations  against the state, Rajapaksa’s popularity is bound to increase,    solidifying  the  support that President Rajapaksa already enjoys. This popularity  is also the main  obstacle for the possibility of ethnic inclusiveness. As long as the TNA continues to apply pressure  through India and West to gain a political solution to the issue of the democratic rights of the Tamils ,it will be seen as political interference in the internal affairs of  Sri Lanka and  thus a largely a  counter productive effort.

There is also an element of this when foreign funded NGO’s campaign for the rights of Tamil people. However, the NGO’s are making a valuable contribution in defending democratic rights, a role which political parties in the opposition are unable to play with credibility as their political lines have been similar to that of the parties in the UPFA.The JVP’s anti-devolutionary violent  political history against the Tamil democratic rights is a case in point.

It is unlikely that the government will be able to dismantle  Sri Lanka’s  parliamentary democracy as some critics would like to suggest but there should not be any complacency in this regard. When the tentacles of family interests spread through state institutions giving up power will not be an easy option.The most difficult situation is that the opposition is meek and feeble and the government would like to have  a free ride at the expense of the political rights of the people. If the government is planning to   dismantle parliamentary  democracy,  it will be the greatest political blunder and the folly of the capitalist class in this country .

A divided opposition  hugely disadvantages ordinary  people.They are in disarray precisely at the time when there is an urgent need for a common political programme to protect basic democratic  and  political rights. Each opposition party is also deeply  divided  within themselves on the issue of political leadership  and/or  political ideology and strategy. The UNP and the JVP are undergoing the most serious and catastrophic  splits  within  their own parties  by weakening their capacity to oppose the government and to change the balance of forces in their favour. The  UPFA political hegemony  appears unbreakable despite  their  shortcomings.    The  government is also  using every possible corrupt incentives  to lure the opposition figures to their side. As long as the opposition is unable to mount a credible and mass base democratic   political challenge to the government, the possibility of  launching a successful  battle  to win for greater  democratic rights  is  still long way off. This has meant that the government have felt able to get away with any anti-democratic act or legislation.In Gramscian  terms this is the ‘effective reality’  at present in the country . Gramsci further sees the need for any political   opposition to ‘transcend beyond’ this ‘effective reality’ and alter the balance of forces in their favour.

The  Mulleriawa incident  exposes  the  continuing thuggish and criminal  behaviour of  some of the government politicians . It is also  a warning that what they are capable of doing to their own  they will feel able to do double fold to those who aim to challenge  them democratically. These are legitimate and genuine issues that need  to be  addressed  by both the opposition and the government. If they fail at this juncture, they will not be forgiven  nor  forgotten by the people. In the deep fault-line of our politics the effect of the breakdown of civil society and political culture can be still felt.The forces of violence ,the climate of fear  and the suffocation of democratic voices that took centre stage in our politics have not yet been defeated despite the end of the war.

I returned to my village, Happawana-Harumalgoda West in Habaraduwa to reside . I had last left as a young man  in 1967 to attend the university. All my memories in growing up here  were of   the poverty and destitution of this village, matched only by   the generosity of its people  when I had difficulties  with the security forces. Growing up in this village made me conscious of  the path of the personal sacrifices  that have to be made   to achieve social justice,political rights  and fairness  for all ethnic communities in our country. The legacy of this village lies deep within my political history and identity. In 1971  the villagers  protected me from the CID and police   as they encamped this village to apprehend me.When I was acquitted  in my trail in1975  they took me home in a huge procession  that filled a two-mile long stretch from the Pilana junction  of  Deniyaya-Akuressa Road to my house.

In Sri Lanka, the journeys we make , both politically and physically are often defined by great  losses.This two mile long route runs through the village that  connects it to  the George Ratnayake Mawatha, which was named after  my comrade and friend George Ratnayake  who was brutally assassinated by  the  JVP in  August 1989. He was the finest human being this village has ever produced. His loss is  felt deeply not least by me.Without him my village is a lonelier place. George was a trade unionist and a Central committee member of the Communist Party . He  stood for the provincial council election  and won in 1989. He was killed by the JVP because he openly supported the devolution of  power to the Tamils. His assassination  stands  a testimony to the brutality of the JVP and their  racist politics of  Sinhalese supremacy. This village  will never forget this heinous crime. The JVP  had  sent  a group of   faceless assassins from outside that day. The day the village buried their finest human being they also defied all the funeral restrictions imposed by the JVP.

This village has changed  since I left it  and will  continue to change at  increasing  speed. It no longer bears the hallmark of destitution and abject  poverty I witnessed as a child. It no longer exists in the same intensity. Both male and female  wage labour has increased here. This I hope  will influence its future political direction and enable it to continue making a political contribution to win and preserve democracy.

In Sri Lanka in  general the politics in the  countryside where  the electoral bulwark of Sinhala Buddhist supremacy reigns supreme  will be pivotal in the coming years of  re-drawing electoral battle grounds. This is partly  due the UPFA regime shifting the political emphasis to its village  based  support  structures and has undertaken infrastructural development hither to unseen in rural areas.Sri Lanka will not be able to resolve its thorny issue of   nationhood unless rural communities support an electoral victory that would resolve the issue of the devolution of power to to the Tamil community.

During these turbulent years of violent politics, the personal losses including having to leave my own country have made a lasting impact on my life.Those  comrades and friends who knew me closely  including my wife Rajani who fell victims to the LTTE, the JVP and  the security forces would have expected  in their last moments that I would continue their  struggle for social justice and democracy. But  I could not evade my personal responsibility towards my children at the time.  Rajani , my  comrades and friends knew  very well the mortal danger that would pose  to any individual in Sri Lankan politics. But they never hesitated. These  murderous  non -state actors eager to justify these crimes  in the name of ‘revolution’ or ‘national liberation’. They have made no  apology for these murders.The  security forces have  not shown any accountability.They have acted with impunity in the name  of ‘democracy’ and ‘national sovereignty’.

It is great to return home.

However, Sri Lanka as a nation has not ended its own political exile even after  wining the separatist war. Unless Sri Lanka  resolves its critical issue of ethnic inclusiveness, she will be in political exile. There will be a day, the masses of this country will drag her out of  this and make us a proud nation where all ethnic communities will enjoy democracy and freedom.

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Put simply, The Incomplete Thombu by Sri Lankan Tamil artist T. Shanaathanan is, for us, one of 2011′s most compelling publications. It is art, but in the form of a book that deftly entwines it with architecture, drawing, the memory of loss and an eerily compelling exploration of what makes a home, a home by those who have left it behind, or lost it to the war. Short excerpts in the book by those who have lost their home are always poignant, sometimes humorous but never vindictive. There is a fragile, essential humanity to these stories that with a light touch reveals so much the war took away from residents in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. There are 80 stories captured in the tome and they range in tone, identity, location and age. The drawings by the subjects themselves are very powerful depictions of loss – not just of property, but at times of hope itself. But in the stories there is also hope regained. Here we see facets of life before, during and after displacement that for those who haven’t experienced it, deeply humbling. Shanaathanan’s gifted ability to render in art the essence of each story makes the intensely personal more broadly appreciated, and you can spend hours flipping through this book, reading its contents and looking at the drawings.

Shanaathanan was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka in 1969. He received his BFA in 1997 and his MFA in 2000 from the University of Delhi. In 2011 he completed his PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He lives and works in Jaffna and is currently senior lecturer in Art History in the Department of Fine Arts, University of Jaffna.

Back cover of The Incomplete Thombu. Click here for larger image.

As noted on the Raking Leaves website, The Incomplete Thombu poses as a bureaucratic document file. Thombu was a term used by the Dutch to describe a public land registery, derived from the Greek tomos, from which the Latin word tome, or large book orginates. The Incomplete Thombu covers the subject of Tamil displacement during the civil conflict in Sri Lanka between 1983 and 2009. Though numerous documents of statistical data have recorded the displacement of civilians from the north and east of Sri Lanka, few have highlighted the personal plights of those involved. This project records the stories that removed civilians from their homes and the memories that they took with them. T. Shanaathanan examines the subject of displacement through a series of drawings that overlay ground plans of houses drawn from memory by displaced Tamil-speaking civilians, with architectʼs renderings and dry pastel drawings. The attempt to register one document on top of the other, maps out further displacements between what is remembered, what has been taken away and the stories left behind in a conflict that has torn apart its land and its people for over thirty years.

Groundviews caught up with the artist at the Saskia Fernando Gallery, where The Incomplete Thombu is on sale. The book is also on sale at the Barefoot Gallery in Colombo.

In this short interview, Shanaathanan speaks of the process of creating something that deals with trauma and loss. We asked him about the challenges of grappling with architecture and memory, as well as the architecture of memory. We ask the artist how in some of the professional architectural motifs, details not present in the original drawings are featured, and go on to ask him about the process of selection that led to the 80 stories captured in the book. Shanaathanan speaks of the politics of this work, and of his art in general, and also explores the idea of home (and its loss), which is a running theme through his work. He also explains how the book was bound and created in the manner it is.

Shanaathanan’s seven year old son, who had come to the gallery to see his father’s paintings, makes a cameo appearance in the video!

• Human displacement
• Sethu Samudram: Bridging art, history and human relations
• There is an urgent need for psychological assistance in the North
• The divide between Muslims and Tamils: Perspective of an IDP
• Jaffna: Moments of Nostalgia

Photo courtesy Lankapuvath

Michael Roberts’ recent Groundviews piece on the government’s rehabilitation programme of alleged former LTTE combatants is generally approving of that programme, not only directly but also indirectly in making the kinds of criticisms that actually add to the approbation. Professor Roberts has added his distinguished academic authority to a set of circumstances that perhaps justifies a more discriminating analysis. His uncritical and at times inaccurate and misleading observations therefore require a response, providing also the opportunity to critique, both the policy and legal perspectives involved. In this article I will attempt to remedy the lacunae in my previous piece on this issue, published here[1] in late 2010, which did not discuss the legal dimensions nor use testimonies of persons released from rehabilitation centres[2] to substantiate certain assertions made in that article.

Statistics: Do we know how many persons have been rehabilitated?
In a section titled ‘Numbers’ Roberts discusses the number of persons who were held at rehabilitation centres. He mentions three categories of persons who were sent to rehabilitation centres- those who surrendered voluntarily, those who were identified as former LTTE cadres and those arrested in other parts of the country from 2006-2008, thereby implying that the process of identifying persons as former combatants came to a halt soon after the end of the war. What he fails to note is that more than 6 months following the end of the armed conflict the government continued to identify persons who were perceived to have had some link with the LTTE, who were then sent to rehabilitation centres. For instance, there were numerous reports that persons were separated from their families and taken away during the IDP return process in late 2009. This continued in areas of origin of the IDPs after they returned home. Further, detainees held at centres such as Boosa have been transferred to rehabilitation centres and vice versa. The population at the rehabilitation centres therefore has been fluid.

Since July 2009, when ICRC access to the rehabilitation centres was stopped, no independent agency has visited the centres to undertake protection monitoring, i.e. ascertain whether the rights of the inhabitants were violated in any manner during their detention. Since news reports and articles often mention IOM’s access to rehabilitation centres, with the implication that it constitutes oversight of an international agency, it is important to state that IOM is not a protection agency and only provides support to the re-integration process of alleged ex-combatants. The rehabilitation process was conducted entirely by the Sri Lanka armed forces acting under the authority of the Ministry of Defence. Another point to note is that although the Bureau of the Commissioner-General for Rehabilitation (CGR) comes within the purview of the Ministry of Prison Reforms and Rehabilitation, the decision making authority in relation to releases, determination of the period of detention etc. lie entirely with the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence. Therefore, there is no independent means of verifying the actual total number of persons who have subjected to the rehabilitation process and released. For instance, while certain government reports state that around 1000 remain in rehabilitation, former Attorney-General Mohan Peiris at the Convention Against Torture Committee (CAT) hearings stated that only 869 currently remain in rehabilitation centres.[3]

Surrendee, Detainee, Rehabilitee: Does Terminology Matter?
All persons held at rehabilitation centres have been labelled ‘surrendees’ by the government although many did not surrender but were taken away by the armed forces from IDP camps or were detained at some point during, at the end of, and after the last stages of the armed conflict. Many were also forcibly recruited by the LTTE with some being forced into combat by the group only for a few days or even hours during the final stage of the war.

Until the state of emergency (SOE) and thereby the Emergency Regulations (ER) lapsed on 31 August 2011, ER 22 governed the status of the surrendees. Regulation 22 (2) defined a ‘surrendee’ as anyone who surrendered in relation to an offence under certain laws, such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act. It further required the person to give a written statement that s/he surrendered voluntarily. The government however has labelled not only those who voluntarily surrendered but also those who were arrested as surrendees. Regulation 22 (13) also enabled a court to impose rehabilitation as a sentence upon conviction. This begs the question, under which law did the government subject those who didn’t voluntarily surrender to rehabilitation? The CGR Maj. Gen. Chandana Rajaguru has stated that ‘there is another category of people who had been produced before Courts and had received rehabilitation as the verdict. They are with us, and are around 1,000 in number. We intend to keep them only for one year’.[4] If rehabilitation was imposed by the courts as part of a judicial order then these persons should have been tried and convicted of an offence. To date, trials of around 1000 persons who were captured or surrendered after the end of the armed conflict in May 2009 have not been held and concluded, unless they were held in secret. Therefore, what are the court orders that Maj. Gen. Rajaguru speaks of and under which law were they issued? Maj. Gen. Rajaguru further states they intend to hold these persons for only one year. If a court has made a certain order stipulating the rehabilitation of an individual then how would the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence or the CGR have the authority to determine the period of rehabilitation? Would it not constitute the usurpation of judicial authority?

The screening process: A combatant unless proven otherwise
Senior Legal Advisor to the Cabinet and former Attorney-General Mr. Mohan Peiris stated at the CAT Committee hearings in Geneva on 9 November 2011 that Sri Lanka did not choose to charge persons thought to be LTTE cadres and jail them, but instead chose the restorative justice approach because the former would not have promoted true reconciliation. In response to a CAT Committee member’s query whether the government gave these persons ‘an offer they could not refuse’, Mr. Peiris stated that these persons were asked whether they were willing to submit themselves to rehabilitation and if so were asked to commit their acquiesce to writing. The other option he said for those who didn’t want to undergo rehabilitation, i.e. those who said ‘I don’t want to be rehabilitated- I want to remain a terrorist- charge me, indict me, jail me’, was to be left to the mercy of the criminal justice system. At no point does the former Attorney-General who was in office during the last stages of the war, consider the likelihood that some of those identified as LTTE cadres may have had no formal link with the group while others might have been forcibly recruited for a few days or even a few hours. There might have even have been those who should have been indicted for war crimes instead of being subjected to the rehabilitation process.

Who is a combatant? The ICRC note on ‘Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law’ recognizes that ‘As with State parties to armed conflicts, non-State parties comprise both fighting forces and supportive segments of the civilian population, such as political and humanitarian wings. The term organized armed group, however, refers exclusively to the armed or military wing of a non-State party: its armed forces in a functional sense.’ It goes on to state that ‘Individuals who continuously accompany or support an organized armed group, but whose function does not involve direct participation in hostilities, are not members of that group within the meaning of IHL. Instead, they remain civilians assuming support functions, similar to private contractors and civilian employees accompanying State armed forces’. Within this framework those who were part of non-combat divisions and did not directly participate in hostilities would not be considered combatants under international humanitarian law.

The National Action Plan of the ‘National Framework Proposal for Reintegration of Ex-combatants into Civilian Life in Sri Lanka’, drafted by the government through a multi-stakeholder process that was supported by many international agencies, contained a sliding scale that provided a guide to categorizing those who required rehabilitation as opposed to those who should have been subject to prosecution, based on various factors including the period spent with the armed group. Yet, this Plan never received cabinet approval and was not implemented. Instead, the government considered all persons as LTTE cadres and subjected them to rehabilitation. This also means that it is possible there are those who should have been prosecuted but instead have been subjected to rehabilitation. While the intelligence agencies no doubt undertook their own method of screening, it is quite possible that such a process violated the rights of persons held at the rehabilitation centres. For instance, as discussed further in the section below, the screening process continued throughout the duration of the rehabilitation process. This meant that persons who were at the rehabilitation centres had no certainty regarding their legal status, i.e. they did not know whether they were going to be released after rehabilitation or sent to a detention centre. While Roberts lauds the government’s ‘enlightened policy’ the reality is that there is no transparent state policy on rehabilitation process.

Determination of the period of rehabilitation: Indefinite administrative detention?

ER 22 stated that a ‘surrendee’ could be held for a period of twelve months and at the end of this period:

• The person could be released following a review by the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence; or
• The period of rehabilitation could be extended for a period of three months at a time so long as ‘the aggregate period of such extensions shall not exceed a further twelve months’; or
• Three months after the surrendee being assigned to a rehabilitation centre s/he could be investigated to determine if the person committed any offences as stipulated in Emergency Regulation 22 (2) and the person could be charged with an offence.

Therefore, the subjection of an individual to the rehabilitation programme did not mean the person was precluded from being arrested for an offence at any point during the rehabilitation process, i.e. even the day before the expected date of release. Hence, the surrendee had no certainty regarding his/her legal position, i.e. whether s/he might be prosecuted, until the completion of the rehabilitation period. Hence, an individual who was held at a rehabilitation centre for the maximum period of 2 years could, the day prior to his release, be arrested. Until an individual was released from the rehabilitation centre s/he had no clarity or certainty regarding his/her plight. There have been reports of individuals who were identified for release being sent to Boossa detention centre a few days prior to the expected date of release.

The CGR Maj. Gen. Chandana Rajaguru has stated in an interview that ‘people who had come from Puthumatalan started their rehabilitation in October 2009’[5]. Although Puthumathalan was captured by the armed forces in April 2009, with persons suspected of being affiliated to the LTTE taken into custody or asked to surrender, according to Maj.Gen. Rajaguru these persons began the rehabilitation process only in October 2009. From April to October 2009 until they were subjected to rehabilitation, which at the time was governed by ER 22, under which law were these persons held? According to testimonies of those released from rehabilitation centres, none were informed of the laws under which they were being held nor produced in court during this period, which leads one to the conclusion that they were arbitrarily detained contravening not only international laws but also Articles 12 and 13 of the Fundamental Rights Chapter of the Constitution of Sri Lanka.

There have also been instances in which rehabilitees have been transferred from a rehabilitation centre, where the maximum period of detention is 24 months, to a detention centre such as Boossa where persons are held on detention orders issued for a maximum period of 18 months under the PTA, and previously the Emergency Regulations. Transfers from rehabilitation to detention centres usually take place towards the end of the maximum period for which a rehabilitee can be held- 24 months. In some cases persons have been transferred from the rehabilitation centre to a detention centre and thereafter produced before a magistrate and remanded in custody. By transferring a person from a rehabilitation centre to a detention centre or placing the person on remand, the government can hold an individual in administrative detention indefinitely.

The Post-State of Emergency Legal Framework
Following the lapsing of the SOE and thereby the ERs, the government issued new regulations under section 27 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which empowers the Minister of Defence to make regulations under the Act ‘for the purpose of carrying out or giving effect to the principles and provisions of the Act’. Of these the Prevention of Terrorism (Surrendees Care and Rehabilitation) Regulation No.5 of 2011 deals with both adults and children subjected to the rehabilitation process. The lapsed ER 22 has been reproduced in this regulation.

Another regulation issued under the PTA titled Prevention of Terrorism (Extension of Application) Regulation No.3 of 2011 extends until specified dates the application of a number of regulations, including the regulation on the appointment of the CGR, that were made under the state of emergency that prevailed until 30 August 2011. The regulation issued under the PTA states that the specified ERs made under the SOE will continue to be in force notwithstanding the lapsing of the SOE which resulted in the lapsing of emergency regulations made under section 5 of the Public Security Ordinance (PSO). It should be noted that regulations issued under a SOE cannot continue to be in force when the SOE lapses because only the proclamation of a SOE empowers the President to issue ERs. Therefore, in the absence of a SOE emergency regulations cannot be extended or kept in force via ‘normal’ legislation, such as the PTA. Hence, the regulation extending the CGR’s tenure is invalid since the extension of the application of the ER appointing him is ultra vires.

Lack of Procedural Safeguards and Oversight Mechanisms
At no point during the rehabilitation process did surrendees enjoy procedural safeguards; they were not provided with information on the timeframe of rehabilitation or the right to legal representation to contest the lawfulness of the rehabilitation process. Coupled with the lack of oversight mechanisms this places surrendees in a particularly precarious position with their fate decided by one individual- the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence. Heads of various missions, as stated in Roberts’ piece, have undertaken visits to the centres but one can hardly claim that a short tour of the facility conducted by the armed forces by persons who do not speak Tamil who rely entirely on (sometimes questionable) interpretation constitutes keeping ‘a weather eye on the programme’.

Donor Support for the Rehabilitation Process
According to publicly available data, except during the initial stages, donors have not supported rehabilitation centres or activities therein. This was a conscious decision made, albeit reluctantly, after they became aware of the legal ramifications of financially bankrolling centres at which persons were being arbitrarily detained. Instead, they provide financial support to re-integration activities that take place following release from rehabilitation centres. Likewise, as stated earlier, IOM is not involved in the rehabilitation programme but supports re-integration activities.

Vocational Training and Livelihood Needs
Although the government claims it has provided vocational training to all those held in rehabilitation centres, according to released persons only a handful appear to have received any form of training at all. Many stated that of thousands of persons only a limited number, around 20-30, were chosen for each training course at any given time, i.e. training was not provided to all persons held at rehabilitation centres. The most pressing need of those released from rehabilitation centres is livelihood opportunities. Although IOM provides a grant to enable them to kick-start income generation activities, some released persons have experienced delays in accessing these grants while others have utilised the grant to engage in one-off economic activities that do not provide a sustainable income. In other instances, due to lack of guidance and support in the form of market knowledge etc. some have undertaken income generation projects which they are not qualified to run and thereby have incurred losses, most often resulting in the loss of the capital as well. Also, the fixed grant provided by IOM does not cover all costs related to a certain income generation activity, which prevents some from engaging in the activity productively.

Post-Release Monitoring and Surveillance
During the past year it has been reported that those released from the ‘rehabilitation’ centres have been instructed by the local government agent, the Grama Sevaka (GS) to register with the Civil Affairs Office (CAO), which is run by the military, and thereafter report to the Office weekly, fortnightly or monthly, a decision dependent entirely on the area military commander. Some former rehabilitees have reported that during these visits to the CAO they were asked to sign documents that were in Sinhala, a language they don’t understand, and interrogated. They said they were asked the same questions that were posed to them in the rehabilitation centres- of which section/battalion/unit were you a member? Who was your commander? How long were you in the LTTE? Do you know where weapons are hidden? etc. Some who were forcibly recruited by the LTTE lament that these questions only remind them of a period they wish to forget when they are trying to move forward with their lives, while other expresses anger about the constant harassment and suspicion with which they are viewed that they say makes them feel like second class citizens. Post-release monitoring and surveillance are being conducted outside existing legal frameworks, in an ad hoc manner by multiple military/intelligence agencies, that visit homes of former rehabilitees often and interrogate them. Most often the officers/visitors do not identify themselves. Former rehabilitees are given no information on the likely duration of surveillance and reporting and some have been subjected to travel restrictions.

The continued monitoring and harassment by the security services restricts the ability of this population to successfully re-integrate into the community, as they continued to be viewed with suspicion by the community due to their imagined links with the armed forces which their regular visits to COA and/or army camps and constant visits by security agencies to their homes elicit. There were also those who complained that they were unable to engage in income generation activities due to regular visits by the intelligence agencies and/or army to their place of employment, which not surprisingly caused problems at their workplaces, particularly in the case of those who are self-employed and provide services to homes, such as electricians, plumbers and masons.

*****

I would like to conclude by addressing a question posed by Roberts about the releases conducted with pomp and ceremony by the government. He asks and answers the question thus– ‘how do ex-Tiger fighters and their kinfolk view such moments? The plausible answer is that these ceremonial functions are akin to a graduation ceremony and a momentous point in their life, even conceivably a “transformational” landmark’. The reality is that none of those interviewed appeared to view the graduation ceremony as a transformational landmark. Instead, all felt a sense of relief to be released from what they, at one point, felt would be a never ending ordeal, and reunite with their families. At the same time they also felt trepidation about the future- about their ability to find employment and re-build their lives free from harassment and surveillance in an environment in which they were still viewed as persons who have to be watched and monitored by the state.

• Cluster munitions, inhumane IDP camp conditions and the White Flag incident: More disturbing leaks from UN report
• A first hand perspective of Sri Lanka’s largest IDP camp: Are they really ‘our people’?
• Lifting of Emergency: Exposing the Sham Exercise
• ‘National security’ in post-war Sri Lanka: Women’s (In) security in the North
• A Kunanayakam by any other name?

As one of the members of the Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990 (Citizens’ Commission), it is my privilege and pleasure to say a few brief words on behalf of all the Commissioners on the occasion of the launch of our Report.

The Citizen’s Commission was an initiative of the Law and Society Trust (LST) and its partners’ in the absence of an official government inquiry into the expulsion of Muslims from the Northern districts by the LTTE. Our mandate was to document comprehensively  and in depth the experiences of the expulsion, the subsequent two decades of displacement and resettlement of the Northern Muslims as well as their expectations of the state and civil society.

The fact that this was conceived of as a ‘Commission’, I think has important methodological as well as conceptual implications. A commission of inquiry (CoI) is generally appointed by the Executive Branch to inquire and report on a particular incident or series of incidents, to verify facts and to determine responsibility. As opposed to judicial proceedings in a court of law, a CoI process provides a number of advantages. A CoI process is able to 1) investigate the underlying socioeconomic and political causes in addition to uncovering facts and assigning responsibility; 2)unlike court proceedings which are adversarial, where facts and legal arguments are presented by counsel, and there sis limited ability to investigate further, a CoI process allows for an inquisitorial approach which allows the Commissioners’ to to be open to a wider range of questions they want answers for as well as the witnesses who they want to hear and take account of; 3) lastly, it also has the ability to involve and inform the public in ways not available in judicial proceedings.

This initiative itself is a unique achievement, in that it is perhaps it is one of the few instances of such a broad-based CoI process being initiated by civil society in Sri Lanka. Our Commission brought together a diverse group of civil society members at the national level and the regional level as well as a number of community based organisations with roots in the Northern Muslim community. What we all have in common is a deep commitment to ensure that the voices of Northern Muslims are heard and that justice is ensured.

We know that official Commissions of Inquiry in Sri Lanka do not always yield expected results. A number of recent studies on Commissions appointed by successive governments have pointed out that they end up being tools to launch attacks against opponents, a way to deflect criticism of the government or a way to co-opt civil society members to white wash violations or all of these things at once. This is borne out, for example, in Kishali Pinto Jayawardene’s work on Commissions of Inquiry, which show how such commissions have largely served the interests of governments, and/or been a cover for impunity and therefore how counter-productive they can be.  She does however, I think, make an important distinction between ‘bad’ commissions and ‘good’ commissions. While bad commissions, were patently political; had political appointees and arrived at political verdicts that suited the government of the day, good commissions did perform the function of telling the truth and did make good recommendations although never implemented. For example, the four Presidential Commissions of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons which functioned during the period 1994 – 2000, looked into thousands of complaints of disappearances and established that over 20,000 cases of “disappearances” had in fact occurred, most at the hands of security forces but, unsurprisingly, their recommendations were mostly ignored.

The methodology followed by us in our work and in compiling our report was multi faceted, including primary and secondary research as well the collection of close to 400 narratives from displaced persons. This research was complemented by several visits by us to different locations to meet with members of the Northern Muslim community, where we also heard first-hand accounts of their experiences and expectations. I think this process ensured a more nuanced analysis of the events of 1990 and the issues at stake. The diverse background of the Commissioners’ opened up a space to talk about the expulsion, its consequences and return and resettlement in an open and frank exchange. The presence of a number of women, both as Advisors and Commissioners allowed us to have a number of special meetings with women of the Northern Muslim community. Given that men used to dominate discussions at mixed meetings, this created an important space where women could talk about issues personal to them, including psycho social problems experienced by them. At one of the meetings, when the women learnt that one of the Commissioners (Gameela Samarasinghe) was a psychologist they opened up to her about their problems in a way they otherwise might not have, talking about their mental trauma and distress following displacement. Gameela was able to respond not just with empathy but with a deep understanding of the psycho-social implications of displacement.  The presence of a retired High Court Judge Mr. Majeed, with a wealth of knowledge on land issues and land law, as a Commissioner, meant that those who came before the Commission could go deep into the critical issue of land separating perceptions and attitudes, myths and facts, and law and non law from one another. The presence of a member of the host community, Dr. Anes gave a necessary balance to the sittings in Puttalam where host – displaced community relations have been strained over the years.  During our visit to Mannar, Dr. Nesiah’s recollection of Tamil-Muslim relations in Mannar during the time he was the Government Agent there (‘65-‘68) enriched our historical perspective, which has been a critical facet of the work of the Commission. My own work on Muslim Personal Law in Sri Lanka, opened up the space to talk about the ways in which women in the community are discriminated by laws endorsed by the ‘community’. We hope therefore that this process resulted in a genuine ‘truth’ seeking. We hope that it has catalysed a dialogue and discussion about the issues facing the Northern Muslim community in Sri Lanka across a number of civil society members and groups with a view to understanding and addressing those problems collectively.

The involvement of community based organisations rooted in the Northern Muslim community in this Commission ensured a high degree of community ownership of the commission process.  The partner organizations were the Rural Development Foundation (RDF) the People’s Secretariat and the Community Trust Fund. It also ensured that our meetings were not always formal interactions. The Commission was welcomed into people’s homes for informal discussions over cups of tea and biscuits on numerous occasions, which gave us added insights to a number of questions.

There was also an expectation that the diversity of people and groups involved with the commission would situate the problems of the Northern Muslim community within the larger socio-political context of Sri Lanka while linking different groups working on similar issues around the country. As expressed by the coordinator, Farah Haniffa, at the outset of this process, many of the issues that the northern Muslims face are common to most SL citizens affected by the conflict, whether it relates to the ration amount, accessing services or language difficulties. Muslims to date have unfortunately not been able to articulate many of their distinct causes as part of the wider concerns of affecting the Sri Lankan polity. We hope that this process was able to realise that expectation at least to some extent.

Finally, we hope that this process reaffirms and reclaims the role of civil society not just to hold government accountable but also in the process of furthering post-war reconciliation in Sri Lanka, in an environment often hostile to civil society. We hope that the insights generated by this report will add to the ongoing discussion to seek an equitable political solution which involves all communities. There is of course no guarantee that the State will pay heed to the recommendations of the report of the Commission. Nevertheless, we hope the report does fulfill its mandate of providing a detailed and inclusive account of the expulsion, displacement, resettlement and the hopes and disappointments of our many fellow citizens. Farah Haniffa, who coordinated this process deserves a special mention and congratulations for her efforts in facilitating our working together–not always easy–as well as putting this report together in a way that brought so many people, groups, ideas, and perspectives. We hope that this can serve as a model for other efforts of this nature. We truly hope that our work will herald new possibilities of justice for Northern Muslims and open the doors wider for justice and peace for all Sri Lankans.

###

(This is an edited and adapted version of the speech made by Chulani Kodikara, at the launch of the Commission Report on 3^rd Nov 2011. Also read Some observations on the Final Report of the Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990 and The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990.)

• The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990
• Some observations on the Final Report of the Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990
• Citizen’s Commission: Expulsion of the Northern Muslims by the LTTE in October 1990
• LLRC submission: The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the North by the LTTE in October 1990
• The Muslim question and resettlement of Muslim IDPs in post-war Sri Lanka: Two comprehensive interviews

This report provides what will be the definitive account of the story of the Northern Muslims following on their expulsion from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990. Faithful throughout to the narrative of the affected, and respectful in its well- nuanced references to earlier writings- Hasbullah, Thiranagama and others- its approach earns the reader’s respect and trust.

Commencing with accounts of pre- existing relations between co –existing Muslim and Tamil communities, the Report tightly states that.

“October 1990 was a water-shed in terms of both Muslim identity and Tamil identity in the North due to the horror of the expulsion. By driving the Muslims out of their homes, the LTTE finally created a mono-ethnic North.”

While the affected people’s  narrative uses terms such as “People from Batticaloa have come” it is clearly orders  from  the top that was responsible for this instance of  “Tamil Turning Terrorist” against Muslims, to use the report’s words. The creation of a mono- ethnic North was the Principal Objective of this exercise, not a consequence alone. The mind- set behind this, preying on civilians, find echo in the spectacle of the LTTEs destruction from behind of the civilian population seeking to escape from the war- zone in the final stages of the war in 2009.

The inaction of the Sri Lankan Army, though physically present in the North at the time of the expulsion, spoken to time and again in the narratives, is rightly seen by the Commission as an off-  shoot of the inaction of the State. The tragic outcome of this was that both Muslim and Tamil while being at that time very much under the domination of the LTTE, failed to see the commonality of their plight. The result was a single failure to come together against a common enemy, the LTTE.

This 230 page Report, vividly and with sympathy captures the experience of an ethnically- determined civilian population forcibly displaced. It recounts these peoples relationships- economic, social, religious and just plain peaceful co- existence wise, with neighbours prior to expulsion; identifies the problems they faced in displacement, how they faced up to them and who helped/hindered or just stood-by. It describes both the broadening of horizons and the acquisition of new skills, as well as the suffering through loss of family and material assets, and the all- pervading sense of uncertainty attendant on displacement.

Valuable insights lie in the section identifying Problems attendant on re- settlement, both problems at individual  level and problems faced as a community. Problems of re- claiming homesteads and farm- lands, problems of re- integration after a 20 year unwanted absence, problems  arising from the “natural increase” in both returning and resident populations in the absence of an attendant incremental development of the North’s resources; all these are amply depicted. As also the fact that all this has to be faced in the midst of Conflicting Perceptions:

Viz :  “We left because we were forced to and have suffered immeasurably in the intervening period.”

Versus  “You were away. You didn’t  have to suffer the depredations of the LTTE and the horrors of war.”

The courage,  determination and enterprise shown by this civilian population forcibly displaced by LTTE dictate its potent evidence of the vitality and cohesion of that community which will make them a power for good where ever they are. If, due to ties of marriage, employment, tenure of ownership, they decide to make their permanent residence in a part of Sri Lanka other than their area of origin, there should be full recognition by all quarters- administrative, judicial, cultural, that this constitutes the exercise of a Right of Citizenship of a Sri Lankan. Should he wish to re- settle in his area of origin, a like recognition of his right as a citizen to do so should undoubtedly be the basis of the provision of services to and assistance to him.

As they narrative eloquently puts it:

“We do not want to live like the displaced again.”

And, even more succinctly:-

“We can’t move backwards.”

Lands that have remained untilled, homesteads that have stood empty, worse still lands or homesteads that have been the refuge of and received the care of others who may well have come there on facing displacement themselves, and in any case themselves number among  the marginalized poor, pose challenges requiring sensitive solution.

At this juncture,  it is pertinent to remember that even the families of slain LTTEers, despite the grandiose words of the LTTE Boss, belong, objectively speaking, to the numbers of the poor and the marginalized.  Ethnically speaking they were Tamils of course- but there was little else to distinguish their circumstances of displacement and destitution from that of the Muslim poor displaced to Puttalam.

Bishop Rayappu Joseph is quoted in the Report as saying:

“The Tamils who stayed behind were displaced over 26 times, lost children to the LTTE, lost family members to death and disappearance, lost limbs etc.”

This is a timely reminder that the bulk of Tamils left in the North during the years of the war belong to the poor and the marginalized and it was they who were the cannon-fodder for the LTTEs grand designs.

The Report’s Recommendations are particularly apposite in this regard. They are:

“When issues faced by Muslim communities are shared by other communities, attempts should be made to articulate such issues on a common platform. Strategic partnerships for activism should be encouraged.”

And:

“Muslim leadership should not be seen to be advocating for Muslim return alone. Especially the Muslim civil society leadership should find ways of working with the Tamil leadership in the respective areas of fostering a culture of collective work and co- existence.”

The solution of problems attendant on re- settlement need to be tackled as a national issue. This needs close consultation and  cooperation between the Government of Sri Lanka, Community and Political leaders at national and regional level, and the affected people. The approach recommended above, however, is signally absent in the New Structures and Procedures which have been put in place for the settlement of property disputes in the North.

The structure and procedures which have been put in place for the settlement of property disputes in the North constitute an instance of the promulgation by administrative regulation displacing age- old laws of property rights and succession rights that have cemented the bonds between citizens-especially in a community with its own customary personal laws. While admittedly solutions are difficult in the face of out- dated laws administered by an over- worked courts system  and area administrative officials who lack the tools for bringing about an equitable solution as required in the circumstances, this instance of the by- passing of  Parliament and attendant public scrutiny, leaves room for suspicion that the objective of this executively  promulgated exercise is the consolidation of the Army’s say in civil matters in the North, and that the enjoyment  of rights be by grace and favour.

The charge of “Creating a Northern Province in the North-Western Province”:There is both poignancy and cause for sorrow in the spectacle of social relations gone sour evidenced by a host community who has gone from so signal  a welcome of such a great multitude of the displaced into their midst to taking the step of petitioning the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (the LLRC) against what they term “The creation of the Northern Province within the North-West Province”.

As the Report clearly describes, the State’s response to the challenge of the delivery of services to the displaced was the provision of a framework of delivery distinct from that serving the Host community. This was a response based on a political imperative, that of keeping the displaced as a distinct constituency from the host community. The end- result of the continuance of this practice over 20 years was a divergence in the quality of services available to persons living in close proximity. The inevitable alienation and resentment felt by the host community was the spring board for action, which took the form of a presentation of a petition to the LLRC by the Trustees of the Puttalam Grand Mosque and the Puttalam Branch of the Jamiyathul  Ulama (Council of Muslim Theologians) as representatives of the host community, in protest against what they saw as the adverse effects of the creation of a Northern Province in the North Western Province. Chapter 8 of the Report on “The Host community’s perspective of the displacement” is essential reading for the greater comprehension of the damage brought about the states  mis-handling of a situation.

Whether it is the adverse effects of ethicized politics in Sri Lanka including political favoritism, or the adverse impact of male chauvinism on the women of the displaced community, the Report is courageously transparent in its examination of the Enemy- Within.

The Position of Women in displacement

A wide- ranging section of the Report deals with intra- familial relations as well as relations with the host community in the context of displacement. The sensitivity and integrity shown in its reliance on the testimony of the women themselves is admirable. As a study that high- lights cultural gradations in Muslim communities within a country and the challenges of adjustments attendant on displacement from one Muslim cultural context to another  Muslim cultural context,  this  Report will undoubtedly evoke interest in all engaged in the comparative study of the intra- action of religion and cultural in  relation to Rights. In fact, one of the Reports most discerning comments  is based on the Commission’s research in this regard.

“While the modern Muslim leadership is in general looking for some rights-based solution to their common problems of displacement, it is not clear to what extent the community will be supportive of such a perspective for addressing problems faced by community women.”

Transitional Justice

That this study has been undertaken in a context of transition in Sri Lanka greatly enhances its value. This is a time when new ways of thinking based on a spirit of inclusiveness are essential both at policy and implementation levels. The creation of a  self- confidant population looking with hope to the future requires this. The aspirations of both Muslim youth returning to the North and the increasing number of Tamil- speaking Sri Lankan youth who are identifying the North as a location of expanding opportunity for the profitable practice of skills acquired in other urban surrounding in the intervening years, can find fulfillment only in such an enabling context. Youth of Tamil- speaking communities in Colombo too, faced with an uncertainty of safe residence in the face of the GOSLs plans for physical transformation of Colombo, are now feeling the need to seek jobs and safe residence elsewhere. They increasingly look to the North.

In the North as elsewhere modern means of production will replace the old, bringing in its wake change in the traditional relationships of status and power. The preparation of returnees to face this with equanimity is a task in hand.

My thanks to the Law and Society Trust and its funders for the vision  shown in initiating this research.

Let us of civil society manifest a like vision and determination to bring to a successful outcome, the process to which this Report has given such a rich inception.

• The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990
• Citizen’s Commission: Expulsion of the Northern Muslims by the LTTE in October 1990
• A Commissioner’s Perspective: Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE
• The Muslim question and resettlement of Muslim IDPs in post-war Sri Lanka: Two comprehensive interviews
• LLRC submission: The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the North by the LTTE in October 1990

In October 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) expelled the entire Muslim population of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Within a period of 2 weeks the LTTE systematically chased out close to 75,000 Muslims residing in the districts of Kilinochchi, Mullaiteewu, Jaffna, Mannar and parts of Vavuniya.

The LTTE expulsion of Muslims has not been adequately integrated into any mainstream historical narrative in Sri Lanka. Most commentators routinely get the date of the expulsion wrong and few give it the status of a highly significant historical event that it warrants. This is unfortunately true of most events involving Sri Lanka’s Muslim community.

The Law and Society Trust (LST) in partnership with the Rural Development Foundation (RDF), the Community Trust Fund (CTF) and the Peoples’ Secretariat (PS) and an advisory group of prominent Muslim civil society actors conducted a two year long truth seeking initiative in the form of a Citizens’ Commission. The objective of this exercise has been to produce authoritative documentation of the expulsion and its consequences that is sanctioned by the community, and to list the community’s grievances through a document endorsed by the Commission consisting of eminent civil society actors. The Commission’s broadly defined terms of reference looked at a) the history of the expulsion, b) two decades of displacement, and c) the resettlement experience.

The Commissioners are eminent persons from civil society who are outside the Northern Muslim Community. The nine commissioners are Dr. Devanesan Nesiah, Dr.M.S.M.Anes, Dr.Catherin Brun, Dr.Gameela Samarasinghe, Dr.E.Santhirasegaram, Dr.Nimalka Fernando, Mr.Javid Yusuf, Ms.Chulani Kodikara and Judge.U.L.Abdul Majeed.

Shreen Saroor Juwairiya Mohideen and Jensila Majeed have assisted the commission process as members of the advisory group.

The commission has been conducting its inquiries since September 2009. Desk research has been done to collect newspaper reporting on the expulsion and scholarly articles that have been written on the event and the northern Muslims’ displacement experience. Commissioners have held 22 sittings in Puttalam, Negambo, Colombo, Mannar, Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Vavuniya.  Several of the Puttalam sittings were especially designed to elicit the participation of representatives from all five districts in the North, women from the Northern Muslim community, young people from the Northern Muslim community, and representatives from the host community in Puttalam. The commission has also collected 390 testimonies and 13 focus group interviews. These include 26 testimonies from host community members.

The Commission Report is now complete and was launched at the International Center for Ethnic Studies auditorium on the 3^rd of November. The report was very favorably received. The commentators were Manouri Muttetuwegama, Barrister, Attorney-at-Law, former Commissioner of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, Chaired the Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal/ Disappearance of Persons (All Island 1998- 2000) and member of the Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Serious Violations of Human Rights 2007 and Seelan Kadirgamar, former Senior Lecturer in History, University of Jaffna.  Both commentators praised the nature of the initiative and the quality of the report. They also stated that it was an important precedent that highlighted the voices of those who were affected. Kadirgama stated that it was one of the few documentation projects of the kind and hoped it would serve as a precedent for other such projects.

The report is comprehensive and consists of 11 chapters. The report was written in order to give as much prominence as possible to the voices of the northern Muslims who spoke to the commission, and also to give as much social and political background to the particular conditions of the northern Muslim experience. Therefore a section of the report is devoted to capturing the experience of the expulsion and also a sense of northern Muslims everyday lives within the war zone, and in the context of displacement. (Chapter 4, 5 and 9)These chapters mostly contain narratives from the testimonies. These narrative most poignantly capture both the time of war in the north as well as the shock of having to leave their homes with no notice.  The following two quotes are from Chapter 4 of the report- Life in the North During War Time.

My mother was not very interested in associations etc but she was a popular person. She will help a lot for matters related to young girls and others. She would go forward for anything. Once 32 people died as a result of a shell attack, and she bathed all the ‘Janasas’ (all were female ‘Janasas’) alone. All the houses that came under this attack were destroyed. The army was on one side and the LTTE were on the other side and shells attacks were happening here and there. It was my mother who bathed them in a hurry and buried them. It was a very difficult time. They were in the mood to shoot anyone they saw. (p. 47)- The quote is from the testimony of R. Faiza of Moor Street Jaffna

The following quote captures the moment of the expulsion in a different location- this is from Sameena of Puthukudiiruppu on Mannar Island.

We left on the 25^th of October 1990 at 5 pm. The LTTE came to the village and announced through loud speakers that we had to leave immediately by the route they  showed us. About 40 cadres came into our village and came to all our houses and demanded 10,000 rupees or 10 sovereigns  in gold or to give them the house and leave. They came at the time my husband was having lunch. When they asked me where he was I said he was not at home as I was afraid they would take him away so I did not let them come in. Then I heard from the other people that they came and robbed the houses in the night so I removed all my jewellery  and put them in a tin and buried the tin.

They came again later that day and asked for my jewellery.  I told them I don’t have it with me now and told them to take the things from the shop and leave. They said it was there in the morning and how come its not there now? One of them got very angry and shot at the table in the shop and broke all the things. They behaved in a violent manner.  From next door they took all the sacks of paddy they had. Then the mosque leaders gathered and decided that we should all leave together and so we left.

Sameena later stated that they were able to recover the jewellery that they buried when the husband came back to the village in 1996. (p.62)

The other chapters trace the social and political background to the expulsion (Chapter 4) the state’s minimal attention to the issue (Chapter 6) and the northern Muslim in the context of Muslim politics.  Chapter 6 refers to the particular manner in which the northern Muslims featured in the political agenda of the SLMC under Mr. Ashraff, and the many developments both positive and troubling that occurred in Puttalam after Risharth Bathiudeen was made minister of Rehabilitation.

The northern Muslim displacement experience has lasted now for twenty one years.  At the time of the expulsion people thought they would go back in a matter of weeks, months—sometimes two years. No one expected it to last two decades.  I would like to read one quote that speaks to the initial moment of displacement.

A.Kuriza from Muslim College Road, Jaffna provides a narrative that amply illustrates the  pathos of trying to live in a place that was unfamiliar.

We reached Zahira School. Puttalam people were very helpful. We were expecting to return back. We were searching for a house for rent. We got a house for six months. But we said we do not need for that long, we want to rent only for a month. My son found a house which did not have doors, windows or grills. My children started to cry, when they saw the house. Then we did not take that house. My son took us to another house even this was not pleasant to any of us. Everyone started to cry. Then my son was angry that we did not like any of the houses he was showing. He was asking us if you all do not like anything I show what I am going to do. Later we went to a relative’s place in Kalpitiya. They used to come and stay in our place, when we were in Jaffna. We stayed with them for three months. (p. 103)

The fact that they were sent out of their district of displacement into a new province had consequences for them. In some ways they did not have the same restriction and security threats as those displaced in the north. However, they were not considered residents of the places that they lived in and this posed many administrative problems that affected their displacement experience. It affected their ability to vote, access to employment opportunities, and also lead to maintaining the distinction between hosts and displaced and obstructed integration and the increase of tensions between the communities.   Also while some displaced were very enterprising and managed to rebuild their lives many still languish in Puttalam in conditions similar to that which they arrived in to twenty years ago. This is covered in chapter 7.

Chapter 8 is devoted to the Puttalam host community’s perspective on the northern Muslims’ long sojourn in the four DS divisions of Puttalam—Puttalam town Kalpitiya Mundel and Vanathavillu.  The northern Muslims were compelled to over stay their welcome due to no fault of theirs. The Puttalam community has been forced to share their already insufficient resources with a community that suddenly arrived and almost doubled the areas’ population. And these people’ did not go back for twenty years. Chapter 8 looks at the host community’s perspective on the influx.

Almost all the northern Muslims that the commission spoke with referred to their northern homes with great love and sadness – even when they didn’t have plans to return. The report has one chapter –chapter 9 entitled The Loss of a Way of Life that explores this element of pain and nostalgia for a lost time and a place. This chapter also records testimonies about the way of life in the north – festivals, religious gatherings and lifecycle rituals that are no longer practiced.

The vast majority of persons that we spoke to wanted to return. And all northern Muslims that the commission encountered in the north were uniformly happy to be back. They spoke about the sense of freedom and independence that they had regained by returning to their own land (sontha uru) and the fact that they were no longer crippled by their language inabilities.  But they faced huge problems with lack of attention from the government, lack of infrastructure facilities, minimal interest of NGOs, and indifference and sometimes hostility from administrative officials.  Sometimes hostility was experienced from the local Tamil leadership in the north. This was particularly true of Mannar where there are a several conflicts among returning Tamils and Muslims over land. The report attempted to capture the problems of return in the 10^th chapter.

A review of the most important scholarly works dealing with the northern Muslims has also been done.

The expulsion, displacement and return experiences of the northern Muslims are particular and somewhat different from other experiences of protracted displacement. The Commission wanted to capture this difference and draw attention to it.  For instance one of the “problems” of Muslim return is that as one NGO person described it —one foot in the north and one foot in Puttalam. The act of ethnic cleansing by the LTTE compelled the northern Muslims to live outside the north for twenty plus years. This is the reality of their displacement and such feet in different places is a strategy that is necessary for their survival. The literature on displacement refers to this process as trans-local strategies of survival. Those designing programs have to take note of these strategies and not expect the northern Muslims to forget twenty years of living outside the north.

Chapter 11 contains a series of conclusions and recommendations. These are divided into recommendations to the state, the NGO/INGO community and the Muslim leadership.  The northern Muslims need assistance to return,  we have heard that due to lack of transport to school and poor facilities, children are dropping out. Some people who went to the north are returning to Puttalam due to the lack of a house and facilities for fishing and cultivation.  We also know of sections of the population that are not going back and will register as residents of Puttalam and elsewhere. However the situation in Puttalam is fairly tense and much work needs to be done there as well. And this work needs to address the needy of those areas in Puttalam without differentiating between the displaced and the host.

• LLRC submission: The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the North by the LTTE in October 1990
• Citizen’s Commission: Expulsion of the Northern Muslims by the LTTE in October 1990
• The Muslim question and resettlement of Muslim IDPs in post-war Sri Lanka: Two comprehensive interviews
• A Commissioner’s Perspective: Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE
• Some observations on the Final Report of the Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990

Duke University Press( Durham and London) has published this superb anthology edited by that most perceptive and shrewd observer of Sri Lanka and its complex social, economic and political history, John Clifford Holt who is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities in Religion and Asian Studies at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in the United States.  He has written several books and, of those, the ones I am familiar with and profited from reading are The Buddhist Visnu: Religious Transformation, Politics and Culture(2004), The Religious World of Kirti Sri: Buddhism, Art and Politics in Late Medieval Sri Lanka(1996), Discipline: the Canonical Buddhism of the Vinayapitaka(1981), and Buddha in the Crown: Avalokiteswara in the Buddhist Traditions of Sri Lanka(1991), for which he received an American Academy of Religion Book Award for Excellence.  Prof. Holt is the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Peradeniya and, in 2007, was selected by the University of Chicago Divinity School as its Alumnus of the Year.

John Holt and I have been friends for over two decades now.  During this period I have watched with great admiration and pride his invaluable contribution to the promotion of mutual understanding between his country and mine. Promoting of such understanding is also the mandate of the United States-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission, with which institution I have been associated for as long a period of time as the length of Prof. Holt’s and my friendship.  As founder – director of the Intercollegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) programme, since 1982 Prof. Holt, along with several of his colleagues from the U.S. academic world, has brought over 400 American undergraduates from some of the leading Liberal Arts colleges in the U.S. on a semester abroad to Sri Lanka. ISLE is formally associated with the University of Peradeniya and Sree Padma Holt is now its capable executive director. As noted above, Holt has written four solidly researched books on aspects of Sri Lanka’s religious culture, three of which have been translated into Sinhala and published locally.  I consider John Holt to be a direct descendant of that excellent American scholarly line that stretches from the late and much revered Howard Wriggins, of Columbia University, to the present.  Besides Wriggins and Holt, this line includes Robert Kearney, Marshall Singer, Myron Weiner, Bardwell Smith, John Ross Carter, Donald Smith, Dennis McGilvray, Steven Kemper, John Richardson, Patrick Peebles, James Manor, Anne Blackburn, Susan Reed, Charlie Hallisey, John Rogers, Jon Walters, Susan Mrozik,  Michele Ruth Gamburd and others. A number of these scholars have also been connected to ISLE as students or faculty directors. Some also have been Fulbright award recipients over the years.   Neither my friendship with John Holt nor my obvious admiration for his scholarship has got in the way of what I say in my comments on The Sri Lanka Reader.

The well- known observation about books and their covers notwithstanding, sometimes a book cover does justice to the contents of a book, other times not. In the case of The Sri Lanka Reader, the cover of the book and its contents complement each other beautifully. The photograph by  Adele Barker ( she is a former Fulbright scholar and author of Not Quite Paradise  An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka published in 2010) that adorns the cover of The Sri Lanka Reader and the cover design are both extremely pleasant.  The tastefully designed cover is an apt forerunner to the handsome and insightful  ‘documents, analytical accounts, photographs and poetic works’ that Holt has woven together in spellbinding fashion in producing this volume. As its editor and publisher declare,   The Sri Lanka Reader is indeed ‘a sweeping introduction to the epic history of the island nation located just off the southern tip of India’.  It is an anthology that includes ‘more than ninety classic and contemporary texts written by Sri Lankans and foreigners’.

Holt dedicates The Reader most appropriately to ‘all Sri Lankans who have died as a consequence of political violence and those who work for peace’.  I wish to draw  attention to a couple of crucial points the editor of the publication makes in his introduction as they are the same that I have been making during numerous  orientation programmes to countless American diplomats, other American public servants and academics for nearly three and a half decades  now, namely, that despite its small size (approximately that of the U.S. State of West Virginia) Sri Lanka is an enormously complex and complicated country; one that, despite its cultural similarities, is markedly different from its giant neighbour across the Palk Straits and is an entity not to be imagined–no matter how strong the temptation may be– as ‘a manageable version of India’.

John Holt’s  Reader   is a stellar collection of wide-ranging essays both scholarly and popular, folklore, poetry and reportage that run into a mammoth 700 plus pages.  Nor is this all. The book contains 54 images of paintings, sculptures and architecture together with its editor’s suggestions for further reading and, a comprehensive index. It is an extreme labour of love on the part of John Holt, a sincere admirer of all that is best of Sri Lanka and an equally sincere critic of the seamier side of this complex Indian Ocean island.  C.R. de Silva, a former Professor of History at Peradeniya now at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, is absolutely right in his observation that The Sri Lanka  Reader  “… is a book that you will return to time and time again.  It will undoubtedly become the standard collection of documents on Sri Lanka and its history.”

It is impossible in a brief essay such as this to do justice to so varied and broad-ranging an anthology .  The most one can do is to seek to offer a flavour of the publication in an effort to entice the discerning reader to search for more.  I undertake the latter task in this brief essay.

The Sri Lanka Reader is divided into five sections: (i) From Ancient to Early Modern; (ii) The Colonial Encounter; (iii) Emerging Identities; (iv) Independence, Insurrections, and Social Change; and (v) Political Epilogue.  The editor has sought to present his sources in a ‘fundamentally historical’ way and he has also, to his eternal credit, attempted to be inclusive, representative and fair to all things ‘Sri Lankan’ without pandering to petty and narrow sectarianism.  Furthermore not only has John Holt included in his anthology those ‘classic’ pieces that should find their way into any serious collection of writings on Sri Lanka, but he has also found the space for writers and artistes whose works are yet to receive the exposure and acclaim that they deserve.  The contributions of Robert Knox, Anagarika  Dharmapala, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Martin Wickramasinghe, R.L. Spittel, Walpola Rahula, K.M. de Silva, K.W. Goonewardena, Howard Wriggins, S.J. Tambiah, Robert Kearney, Paul Caspersz, Dennis McGilvray, A.J. Wilson, A.T. Ariyaratne, Ismeth Raheem, C.R. de Silva, K. Indrapala, Michael Roberts, Jean Arasanayagam, and John Holt himself are interspersed with the writings of such younger Sri Lankans and Americans as Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe , Mirak Raheem, Antoinette Ferdinand, Lilani Jayatilaka, Michele Ruth Gamburd and Ben Schonthal.  In addition, English translations of notable works of those Sri Lankans who write in Sinhala and Tamil are included.

Of the essays included in The Reader, my personal favourites are found in Sections IV and V.  These are K.M. de Silva’s Sri Lanka in 1948; James Manor’s The Bandaranaike Legend; Howard Wriggins’s After Forty – Five Years; Lasantha Wickrematunga’s And Then They Came for Me; and Lilani Jayatilaka’s Moderation the Only Way.

De Silva’s is a superb account of the socio-political dynamics of Ceylon in 1948 when the island made the transition from a British colony to a newly independent state.  As de Silva notes, at the dawn of independence the country was an “an oasis of peace, stability and order.”  However “beneath the surface…, religious cultural and linguistic issues were gathering momentum and developing into a force too powerful for the existing social and political set-up to accommodate or absorb.  They were to tear the country apart within a decade.”  De Silva’s essay gives us a persuasive and convincing assessment of D.S. Senanayake, the country’s first prime minister.  It is a pity that no scholarly biography has yet been written of this towering national political personality,  arguably the best prime minister Sri Lanka has had to date.  The editor has very deftly placed The Bandaranaike Legend, the conclusion to James Manor’s (1990) notable study of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (The Expedient Utopian : Bandaranaike and Ceylon) between de Silva’s essay and Howard Wriggins’s swan – song of Sri Lanka titled  After Forty – Five Years .  Each essay complements and reinforces the other.  Manor’s substantial study of Bandaranaike is too well known to need recapitulation here.  I should like, however, to quote anon   an extremely significant paragraph from Manor’s The Bandaranaike Legend that Holt has included in The Reader, since   the key points Manor makes in it mesh with my personal assessment of Bandaranaike the man as well as of the government he headed as prime minister in 1956.

My long held view is that although he played to the Sinhala gallery to gain transient political power, Bandaranaike himself was no Sinhala zealot.  He was too educated and possessed of a universal worldview for such zealotry, as evidenced by his early (1926) advocacy of federalism as a possible solution to the then not yet-deadly competition between the Sinhalese and Tamils and later by his decision to enter into a pact with the then leader of the Federal Party in 1957. We should also not forget his substantial, and for the time, pioneering work done in relation to constitutional reform and devolution as Minister of Local Administration in the State Council (1936- 1946) and later (1947- 1951) as Minister of Health and Local Administration in the House of Representatives when the State Council was replaced by the former.  Having exploited the resurgent Sinhala nationalism that was on the rise in post – independent Sri Lanka to ensure his electoral success, Bandaranaike the non – chauvinist attempted subsequently to put that genie back in the bottle.  However, the passions he had unleashed proved far too strong for Bandaranaike to contain them.  His vacillating and indecisive attempts at containment led to destructive factionalism within his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) coalition that formed the government of the day. In sharp contrast to his notable predecessor D.S. Senanayake and his successors Sirimavo Bandaranaike, J.R. Jayewardene, R.Premadasa, and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga–who were all surer-footed and hence exercised more authoritarian control over their subordinates, as does the current incumbent–eventually the politically fragile Bandaranaike was destroyed by the very forces that propelled him into power.  Here, as promised above, is how Manor captures effectively the rise and fall of Bandaranaike:

He [Bandaranaike] had hoped to use chauvinism as a means to achieve power, believing that he could disarm it by making modest, long – overdue concessions to Sinhalese Buddhist interests, and then by concentrating on reform to remove social injustice and soothe the anxieties of would be communalists.  He did not succeed partly because the problems he inherited were so severe, partly because his ruling coalition contained too many contradictions, partly because his government functioned so sluggishly, but very substantially because of the way Bandaranaike himself thought and acted.

In his After Forty – Five Years, Howard Wriggins   confirms  our views. He records his 1955 encounter with Bandaranaike, the then leader of the opposition and aspirant for the post of the prime minister of Ceylon.  Whilst discussing the rising swabasha movement, which demanded a change in official language policy, Bandaranaike had startled Wriggins by saying: “you know, Professor Wriggins, I have never found an issue as good as the language issue for exciting the people! Bandaranaike had said so in a way that had suggested he was confident the excitement could be managed” — i.e., that the genie could be put back in the bottle.  Here is how Wriggins put it:

It would be wrong to assign all the blame (or credit) for this [ the Ceylonese Jacksonian revolution Bandaranaike ushered in 1956] to Bandaranaike alone.  Others, far more passionately committed to Sinhalization of Sri Lanka than he, seized the opportunity and pushed all the harder.  They found ready acolytes, and no leaders of principal parties dared stand against the tide.

On the morning of 8 January, 2009, Lasantha Wickrematunga was brutally assassinated  in broad daylight as he drove to his office.  Like most independent-minded journalists, Wickrematunga   lived in the shadow of death by assassination for a considerable period of his professional life.  He had left behind an editorial to be published, consequent to his death, which the Sunday Leader duly carried on 11 January 2009,   titled  And Then They Came for Me.  It is a powerful indictment of the culture of impunity that has prevailed  in Sri Lanka from 1970 onwards  but has become particularly virulent  since 2005.  Towards the end of this hard-hitting editorial Wickrematunga expresses the hope that “my assassination will be seen not as a defeat of freedom but an inspiration…”  And he goes on to hope against hope and say:

I hope it will help galvanise forces that will usher in a new era of human liberty in our beloved motherland.  I also hope it will open the eyes of your President to the fact that however many are slaughtered in the name of patriotism, the human spirit will endure and flourish.  Not all the Rajapakses combined can kill that.

After Wickrematunga’s murder, Sri Lanka witnessed further death and destruction during the last stages of the war against the LTTE and in May 2009 we witnessed  the brutal and intransigent Tigers’ spectacular demise.  Most of us hoped that the bloody events   ‘on the sands of Mullativu’ which brought the internecine war to a close would pave  the way for healing and national reconciliation. Tragically, post-war developments have instead taken us on a disappointingly different direction where Sinhala triumphalism, coupled with increased authoritarian governance,   have placed reconciliation on the back burner. Our Holocaust, an editorial published on 16 May, 2009, in the Tamil diaspora newspaper The Tamil Guardian and republished in The Sri Lanka Reader,   makes a tragic and  ominous prediction to the effect that as long as the Tamils are oppressed, “Sri Lanka will never be able to live inpeace’.

Neither Sinhala triumphalism nor the continuing violent defiance of the Tamil diaspora will help the Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka to learn to respect each other and share constitutionally guaranteed equal rights as citizens of the country.  Only the moderate middle–  the non-sectarian segment of the Muslims, Tamils and Sinhalese living in Sri Lanka– can and will usher in ethnic peace and social stability in our island home. It is such a consummation that Lilani Jayatilaka devoutly wishes for in her essay of 17 May, 2009 titled Moderation the Only Way that is the penultimate item included in The Reader. Before I proceed further I wish to state that, unlike the disclaimer made with regard to my comments on John Holt, nothing I say about Moderation the Only Way   or its author is dispassionate: they are entirely passionate for both professional and profoundly personal reasons! Lilani Jayatilaka’s essay,  as editor  John Holt notes, offered “a more moderate humane, and nuanced perspective” than the predictably slanted editorials and other contributions that appeared in most Sinhala, Tamil and English newspapers published in Sri Lanka and overseas at that time.  It is an essay, John Holt goes on to note, that is “noteworthy not only for its expose`  of the internment camps containing Tamil refugees but also for its insistence on the need for Sri Lankans not to be held hostage by Sinhala ultranationalists, on the one hand, and by Tamil separatists, on the other.”  I wish to end my comments on The Reader quoting the concluding lines of Moderation the Only Way as I identify totally with the sentiments expressed therein:

[T]hen  there  are  the Tamil Tigers who manipulate the emotions of the vulnerable with information and misinformation.

But then there is information and misinformation disseminated by the government of Sri Lanka as well.  The Sinhala supremacists and the radicalized Tamils make an emotional choice as to whom and what they will believe, fuelled by their ethnic loyalties.  Each has access only to partial truths, which they believe are whole truths.  In this lies their blindness.  I write in favour of moderation — to  see these  partial  truths for what they are and to recognize the fact that the whole truth will continue to elude us; to beware of the rhetoric of hate and to refuse to become a pawn in the diabolical vision of either the nationalists or the separatists.  For while the ultranationalists and the separatists pursue their own ends, the people of this land of whatever ethnicity are being required to pay with their lives for the intolerance and intransigence of the bigoted few.

• Interview with Manik de Silva, Editor of the Sunday Island
• For those who have missed out and want to know humanity
• Chandrika Kumaratunga responds to Dayan Jayatilleke’s comment on the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge
• In conversation with Neluka Silva, Professor in English, University of Colombo
• Shyam Selvadurai: Literature, identity, politics and the Galle Literary Festival

The Editor,
Groundviews.

21st Year Commemoration

Dear Sir,

At the last general meeting of the Batticaloa Peace Committee our talks led us to the conviction that we should speak out. We commemorated then the grouping of tragic events in our vicinity 21 years ago that proclaimed the vast gap between the aspirations of the Tamil people and the blindness of national leaders. With this short list of violent events, the die was cast, setting the nation on a continuous confrontation that ended only with the annihilation of any hope of equality of status for Sinhalese and Tamil people of the country.

Our civil war has now been fought, and both sides, in fact, all sides have lost lives uncountable and decades of years. There have been no winners. All have been losers. Far more lives were lost than we can enumerate. The tragic cases we choose now to highlight were the trend setters. More ceasefires would be proclaimed in search of an end process. And yet hostilities would be resumed. Those hundreds we here commemorate would rise to multi-thousands.

While “ceasefires” reign, violence still rules around us. Peace is elusive. We have nothing to offer beyond our message. Voices like ours will not be heard.

Signed:
B. H. Miller, S.J
President
The Batticaloa Peace Committee

###

We remember again now in 2011 the story of June 11, 1990, the massacre of some 600 police officers at stations south of Batticaloa. This was a violent attack by the LTTE in a fight to take control of east Sri Lanka, as well as the North, in independence for Sri Lankan Tamils.

On 3rd August 2011, Muslims of Kattankudy have commemorated the tragedy that befell their community on 3rd August, 1990, 21 years ago. Some 30 heavily armed Tigers crossed the lagoon and entered the town of Kattankudy, a predominantly Muslim town. Kattankudy recalled: “As worshippers knelt in prayer in several mosques, the Tigers attacked them, spraying automatic fire and hurling hand grenades at them. Most of the victims were shot in the back or side. The Tigers fled to their boats in the lagoon as Sri Lankan soldiers, hearing of the ongoing massacre, arrived on the scene. The final death toll was 147 men and young boys.” We remember all this with them this year.

This was followed days later by a daylight LTTE attack on the streets of the Muslim town of Eravur, where up to 200 were shot dead before the LTTE again took to their boats across the lagoon. With this, the co-existent Tamil town of Chenkalady was abandoned as its residents fled, as they feared retaliation, to a refugee camp in the grounds of the Eastern University. We went there, still in 1990. We too remember.

Then on 5th September, 1990, the head of the Sri Lanka army camp at Saththurukondan took away 156 young Tamil men from that Refugee Camp of the Eastern University Campus “for questioning”. Their names were listed by refugee camp officials. They never returned from that questioning. We went there. We asked, but got no answers. Even protest in parliament did not secure their return or an explanation.

Further, on 9th September, 1990, the army arrested all the members they could find of the four villages in the area of the same army camp, Saththurukondan, Pulliaradi, Kokkuvil and Pannichaiadi, ranging in age from 70 years to 2 months, a total of 184 persons. None of these persons have been seen by anyone after that day. A young escapee, the only one, gave us his account of that night. We of the Batticaloa Peace Committee adopt his account as our own. It was 21 years ago.

All these events we recalled in September 2011, after 21 years. All perpetrators went unpunished. There was no resolution arrived at for any of them.

But WE REMEMBER. They must not be forgotten.

• Elections in the East: The dawning of democracy or fostering of violence?
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• I REMEMBER – 19 May 2010
• Closer Look At Operation To Capture Thoppigala
• “We are not willing to go back to our village, till a permanent solution for the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka”

Whatever the death toll during the last stages of Eelam War IV in 2009 the official government data in that year acknowledged that 11,696 (9078 male and 2024 female)[i] of those who survived had identified themselves or been identified as members of the LTTE — whether combatants or active functionaries. There were others who had been arrested elsewhere in the island (that is beyond the battlefields), often on flimsy evidence, in the years 2006-09. Muralidhar Reddy stresses that “once bracketed in the category of a combatant, irrespective of the degree of their involvement in the war, there was no mechanism for those detained to prove their innocence.”[ii]

In parenthesis let me add that grapevine information from Tamil sources indicate that in April-May 2009 quite a few Tigers seem to have successfully merged themselves with the population that was deemed civilian and placed in the IDP camps in Menik Farm and elsewhere. Several commentators with some familiarity with the IDP camps have indicated that these detention centres were like the proverbial colander and that a significant number – estimates vary widely from 1,000 to 10,000 — slipped out of the IDP camps in mid-2009 and found their way abroad. It is alleged that at least 500 of this lot were “hardcore LTTE.”[iii]

The focus in this essay, however, is on those held in tight security arrangements as Tigers. Unlike those in the IDP camps, these detainees had no access to mobile phones and were under stricter military control. Technically they could be regarded as POWS, but the government, in what must be considered an enlightened policy, chose to treat them as Tigers-in-rehabilitation. The commencement of this policy could be dated to October 2009 when the Bureau of the Commissioner General of Rehabilitation was established. It is this programme that is reviewed here in what is no more than a preliminary survey from afar.

As preface I emphasise that it is quite amazing that no pro-government newspaper or agency provided an in-depth clarification of this programme till Ranil Wijayapala provided a description through a Q-and-A session with the new Commissioner General of Rehabilitation, Major-General Chandana Rajaguru in the Sunday Observer, 9 October 2011. While the BCGR (which works within the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Prison Reform maintains a web-site (namely, http://www. bcgr.gov.lk/), it is unlikely that many people have visited this source or that its data is widely known. I was among those in the dark till last week.

Though government newspapers from time to time highlighted the public ceremonies where ex-combatants were released, this coverage does not seem to have secured much mileage. To the best of my knowledge there have been no U-Tube or CD presentations of the rehabilitation programmes and the graduation ceremonies of release widely disseminated in the internet circuit of universal access. In a word, the prosaic governmental measures of publicity seem to have done a disservice to the work of several well-intentioned officials. Let me clarify why I make this remark by first distilling the information provided in the Rajaguru-Wijayapala dialogue, the mission statements and other data within the BCGR website and data from elsewhere.

Numbers: In differentiation from the figure of 11,800 persons identified as Tigers in mid-2009, Rajaguru[iv] now refers to a rounded figure of 12,000. But, guided in part by th interview as supplement to grapevine informaiton one has to supplement this figure with (a) Tigers captured or arrested in the years 2006-08 and (b) those arrested in the course of intelligence operations subsequent to May 2009. On this foundation I speculate that the figure of Tigers in government custody in the course of years 2009-10 was in the range 11,800 to 13,000. There is, clearly, a need for greater precision in official figures in this field.

This cluster of Tamil Tigers was kept in 24 centres, with four centres catering to the females (2024 less the children). From this total, 594 individuals below sixteen were classified as children and 273 from this lot were sent to attend Hindu College at Ratmalana for schooling[v] and it is this highly specific exercise that received a public airing in BBC’s Hard Talk Programme through the energy of Stephen Sackur.[vi]

The rest were placed under six categories after investigation of some sort: leaders, staunch combatants, fetchers & carriers, political cadre, supporters and labour-conscripts.[vii] A foreign INGO official[viii] who had some interaction with the military once indicated to me in mid-2010 that the Army considered about 15-20 percent of this mass to be hardline LTTE. The implication was that they could be incorrigible and in need of strict supervision if not prosecution in some instances. The answers provided by Rajaguru enable one to conjecture that many of these hardliners and staunch followers would have been incarcerated at Boosa in the south rather than elsewhere.

If all this indicates a tough regime and POW status for these Tiger personnel, other details, a series of events, the details in the BCGR website and the character of the agencies involved in training and alleviating the lives of these Tiger detainees, simply destroy such a verdict. In fact the government insisted on designating the ex-Tigers as “rehabilitees” and proceeded to institute a number of programmes to effect a transformation in their thinking and prospective circumstances. Let me elaborate.

Costs: This was a costly exercise involving the basics of food, clothing and dormitory shelter, plus the organisational costs of training, transport et cetera. At the outset in 2009 and 2010 the government claims that it forked out Rs. 150 million a month though this has gradually wound down to the present figure of Rs. 50 million a month as more and more were “released to their families.” As these ex-Tigers were released several centres have been phased out and by June 2011 there were only 8 remaining.[ix] Rajaguru indicated that a total of Rs.1.3 billion has been spent by GoSL thus far.[x] An IOM representative remarked in February 2011 that they required 15 million US dollars for the programme; [xi] and a British embassy official indicated that “UK [had] contributed £1.5 million to fund vocational training for former child soldiers in partnership with UNICEF and the Sri Lankan Government.”[xii]

A critical component of expenditure was provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM’s website includes a mission statement that says: (a) “At present, IOM’s interventions focus on assisting the government to resettle displaced populations in their villages of origin and to reintegrate former combatants, thus supporting national efforts in building peace and stability;” and (b) underlines the importance of  “IOM and state actors [enhancing their] institutional capacity to combat human trafficking and irregular migration” so that  “IOM in partnership with relevant stakeholders offers voluntary returnees a tailor-made return and reintegration package.”[xiii]

As this statement indicates, the IOM has also been heavily involved in financially supporting the resettlement of civilian IDPs from the Menik Farm and other camps. In this task it has been a conduit for monies channelled from the governments of USA, Australia, Netherlands, Norway, Japan and UK. In the Australian case this includes considerable monies coming from AusAid; while the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Australia (DIAC) became one of the agencies working through IOM.

I do not have firm evidence that donor countries have financed the rehabilitation of ex-combatants. But it is of some significance that the ambassador for the Netherlands visited the Tellippalai centre on 16^th November 2010, while the British HC, John Rankin, visited Poonthottam RC at Vavuniya on 22 June 2011.[xiv] This indicates that several countries kept a weather eye on the programme and kept in touch with the IOM for this purpose. It is because of this connection, therefore, that one canpresume that the grand function at Temple Trees on 30 September 2011, which saw the graduation so to speak of 1800 rehabilitees, had a ‘crop’ of foreign dignitaries seated up front, while a few participated in the distribution of certificates.[xv]

Organisation & Rehab-Programmes: While the military supervised the detention centres, Rajaguru’s interview indicates that much of the training was in the hands of uniformed personnel from the National Cadet Corps, many of whom were teachers by profession. Critically, the programmes depicted in skeleton form in the BCGR web site indicate that there were a wide variety of paths deployed to assist the re-orientation of the detainees and to fit them for future life. The statement on the front page of the web site proclaims that:

[the detainees] were provided training in areas such as [the] use of English language, leadership skills, management of small business enterprises, clerical and administrative know-how. Vocational training comprised computer technology, masonry, plumbing, carpentry, arts & crafts, music and drama, food preparation etc. The rehabilitation programme was planned to enable the beneficiaries to engage in self-employment activities following reintegration into society and become fully productive members of civil society.

If my recollections are correct, those Tigers who were university students were released to the Vice Chancellor of Jaffna University quite early in the piece, perhaps in late 2009.[xvi] According to Rajaguru’s recent interview other adults who had foregone their schooling because of the war were permitted to study and sit for either the O-Level or A-Level examinations. One news item indicates that 175 sat for the GCE O/L examination in 2010 (38 passed in all the subjects), while 361 sat the GCE A/L examination (222 passed).[xvii]

What is praiseworthy in this policy has been the emphasis on vocational and technical education rather than the standard clerical streams. In my reading, the education system in Sri Lanka over the past 50 years has been quite sterile because of its overemphasis on paper qualifications and its encouragement of white collar status. Arguably, in the south and centre of the island it has been a process geared to the production of a steady stream of recruits to the radical chauvinist Left associated with the JVP and the JHU.

From this standpoint, then, the vocational, technical and petty business leanings in the BCGR programmes are just what the Tamil peoples and the country-at-large requires for the near future. Critical to this orientation has been the engagement of some mercantile companies in the training programme: Abhina, Holcim, David Pieris Motor Company, Venntures, Virtusa, VUSAA and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry for instance.

Arbitrary examples of this line of training in reverse temporal order drawn from the long list on the BCGR site are:

• Learning Basic Principles of Entrepreneurship development and training conducted by Survivors Association held at Pampemadu for 40 Rehabilitants … 22 Sept. 2011.
• Palmyra leaves related Handicrafts creations training course continue at Poonthottam PARC facilitated by Survivors Association for 35 Rehabilitants from 6th July to 6th October 2011.
• Leather work training course from 28th February to 10th June 2011 at Thelippalai PARC…. 28 Feb. 2011.
• 2nd Batch Training Course of IDM Computer Training Program was Commenced at Maradamadu Tamil Primary, Technical collage [sic] … 22 Feb 2011.
• 5th batch of David Peris motor mechanic training course was completed… 25 January 2011.
• Masonry related vocational training program Commenced at Dharmapuram PARC for 200 beneficiaries for 15 days. Facilitated by National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority (NAITA) and Sponsored by Holcim Cement.…. 23 August 2010.
• Vocational training course held at Handwerk Vocational Training Centre, Payagala, facilitated by FCCISL [attend 60 beneficiaries]…. 9-25 August 2010.

In an imaginative leap the BCGR also utilised the actress Anoja Weerasinghe’s social commitment to provide training in dance and drama for some of the former Tigers with the result that a dancing troupe has eventuated and are said to be in great demand.[xviii]

“Release” with Tamasha: Recent official announcements proclaimed that “over 9,500 youth who took arms have been reunited with their families after following rehabilitation in 24 State-run centres;”[xix] though another 1000 or so were still in detention in early October 2011. This release of Tiger personnel has occurred gradually from mid 2010 onwards.[xx]

Several of these moments of “release” have been presented with considerable fanfare in local newspapers aligned with the government. On one occasion the state arranged for public marriage ceremonies for former Tiger rehabilitees and their partners. The largest of these tamashas was held at “Temple Trees” on 30 September 2011 when 1800 ex-Tigers “passed out,” so to speak, as free citizens in front of their relatives and an assemblage of foreign and local dignitaries. A cultural performance (presumably by one of their own troupes) entertained the large crowd, while the High Cpommissioner for Australia, Kathy Klugman, and other ambassadors handed out certificates.[xxi]

Clearly there is a self-congratulatory and propaganda aspect when the GoSL organises such high-profile functions. Generalized cynicism or hostility to the Rajapaksa regime should not, however, lead one to underestimate the implications of such a process. The critical question is this: how do the ex-Tiger fighters and their kinfolk view such moments? The plausible answer is that these ceremonial functions are akin to a graduation ceremony and a momentous point in their life, even conceivably a “transformational” landmark. This is a verdict that I present on a priori reasoning.

Both the images presented in the government media and the responses of released Tigers in brief interviews carried out by pro-government media personnel indicate their delight at the new situation; while video interviews on the BCGR website praise the training received. The outside world may well be skeptical about seeing this evidence as a representation of generalized satisfaction among the former Tigers because it has been mostly purveyed by tame reporters in government run newspapers.[xxii]

The GOSL has not matched its enlightened policy with an enlightened presentation of self in the face of a suspicious world. What is required in such moments is the encouragement and scope for fearless commentators of the Ruki Fernando, Indi Samarajiva and Mutthukrishna Sarvananthan kind, as well as journalists from the Sunday Leader, to speak unmonitored with rehabilitees of their choice.[xxiii] This should have been seconded by the promotion of independent agencies to pursue studies of the process of reintegration at the local level over a period of months. It would seem that the official world is hidebound within a mind-set attached to top-down control and lacks imagination in propaganda techniques, or combines both tendencies, in ways that encourage shortcomings in the dissemination of what could well be a remarkable story.[xxiv]

Monitoring and Process of Reintegration: Rajaguru makes it clear that security concerns also governed the manner of “release” from detention:

Most of them have families. …. We reintegrate people only when have an address of known relatives. We locate them and then only we reintegrate them to society. This is being done by the military intelligence when we provide them with the information given by the rehabilitate (sic). So, they are going back to the people they know. There is no case of any individual being released without background being checked.

These individuals were not just cast adrift. It would appear that the process of resettlement was organised with the cooperation of IOM who used donor funds to provide them with equipment and tool kits. As critically, attention has been paid to the provision of micro-financing, while local banks have been induced to grant “low interest loans with grace periods and a repayment period of ten years.” This line of post-release support is depicted by Rajaguru as a “period of re-insertion” and a process of “community-based rehabilitation” that merges with the resettlement of other IDPs in those parts of the Vanni that were deserted by the inhabitants under the guns of the LTTE as the latter retreated in 2008 and early 2009.

While there is much that is commendable in this subsequent programme, one must exercise caution in accepting these official pronouncements at face value. Such concepts as “reintegration” do not work like mantra and require examination through ethnographic studies of individual biographies and broader processes over time. A study conducted by a triumvirate (de Croos et al 2011) who explored the subjective experiences of 15 former detainees depicts an alarming picture. Several stated that they had received little training. “All ex-detainees stated that the CID and Army visited their homes at least once a week or once every fortnight and checked on their whereabouts and details.” Not all had received IDs and everyone had been instructed to seek permission if they travelled beyond their village. [xxv]

Such restrictions, needless to say, have generated frustration and resentment. The investigators met “three mothers of former detainees from the same villages, two of whom had already left Sri Lanka for safety reasons.” This meant tightening screws of surveillance and spiralling levels of dissatisfaction.

Several of those interviewed also stated that the level of surveillance had increased significantly following the ‘disappearance’ of a woman ex-combatant from the village in late 2010. This person was a senior LTTE carder (sic) who had been released and had returned home to the village. Many believe that she has been taken to India for safety. Following her release, several ex-detainees have been questioned by intelligence officers regarding her whereabouts. Her father and sister were also taken into custody briefly and questioned but were later released.

This is not a pretty tale at all. It reveals that the training provided in the rehabilitation programme is not as comprehensive as it has been made out to be; and that the results are erratic at best.[xxvi] As vitally, the longer-term prospects of goodwill are being seriously undermined by the overwhelming concerns with security. Having classified detainees into several categories in the security centres, the paranoid surveillance methods treat all those released alike. They also seem to be restraining freedom of movement and thus freedom of trade.

Given the extensive networks of army cantonments in the north, given the recruitment of some ex-Tigers into the networks of military intelligence[xxvii] and given the degree to which a wide spectrum of the Tamil population is “conflict saturated” and alienated by the extremism of the Tamil diaspora,[xxviii] the prospects of any guerilla activity re-emerging in the north are minute. The ham-handed vigilance that has been highlighted by Croos et al is therefore as silly as counter-productive.

In brief, the left-hand is removing what the right-hand has sought to achieve. It is not only a question of some unhappy rehabilitees, but the ripples of dissatisfaction that are being generated through the networks of kin, friends and locality. Such ripples will invariably link up with those political figures speaking up for the Tamils. That is as it should be: local politicians must represent their constituency.

What we now require are more in-depth locality studies of resettlement in the Vanni by independent university or research agencies deploying social scientists with the requisite language and ethnographic skills. Such studies should embrace both the civilian IDPs and rehabilitees; and should have some longitudinal temporality built into them.

Our assessments will then be better grounded. It would seem that the rehabilitation programme has been erratic in its processes. Though one can congratulate the government of Sri Lanka for the measures taken to release and help the former Tiger personnel,[xxix] the forms of surveillance that have been set up are extreme and undermine the broader goal of reconciliation. The pleasure revealed by the rehabilitees at their graduation ceremonies will wane if and when they are subject to harassment by local-level minions or restricted in the pursuit of their career goals. They (or some of them) and the Tamils around them will be confirmed in the impression that they are second-class citizens – a subjective reading that has been prevalent in Tamil society for many decades. Rehabilitation of former Tigers and reconciliation between Tamils and the other ethnic communities will only develop solid foundations if political and administrative measures confirm to Tamils their dignity as citizens of equal worth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abeywickrema, Mandana Ismail 2011 “Rehabilitation and Re-Integration of Former LTTE Cadres,” Sunday Leader, 9 January 2011.

BCGR  n. d. “Reuniting Rehabilitated ex-combatants with their families and Reintegrating them into Society,” http://www.bcgr.gov.lk/

Karunanayake, Samanmali 2010 “Ex-LTTE cadres recalled to a life of fruitfulness,” Daily News, 11 October 2011.

Croos, Fr. J., Deanne Uyangoda  & Ruki Fernando 2011 “Threats, Harassments and Restrictions on Former Detainees and Their Families in Vanni,” 11 May 2011, http://www.globalpeacesupport.com/ globalpeacesupport. com/post/2011/05/14/

Daily News 2010 “Ex-LTTE cadres well looked after — IOM Chief,” Daily News, 18 December 2010.

DeSilva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2010a “Exclusive Interview with Thirunavukkarasu Sridharan,” South Asia Defence & Strategic Review Sept-Oct 2010, pp. 46-49.

DeSilva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2010b “Civilian casualties, IDP camps and asylum seekers,” South Asia Masala online, 9 Dec. 2010 http:// asiapacific.anu. edu.au /blogs/southasiamasala/2010/12/09/civilian-casualties-idp-camps-and-asylum-seekers/

DeSilva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2010c “The 13th Amendment to the Constitution must be properly implemented” says Dharmalingam Siddharthan, www.transcurrents.com, 23 December 2010.

Ferdinando, Shamindra 2011a “Dy British HC says re-integration of ex-combatants important part in reconciliation process,” Island, 27 May 2011.

Ferdinando, Shamindra 2011b “Military visitors see facility rehabilitating LTTE cadres,” Sunday Island, 12 June 2011.

Ferdinando, Shamindra 2011c “LTTE rump ignores ex-combatants undergoing rehab,” Island, 17 June 2011.

Haviland, Charles 2011 “Tamil Tiger releases hit by rehabilitation problems,” BBC News, Colombo 3 Jan. 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12108479).

Irin News 2010 “Sri Lanka: former female fighters strive for a better life,” 29 Sept. 2010 (http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=90613).

Nadesan, Noel 2011 “Australia’s positive role in Sri Lanka,” http://noelnadesan.wordpress.com/ 2011/10/11/australia%E2%80%99s-positive-role-in-sri-lanka/

Radhakrishnan, R.K. 2011 “Former LTTE combatants rehabilitated,” The Hindu, 4 Feb. 2011 (http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/ article1155465.ece).

Sackur, Stephen 2010a “A Sri Lankan re-education for Tamil child soldiers,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8721974.stm.

Sackur, Stephen 2010b “Former child soldiers rebuilding their lives,” Hard Talk pod cast, in three parts, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf5U5NB9Mk0.

Sriyananda, Shanika 2011 “LTTEers reintegrated bright brush strokes emerge,” Sunday Observer, 9 October 2011…. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/10/09/fea03.asp

Wamanan, Arthur 2011 “Rehabilitation: Beginning a new life,” Nation, 24 April 2011.

Wijayapala, Ranil 2011 “Rehabilitation, resettlement of ex-LTTEers, a success,” Sunday Observer, 9 October 2011.

Long Reads brings to Groundviews long-form journalism found in publications such as Foreign Policy, The New Yorker and the New York Times. This section, inspired by Longreads, offers more in-depth deliberation on key issues covered on Groundviews.

• Response to Michael Roberts’ ‘Turning Former LTTE Personnel into Sri Lankan Citizens?’
• Reconciliation through ‘Rehabilitation’ & ‘Reintegration’ of Ex-LTTE members in Sri Lanka: Separating Fact from Fiction
• Exclusive: Syllabi and timetables from compulsory University ‘leadership’ training course
• Picking up the Tamil Tigers’ scent
• University Students, Military and the Leadership Programme: Observations on the First Session

Photo credit Dinuka Liyanawatte / Reuters, from Time magazine.

Keynote address delivered on 17th October 2011 at ‘Language and Social Cohesion: 9th International Language and Development Conference, Colombo co-organized by the Ministry of National Languages and Social Integration, Ministry  of Education, GIZ, AusAID and British Council.

###

Approach

Language is never a simple issue of communication; in contemporary social and political practice everywhere, language goes much beyond its basic utilitarian purposes. In this sense, Sri Lanka is no exception. By now, Sri Lanka has ended an immensely destructive military conflict that had much to do with a crisis of identity linked as much to language as to ethnicity and contested notions of binary-nationalisms and competitive interpretations of history. In this context, this is a crucial time to seriously consider the politico-developmental position of language in imagining the future of the country.

Today, I will briefly focus on the historical development of the politics of language in Sri Lanka and explore the dynamics of the specific political process that has emerged out of privileging and de-privileging language use in the country. This necessarily has to focus on the policy discourse that has enhanced language regulation and legislation in Sri Lanka as well as political impediments that have retarded the comprehensive implementation of the provisions of these legislative provisions and regulatory frameworks. For me, heading for the future and imagining the future after a catastrophic and very painful recent past and without the hindsight of the larger history that has molded our collective personality is a recipe for future instability.  And it endlessly disturbs me that often we as a people seem very reluctant to learn from our own history.

History of Politics of Language

Both Tamil and Sinhala politicians espoused the idea of swabasha (or ‘native languages’) during the colonial period in the early 20^th century aimed at promoting Sinhala and Tamil.  So contrary to popular belief today, politics of language have not always been a reflection of inter-ethnic rivalry.  In its initial stages, the demand for swabasha reflected class connotations even though blurred outlines of Sinhala aspirations could also be detected.  But such aspirations were not clearly articulated, and did not receive popular support at these stages.  Demands for swabasha was a protest against the privileges enjoyed by the English educated elite, privileges not open to the masses educated in the local languages.

In 1944, J.R. Jayawardena moved a resolution in Parliament to declare “Sinhalese as the Official Language of Ceylon within a reasonable number of years”.  An amendment was proposed by V. Nallaiah, a Tamil state councilor, for providing both Sinhala and Tamil the status as Official Languages, which was seconded by R.S.S. Gunawardena, a Sinhala state councilor.  The resolution in this form was approved by 27 to 2 in the Sinhala-dominated legislature, another sign of the lack of ethnic overtones in language politics at this stage.  The resolution specified that Sinhala and Tamil would become the languages of instruction in schools, examinations for public services and legislative proceedings.

In 1946, a committee under the chairmanship of J.R. Jayawardena strongly recommended the establishment of local languages as Official Languages replacing English while recommending that the transition take place over a period of ten years.  But there was no serious movement in the language front despite these official conversations. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike left the UNP in 1951 citing the government’s inaction in implementing the new Official Language Policies, and launched a concerted attack on the UNP claiming to see “no difficulty in the way of the early adoption of our languages.” Soon after his resignation, Bandaranaike organized the SLFP and began mobilizing forces supporting the swabasha movement within Sinhala society to form a broad-based coalition to wrest political power from the UNP in the upcoming general election.  However, the language issue had not become a divisive ethnic issue even at this stage as exemplified by the SLFP manifesto which claimed that “it is most essential that Sinhalese and Tamil be adopted as Official Languages immediately so that the people of this country may cease to be aliens in their own land….”.

By the late 1950s however, this cross-cutting interest in empowering local languages diminished in the context of emerging and divisive ethnic politics. It is in this context that  S.W.R.D Bandaranaike was elected as Prime Minister in 1956.  His main election promise to establish Sinhala as the Official Language of the country replacing English was fulfilled soon after the election, giving no status of parity to Tamil. This is the manner in which language politics as we know it today was introduced into the Sri Lankan political discourse.  All of us are quite aware where these politics have lead us since that time.

Language Policy History

Let me take a moment to briefly reflect upon the policy formworks that have impacted the language situation in the country.  In 1966, ten years after the passage of the Sinhala Only Bill, the use of Tamil as the language of administration in Northern and Eastern provinces was begun after the implementation of the provisions of Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act No. 28 (1958) mostly due to pressure from Tamil political parties.  In 1987, through the 13^th amendment to the Constitution Tamil was also decreed an Official Language of the state and the legal basis for parity between Sinhala and Tamil was clearly established by law.  In addition, both languages were also defined as ‘national languages’ while recognizing English as the ‘link language.’ 

Section 21 of the Constitution under the 16^th Amendment offers extensive provisions and rights for the language of administration to be available in both Sinhala and Tamil.  In addition, Section 23 of the same amendment provides that the language of legislation will be Sinhala and Tamil while a translation of these legislative enactments and laws must be available in English.  Further, Section 24 of the same amendment provides that the languages of the courts in the country will be Sinhala and Tamil.

Chapter IV of the Constitution and the 13^th and 16^th Amendments in particular, formally recognize the earlier mistakes of language politics, and provides for extensive and legally binding solutions.  In effect, Chapter IV as it appears today provides for the equitable use of Sinhala and Tamil in all areas of social and political activity.  In that sense, the Constitution is both a historical text of mistakes and also their correction, and a point of departure for the implementation of the Language Policy that has been so exhaustively articulated.  When it comes to language rights, the issue is no longer with the Constitution or with regulations, but with their practical implementation.

In 1991, the Ministry of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Home Affairs issued a circular under the title ‘Implementation of the Official Languages Law – Trilingualization of Forms,’ and made the following directive: “It was decided that forms of all government institutions should be made available in the three languages, Sinhala, Tamil and English printed in the same paper.  All old forms not satisfying these criteria should be withdrawn.  Secretaries of all Ministries and Provincial Councils should be responsible for implementing this decision”.

This was a conscious attempt at implementing some of the most basic provisions in exercising language rights that affect people in routine circumstances.  In 1992, the same Ministry issued another circular under the title ‘Preparation of Infrastructure for the Implementation of the Official Languages Law.’  It stated that the government’s objective was to implement the language legislation as laid down by the Constitution, and urged heads of government agencies to recognize and address these issues.  More importantly, the circular requested Secretaries of Ministries to investigate and report the lapses in implementing the Language Policy in departments and institutions under them.  Further, the circular categorically stated that lack of language skills and lack of equipment would no longer be entertained by the government as excuses for the delays in implementing the Official Language legislation.

The repeated issuing of these circulars point to a number of realities.  The constitutional changes made were serious and these circulars indicate numerous attempts made over the years to implement the provisions in the Constitution.  They also point to the failure of the Official Languages Policy at the level of practice due to sheer lack of capacity, mechanisms, skills and the recognition of such lapses as well as a pronounced absence of political will and interest at the ground level.  The narratives emerging from these circulars suggest that the government’s interest was the speedy implementation of the Language Policy rather than first establishing a long term and robust framework for its implementation.

On 30^th June 1998, President Chandrika Kumaratunge writing to her Cabinet of Ministers also made a clear statement regarding concerns over the failure of implementing the Official Languages Policy:

Several Instances of failure on the part of Government Institutions to comply with Constitutional provisions relating to Official Languages have been brought to my notice.  These are serious omissions as they cause immense inconvenience and hardship to members of the public who are not conversant with Sinhala.  Besides, it also amounts to a violation of the law.  I dread to think of the plight of citizens who receive letters in a language which they do not understand.  This is tantamount to denial of that citizen a fundamental right.

However, despite good intentions and various attempts outlined above, the overall damage caused by the initial phase of politics of language, and the suspicions these politics created in the minds Tamil-speaking people remain un-addressed at the level of both country-wide practice and felt experience.  In other words, the vast gap between the official recognition of Tamil as an Official Language and the practical implementation of the provisions and conditions it entails, is yet to be bridged.  As recently as 2005, the government’s Official Language Commission made the following crucial observations with regard to the implementation of Language Policy in a wide-ranging document titled the Memorandum of Recommendations:

The facilities for communicating with the central government in obtaining its services in Tamil are minimal.  This situation amounts to a violation of constitutional rights of the Tamil speaking citizens of the country.  Apart from the indignities they are made to suffer, they are put into innumerable inconveniences in transacting business with the government.  The provincial administration including that of the North East miserably fail in serving citizens inhabiting those areas who are not proficient in the language of the administration of the respective province in their own language which has Official Language status.

These statements summarize the social and political repercussions of the politics of language in this country as they exist today despite numerous attempts taken to address them.  On the other hand, some significant measures adopted seem to have been formulated in an ad hoc manner despite the articulation of a language sensitive ideological commitment resulting in their state of unsuccessfulness.

The Present

Through that rather turbulent road with too many blind corners we come to the present; and the question is what does the present hold? Quite literally, if we had followed the road signs that we ourselves had established in the form of rules and regulations, our politics, at least with reference to language, would have been quite different; if so, we would have been discussing very different things in this conference today.

Last year (2010), about one and half years after the conclusion of the war, at the invitation of the Ministry of Official Languages and Social Integration, I visited Vavuniya and Jaffna between 1^st and 3^rd December to undertake a quick assessment of what the language situation was at ground level in two primarily Tamil speaking areas. Without going into details, I will only offer a summary of my experience which will place in context, the prevailing situation. The Divisional Secretariat for Vavuniya where the GA is based, services mostly a Tamil-speaking population. While government circulars received by this office as a rule come in all three languages and sometimes in two, a great majority of routine communication from government agencies continues to be in Sinhala. This includes communications from the Ministry of Public Administration, Ministry of Heath, Pensions Department, Samurdhui Authority, Widows and Orphans Fund and the Ministry of Economic Development. A cursory survey of the daily ‘in-try’ of mail for the GA for the 1^st of December 2010 indicated that the majority of the mail was in Sinhala, a few regional letters in Tamil and almost no Sinhala language letters were accompanied by either Tamil or English translations.

The Vauniya Police has a similar situation with regard to language of service. In a force of about 300 officers and constables attached to the Vavuniya Town Police, only about seven are competent in Tamil. The police acknowledge that with the end of active war, the numbers of people coming to police stations in the region have increased considerably, and that their ability to serve the people in their own language needs to be vastly improved. At present, all complaints are only recorded in Sinhala; a Tamil-speaking person can relate his or her compliant in Tamil, and if one of the handful of policemen competent in Tamil is available, the narrative is translated into Sinhala which is recorded. None of these are trained translators and the possibility of errors and inaccuracies seeping into the recorded statements are significant.

Structurally, the situation in Jaffna is quite similar to Vavuniya suggesting the existence of a pattern in similar ethno-cultural conditions where the official languages policy is faltering seriously in the process of implementation. The Jaffna Hospital receives most of its instructions and correspondence from state agencies in Sinhala in a situation where it does not have formal mechanisms to translate these documents. It is clear that Ministry of Health is one of the most consistent violators of the official languages law. The great majority of correspondence from this Ministry comes in Sinhala which includes letters of appointment, salary increments, and above all, disciplinary inquiries.  The police in Jaffna Town has a force of about 600 officers and constables; out of this only about 7 are competent in Tamil though serving an overwhelmingly Tamil majority population. As in Vavuiya, officers have to take procedural detours to manage with what is available and depend on informal systems when the formal structures are dysfunctional.

This state of affairs poses a series of problems which seem to crop up regularly in other central and local government bodies in the north which indicates a consistent pattern and deeper malaise.  That is, despite the constitutional and legal right of the people to receive information and services from central and local government agencies in their own language, this does not happen on a routine basis. So, despite the existence of an ideal legal and constitutional framework for the implementation of the official languages policy, it is consistently violated as these examples and people’s experiences indicate. While this has lead to a situation of frustration and lack of trust towards the state, people also seem reluctant to take legal remedies to rectify the situation though such procedures exists, for fear of reprimand.

It is in this context that we finally come to the attempted ban of the Tamil version of the national anthem which is entrenched by the Constitution. The Minister of Housing quite loudly and without wisdom called the Tamil version of the national anthem a ‘joke,’ while the proposal received considerable support from some of the top leaders of our political spectrum, based on spectacularly false information and assumptions. Naturally, if the direct translation of the original is a ‘joke’, then so must be the original. But as we know quite well, our national anthem in Sinhala, Tamil or any other language is a fine and exemplary text that defies divisiveness in all its forms, and upholds the value of a collective identity.  The fact that the ban was not carried through is another matter. I find it extremely unfortunate that such an unenlightened political debate emerged in the first place, barely one and half years after the conclusion of the an immensely destructive war, and while our collective sorrow over the losses in war was still quite painful, and ‘reconciliation’ had become a free floating word in the local political discourse.  Perhaps that word has lost its meaning just the same way our post-independence language policies have lost their direction. It is in this context that I would like to reiterate a point I made at the very outset. That is, if we do not learn from our history, from our collective past, from our mistakes and from our strengths, we will be the architects of our own future destruction just the same way we have been of our recent past.

I would like to conclude my reflections with a few not so well known words from one of the greatest political leaders of our time, Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” My wish today is that our political leaders would somehow find the wisdom to be guided by this simple logic. I also wish that wisdom would come to govern our politics in general and our politics of language in particular.

(The speaker is Professor and former Head, Department of Sociology, University of Colombo)

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• Language Barriers
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• Curated updates from Indian Foreign Minister’s official visit to Sri Lanka

A few evenings ago, parents were invited to our son’s school which goes up to Grade 8 for a presentation on Bullying.  Dr. Tina Daniel, Asst Professor of Psychology at Carleton University engaged in researching children’s relationships, violence and bullying facilitated the session.   She and her research colleagues had already spent the day in school first making a presentation at the assembly, then a workshop with teachers and classroom sessions with children themselves.

In her presentation she showed footage of an actual playground incident where a girl aged 12 was being bullied by another bunch of girls.  As she deconstructed the scene, there was a child seated on the ground and about five girls hovering around her and it appeared innocent enough, but a closer look revealed her being taunted and teased, as she had her head down crying.   It appeared that this pack of girls had a leader who was directing all this.

Dr. Daniel stated that bullying does not have to be violent, in fact covert forms of bullying such as teasing, ignoring, ostracizing can be even more harmful as they can be mentally agonizing for children, affect their self esteem and confidence.  She also said that a lot of bullying happens between girls and between boys separately.  Surprisingly, her research shows that girls also bully boys, rather than the other way around.

She provided the teachers, students and now the parents ways to understand, recognize and prevent bullying when it happens.  When there is an environment that is conducive to it, the stronger children who have a sense of confidence, and maybe even born with some aggression in their genes, tend to pick on those who are quieter and more timid.  For the bully, these actions tend to enhance their power and the ego.  She told us that even watching someone get bullied is a form of endorsement for the bully and the least one could do is to walk away from it, if he or she cannot intervene and stop it.   She urged parents and teachers to be constantly aware and vigilant and to deal with incidents immediately.

Dr. Daniel’s philosophy of dealing with the offenders was also appreciative.  She said, the perpetrators are not “bad kids”, just that they are not aware of the consequences of their actions, as often the victims suffer in silence.  She suggested that teachers and parents engage in a dialogue with them in a positive appreciative manner and ensure that the behaviour of the bully changes.

Also, if bullying is looked upon as “uncool” and there is peer pressure against it, it may stop.

She highlighted the importance of addressing the issue with the perpetrators, as a 4 year old bully will continue this behaviour and eventually may end up in extreme cases committing violent crimes.  Evidence shows that many violent adults also bullied when they were young.

This is a good lesson for Sri Lanka, as bullying is rampant is schools and with the current example of a political leadership that perpetuates the bully culture of violence.

The recent public firefight which left many people dead and hurt reinforces this behaviour in schools as, if political leaders can do it in public with impunity, what is there to stop the children.

Maybe Duminda Silva was a bully as a child, maybe by nature he has violent tendencies, but it is only in a conducive environment he metes out his aggression.  If he knew there were consequences for his violent action, he may behave differently, but the impunity he has been provided sadly by the current system of governance allows him to be destructive.

…..but we all know the saying, one who lives by the sword, dies by the sword….a saying not heeded by the powers that be.  It is a sad reflection of the current state of a nation founded on the most compassionate of teachings of the Buddha.

Sri Lanka’s leaders, be it from the political, judicial, education or business allowing these acts to go unabated endorses this culture to perpetuate itself into the future.

That is why I am impressed with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board taking the initiative to create a humane, positive, appreciative, safe and a peaceful environment from a very young age.  This is especially a challenge as Ottawa, like many other cities in Canada is multicultural where over 100 nationalities share the school system.  Yet, it is investing heavily in the future of Canada.  It recognizes that prosperity can come and be sustained only in an environment of harmony and respectful relationships, where people’s dignities are protected.

Dr. Daniel’s work with the school board is a part of a larger philosophy and initiative called Lead the Way, as creating a respectful environment free of violence is crucial to foster creativity and openness required for prosperity.

The school board administering 147 schools in the Ottawa district has a vision founded on three principles of inclusion and engagement.   They are stated in their website as follows;

• Each individual has unique capacities and ideas that need to be recognized. It is one of the driving forces behind our leadership initiative. It is our responsibility to reach out, to value, and tap into each of these capacities.
• By harnessing these individual capacities, our organization will be enriched and invigorated and,
• The intended result is to achieve a culture of engagement where people feel valued and supported in an environment that embraces and systematically promotes ongoing learning fostered through internal and external dialogue.

They recognized that being bullied is definitely not being valued and supported as a child.

We have some simple lessons to learn from this for Sri Lanka.  Let us begin with the child as the adults seem a lost cause.  Teach them the basics of respect for self and others.  Protecting another’s dignity is to keep one’s own dignity intact.

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• School admissions
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• Getting rid of the LTTE: A few questions

Image courtesy Lankapura

An oyster sucks in particles from its environment and creates a pearl. If instead, it filters out every particle, it is destined to be a lesser being.

In untold generations, the Sinhalese people were fashioned from extraditions, waves of invasions, conquered kingdoms and stranded travelers to this fecund island. They are the children of exiles, conquerors and refugees, some noble and often not…. They are begotten of peoples who have absorbed and yielded, been besieged and withstood and been enriched, pearl-like.

In time the Sinhalese defined themselves as a race and a culture that can be distinguished from the cultures of India. This is laudable in the face of that overshadowing mass.  We have swum through multi-colored waters and still stand as a discernible ethnicity…but are we quite as boldly discernible and as splendidly isolated as we believe? Our outline has to have merged and blended with the communities we have mingled with; the aboriginal, australo-negroid Veddha, Dravidian conquerors, prisoners and laborers, the Moorish traders and sailors from the Arabian land mass and the mercenaries from the Indonesian archipelago who fought for the Kings of Lanka, European conquerors and missionaries, Chinese merchants and African pearl divers, tourists… who surely sowed their seed! The undoubted genetic infusions could only have embellished us! And embellished, we have emerged as a discernible race. It is as this discernible race that we encounter the perils of isolation.

It is true that Rulers of a nation have the privilege of defining ethnic strata and often isolating ethnic groups. So easily is this done that worldwide, ethnic definition has always been a common and deliberate tool in political manipulations. For Sri Lankan leaders, in the process of ruling the island that dangles off the Indian subcontinent, definition has sometimes been inevitable; dangling precariously close, in times when that massive nation has decided to worry us like a bone in the teeth of a bitch, ethnic definition has even been necessary. But, stratifying ethnic groups is a dangerous game; the players forget they are playing.

Over the centuries, in Sri Lanka, the stratification of ethnic groups has varied from sharp, crystalized layers polarized by their distinctions, to rare times when the ethnic layering became soft, like melting jaggery. In recent memory, the last time the island people’s ethnicity was blurred was during the colonial era. Confronted with a common enemy, diverse ethnic communities recognized commonalities and faced the invasive western culture. Eager and passionate nationalists of all Sri Lankan ethnicities filled the vacuum created in 1948 by the departure of the British.  But as soon as the majority voice formulated, the ardor of the minority politicians cooled. Now rid of the imperialists, ethnic divisions swirled back in to sharp focus.

Post independence, the island’s rulers have been the majority Sinhalese. Too many times these leaders have over reacted and ridden the wave of ethnic definition that easily surfs in to the dangerous waters of ethnic superiority. Standing in the foreground, we the Sinhalese, often nudged by politicians, intoxicate ourselves with doses of ethnic superiority. In addition, sections of the Buddhist clergy, who have forgotten that ‘Tolerance and Equality’ are the hallmarks of Buddhism, have curiously linked themselves to Sinhala chauvinism; if the politicians happen to forget then, members of the Buddhist clergy will raise the banner of the purported pure Sinhala race. This has created a hierarchy even amongst the Sinhalese with the Christian Sinhalese feeling less of a sense of belonging.

With the infamous ‘Sinhala Only’ cry of 1956, instantly, like a bathtub plug being pulled, hoards of non-Sinhalese Sri Lankans drained out of the country. The majority who left then, were Burgers; descendants of the intermix of Sri Lankans with Portuguese, Dutch and British colonials. Their lingua franca had been English and as they emptied out of villages and towns island wide, that they had inhabited for centuries, they took with them the ready access the Sinhalese had to the international language. That wave of ethnic definition impacted on the Sinhalese a generation later with a dearth of English speakers.

The largest ethnic minority, the Sri Lankan Tamils took longer to respond to the frequent underscoring of Sinhala priorities. Their ultimate reaction hatched the violent LTTE that viciously protracted a civil war for almost 3 decades. As the LTTE raised its head and bared its teeth, the Sinhalese initially lashed back with horrendous ethnic rioting that left all minorities petrified by its portent. But the anguish of the Tamils, who were the focus of the riots, drove them not only off our shores but further, to find resonance with the bloody LTTE.  In 2009 the LTTE was finally defeated and the Sinhalese have not yet paused to examine the damage.

The Tamils, in the longest association with the Sinhalese had formed a cultural fabric too tightly interwoven to define origin. Our cuisine, our clothing, our arts  & architecture were the reflection of the Dravidians who we had communed with, but in adoption as, it was blurred and simplified by Buddhism, it acquired an individuality. Our religious practices, from the boiling of milk to incense and light carried the Hindu influence that had lent ritual to the spartan Buddhist philosophy when the Sinhalese metamorphosed it in to a religion. Our language was where we were most clearly distinct but even so, its muddled linguistic root made us aware of our compatriot Tamils.

In the early part of the 20^th Century as we Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim, stood shoulder-to-shoulder, to face down the British and be rid of colonialism, we were Sri Lankan or rather still obediently, ‘Ceylonese’. This was a common patriotism that spelled a common love for this country. This was until, slowly, in the process of leadership, we alienated the minority races. In older generations of Sri Lankan diaspora, the love of a distant homeland, lingered. Frequently emails were circulated, recalling life in the land they left behind. Whenever opportunity arose many of these emigrants would return, despite the absence of friends and family, simply to revisit their old country. In their lives in foreign lands, even the most well adapted emigrant would easily lapse in to recollections of a faraway lifestyle. In the forested garden of a country home in upstate New York, belonging to Sri Lankans who had left the island over half a century ago, I was introduced to a pair of white-tailed deer named Maan & Muva. In this inseparable pair of deer, bearing the Tamil and Sinhalese monikers for ‘deer’, I saw a lost dream!

In the post-war resettlements in northern Sri Lanka, I encountered Muslim children who cheered not for the Sri Lankan cricket team but Pakistan! When had this affiliation to a foreign land begun? I had grown up with close family friends who were Muslim and their affinity to Sri Lanka, the land and its politics, was no different to what was inculcated in me. Perhaps subtle changes had gathered momentum and with the establishment of ethnically defined political parties and the fundamentalism sweeping the Muslim world, the Muslim youth of Sri Lanka had reached a tipping point. I wonder if there is still time to retrieve and include them in our future? As I sat in the blistering heat and dust of a temporary school in newly resettled, post-war Mannar and listened to the school boys reel off names of their favorite cricketers, “Afridi! Khan! Shah… Malinga!” I thought there was still a glimmer of hope, if only we consciously tried.

We the Sinhalese had borrowed from and shared with all the other races we had encountered in the many millennia it took for us to emerge as this distinct race.  Now, we certainly had reached the plateau in our status as the superior race on our little island. However, as we continued trying to distinguish ourselves by highlighting our differences, I felt we would only lose from denying ourselves the nourishment that the intermingling of races allows. With these constant racial efforts we have alienated many and deprived our selves of so much that could have spiced our lives. We have made minorities who have inhabited this island as long as we have, feel secondary and less welcome. In doing so, have we deprived ourselves of the huge benefit of all Sri Lankans being equally patriotic?

With pluralism so deeply embedded, whenever we have tried to isolate ourselves the surgery has been intensely painful.  Anyway, why do we try as, we will only be poorer if, we divest ourselves of the enhancement that the Muslim cuisine adds to our lives, the solace that the Hindu Gods offer many a Sinhalese, the wild side that the Veddha adds to our cultural pageants, the joyous baila music of the Burghers…. As we crystallize our distinct race and shrug away our previous influences perhaps we should pause and examine what we deny ourselves…. What will we find?

A minute race isolated with nothing further to nurture it? In years to come, as we stand on our tiny island, eclipsed and isolated through our own insistence, will we the Sinhalese wonder if this is what we really sought? A race silenced by its own cries for isolation and no meter to measure its distinction.

In memory of Yogaraj Yogasunderam (1927 -2011)

• A question to the government and the LTTE
• Does cricket have a citizenship?
• Beyond the time-warp in Sri Lanka
• TMVP in same dustbin as LTTE in the past?
• The sentencing J.S Tissainayagam: Not in my name!

TED Fellow and gifted cellist Joshua Roman was in Sri Lanka recently for his debut concert in Colombo. He also performed in Kandy. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma called him an “extraordinary young musician”. Those who came to listen to him play in Colombo and Kandy, accompanied by Eshantha Peiris on the piano, left richer for having experienced his music.

As with Mandhira de Saram, Joshua started playing an instrument very young, at age three. Joshua speaks about his family’s influence on his music, and choice of instrument. We also talk about the cello he brought to Sri Lanka, which made in 1899, was perhaps the oldest western musical instrument to ever grace the stage at the Lionel Wendt and the venue in Kandy.

Joshua speaks about his approach to music, and how though trained and obviously adept at playing classical music, he always tries to experiment and likes to play contemporary music as well. This brings us to the question of how and to what extent the audiences Joshua plays to influence his selection of music, if at all. Joshua opines that an audience may not have to like the music played, but that it is the role of the musician to take them on a journey through soundscapes both familiar and new, to connect with an audience, to take them by the hand and guide them through the traditional classical cannon and at the same time introducing them to the new and contemporary.

Joshua also talked about how he developed his style of playing, anchored to the music he played and listened to as a child. He then speaks about the time he played in Uganda’s IDP camps, noting how people there connected immediately and in a novel manner with the classical music he played. He connects this to the possibility of using music in reconciliation processes, including in Sri Lanka.

Joshua also talks about his relationship with the web and the Internet, and how both are helping him create a community of listeners who tune in to what he plays, and hopefully, more of the same online.

Photos of his concert in Colombo can be seen here, and the one in Kandy, here. They are also embedded below.

• Joshua Roman in Sri Lanka
• In conversation with Mandhira de Saram
• Lionel Bopage: Evolution of the LTTE and Prabhakaran’s role in the Tamil nationalist struggle
• In conversation with Iranganie Serasinghe: Environmentalist and cinematic icon
• Song of the Sleepless River: Music, racism and resistence

News that my friend has suffered a mild heart attack
does not surprise me. His muscle has been strained
for more than thirty years. From the Saturday Review

where he reported the first days of rebellion in Jaffna
to more recent sociological study and dramatic writing,
the man, as scientist and poet, has let emotions hang

on strings strummed to a tabla’s beat. Wordsmiths
for Tamilians are as good as our instruments
and words are always enhanced by music. I recall

when we met in 1987 at the International Centre
for Ethnic Studies on Kynsey Terrace in Colombo,
where I moved as a kid when the house was home

and not yet a center dedicated to resolving differences,
the wounds of the1983 “Riots” were still very fresh,
and enthusiasm for resolution of long-standing

grievances strong, and nobody thought
we would allow democracy to fall into tyranny.
Neelan had not yet crossed the hairs of a Tiger,

nor even Premadasa, but the Indian Army were
landing in Jaffna, and resistance came soon after
that brief spring during which Cheran and I smoked

a cheroot and spoke poetry tinged with sadness
still for the murders of Black July and later,
on another visit, the suicide of Sivaramani,

whom we translated before the light
of an oil lamp in a thosai kaddai and thought
that, now we live abroad, let us recognize

at least that our spirits will not present passports
and our children, whom we could not imagine
then, would wander about our new homes and one day

think that to be Tamil is to be well-prepared to write
the essay on expulsion from the garden, and to feed, dream
and compose that other promise too, called the right of return.

• In conversation with Vivimarie Vanderpoorten
• Ground realities in Jaffna and its environs: Two key perspectives
• A travesty of justice: The sentencing of J.S. Tissainayagam
• Rajani commemoration: An absence of actuality
• my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii

As I write this, friends and people I have worked with, are living in fear.

In truth, since Saturday before last (10^th September) when Rivira published their exposé on condoms and lubricating gels being distributed to men who have sex with men, and the community based organization involved in the process, tensions have been high for the gay community. In the 10^th September article, the organization was identified by name, their detailed address was also offered up with the sensational declaration that both offices of this organization (project and head office) were in close proximity to a primary and secondary school respectively. Of course parents were warned to protect their sons, based on the infantile notion that if a man is gay, he must necessarily be a pedophile too.

In addition to targeting the community organization, Rivira also raised questions about the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) who have provided funds to the community organization to implement their HIV prevention programming. The not very veiled assumption was that ‘foreign’ funds were somehow forcing us to violate the norms and mores of our culturally conservative nation was predictably poor journalism. As were the uninformed accusations directed at the National STD/AIDS Control Programme (NSACP), part of the Ministry of Health; and Sarvodaya, who together with NSACP are the primary recipients of this US$ 12 Million grant to prevent the spread of HIV in Sri Lanka by working with populations that are most at risk from the virus.

Responsible journalism that searches for the facts as opposed to sensationalist fiction that sells newspapers would identify that neither the NSACP, nor Sarvodaya, nor the ‘dreaded foreign hand’ of the Global Fund have any insidious agenda of promoting homosexuality on our island. Let’s be clear, the community based organization has no agenda of promoting homosexuality either, despite the scathing report of the investigative journalist that masqueraded as a gay man seeking services. According to his allegations, some workers within the organization were trying to set him up with another gay man. Perhaps he looked lonely, and sad, and miserable and they were trying to cheer him up with the knowledge that there are other gay men out there in Sri Lanka who also suffer in silence due to the general negative perceptions of homosexuality that exist in our country. This said, his investigative adventure has made it clear that community based organizations such as these need to have clear protocols in place on how to manage new members professionally and sensitively. What is also clear is that investigative journalism needs to make sure they investigate; this would reduce the opportunity for incredulous statements which included confusion around the use of water-based lubricant (gel). At one point, the investigator asks (and he will now no doubt claim irony) if these gels are to be consumed orally.

Ever heard of KY Jelly? It has been around since 1904 or so, as it says on the box it is used for all our general lubricating needs. Most crucially, as KY is a water-based lubricant as opposed to a oil based lubricant like baby oil, it does not react with latex condoms.  Oil-based lubricants thin out the latex resulting in a broken or split condom. A simple experiment of blowing up two condoms and rubbing baby oil in a gentle circular motion on one ballooned surface and KY on the other ballooned surface will have immediate results. The condom that you’re rubbing oil on will burst. Now imagine a tight anus and a condom-ed penis; common sense tells us a lubricant is necessary and household lubricants are often used including ubiquitous baby oil – based on the assumption that if it’s alright for babies it’s alright for the anus –  and of course yummy olive oil (perhaps extra virgin). A condom will tear as the friction builds up. With KY or any other water-based lube you remain protected. Here then is the rationale for distributing water-based lubricating gel with condoms to gay men in Sri Lanka. The condom remains intact and protects a gay couple from HIV which can be present in semen and blood.

Simple HIV prevention science really, except that it may fuel alarmists, for it is based on the premise that people have anal sex; and to distribute condoms and water-based gel means that we’re encouraging gay men to have more anal sex, and how could this be the most logical way of preventing HIV. Surely what we need to do is prevent anal sex! Perhaps another premise floating on the periphery is that only gay men have anal sex, and that heterosexual couples exclusively engage in vaginal sex, with perhaps a little bit of Fellatio and Cunnilingus (my two favourite Roman Generals) thrown in for variety.

Sexual behavior needs to be addressed if HIV is to be prevented. We’ve known this for almost as long as we’ve known HIV. Remember the old names for the condition which included GRID – Gay Related Immunity Deficiency. Why did we think it was only gay people that contracted it? Was it to do with floppy wrists and a penchant for musicals (or any other reductive stereotypically gay behavior), or was it the way that gay men enjoyed having sex?

But it’s illegal! Penal code 365A! How dare gay men have sex in a country where it is illegal!? The NSACP and Sarvodaya, along with Global Fund are breaking the law.

After the 10^th of September article those involved in the Global Fund Round 9 proposal conducted a press meet to respond to the allegations. The value of the intervention was argued from a public health perspective, and it was underscored that this community that is criminalized has to be included if we are to be successful as a country in maintaining a low level epidemic.

The next weekend Rivira responded. So last Saturday another series of articles was published furthering the argument that NSACP, Sarvodaya, and the Global Fund were breaking the law; that Western ideals were being imposed upon us; and that the current approach to HIV prevention with this community was flawed! Counseling, not condom and lubricant distribution, is the answer if HIV is to be prevented and gay men are to stop being gay. Yes, being gay is apparently a choice; all you need to do is chose not be gay… or its some kind of affliction where one must pray the gay away (as also advocated by US presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann).

The views in the Rivira included the musings of Buddhist and Christian clergy, law makers and even medical professionals who claim to understand the HIV industry. In addition, the Rivira newspaper last weekend carried a report stating that the president has asked for an investigation into the irresponsible distribution of condoms and lubricants. Rivira clearly feel that their piece of investigative journalism has had its desired effect.

What this relatively obscure newspaper has succeeded in doing is strike fear into the hearts of a community that was trying its best to ensure that they stayed safe from HIV. They understood what it meant to work in society that ridiculed and criminalized them, but had regrouped to answer the call of multilateral agencies, government (NSACP) and civil society to fight for their health and wellbeing. Due to the exposé and continued press coverage last weekend, some smaller groups have closed down. Others have pulled their websites, shut down their facebook, and even cleared their work and living spaces of anything that could be considered incriminating.

Overkill… or is it?

We welcome the president’s investigation into the current HIV prevention strategies employed by his government and civil society. Clearly there appears to be a lack of effort in terms of engaging key policy makers in the decisions around HIV prevention strategies, and this investigation maybe the beginning of something positive, for the public health approach has had successful results in countries with supposedly conservative cultural norms and mores; Indian and Malaysia are examples in this region, the former overturning punitive colonial laws that we still embrace. If there is no policy framework, or even the beginnings of a discussion or debate, then it could be argued that it is irresponsible of the government and civil society and the donor community to push for US$12 Million project for HIV prevention which include the establishment of (the now much dreaded and maligned) support centres for this vulnerable community.  Why irresponsible? It is the community that suffers. It is the community that is criminalized. It is the community that is now living in fear.

• Sri Lankan government admitted to the proctology ward of General Hospital
• Excellence in exile
• On Lasantha Wickremetunge, media freedom and human rights in Sri Lanka: Interview with Dilrukshi Handunnetti
• World AIDS Day is passed. Let’s begin forgetting again.
• Living with HIV in Sri Lanka: Reflections from ICAAP10 in Busan, Korea

Portrait of a card-carrying Sri Lankan patriot.

###

I am not a patriot. I am not a patriot if it means that to be a patriot I must deny that innocent people have been killed. I am not a patriot if it means that I have to turn a blind eye to the destructive activity of self-righteous members of the Sangha who feel it within their purview to destroy a Muslim shrine. Neither am I a patriot if it means I have to be amongst the Sinhalese who support this crime. Nor am I one if, like the Catholic Church I remain silent or am partisan to the Rajapaksa regime. I am not a patriot if I have to ignore criminality because it grants a certain kind of peace. I am not a patriot if it means I must remain speechless and unresisting.  A few short weeks ago, Groundviews carried an article by Meena Serendib on Why the Diaspora must return to Sri Lanka.  She cites Indrajit Samarajiva who supposedly avers that radical change demands radical sacrifice, and, while I have not read very much of Mr Samarajiva’s work, I am here to add support to that sentiment and also to the views expressed in Ms. Serendib’s article. Not only must the diaspora return, but the voice of the diaspora and the Sri Lankan middle classes must become a radical, insistent one. The greater crime now, is to remain speechless.

Sri Lankans live in a conditioned peace, not dissimilar to the conditioned freedom we have lived in for the last sixty-three years.  Frantz Fanon, the most influential voice of the anti-colonial struggle urged for a ‘greater and more terrible force’ that would counter the oppression of the colonial power.  Freedom was meant to be taken, and not simply accepted.  Yet, the postcolonial nations have built their lives, meanings and identities on the structures of their colonial parent. Post-colonial, indeed, but hardly decolonized. Decolonisation is a condition that goes beyond the attainment of Independence.  While the nation has gained legitimate freedom from the colonial power, such independence is hardly the goal of the Fanonian revolutionary.   True decolonisation is not about accepting the condition of freedom or rather a conditioned freedom, it is about taking freedom.  Forming a truly free, postcolonial, postracist, decolonized polity is inevitably a dirty and violent process in the Fanonian view – it is a radical process. Violence itself has surfaced quite readily throughout South Asian history.  We have fractured, each of us; India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka – and none more so than the latter. Whilst there is still a breath of resistance in the speech and the lives of many members of the Indian and Pakistani public – especially their massive diasporic population[1], Sri Lankans around me dissolve into their usual stance of a carefully negotiated acceptance, indeed we are a nation characterised by that vile little utterance, “What to do , aney?” How terrible to be reduced to such a colloquialism. How terrible that we are still, even with the memories of countless colonizers still fresh in our minds, willing to be bound to yet another regime.

Our postcolonial inheritance is that we must think constantly about freedom, and that we must militate constantly in order to ensure that freedom.  With the  UN  report on Sri Lanka being sent to the human rights council,  our meditation must not rest simply on the issue of rights, but upon the freedom that gives birth to the discourse in rights. The freed nation is bound in chains of its own making. These chains, forged in the fires of violent struggle keep the nation viscerally attached to the entity that it sought to be independent from.   The nation creates identities, structures, norms, systems and knowledges that are conceived within the womb of its colonizer, each is a nod to the need for acceptance, for inclusion and for recognition from its now distanced parent. Yet, the discourse of its freedom insists that these identities and systems are entirely independent, for each is a new declaration of autonomy and self-hood.  Is this truly freedom, or is it freedom only in name?  Freed into a name of its own, the nation builds great expectations, and these invariably do not come into fruition; or in manifestation become strange and unholy beasts.  A disillusionment bred by the non-fulfilment of the promise of a political-economic order disrupts the heart of the nation and , when its acclaimed identity of independence meets the paradox of its dependant freedom, the nation is thrown into a violent resistance with and against a self it does not know, against its internal Other.

And so, the freed nation takes hold of its inheritance of violence, a history of violent evolution.  Postcoloniality presumes freedom, but also accepts that chains exist; chains of structure and institution that refuse a truly independent identity. And yet, Man’s eternal search, indeed freed Man’s eternal search is for the truth of his being.  He finds shades of it in fear, in a juxtaposition with external alterity, but such liberation is only found in relation to another.  In this way it is almost possible to say that there is no freedom, and that it is in the search for freedom that Man and the Nation he builds for himself is lost and fractured. In seeking a freedom we are seduced into desiring, but yet a freedom we do not and cannot know, we ‘descend’ into many forms of violence. The physical clash of fundamentalisms, identities, into outright civil war; the demonization and dehumanisation of  those we fear; slavery; oppression; racism;  political branding, and most insidious of all, academic categorizations that  positions certain ideas, concepts and movements into points of weakness.  Do we not see all of these in the Sri Lankan polity?  Perhaps the next step is to mount the final struggle, and to take freedom.

Sri Lanka’s colonial period under the British was not as fraught as those of its South Asian counterpart. Whereas India obtained freedom through long years of both violent and non-violent struggle against an oppressive British regime, the colonial administration treated Sri Lanka in a similar manner as the French did their colonies – indeed in the seminal Buddhism Transformed,  Gananath Obeyesekere performs a brief but pithy examination of how middle class activity allowed this to be. In this way, colonization, while eventually having far tighter a grip on the island as it did on India, happened in a rather gentle manner. Similarly, the ‘nationalist’ struggle in Sri Lanka did not have the same intensity as the Quit India movement; neither did it use any militant resistance to the British. Jayadeva Uyangoda and Sunil Bastian, in a paper to the CSDG group of King’s College[2] , describe the anti-colonial movement in Sri Lanka as decidedly ‘conservative’.  The strain of conservatism continues, as we complacently accept the face of a self-righteous Sangha, a weakened non-Buddhist leadership, a virtually non-existent political opposition,  a civil society that is either  mired in decadence or struck voiceless on the charge of ‘Westernism’, and the increasing perversity of this government.  There is no sense of accountability, and worse, no militation for accountability. The lesson from Fanon is clear; decolonization happens not only on paper but primarily in our minds and in our attitudes. We must ‘descend’ into the violent struggle; we must militate. When did Sri Lankans, and the Sinhala middle classes especially, forget the potency of resistance? When did we give up the fight?

Remember that the state is not supposed to be the enemy of the people. Here, in Sri Lanka, however, we have a state that has risen up in defence of itself, and indeed continues all out hostilities against its own people. While the civil war against the LTTE is over, a civil war against the Sri Lankan polity continues. The state uses its army, and its network of informants and media personnel to suppress free speech, identity, academia and even now goes as far as to rewrite history and memory. It speaks in terms of absolutes and has no need to, nor any pressure to be accountable for what it does[3]. Lasantha Wickrementunge and countless others have been murdered or tortured for speaking their minds. The Channel 4 documentary revealed to us the brutality of the war crimes performed by the government and the LTTE. Emergency regulations were lifted, only to give way to harsher Anti-Terror legislation. Even during the World Cup – something seemed rather amiss amongst our Cricket team, and the mass resignation of many key players spoke volumes about the level of government fiddling.  The stories stream in of inconveniently minded persons and officials who are ‘transferred’ in order to keep silent. This is guerrilla warfare from the state, a conqueror’s tactic to keep all voices beating to the same drum. Arundhati Roy refers to such moves as a form of vertical colonization in a recent interview, and this indeed is what it is. Fanon suggested that the colonizer will perhaps change, but we remain colonized if we do not lash out in a radical vein. The colonial struggle is ongoing, the colonizer now is the government and the system to which your mind is chained. Shed your complacency and militate, so you can truly be free.

• Should We Fight Terror?
• A Mother’s Call for the Re-awakening
• The fate of Internally Detained Persons and the future of freedom and democracy
• Using SLBC to brainwash the population
• The Nationalist Epidemic

Photo courtesy Ada Derana

My new neighbour, a quiet middle class, young Sinhala Buddhist professional from beyond Matara, who started constructing his own house, brought down a “Kattadi mahathtaya” from his village to evoke blessings on the property, the new construction and on himself and his young family, before the foundation stone was laid. The ritual went on with loud chanting and drumming through midnight, a public nuisance, but tolerated in silence, as it was his belief for which he also had a right. Early morning we woke up when a cockerel screamed it’s life out. The final sacrifice of a “life” made in this ritual called the “Bhahirava poojah”.

This is no isolated event in this Sinhala Buddhist society, where people construct their own houses and often indulge in such sacrificial poojahs. May be there are other similar rituals too, when “life” of animals and birds are sacrificed, in lieu of a safe and prosperous future for the person(s) who provides that animal/bird life to his or her preferred God.

Yet, this year when in Munneswaran Kaali Temple, the annual festival had goats and poultry lined up for “sacrifice” by Tamil Hindu devotees, this Sinhala society took it upon themselves to go against “cruelty to animals” at this Hindu festival and stop their religious ritual.

Munneswaran temple had been in existence, even before the 12 century, as records say, King Parakramabahu who had the whole island under his reign, brought down an artisan – “Silpačãri” – group from Kapilavastupura to renovate the temple. Pleased with the work, the king had conferred the title “Mutugala Rãjakarunadi Viravardana Viskammandana Ačãri” and given land for the whole group to “reside and enjoy until the sun and the moon would last”.

This ritual of animal sacrifice, is thus over 10 centuries old in practice and the annual festival with animal sacrifice at Munneswaran is a Hindu religious belief that had continued for that long. After all these centuries of seeing, accepting and may be participating in this animal sacrifice, what provoked the Sinhala Buddhists to go hard line “animal lovers” ?

There is definitely “Sinhala politics” in it, for the Sinhala Buddhists to take up cudgels against this ritual, as it is now practised by only the Tamil Hindus in this form of a festival. The hyped trend against other minority religions is an extension of what was cropping up now and then against different unorthodox Christian sects over the past decade or two. On 10^th September Saturday, reports say a Buddhist monk, Amatha Dhamma thero led a mob of Sinhala youth to destroy an ancient Muslim “shrine” within the Anuradhapura sacred city. The Buddhist monk’s claim according to a BBC report was that, the land belonged to Sinhala Buddhists for over 2,000 years.

If historical length is the defining factor for ownership, then a 10 century old religious ritual is also one that can not be denied. Tamil Hindus thus have a right to continue with their religious identity where the festival at Munneswaran with animal sacrifice is a historical presence. It is for that reason, the Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalists have opted to use the slogan, “stop cruelty to animal” for that fits in with “Buddhist compassion” and also the modern law. Thus Mervyn who tied a public servant to a tree, attacked the media every now and then and leans on ugly, obscene retorts on TV shows, too becomes a “lovable” hero for this Sinhala Buddhist gallery.

What nevertheless baffles rationality in this argument against animal sacrifice is, why they were not worried about killing of animals for sacrifice, all these decades. Why suddenly now? Is cruelty to animal defined in terms of “killing for sacrifice” and not on “killing for human consumption”? There can not be any difference to an animal, whether it is taken to Munneswaran kovil to be beheaded as a sacrifice, or to a Municipal slaughterhouse, to be killed and sold.

Even in Sri Lanka, Tamil Hindus don’t consume “beef” for they take the cow as holy. Beef is consumed only by other religious groups including Buddhists, Christians and Muslims. Some one would have to do a count on cattle that is slaughtered daily in municipal and other licensed slaughterhouses, for their consumption. In 2004, the Colombo Municipal Council had a project to renovate and modernise their Dematagoda slaughterhouse to accommodate 250 cattle per day.

Goats have become more popular with scattered campaigns against slaughter of cattle. A survey done on goats and their diseases by the Peradeniya Veterinary Research Institute and the Colombo Municipal Council, led by R.P.V.J Rajapaksa and A.C.M. Faizal has recorded that around 125,000 goats are slaughtered annually in Sri Lanka, for consumption.

According to Sunday Times (10 April, 2011), the present demand for chicken is around 8.5 to 09 million kg per month as told by the Chairman, All Island Poultry Association of Sri Lanka. That’s about 102 to 108 million kg annually and roughly about 70 million birds killed every year. The best part of these lives definitely go to feed the Sinhala society. This is leaving aside all the billions of lives of fish, eaten and exported dead.

“Life” in Buddhism has no varying values according to varying kinds and sizes of animals, birds and fish. There is also no justification in Buddhism for killing animals, birds and fish, for any reason. “Killing” is killing and killing cannot be any humane, when killed for consumption.

Where then is this Buddhist campaign against cruelty to animals perched, with its consumption of thousands of metric tons of animal flesh ? There certainly is a politico religious bias in this intervention that obstructed a religious belief. A racist bias, against the minorities. It can not be otherwise, in this heavily omnivorous Sinhala Buddhist society.

• Concentration camps for animals
• In the midst of the Adi Vel festival
• Concerns over Cattle Population
• Female deities of Theravada Buddhism: Kannagi and Pattini
• The Anti-Conversion Bill violates the freedom of Conscience and the freedom of expression