“The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.”

Milan Kundera[1]

“…. Some [intellectuals] served as spokesmen for power or for a constituency, trimming their beliefs and pronouncements to circumstances and interest: what Edward Said once called “the fawning elasticity with regard to one’s own side’ has indeed “disfigured the history of intellectuals.”

Tony Judt.[2]

His Excellency Dr Dayan Jayatilleka has been good enough to respond to my critique of his position with regard to the merits of the current government of Sri Lanka.[3] Let me first deal with his view of my original comments on his intellectual and political practices; then I will go to the heart of his response.[4]

Readers of Groundviews know, better than most, Dr Jayatilleka’s fondness for name-dropping. Famous names in themselves are harmless; it all depends on the use or misuse one makes of them. Therein lies the rub and my title: A Man for all political seasons.

He says:

“MCC accuses me of “idealisation of the current government of Sri Lanka”. That’s plain silly, and he would find it impossible to back it up with a single quotation or example, while none of those he has furnished amount to anything remotely approaching idealisation.”

He adds that he defends the elected government of Lanka and its leadership selectively and hardly uncritically. (Groundviews, January 16, 2012)

By idealisation I mean Dr Jayatilleka’s exalting of President Rajapaksa above the normal run of Sri Lankan politicians.  Let’s look carefully at Dr Jayatilleka’s polemic Marking the Mahindra Moment in Lankan Politics (Groundviews, September 11, 2011). The title itself is epic; the picture attached shows the President at his most handsome and commanding. An image reinforced by emphasis on the following facts: Sri Lanka is a competitive democracy (true), and the President currently has a 90 per cent rating approval (true).  Yet, interestingly, no analysis is made of this in the light of the country’s past experiences of initial euphoria and subsequent disillusionment with other charismatic rulers. Critics of the regime are dismissed, being out of touch with the people and (inevitably) lackeys of the West. Why? According to Dr Jayatilleka, during the period of Wickramasinghe’s ‘appeasement’ of the West and the Tigers, “Mahinda proved lucid, balanced and in touch with the people’s accurate perception of the enemy.” (Groundviews, September 11, 2011)

These patriotic qualities are just as important in post-war Lanka:

“Any attempt to contain divert, pressure, outflank or exceed President Rajapaksa’s quintessential if protean centrism, would be socially suffocating, choking the pores of free expression, resulting in a more hawkish, less flexible, less intuitively smart, more brittle and therefore more vulnerable Sri Lankan state.” (Groundviews, September 11, 2011)

Dr Jayatilleka goes on to say that not only is President Rajapaksa a steadfast, patriotic ruler, he might be the best person to construct a more liberal and democratic Sri Lanka, because “after all, what is a more liberal and social democratic Mahinda Rajapaksa than the fusion of Mahinda Rajapaksa as President and Mahinda Rajapaksa as youthful, dissenting, rather rebellious left-of-centre Parliamentarian, in government and Opposition, backbench and cabinet, in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.” (Groundviews, September 11, 2011)

Reading this, the word protean (also used by Dr Jayatilleka) comes to mind: “Of pertaining to, or characteristic of the sea-god Proteus of classical mythology; taking or existing in many forms, changing and variable”.[5] Protean centrism (a concept favoured by Dr Jayatilleka) means that the political centre is wherever the President wishes to take the country – praise not bestowed on critics of the President or other political parties and figures in Lanka, be they of the right, left or centre. In fairness I must say he is kinder to the son of his former political patron Premadasa:

“Today President Rajapaksa is the best representative of National Democracy and the UNP reformists identified with young Premadasa, the best bet for (pluralist) Social democracy”.[6]

Dr Jayatilleka’s support of the Rajapaksa government is not selective; it is touchingly uncritical.

His summary of the threats to the nation state might be as follows:

(a)   Diaspora and Tamil Nadu based pro-Tiger secessionism and external hegemonic interventionism and (b) Ranil Wickremasinghe and his UNP as the domestic political alternative. (Groundviews, January 16, 2012)

The reality is the LTTE as a military force is finished and its support base is in tatters. Ranil Wickremasinghe is neither a traitor nor even a mild threat to national security; he is part of the status quo. Western pressure was in the form of words, not actions. One cannot compare this to the pressure placed on Iran.

Criticism of government policy is something a democratic government should be able to deal with – part of its very essence. The most important issue, and one on which the good doctor is silent, is how to best harvest the peace dividend. The government and its charismatic President should use the euphoria of victory to enlarge the democratic space instead of closing it.

Why does Dr Jayatilleka not criticise his patron for removing the Presidential limit of two terms (the 18^th amendment)? The President himself, not an independent commission, will oversee the running of elections. The executive powers of the President, already considerable, have now been expanded to the selection of the judiciary and officers of the armed forces. The vital oversight committees for the allocation and spending of public monies were usually under the chairmanship of the opposition parties. They are now under the control of ministers appointed by the President. All this undermines the checks and balances affecting the executive arm of government, the judiciary, the state bureaucracy and the armed forces.[7] Choking not enlarging the very – ‘pores of free expressions’.

One must reject simplistic binary notions on national liberation struggles versus a nation state. Life and politics are complex. One cannot equate the homicidal quasi-Maoist Shining Path with the struggle of the FRETILIN against the Indonesian army. One can condemn (as I did) the wanton bombing of Serbia by NATO in 1999, yet not dismiss Noel Malcolm’s research on the rights of the people of Kosovo.

Research that showed the history for the Serbs started in the seventh century, when they settled in the Balkans. They only conquered (not settled in) Kosovo in the 13^th century. They ruled Kosovo for 250 years, until it became part of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-15^th century. So there is no more continuity between Byzantium Greece and modern Greece as there was between a medieval Serbian state and today’s Serbia. The Serbs reconquered it in 1912. When they did, the Serb population in Kosovo was less than 25 per cent. Kosovo was incorporated (i.e. not conquered) by the Yugoslav state. Till the breakup of that Yugoslav state it was not only a part of Serbia but also a part of the federation of Yugoslavia. It had its own parliament and government and was represented by at the federal level not by Serbia, but by its elected representatives.[8]

This is not nonsense but historical facts. Serbia and Croatia deliberately started to break up the Yugoslav state; it encouraged separatists in Bosnia breaking down Bosnia’s rich multi-cultural heritage. The barbarity of the Serbian proxies in the siege of Sarajevo was unspeakable. Their atrocities and Western reluctance to stop them in Srebrenica is now on the public record and to deny it is sheer political mendacity. The killing of thousands of men and the forcible movement of tens of thousands of women and children from their homes (many of the women were raped multiple times) are no longer creditable allegations, they have been proven. Are we going to deny the women whose husbands and sons were killed, their day in court? Instead of dismissing this it should be acknowledged and criticised. What needs to be also made clearer and prosecuted is the role of Western forces in the massacre. As I have said these examples resonate but not in the way Dr Jayatilleka wants them to.

The heart of Dr Jayatilleka’s polemic concerns the alignment of Lanka with the countries he deems anti-imperialist. They have formed a block against the liberal forces from the West who want nation states to have negotiated settlements with minorities in their midst. Lanka under the leadership of Rajapaksa rejected this approach. The diplomats of Lanka foiled attempts at any censure in the UN of the conduct of the war. This was done with the support of anti-imperialist countries. Lanka and Russia helped by other member states of the UN, successfully deflected human rights concerns expressed about Chechnya and Lanka. Dr Jayatilleka played a prominent role in this, and even cites a critic, David Lewis,[9] who it seems supports Dr Jayatilleka’s contention as to the real choices that prevailed when he supported Rajapaksa. (Groundviews, January 16, 2011)

What does Lewis actually say? He sees the peace process as flawed from the outset. Key sections of the Lankan elite were hostile to it. There was no consensus amongst the political elite for the peace agreement. Once Ranil Wickremsinghe lost power in 2004, the support for the peace process began to fade. And fortune was on the side of Lankan government: the rise of China in the region, along with that of powers like Brazil and Russia, who were economic and political competitors with the Western powers. They also had restive minorities and were more inclined, therefore, to support the Lankan state. And post 2001 it was easy to use Western rhetoric on the war on terror to gain logistic, financial and political support.

I would emphasise that the Lankan state’s best recruiting tool was the LTTE and its autocratic leader, the late Velupillai Pirapaharan. The LTTE suppressed political pluralism and freedom of expression. If Eelam were achieved it would be plausible to assume that it would be an oppressive one-party state. The Lankan state could with equal plausibility make the claim that they were fighting a terrorist group. (Lewis, 644-655). Lewis fails to mention that the Lankan military and the LTTE both paid only lip service to the peace process and violated its tenets many times. During the peace process, the Lankan military, with the help of its Western and ‘anti-imperialist’ backers built up a formidable fighting force of around 100,000 men who were fully equipped and had the logistical and tactical support of a modern air force and navy. By 2005 they were ready.

Pirapaharan’s skills as a tactician were on par with those of Lord Cardigan, notorious for ordering the suicidal charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean war. Why else would he and the LTTE have forced the Tamils in the North and many in the east not to vote, thus allowing Rajapaksa to defeat Wickramasinghe by a whisker during the 2005 election? After 25 years of war only a sliver of country was in Pirapaharan’s hands. The Lankan military had surrounded his fiefdom by air, sea and land. He would have lost a lot of his equipment because of the tsunami; compounding this, the eastern forces of the LTTE under Karuna had defected.

For all Jayatilleka’s claims of Lanka being in the anti-imperialist camp and of diplomats like him being active ‘norm entrepreneurs,’ their victory depended on the logistic support provided by the ‘imperialist’ camp. The Americans provided a radar-based maritime surveillance system, electronic surveillance and military intelligence. The radar system was crucial in intercepting and sinking ships that carried military cargo for the LTTE.[10] Israel provided war planes and patrol boats.[11] India and China provided military hardware. Billions of dollars of aid were provided to the Lankan military.

Evidence of this comes from straight from Dr Jayatilleka’s mouth. The good doctor, a diplomat and public intellectual, is also (according to him) an expert on military history and strategy. He has (he tells us) lectured at every military academy in Lanka, and tells us that he was in the belly of the empire at the Special Warfare Centre at Fort Bragg, where for several years running he was a lecturer in the joint training programmes of the US and Sri Lankan Special Forces.

“I have some cherished mementoes and insignias presented on every occasion. Perhaps you should tell it to those of the SAIC in Washington DC where I was one of the 2 invited panellists with one other being a member of the US Joint chiefs of staff, at a session on the evolving strategic landscape of central and south Asia.” (Groundviews, January 28, 2009)[12]

A man truly for all political seasons!

The LTTE’s financial and logistical support was being cut off and it was at this point that Pirapaharan and his advisers decided to fight a conventional war. There was only one possible outcome; it just took a little longer than it should have. It is in this context one should see the decisions made by Rajapaksa.

I have already dealt with the issue of human rights violations committed by both parties to the conflict in my earlier article. Taking 1971, 1977, 1983, 1987-89 and the thirty year civil war, the total is hundreds of thousands of deaths. Recognition of this and reconciliation are priorities. Ignoring this retards the progress of democracy and the economic development of the country (Groundviews, January 16, 2011). At the moment that is not happening, and if long-term strategies are not implemented a situation similar to the Palestinian conflict is likely to result: the permanent presence of troops and sporadic outbreaks of worsening violence (Lewis,. 665).

Dr Jayatilleka refers to my apparent failure to appreciate the fact that world’s “radical” regimes (Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, China) supported the Lankan state in the war against the LTTE. He concludes, witheringly: “Debating Marxism with such a man is a waste of time”. (Groundviews, January 16, 2011)

The answer, alas, is economic. The reality is that there is only one market, meaning a marriage of imperialist and anti-imperialist interests. Emerging superpowers like China and India are trying to secure key resources, putting them in direct competition with established economies. This fact governs the attitude of China (with its soft loans and strategic investments) to Lanka. And China, India and Brazil are implicitly dependent on the West in their attempt to sell vast amounts of consumer goods, services and resources. In addition, they buy Western technology and economic assets.

Lanka was one of the first countries in the world (after Chile) to open its economy to foreign investment and finance. It did this in 1977. It has been a part of the global circuit of capitalism for well over thirty years. Why, otherwise, would the International Monetary Fund agree to a bailout package of $2.6 billion dollars to Lanka two months after the war had been won? The World Bank (a prime prop of imperialism) released its annual funding of $465 million to Lanka in 2011. It would never finance a truly anti-imperialist government like Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela. Titles of countries and the name of political parties in a lot of instances do not reflect a country’s real economic makeup. Lanka’s proper title is: The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, but very clearly its economy is capitalist and its parliamentary system bourgeois.

I have no desire to debate Marxism here, but I say again that the use of left-wing establishment names is inappropriate in a discussion of Rajapaksa’s political programs and ideology. Dr Jayatilleka would do well to remember that his idealisation of his paymaster compromises his ambition to be an independent public commentator and intellectual. His many articles and comments in Groundviews show his position all too clearly: he is visibly damned by his history. It is time to listen to other voices from multi-cultural Lanka. Voices of tolerance and reconciliation: speaking of justice both social and economic. Lankans who express those views should not be subject to intimidation nor branded as traitors to the nation state. It is time these other voices were heard; then a true dialogue might begin. In doing this we can all defend Lanka not the current elite’s version of it.

• A Man for all political Seasons: Dr Dayan Jayatilleka
• Mahinda, Marxism and Michael
• Poll: Prospects for Peace in Sri Lanka in 2007
• Chandrika Kumaratunga responds to Dayan Jayatilleke’s comment on the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge
• Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Second-Term: A New Beginning?

The Norwegian (NORAD) commissioned study ‘Pawns of Peace: Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, 1997-2009’, is useful and good, but analytically flawed at its very core. It is useful because it shows us how the ‘liberal peace’ discourse goes and how that constituency views the conflict in retrospect. This does not mean that this perspective has it all wrong. Indeed the study has quite a few things right. In any case it is crucial that the Sri Lankan readership sees how our contemporary history is perceived and reconstructed. It is useful to look into a mirror, while being conscious as to whether it is a slightly or greatly distorting one. Taken as a whole, the Norwegian study is a valuable and welcome addition to the growing literature on the war and our times—with the strongest part being the analysis of the International Dimension in Chapter 7. In the interest of transparency I should add that I am one of the 84 persons listed as having been interviewed for the study (one of the authors flew over from Europe for a day to the Singaporean think-tank where I was at the time), and have been quoted quite accurately (p 79, fn. 273).

It is however, wrong or empty at its very core. Wrong not only in what it sees and says, but perhaps even more so, in what it does not—in what it fails to or chooses not to see and/or express. The NORAD study is characterised by an absent analytical core. Let us limit ourselves to considering, as a microcosm, a representative sample, these conclusions from the Executive Summary:

“…there was an incommensurable gap between what the South would countenance (a unitary state with limited devolution) and the LTTE demanded (a separate state in all but name)….” (p. xv)

“…The effort led by the United National Front (UNF) government to internationalize the peace process through security guarantees, donor funding and politically sensitive economic reforms sparked a Sinhala-nationalist backlash. This contributed to the emergence of a nationalist-oriented administration, with a commitment to a more hard line position towards the LTTE and greater scepticism towards Western involvement. ” (p. xvi)

This is as inaccurate as it is inadequate. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was willing to go beyond “a unitary state with limited devolution”.  This neither prevented the Tigers from going to war nor did it induce them to stop the war they re-initiated in April ’95 and talk to her about the quasi-federal ‘union of regions package’ (’95-’97).  Certainly, it didn’t prevent the LTTE from trying to blow her up, leaving her blinded in one eye. Furthermore, why was a unitary state with devolution acceptable to the IRA/Sinn Fein, which debated and negotiated the limits and extent of that devolution, but was not something that the LTTE would even consider (and the TNA is unwilling to explicitly commit to, even today)? Why did it continue to demand and repeatedly initiate war for ‘a separate state in all but name’ even in the wake of reforms such as the Indo-Lanka accord and against a peace-keeping force from a country with a huge Tamil population? What does that say about the LTTE, from a comparative political perspective? What does Norway’s failure to ask itself the question after the Good Friday agreement, tell us? What indeed does the failure of this post-mortem, to raise that question, reveal?

The second assertion quoted from the executive summary is also wrong or only partially true, and misses the essential point. What, exactly, fuelled the ‘Sinhala nationalist backlash’ to the point of the ‘emergence of nationalist oriented administration’? As public opinion polls of that period (some cited in the study) reveal, support for the UNP administration’s CFA was moderately high at the outset but kept dropping as the LTTE’s lethal violence continued, with the killing even of a police officer in the Dehiwela police station, an army officer on a city street and the much respected Foreign Minister as he took a swim.  In sum, was not the real causative factor, the aggressive, deadly behaviour of the Tigers during the CFA, and the pusillanimity of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga during her comeback ( Karuna rebellion, PTOMS), and the Norwegians, in the face of such marked aggression? What does the failure of the NORAD analysis to pose this crucial question tell us?

Running through the entirety of the study is the dual argument about (i) two contending nationalisms (or ultra-nationalisms) and (ii) the failure of the Sri Lankan state to reform/restructure. This argument is supported by and often attributed to a few Lankan social scientists.  Though containing considerable truth, the dual argument fails to grasp the main thing: as Sartre emphasised, what is most crucial is not what is done to you by others, but what you do with, and about, what is done to you. One is free to choose, and the existential choice one makes tells you about yourself and tells us about you– all the more so if it is a choice that is repeatedly made over time. Not many armed movements faced with the phenomenon of a state that refuses to or is agonisingly slow to reform, respond by assassinating neighbouring peacemakers like Rajiv Gandhi or wiping out competing guerrilla movements and intellectuals who were for federal reforms, such as Rajani Tiranagama and Neelan Tiruchelvam.

Aristotle was the first to point out that one size does not fit all, when he embarked on a comparative study of constitutions of the Greek city states and pioneered the classification of regimes, according to their internal arrangements and ‘animating spirit’ or governing ethos. For many long years I have argued emphatically that the same is true of non-state or anti-state actors.

Thus, the Tigers and their leader were of a qualitatively different category from, say, the Guatemalan guerrillas with whom the Norwegians dealt with in the peace process they successfully mediated.

This is not a prejudiced assumption which should have been made apriori by Norway. It is a conclusion that would have flowed had they undertaken a quite basic task of analysis, namely to study the earlier peace efforts that were made by India and Sri Lanka, and have detailed discussions with the Indian and Lankan negotiators. Even if one assumed ideological–cultural bias on the part of the Sri Lankans, searching conversations with the Indian negotiators of the 1980s (such as India’s man currently on the Security Council) should have been an obvious exercise. That this has not been mentioned or undertaken by the Norwegian study reveals that they are still unaware that they attempted to re-invent a wheel.

In an exercise that is pretty standard in the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico, a study of the LTTE’s conduct during all previous ceasefires and efforts at negotiation would have yielded an unmistakable profile of the movement and its leader.

That in turn, would have helped construct a far less frail and foredoomed effort at peace by Norway. Given the character of the LTTE as analytically derived from its patterns of political (more correctly, politico-military) behaviour, a different and far stronger strategy could have been drawn up by Norway. Such a strategy would have had to be based on concepts of containment and deterrence, not of appeasement; a model emphasising conflict management rather than of conflict resolution. The primary object of containment and deterrence should have been of that party which had repeatedly returned to war– even against a non-Sinhala, secular, quasi-federal mediator (India) and a reform-minded President (Chandrika).

That would have been the Realist option. The last war was not solely the ‘realist’ choice of several available (and implicitly free-floating) options, and to present it as such, reveals a feeble capacity for political analysis. The final war was the sole realist (or real) option left open after the Norwegian failure to adopt a realist model of peace-making deriving from a comprehension of the character of one of the belligerents, itself deducible from (a) the political behaviour of that actor and (b) a comparative political analysis of other armed movements (e.g. Guatemala, El Salvador, Northern Ireland).

This study does not pose, still less grapple with the quintessential political question involved in the Norwegian and other efforts at a negotiated peace in Sri Lanka: how does one make peace with a non-state (therefore unconstrained) actor that is fanatical, politico-ideologically fundamentalist and totalitarian? Is peace possible, in the final analysis, with such an entity? If so, is it not only as a product of prolonged containment and firm deterrence, until that entity evolves/mutates, or decomposes/implodes? If not, surely war is necessary, and if we are to invert Machiavelli who said the only just war is a necessary war, is not a necessary war, a just war?

It is also bad political theory verging on ignorance, to posit, as the Norwegian study and its supportive/feeder studies by Sri Lankan Social Scientists have done, a contradiction between the ‘liberal’ and ‘Realist’ approaches. On the contrary, not only have contemporary Realists credibly counterattacked, dismantling the illiberal neoconservative militarist approach as undermining precisely the national interest, the most outstanding thinkers in the modern Realist tradition have themselves been liberals and reformists (even progressives): George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Raymond Aron and Stanley Hoffman to name just those who spring to mind. Moving from such ‘grand strategists’ to contemporary military thinkers, Gen David Petraeus (with whom I had the privilege to dialogue during his presentation in Paris few months back) is a socially liberal Realist.

This is not one-upmanship or hair-splitting. It is the enduring intellectual availability and strong international reassertion of a reformist liberal Realism — ‘post-Neocon Realism’ – that enables a clear understanding of why the Norwegian effort was foredoomed, and why the war had to be fought to win. It sheds light on why, with the domestic abdication or absence of a liberal realist political will to defeat the Tigers and defend sovereignty, leaving the task almost by default to a re-emergent ‘nationalist orientation’,  the aftermath was pretty much inevitable. A liberal realist perspective also informs us no less crucially, what must be done, undone and not done, for the peace too to be won.

• Pawns of Peace: Evaluation of Norwegian Peace Efforts in Sri Lanka
• Norwegian and British Interventions in the Sri Lankan Conflict: A Sorry Tale of Misinformation and Misunderstanding
• Interview with Austin Fernando, a Peacetime Secretary of Defence in Sri Lanka
• Looking at the grid of SL political opinion as a continuum
• Are We Back on Square One?

The Pope with Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith

Though my political approval of and personal liking for Mahinda Rajapaksa, (certainly in relation to his competitors and immediate predecessors) are shared by nine out of ten Sri Lankan citizens (according to the Gallup poll), it is not comfortable to be alone in one’s analysis and evaluation, among one’s own social stratum, the intelligentsia, especially the English-speaking and writing urban intelligentsia. It is therefore a good feeling when you discover that your views coincide with someone who stands above the fray, and cannot but evoke respect from all rational people. Nicest of all, is when the public personage with whose views your own coincide, has achieved a status and recognition that is truly global.

My perspectives on Mahinda Rajapaksa, his administration, Sri Lankan politics and the issue of accountability and international pressure have been denounced by political partisans of almost all sides. The Tamil Diaspora accuses me of Sinhala chauvinism or neo-nationalism (as Taraki put it). The Sinhala chauvinists accuse me of being Eelamist because I support provincial devolution. The Left accuses me of having sold out to the Right. The Right accuses me of a dangerous Left radicalism in international affairs.

The liberals who support international calls for boycotts and accountability hearings will never forgive my defense of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in Geneva, May 2009. The Sinhala hardliners will never forgive me for my advocacy of provincial level devolution.

The dogmatic Left regards Mahinda Rajapaksa as a Rightist. The cosmopolitan liberals and Diaspora Tamil lobbyists consider him the chief representative of the Sinhala Buddhist Right, without whose patronage that Right would not exist. The Human Rights constituency sees Mahinda Rajapaksa as the most authoritarian, autocratic and possibly fascist element in Lankan politics, and the main danger to democracy.  I consider Mahinda Rajapaksa a centrist and a Bonapartist balancer.

It is gratifying, in this context, to note that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, at the time Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, had arrived at almost the same conclusions, and expressed them way back in 2009 to the US Ambassador.

The Cardinal can hardly be accused of being a Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist. Even if one modifies the charge to one of Sinhala chauvinism, it is hardly credible that the world’s oldest and most far-flung transnational organization, a fount of ‘universality’, would choose a Sinhala chauvinist, representing under 20 million people, as one of the youngest cardinals in the world, and as the only Asian in the electoral college that finally chooses the Pope.

Nor can the Cardinal be accused of being less than intelligent. Lack of intelligence is not a shortcoming that even the worst enemies of the Catholic Church would accuse it of, and with its high premium on training, we may readily conclude that a young Cardinal must be a very smart person indeed, with solid scholarly credentials and considerably wide and diverse experience.

The Catholic Church being the sole social institution that cuts across Sri Lanka’s ethnic divide, or that social institution which transcends it most, it could be said that it is suitably positioned to articulate an inclusive Sri Lankan identity and ideology.

Furthermore, a high ranking official of the Church, the most globalised and multicultural of institutions, is likely to provide a truly global and comparative perspective, and is least likely to provide a parochial one.

Finally, no institution has grappled more with the tough task of combining virtue and power, as has the Catholic Church. No intellectual tradition has attempted to wrestle with and synthesise ethics and Realism as has that of Christian theology (e.g. Just war theory).

It is against this backdrop that we must read Cardinal Ranjith’s reading of Sri Lanka’s politics and the Rajapaksa/s role, or more precisely, the US Ambassador’s reading of Cardinal Ranjith’s reading. Wikileaks tells the tale. According to Ambassador Butenis’ Oct 2009 cable, the perspective of the Archbishop, in summary was as follows:

“SUMMARY: Roman Catholic Archbishop Ranjith told ambassador that pushing the GSL too hard on the war crimes accountability issue now could destabilize Sri Lankan democracy and would set back the cause of human rights.  He reasoned that weakening the Rajapaksas — who despite their public image were relative moderates in the Sri Lankan polity – could backfire.  Moreover, if Sri Lanka were denied GSP-plus or the U.S. were to enact strong economic sanctions, leading to a sharp downturn in the economy, Sri Lanka could suffer revolution from the right or a coup by the military, which now had a very strong position in society.  Ambassador countered that this was an interesting perspective, but if the Rajapaksas were in fact moderates, they needed to show it.  END SUMMARY ».

The cable says that “In a September 30 introductory meeting with Ambassador and PolChief, Roman Catholic Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith recounted the recent political evolution of Sri Lanka, of which he has been both an astute observer and important participant, and described the role of the Church in society. He noted that while he himself was a Singhalese, he was very sympathetic to the plight of Tamils, who had suffered greatly from pogroms and discrimination by the majority and from the disastrous results of LTTE separatist ideology.  He explained that the Church had played a key role in brokering talks between the GSL and the LTTE over the years, including the 2002 cease-fire agreement.  After the war, the church was advocating publicly for the release of IDPs and other controversial positions.  This had led to criticism from the Buddhist right and even death threats against the archbishop himself.  This was the opposite of the leading role in reconciliation the archbishop believed Buddhists should have been playing years ago.

Despite this criticism, the archbishop said he believed President Rajapaksa personally was a good man and in the constellation of Sri Lankan politics was a relative moderate (he reminded us that Rajapaksa used to attend human rights meetings in Europe as an opposition MP).  Rajapaksa and his brothers were under great pressure from the Singhalese Buddhist right, and any show of what would be perceived as weakness before the international community could result in their losing ground to much more extreme elements.  Indeed, he argued that if something happened to the president there would be “chaos” in Sri Lanka.

This led to the archbishop addressing directly the question of war crimes accountability.  He said “my suggestion is, in order to strengthen democracy in Sri Lanka, don’t push accountability now.”  He reasoned that weakening the Rajapaksas could backfire.  Moreover, if Sri Lanka were denied GSP-plus or the U.S. were to enact strong economic sanctions, leading to a sharp downturn in the economy, Sri Lanka — where democracy was not strong now — could suffer revolution from the right or a coup by the military, which currently had a very strong position in society.  The archbishop said this was why he had recently come out publicly in favor of extending GSP-plus to Sri Lanka, despite the GSL’s many human rights problems.  Ambassador countered that this was a very interesting perspective, but if the Rajapaksas were in fact moderates, they needed to show it in at least a few ways.  The archbishop said this was the challenge that he had been working on — how to get the president not to worry only about the “forces lurking beneath him” and to act as a moderate.  He told the president it was important to work with Tamil leaders on reconciliation and to invite the Diaspora to help re-build the economy.  “The Rajapaksas will come and go,” the archbishop opined, “but the Tamils will always be here.” ’ ( Wiki leaks FILE, Oct 2, 2009)

Ambassador Butenis’ concluding comment to her bosses in Washington DC bears repetition:

“Archbishop Ranjith purportedly is respected by the pope and served as papal nuncio in Indonesia.  He also commands considerable authority in Sri Lanka — despite his problems with the Buddhist right — and has a good relationship with the president (whose wife is Catholic).  It is certainly true that the president is under great pressure from the Singhalese Buddhist right.  It is also arguable that the international community’s pushing too hard on accountability could backfire.”

Two things that senior clerics know about are ideologies and to evaluate and judge the character of men. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith characterises Mahinda Rajapaksa as essentially “a good man” and “a relative moderate in the constellation of Sri Lanka’s politics”. This should surely be taken into account.

• Destroying monuments for those killed & disappeared: The Catholic Church and the Sri Lankan Government
• Violating the Madhu Sancuary – Some brief thoughts
• Sri Lanka’s Libyan Spring
• Political Opposition in a Nihilistic Sinhala Society: Responses and clarifications
• Moving away from democracy in Sri Lanka

Mercenaries with misplaced consciences appear to be leading Sri Lanka’s latest band of apologists. Seldom does a hired hand leave such a damning trail as does Tamara Kunanayakam, Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerland.

During the General Debate under Item 2 at the 18^th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on 12 September 2011, H.E. Kunanayakam criticized the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay for her apparent ‘partiality’.[1] One is at a loss to comprehend what ‘partiality’ the Ambassador alludes to, except perhaps the fervency in which the High Commissioner has thus far discharged her mandate. In any event, there is no doubt that the High Commissioner will wear this curious brand like a badge of honour. The Ambassador goes on to state:

I must also observe that it appears that the High Commissioner does not have the will to even acknowledge a paradigm shift in the policy of the Government of Sri Lanka.  In her statement, she treats the lifting of emergency regulations so lightly and fails to acknowledge that they are withdrawn in their entirety.  Sri Lanka observes that the High Commissioner’s position on the withdrawal of emergency misleads the Council with regard to the true legal position.

In conclusion, Madam President, it has to be appreciated that each Member State of this Council does recognize the need to have a security related legislation, and it has to be noted that Sri Lanka’s only existing legislation as it stands today is less stringent than the modern legislations of some other countries, which provide for the most stringent of measures in the treatment of terrorism.

Any government apologist would be expected to make the point that emergency has been lifted and that normalcy has been restored in the country. In other words, it is perfectly safe to hold the Commonwealth Games in Sri Lanka. Yet the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) continues to be enforced—a negligible detail. Not surprisingly, the Ambassador fails to mention that the government has also introduced new regulations—just in case broad powers of search and seizure; detention without indictment for a period of up to eighteen months; admission of confessions in police custody as evidence; and the reversal of the presumption of innocence, all provided for under the PTA, are not enough to combat terrorism in the current context. The Government of Sri Lanka is obviously eager to eat the cake and have it—perhaps even place it under preventive detention. Despite signalling to the international community that normalcy has been restored, the government wishes to keep the anti-terror trick up its proverbial sleeve. The PTA and the additional regulations will no doubt be instrumental when the government looks to suppress dissenting voices in the future.

Returning to H.E. Kunanayakam, one is a Google search away from stumbling upon a delicious piece of irony. The Ambassador has commented on emergency and the PTA before. In fact, she appears to be remarkably proficient in analyzing the far-reaching consequences of the PTA, the same piece of security related legislation she calls ‘less stringent than the modern legislations of some other countries’. Back in February 1987, when the current UN Human Rights Council was called the Commission on Human Rights, and current presidents were called defenders of human rights, H.E. Kunanayakam launched a blistering assault on the emergency regime in Sri Lanka.[2] In an astonishingly lucid account of the dangers of anti-terror laws such as the PTA, she observed:

The Prevention of Terrorism Act and Emergency Regulations have removed most of the legal safeguards prescribed under the International Covenants on Human Rights. Prolonged incommunicado detention without trial is the norm. The whereabouts of people arrested and detained are not made known to relatives. Lawyers and relatives have no access to detainees in most cases.

Most of the arrests, the victims of which, by and large, are Tamils, are effected under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and Emergency Regulations. It may he noted that the Prevention of Terrorism Act has been described by the International Commission of Jurists as an ugly blot on the statute book of any civilised country. Sri Lanka has been ruled by the present government under a state of emergency for most of its life since 1977.

[I]t is in this context that many substantiated cases of torture and deaths in custody have been reported, so much so that the Special Rapporteur on Torture has expressed great concern [in] his report referring to Sri Lanka. The suspension of important legal safeguards under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and Emergency Regulations have created conditions conducive to the practice of torture.

Mr. Chairman, no longer can the government of Sri Lanka divert the attention of those genuinely concerned by the human rights situation in that country by references to separatism and terrorism. It must, as we said earlier, address itself to the root causes that have given rise to violence and violations that characterise Sri Lankan society today.

These sentiments ring eerily true almost 25 years later. Though little has changed as far as the predicament of those affected by emergency laws and the PTA are concerned, the voices that spoke on their behalf have now abandoned them.

There is a bitter lesson to be learned from this metamorphosis. Human rights defenders of today may return as government apologists tomorrow. This is not to say that the human rights community of Sri Lanka is packed with wolves in sheep’s clothing. Yet the community must be prepared to expose purely agenda-driven activism. The embarrassing contradiction that has befallen the Ambassador confirms the intuition that ‘human rights’ is not merely a set of rules, but a set of convictions; it is a calling that must be jealously guarded against usurpation by self-serving imposters. It is, ultimately, an enterprise that must proudly welcome the accusation of partiality.

• State of Emergency in Sri Lanka, with or without it
• Focus on Human Rights
• Post Arbour
• Youth activists on human rights in Sri Lanka
• Too tired to say ‘human rights’

Prof. Rohan Gunaratne- international terrorism expert- addressing the business community last week convincingly and openly cautioned that “India might ‘punish’ Sri Lanka”, if Sri Lanka leans elsewhere to India’s detriment. This is a very serious statement, especially if Indians do not intend doing so.

To prove his point, he quoted a meeting with the first Research and Analysis Wing Chief who had told Gunaratne their concerns over President JR Jayewardene stepping away from the Non Alignment Movement, Jayewardene’s intentions to economically favor the USA by opening the Trincomalee Port and the intention to handover China Bay oil tanks to the USA, Voice of America eavesdropping on India etc.

Gunaratne would not have had any personal antipathy or bias towards India when he emphatically quoted the past to predict future.

Indo- Lanka Joint Statement (JS)

The attempt here is to observe whether such punishment could be inferred from the latest hinting basing Indian approaches stated in the JS between India and Sri Lanka, datelined May 17^th 2011. JS definitely reflects India’s immediate concerns and could be perceived as an accumulated response to Sri Lankan political behavior after May 2009. To me the JS seems an effective diplomatic exercise- i.e. strategically hiding issues, while sending strong messages.

Outputs of the JS

When the JS said “The two sides reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral relations” one expects the most important current issue for Sri Lanka (i.e. UN Panel Report) would have been the top priority subject discussed. But horrifyingly, the two words “Panel Report” or anything means that do not appear in the JS. The word UN appears under sections 10 and 11 of the JS where reform of the UN Security Council and Sri Lanka’s support for India’s legitimate claim for permanent membership in the Security Council are mentioned respectively.

While focus on relief, rehabilitation, resettlement, reconciliation, children, development etc extensively stated in the UN- Government Statement datelined May 23^rd 2009, it is surprising that both countries did not least point out that the Moon or Darussman Report continuously worshipped ‘accountability’ as most sacred, though there is only one sentence reference to ‘accountability.’

These were the previously allured topics of interest to dignitaries like Indian Ministers Mukherjee and Krishna, Advisor Menon and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao. Yet, the Parties at least do not question the UN on not appointing an Advisory Panel for such long-term interests! Was this the genuine stance expected of the Indians by Sri Lanka, when Peiris visited India searching a straw- not the last? The ‘last’ may be elsewhere. Or, was it that Sri Lanka failed to convince the Indians on this point? Or, did not Indians wish to hear our plea?

The JS speaks of the parties assessing the developments taken place since President Rajapaksa’s visit to India in June, 2010 and the bilateral Joint Commission meeting at ministerial level in November, 2010. Issues relating to regional and international common concerns too had been discussed. However, we know that ‘accountability’ on the events during the latter period of conflict was not the most pursued by Indians, when Indian dignitaries visited North-East and Colombo. Undeservingly for Sri Lanka this sentiment is not expressed in the JS. It prioritizes other issues wherein paisas are involved.

Referring to the Sri Lankan current situation, JS pointed it as a historic opportunity to address outstanding issues in a spirit of understanding and mutual accommodation imbued with political vision to work towards genuine national reconciliation. While this statement is really rhetoric, the preamble itself is not very heartening, as it indirectly reverberates non-usage of such opportunity by Sri Lanka and its failure to be genuine. Have the affirmations made by the Sri Lankan Government considered not genuine or committed?  Why is the genuineness of the government suspected when thousands are resettled in the North and especially East, peace restored to a great extent, detainees released in hundreds after rehabilitation, schools reopened, infrastructure developed, positive financing happens etc?

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Devolution

Have the statements made by TNA spokespersons (e.g. Parliamentarians R Sambanthan et al) and withdrawal of Senior Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake from the Government – TNA dialogue etc discolored the government’s “commitment to ensuring expeditious and concrete progress in the ongoing dialogue between the Government party and representatives of Tamil parties?” Are these irreparable?

Nevertheless, the JS committing for a devolution package vehemently differs from this government’s previous fluttering and wavering stances on devolution. Have these stances in the face of TNA’s consistent  demands for power sharing provoked Indians to incorporate in the JS the need for a “devolution package, building upon the 13th Amendment” contributing  to create the necessary conditions for such reconciliation?”

Why did Peiris subscribe Sri Lanka’s agreement with India when the government emphasis on devolution differed? Was he the loner signatory or backed by delegated collective responsibility? If it is the latter, he does not deserve to be crucified by criticism.  Or, was it to deliberately give false hopes to Indians to overcome a problematic situation?  The latter could be dangerous and knave.

This may be the umpteenth time greater devolution has been ‘demanded’ by India. Under whatever circumstance, the JS may be a firm written response from the incumbent Sri Lankan Government. Have the Indian dignitaries by committing Peiris for the JS supplied ammunition to Alliance partners, JVP and media to adversely react causing adverse exposures of government’s intents, so that the internationals have another steak to gulp? Is this elementary ‘punishing’ of Sri Lanka? If it was the Indian intention, are not the Alliance partners who hate devolution and criticize India mercilessly, play in to Indian hands?

Since a hard Indian stance will boost Jeyalalitha Jeyaram’s relationships with New Delhi, is India killing two birds with one stone? Having sent Peiris to gain Indian support to battle the UN Report, has Sri Lanka ultimately supported India to settle its domestic political issue? Did Delhi’s South Block beaten Colombo’s Republic Square?

Restitution / Reconciliation and the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC)

Lankan Minister has also reiterated the commitment of the Government to continue to address issues related to resettlement and reconciliation. While giving evidence before the LLRC (August 18^th 2010) I quoted the internationally accepted Pinheiro Principles (PPs) of which a summary was handed over to each Commissioner.  The PPs address restitution issues, with deep attachment to international rights laws stated in Section 5- JS and Recommendations 2- v and vi of UN Report. In fairness to the government, positive action is reported as highlighted by President Rajapaksa at the Victory Celebrations, though breaches are also highlighted sometimes by critics like the partial Tamilnet.

As Gunaratne said the mandate of the LLRC has to be reviewed. While giving evidence I quoted from the Preamble of South African Act No: 34 of 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation. I was not for duplication of South Africa, but to learn lessons from the past and international experiences and summarily mentioned how the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Committee on Human Rights Violations, a Committee on Amnesty and Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation were to be established under this Act. May be whatever Sri Lanka establishes indigenously could focus differently and could be term-bound. Such could take the critical venom by being positive in the interim.

If such propositions were at least partially heard, at least appropriately and selectively implemented, Peiris could have gained from the LLRC’s positive actions and constructive nature in a wider perspective. The Inter-Agency Advisory Committee chaired by the Attorney General could have pursued implementing the Interim Recommendations more effectively and showed larger output, and even reinforced Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe at the UN Human Rights Council.

Sri Lanka could have exhibited the LLRC as a show-piece of a constructive domestic institutional arrangement, months before the UN Report or JS spoke of rights of the affected and won the kudos and acclaim of internationals. The opportunity to prove the Urdu saying “Elephant has two sets of teeth- one for chewing and the other for show” was thus missed!

Of course, with an extension given recently, it is not too late for correction to get the LLRC to address issues raised by the internationals, to take the heat off to a manageable extent and normalize. It appears the President too wishes so, as heard at the Victory Celebrations.

I remember saying in evidence that the LLRC had no mandate to inquire in to human rights and that the two words do not appear in its mandate, i.e. in the Gazette Notification. It was challenged by one Commissioner. If addendum or revision was granted, a downgrading statement such as “investigations into allegations of human rights violations” in the JS could have been diluted and even the UN Panel Report could have been contested.

It is observed that there had been accelerated positive action implemented by the government, as mentioned earlier. In response, Indian External Affairs Minister urged the expeditious implementation of measures by the Government of Sri Lanka, to ensure resettlement and genuine reconciliation, including early return of Internally Displaced Persons to their respective homes, early withdrawal of emergency regulations, investigations into allegations of human rights violations, restoration of normalcy in affected areas and redress of humanitarian concerns of affected families. I still believe that appropriately implementing the PPs to the best extent possible can answer some criticisms; but not all.

India- the Winner and punisher?

For Indians it would have been heartening to note the JS quoting (Section 6- JS) very constructive Indian projects.  Further, in JS-Section 7 both sides have agreed to the early conclusion of Agreements related to Sampur Project, finalization of remaining agreements for Indian investments and to continue ongoing dialogue for early finalization of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).- another feather in the Indian cap. JS-Section 8 said that both sides noted that the Joint Statement on Fishing Arrangements had led to a decrease in violent incidents, which had been an ongoing battle. This soothes Tamilnadu.

All these show that Indians have benefited more from our tale of woe and succeeded in sending strong messages and not openly heeding, which were considered inimical by Parliamentarian Anurakumara Dissanayake. Has the Kautilyan tact won? Is it, as Gunaratne predicted commencement of ‘punishing’? Will there be unknown developments after Chinese Foreign Ministry reportedly supporting Sri Lanka?

We may keep our fingers crossed and cautioned because these have unseen underhand international manipulations and strategizing, as against the un-preparedness of the President to be arm-twisted, as he exclaimed at the Victory Celebrations.

• Going beyond the 13th Amendment: Newspaper coverage of the Sri Lankan’s President’s assurance to India
• The LLRC report and ‘accountability’ in Sri Lanka
• Archive of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) submissions and media reports
• The Indo- Sri Lanka Joint Communique: Delineating the Parametres of Action in Response to the Panel Report
• Speaking lies to power: Sri Lanka’s PM and the LTTE in India

“Declare Rajapakse a war criminal: Jayalalithaa tells Centre” was a banner headline on 13 Friday in the “Indian Express”, following AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa’s march to victory, at the Tamil Nadu assembly elections concluded last week. No analyst expected the DMK-Congress alliance in TN to be so unmercifully smothered, at this elections. Never has the DMK fallen to third place in assembly elections ever before. Not even after MGR created the AIADMK in 1972 and turned himself into a political demigod in Tamil Nadu politics.

Jayalalithaa and LTTE

MGR’s brightest co-star for long with a continuing run of box office hits and a popular playback singer too, Jayalalithaa Jayaram though qualified herself to lead the AIADMK, over riding MGR’s wife Janaki, after MGR’s demise in 1987 December, wasn’t beyond MGR in popularity. Yes, she took total control of the party as its revolutionary “Thalaivi”, but was never expected to drub “Kalaignar” Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the veteran and maestro in political manipulation, the way she did this assembly election.

Jayalalithaa, quite contrary to her mentor MGR, who had very close personal links with Prabhakaran, was a well known “anti Prabhakaran” politician in Tamil Nadu. She was quite open in her statements against the LTTE, having enjoyed a resounding victory in coalition with the Congress(I) in 1991 TN State assembly elections. She bagged 224 out of the 234 seats. That was a sympathy wave after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Karunanidhi’s sympathy for the LTTE was then considered the fault line in DMK politics. This 2011 assembly elections was the first TN State assembly election that had no LTTE factor, but a Sri Lankan Tamil tragedy that carried its agony across the Palk Straits. An agony that for the first time in its history saw 02 self immolations, in solidarity with the SL Tamil people.

Karunanidhi and his family stakes

Was that Tamil sentiment, the aggrieved factor which brought Jayalalitha to power in TN this time ? Certainly not. That was not a decisive factor in TN politics during this assembly elections. It was family politics and mega corruption that decided TN politics this time. Tamil Nadu was Karunanidhi’s fiefdom. That was his treasure trove which allowed him to appease his friction ridden large family brood. “Karunanidhies” as an extended and branched out large family, had to have complete empires of their own. Karunanidhi’s tenure as Chief Minister of TN and his life as an octogenarian  could only compromise by giving his high appetite, power hungry large brood, adequate access to power in Delhi and Chennai Centres, to keep infighting at its lowest manageable level.

During the past 07 years, having an alliance with the Congress allowed the DMK Supremo to provide for his brood what they wanted but not what the TN middle class wanted as clean, decent, democratic life with development. The growing middle class in India was becoming more conscious of a decent, quality life. They were all educated, professionally employed and were open to the Western world than those previous generations under Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Theirs was a modern culture with new ethics and values in life. India was thus a growing and expanding contradiction. The neo liberal economy after 1979, allowed for massive growth in the corporate sector that created a thick periphery of middle class life, leaving a much larger, poor India, below that growth.

Rich India, corruption and DMK

This new rich India in the world’s largest democracy, is corrupt inside out and its influence trickles into Indian life, steady and sure. Two most recent scandals, the “Commonwealth Games 2010” and the “2G Spectrum Scam” alone speak out on that. This new rich India brought criminals into politics and dented systems in their favour. The Indian Lok Sabha by itself is proof with increased numbers of Lok Sabha members with criminal records in 2009, than in 2004. The National Election Watch (NEW) scanning official affidavits of 533 of the 541 MPs elected to the 15^th Lok Sabha in May, 2009 says, 150 of them have criminal charges against them and 72 have serious charges amounting to murder, attempted murder and even extortion. The remaining 08 MPs whose affidavits have not been available for public scrutiny are all from Tamil Nadu (TN).

DMK family leadership hitched into this politically corrupt and criminalised Indian corporate world, while nursing the poor TN constituency with State funds. They doled out 16 million colour TV sets free, at a cost of 39,600 million Indian rupees for the State government, as an election promise in 2006. That election in 2006, the DMK promised free electricity, waiving off of co-operative loans given to farmers, free gas stoves to all women, that had a train load of 36 such State donations, if voted to power. This year, the DMK election manifesto had free laptops for school children and rice at a subsidised price of 02 Indian rupees along with other promises. And they launched a “cash for vote” project too, during elections.

Seven years of UPF rule at the centre with the DMK as an ally and 05 years of DMK rule in TN, saw the biggest financial scam ever in the history of India, now popularly talked of as the “2G Spectrum Scam”. The estimated fraud runs to around 39.2 billion US dollars, a sum equivalent to about 03 times Sri Lanka’s national annual budget. The “2G Spectrum Scam” has landed DMK Supremo’s Lok Sabha elect nominee A. Raja as Union Minister of  IT and Communication and his daughter Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi as main suspects along with corporate sector allies and bureaucrats. All except Kanimozhi whose bail plea remains to be announced on 20 May, are remanded for further investigations.

The 2G Spectrum Scam is all about DMK and the Karunanidhi family. Raja whose tenure as minister of IT and Communication put him in charge of Telecom and is investigated for the 2G Scam was again lobbied to be appointed as minister in charge of Telecom, after the 2009 May Lok Sabha elections. The lobby had included some members of the corporate world and implicates popular media personality Barka Dutt of NDTV, who is said to have assisted Niira Radia with political facilitation for lobbying. Karunanidhi family, high profiles in the corporate world and TN State government under DMK, have all been seeping in massive corruptions that ran right to the heart of TN life.

Anti-corruption and TN Middle class

This corruption was what stirred the TN voter this time. There were new civil society initiatives by middle class professionals, social activists and new youth organisations that came up to monitor election fraud. Most such civil society initiatives were urban middle class initiatives that challenged the integrity of the DMK leadership. Jayalalithaa’s strength and her main campaign plank against DMK and Karunanidhi was this anti corruption lobby. She pledged to remove all debris, after demolishing the DMK mansion of corruption. Her stand against corruption, despite she been accused of corruption with 09 cases against her when she was previously the CM in TN, gave the civil society campaign the political strength to take the DMK and its father figure, Karunanidhi to task.

Jayalalithaa and SL Tamils

While that campaign sealed off the results in TN assembly elections, Jayalalithaa the shrewd and seasoned politician she is, crowned her campaign by reaching out to the Tamil sentiments too. She demanded 02 well articulated interventions from the Congress-DMK alliance in the Centre. One, to positively respond to the UN Advisory Panel Report and support an investigation on accountability and crimes committed during the war and two, declare an aid embargo on SL, until the grievances of the Tamil people are fully met with. She knew quite well, the Central government of Congress-DMK partners can not meet such demands, having played a very covert role in supporting the Rajapaksa government’s war against the LTTE. Such turn around for the two is virtually impossible and thus gave Jayalalitha the throne and the crown both, in TN.

Her politics, whether she intended or not, has now given a new life to Tamil nationalist politics in TN. Her stand galvanised small Tamil groups across TN, into activism during the election time. Groups like “We Thamil” with celebrity names like Seiman on stage, who were cowed down by the TN CID and “Q Branch” sleuths under the DMK rule, would now surface with new vigour and with a binding on the new CM to honour her own demands. Its a common practice in TN that all major administrative positions including those in the police get a complete overhaul with every change of State governments. That would give, at least in the first year or two, a wider space for agitations, campaigns and lobbying in TN, on the SL issue. It won’t be easy for Jayalalithaa to leave them and go.

Delhi -  Colombo axis and convalescing DMK

With pressure building up in TN on the SL Tamil issue and Jayalalithaa compelled to maintain heat on the Delhi administration over the SL Tamil issue, more because that would have the Centre reaching out to her for compromise and in turn give her leverage to deal with the now mutilated and discredited DMK, Colombo would have to feel the heat. For the DMK, this election would leave Karunanidhi topping 87 years in June to seriously ponder on his final exit from active politics.

It would give heir apparent M.K. Stalin the space to take over the DMK, but family disputes would not make it that easy with especially M.K. Aligiri also wanting to enter State politics, a turf that was left for Stalin as Deputy Chief Minister. With Raja and Kanimozhi now in deep waters, Karunanidhi would still be wanting to intervene in soothing family disputes that had always been issues for DMK. While having family disputes, the DMK would still have to take a position on Jayalalithaa’s demands on the SL Tamil issue, that would once again emerge as a bargaining slot in Indian politics.

That basically gives Jayalalithaa a free hand, but, Delhi can not afford to allow TN to be totally controlled by Jayalalithaa and her AIADMK. They would have to carve out space for Congress(I) in gaining a political foot hold in TN. Whether Rahul who blundered very much in Kerala assembly elections this time, but still has his say in State politics, would ditch DMK to compromise with Jayalalithaa is one that needs to be watched.

What can the Rajapaksas in Colombo do in such hostile situation ? One, it could compromise with Delhi and live on its mercy. But what compromise Delhi would have with Jayalalitha is also uncertain, except for the single consolation that Delhi can not give into Jayalalitha, lock stock and barrel, on the SL war issue. It has many war porns that would be too lewd for others to see. But a more safer and a firmer terrain for SL regime to tread is to compromise with the TNA as a pragmatic leadership. To negotiate with the TNA on Tamil political issues with a more democratic and sincere agenda and perhaps agree to have the APRC final report out for discussion, as the TNA was no party to that.

The Rajapaksas need to know that DMK and Karunanidhi were at one time the all powerful family dynasty, the  kleptomaniacs in Tamil Nadu life. It took only a single slogan to leave them battered and bruised like a limbless Gulliver. Politics and repressive power over a deceived people, have always been temporary and pretty dangerous at the end.

• People’s immediate post election responsibility on “corruption” promises
• India, Sri Lanka and the Minority Question
• Mervyn Silva publicly admits to killing Lasantha Wickrematunge and grievously attacking another journalist
• Crossing Red Lines: The New Tamil Consensus in Sri Lanka
• Sri Lankan Identity in a Time of Seige

The report of the three-member panel of independent experts, appointed by the UN Secretary General to advise him on the issues of legal accountability arising out of the brutal final stages of Sri Lanka’s war, has finally been published. The panel has found ‘credible’ a large number of allegations of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by the military protagonists in the conflict, the Sri Lankan security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), some of which could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has also concluded that a political and legal environment conducive to the transparent investigation and prosecution of these violations does not exist in Sri Lanka. The substance of the report is as systematic and as rigorous as could be expected within the panel’s terms of reference, and the absence of co-operation by the Sri Lankan government. Within those circumstances, the report has historic significance as an independent account of what happened at the denouement of the war that directly and plausibly challenges the government’s version of events.

The panel has been careful to frame its recommendations for credible accountability measures as the responsibility of the Sri Lankan government at first instance, and envisage international action only upon the failure of the government to do so. However, for reasons extensively set out in the report, it would appear the panel has little expectation the government would act on its recommendations in a manner that satisfies international best practice. Beyond the recommendations addressed to the Sri Lankan government, therefore, the panel has also advised the Secretary General that an ‘international independent mechanism’ to impartially investigate and record the facts of these allegations should immediately be established.

In view of the emotive implications this particular recommendation has for notions of national sovereignty and independence (not least due to deliberate distortions by representatives and apologists of the Sri Lankan regime), it is important to note that the recommendation is not about the establishment of an international tribunal empowered to try and punish individuals. What is within immediate contemplation is essentially a fact-finding body. In the statement of the Secretary General accompanying the publication of the report, he has stated that the establishment of such a mechanism would require the consent of Sri Lanka or ‘a decision from Member States though an appropriate intergovernmental forum’, i.e., the Security Council or the Human Rights Council.

As with the polarised debates surrounding the appointment of the panel last year, there is little chance that its report will receive a dispassionate reading. Even before the report was officially published, predictable responses were already in evidence, with the Sri Lankan government rejecting it out of hand, and others such as Tamil diaspora groups welcoming it. It is fair to say that the present Sri Lankan regime and the Tamil diaspora (or at least its more vocal sections) are representative of the more extreme nationalist stances within the Sinhala and Tamil communities. For others less interested in such prepossessed postures, but more on a decent, sensible and principled approach to Sri Lanka’s post-war future, however, there are a number of moral dilemmas to be resolved and political choices to be made. In relation to post-war reconciliation, and especially the question of criminal accountability as an element of it, these dilemmas are located at the interstices between the legal and the political, and the international and the domestic.

There are two key assumptions underpinning the panel’s report that are particularly important in this regard. The first is that there is a positivist reality of an international rule of law on humanitarian rules and human rights, which is the basis for the claim that leaving credible allegations of violations unaddressed in the Sri Lankan case would constitute an unpunished assault on the entire regime of international law. While in recent decades, there has been increasing clarity and crystallisation of international humanitarian and human rights norms in terms both of substantive rules as well as procedures and institutions for their enforcement, it nevertheless remains the case that the international system of law and politics continues to be essentially wedded to the classical Westphalian model, together with its doctrinal elements such as national sovereignty, non-interference, territorial integrity and the sovereign equality of states. As a general proposition, therefore, the observance and enforcement of international law remains an obligation of the state as a subject of international law, notwithstanding progressive developments in relation to human rights and duties, legal personality, and international enforcement mechanisms both ad hoc and permanent.

This is not to unduly reify the Westphalian nation-state, nor to accept the hyperbolic claims of sovereignty made by states having things to hide, but merely to acknowledge the reality of the resilience of the state in the existing international order. Consequently, illegal behaviour is addressed rather differently from the way in which it would be within a domestic legal system, and there is therefore a discernibly political element to the pursuit of international legality as we see in any number of examples in the recent past, from the international use of force to international individual criminal liability. If this were not the case, for example, all member-states of the UN would be signatories to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. There is also a critical domestic element to this, in that the democratic wishes of the people within a state are also relevant to the pursuit of international legality.

Seen in this light, the panel report’s assumption that the absence of genuine and immediate redress in the form of criminal liability for violators in the Sri Lankan war erodes the credibility and authority of international law seems, at best, idealistic. It could even be seen as a distinctively liberal interventionist (or ‘cosmopolitanist’) ideological approach in which international norms are accorded a primacy over domestic sovereignty, inviting opposition thereby in ideological and political terms. This is apparent in the Sri Lankan government’s initial responses in which it was alleged that the acceptance of the report would imply a repudiation of the entire UN system, meaning the established order of sovereign states, and its appeals to states such as China, Russia and India in resisting the purported undermining of those principles.

The second assumption that may not find universal currency is the notion that immediate criminal accountability is indispensable to post-war reconciliation. In any context, reconciliation after a protracted conflict is a complex and multi-faceted process involving delicate questions of sequence, timing, and trade-offs that may be regarded as unpalatable by some. The report asserts that choosing between models of retributive and restorative justice is a false dichotomy, arguing that both elements are necessary to a legitimate process of reconciliation. It might be asked, however, whether the insistence on immediate retributive measures as a sine qua non of reconciliation is not itself a false dichotomy. We should not regard criminal accountability in processes of post-conflict reconciliation as an absolute concept in law or morality, but one that has often been treated as a political variable subject to negotiation. To cite a familiar example, it would have been very unfortunate if Martin McGuinness were unable to play the constructive role in the Northern Ireland peace process and now as Deputy First Minister in the power-sharing executive by a doctrinaire attitude to his terrorist past.

Admittedly, the basis for the panel’s scepticism arises from the recalcitrant behaviour of the Sri Lankan regime, which refuses to countenance anything other than resources in terms of international engagement with its post-war programme, its militaristic nationalism and ethnic triumphalism, and its intolerance of critique and dissent. Neither its petulance abroad nor its authoritarianism at home gives ground for much confidence that it will display sensitivity to Tamil grievances and aspirations in social reconciliation or in a political settlement. But in conceiving a reconciliation process, it is necessary to think beyond the regime to the broader social and political values that animate a South Asian society. Thus, given its track record, the fact that the regime is the champion of restorative justice is certainly unhelpful, but that should not blind us to the deeper issues of context. In this regard, the dominant religio-cultural values and sensibilities shared between Sinhala Buddhists and Tamil Hindus do not attach the same premium, at least not temporally, to redemption through responsibility and answerability as in the Judeo-Christian tradition. At least to some extent, this resonant social sensibility explains why the regime is able to command wide support for its resistance to criminal accountability.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the hostility to any accountability initiative is clear among the majority Sinhalese, even among those who would not otherwise support the regime. While the panel report is a clear acknowledgement of the suffering they underwent, it is difficult to discern precise contours of opinion about international criminal accountability among those who were at the receiving end of the wartime abuses – the Tamils living in the North – although the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), their main vehicle of parliamentary representation, has welcomed the report. It is also fair to say they have more pressing problems to worry about in the post-war environment, of which there are both serious existential issues, and more fundamental political aspirations. Especially for those living in the North, normalcy is far from reality. Only a part of these are the deciduous problems encountered, unfortunately but unavoidably, by people living in former conflict zones in the aftermath of war. It is now disconcertingly apparent that the militarisation of all spheres of life in the North is becoming increasingly institutionalised, and moreover, that this is the deliberate policy of the government. The regime is able to implement its policy with regard to the North, and more generally the continuation in force of disproportionate and repressive wartime national security measures, with virtually no meaningful democratic opposition.

Excepting international and local human rights groups whose campaigns are based on normative principles rather than a political project, the accountability demand is strongest among the Tamil diaspora, which is once again unsurprising. Especially among those whose Tamil nationalism is synonymous with a commitment to a separate state, the defeat of the LTTE and the death of its leaders mean they have nothing lose by the panel’s adverse observations on the LTTE, and the report thereby becomes an instrument for the settling of scores with the victorious regime in Colombo.

In view of the credible accounts of abuses that have emerged – listed and evaluated according to an expressly stated methodology by the panel – it would be crass and unconscionable to deny the genuine moral outrage that animates many, if not all, of those who are seeking criminal accountability from the alleged perpetrators. However, an approach to the matter based solely on moral verisimilitudes is impercipient to the multiplicity of other factors relating to the local political context in considering the future of post-war Sri Lanka. Crucial among these is the ineluctable truth that no process of reconciliation can have any hope of success without broad democratic support. It is obvious that there is no such support in Sri Lanka at this time for any initiative involving criminal prosecution and punishment; in fact pellucid hostility better describes the state of public opinion, and the best evidence for this is the number of opposition parliamentarians falling over themselves to condemn the report, the panel, and the Secretary General.

A realistic apprehension of this reality however does not necessarily mean that the question of accountability is closed forever. Over time it is entirely possible that the accountability issue may be revisited, with greater prospects for success than in the emotionally charged atmosphere of what is still, in the historical scheme of things, the relatively immediate aftermath of the war. This is borne out by similar experiences elsewhere such as Germany and Cambodia, in which a moratorium on reopening particularly egregious or traumatic events has in fact ensured that they were more effectively addressed by a succeeding generation more secure in the stability and capacity of their society to resolve major differences.

On the other hand, the nature of the Sri Lankan regime, and especially its post-war conduct, gives rise to understandable anxieties. The regime’s majoritarian ideological foundations result in a populist and authoritarian approach to government, which is incapable or unwilling to regard as legitimate, and therefore to accommodate, Tamil and other minorities’ political aspirations to autonomy, recognition and representation. Using the autocratic powers of the executive presidency and its comprehensive grip of Parliament, the regime is also tampering with Sri Lanka’s constitutional heritage as Asia’s oldest democracy. In the state’s relations with the rest of the world, it seems incapable of nuance and calibration, beyond the crude calculation that those who are not uncritically with it, must be against it. Less tangibly, one of the more chilling aspects of its post-war conduct has been the construction of a triumphalist historical narrative enmeshed with Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, together with the suppression of the space for alternative accounts. The regime’s intemperate response to the Secretary General’s panel from the outset is a function of this outlook.

What is critical to note, however, is that all this is done with a widespread political legitimacy the regime enjoys – albeit largely among the majority community, but a democratic majority nonetheless – which stems from successive democratic mandates. The regime’s repeated electoral successes are in turn the result of its success in reshaping the entire political discourse in Sri Lanka according to an ‘us v. them’ or ‘patriot v. traitor’ dynamic. During the war, the LTTE represented the obvious, and suitably diabolical, enemy. The West, the Tamil diaspora, and human rights groups are now fitted into the role of the ‘other’, which is fundamental to the regime’s discursive logic. It is from the perspective of these domestic political implications that the uses to which the panel’s report is put must be considered.

In the context of what Lord Malloch Brown has described as ‘a new cold war of ideas’ on human rights between the West and China and Russia, it would seem that any further international action on the report, or indeed the lack thereof, would depend on the political vagaries within the councils of the UN. Should the international community decide to act on the panel report, the regime will have to deal with that in the appropriate intergovernmental forums. Although it has so far been successful in repelling international action, notably in the Human Rights Council in 2009, it should also realise that the surest way of sustaining adverse international attention is to continue on the obtuse and bellicose path it has taken so far. Its reliance on China, Russia, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and especially India, is not a failsafe insurance policy in all circumstances.

On the domestic political front, a more nuanced response is called for from those desiring a more liberal future for the country. To the extent that the regime is able to mobilise democratic support for itself by projecting the panel report and the proposed international mechanism as a selective persecution of Sri Lanka, the unintended consequence would be to further consolidate and entrench the regime. Keeping the ‘international factor’ alive on the domestic political agenda might seem like a good way of keeping the regime in check, but given the state of public opinion described above, this also significantly erodes the legitimacy of human rights and accountability advocates in the eyes of the majority. By removing what they say and their right to say it from the public discourse, the space for reconciliation is distorted, enabling the regime to occupy the vacuum. Inflaming the populist paranoia it has itself instituted, as it has done in the past, the regime would be given the opportunity to tar-brush the opposition, Tamil parties, and civil society as fifth columnists out to undermine the sovereignty, independence and self-esteem of the Sri Lankan (Sinhala) people. This would be most unfortunate, not only for reconciliation, but also for Sri Lanka’s democracy and any hope there remains for a happier constitutional settlement among all the peoples of Sri Lanka in the future.

It seems therefore that sound strategy would oblige the democratic opposition, Tamil political parties and civil society in Sri Lanka to regain lost legitimacy among the populace by drawing the line at international intervention as well as immediate criminal accountability. This entails neither an abdication of Sri Lanka’s international obligations nor a renunciation of the possibility that accountability might be revisited when it is politically feasible. A strategy aimed at depriving the regime of its absolutist patriotic pretensions is also a principled one based on democracy, human rights and popular sovereignty, and one that reclaims the constitutional character of patriotism from the procrustean parochialism of the regime’s vision. Committing firmly to a Sri Lankan process – which will be riven with difficulties and excruciatingly slow, but more stronger for it – would enable the use of the resulting legitimacy to hold the regime to account on reconciliation, governance, democracy and pluralism.

• Petition against UN Panel’s report on accountability: Opposing what exactly?
• An elephantine gestation: UN Panel’s report on accountability in Sri Lanka released
• UNSG Panel Report on Sri Lanka: Revisiting ‘Accountability’
• Reconciliation without Truth in Sri Lanka?
• Reconciliation and accountability after the UN Panel’s report: Challenges and opportunities for Sri Lanka and the UN system

Leaked versions of the UN Panel’s report found their way into The Island newspaper, where over the past week, Groundviews has contextualised the content that was published in print. Today, the Hindustan Times published an article based on the full version of the report, based on a leaked version of the full report the paper had acquired. Interestingly, the unimaginable horror highlighted in the HT’s report (body parts of babies on tree tops after shelling by the Army) is not content that was published in The Island.

The UN had earlier expressed its deep regret over the leak to mainstream print media in Sri Lanka. Accusations between Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s envoy to the UN in New York and UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq over who is responsible for the leak have been traded.

The constitution of the Secretary General’s panel and its mandate was announced in June 2010. As noted on the UN website,

“The Secretary-General has appointed a Panel of Experts that will advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka. Its members are: Marzuki Darusman ( Indonesia), Chair; Yasmin Sooka ( South Africa); and Steven Ratner ( United States).

The Panel will advise the Secretary-General on the implementation of the commitment on human rights accountability made in the Joint Statement issued by President [Mahinda] Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka and the Secretary-General during the latter’s visit to Sri Lanka in May 2009. It will look into the modalities, applicable international standards and comparative experience with regard to accountability processes, taking into account the nature and scope of any alleged violations in Sri Lanka. It will be available as a resource to Sri Lankan authorities should they wish to avail themselves of its expertise in implementing the commitment.”

There was some concern that the ostensibly on-going discussions between the Foreign Minister and the UN Secretary General would delay indefinitely the public release of the report. However, despite strong calls from Sri Lanka to not release it (and strangely, Oman), the UN went ahead and published it today.

The official version of the report, released today around 5.45pm New York time, can be read in full below. The UN Secretary General’s statement on the official release of the report can be read here and is reproduced below as well.

Download it directly here (~9.2Mb).

Pertinent to recall in light of this report is the investigation commissioned by the erstwhile Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Mr. Philip Alston, in relation to the authenticity of the “Channel 4 videotape”, showing the execution of unarmed persons by the Sri Lankan Army. However, the authenticity of this video, also referred to in the report of the UN SG’s Panel of Experts, continues to be vehemently denied by the Sri Lankan government. Alston’s official report to the UN on the video and its appendix can be read below.

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In less than two weeks since the Darusman Report (hereinafter referred to as the Report) was handed over to the United Nations Secretary General (hereinafter referred to as UNSG), a large number of articles have been written about the report, its motivations and on its impact on Sri Lanka. Except in several exceptions, the majority of these renderings seem to have lost the plot, in their failure to provide adequate attention to several key issues surrounding the report, or the ‘leaked’ version of it published in the Sri Lankan newspaper The Island. Public reactions to the leaked sections of the Report are best glimpsed from Groundviews, where comments made by readers include rather heated debates on issues such as the number of Eelam War IV casualties raised in the Report.

One such key factor is that the Report is critical of both adversaries of Eelam War IV, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Reactions to the Report from Colombo accuses the UN over undue interference, and rejects the accusations laid against GoSL and the state military forces. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a political alliance that, during a substantial period of time, represented the Tamil cause in the Sri Lankan parliament, with a political discourse built on Tamil nationalism, oftentimes in relative alignment with the LTTE’s secessionist discourse of Tamil nationalism) fails to ponder on the accusations levelled against the LTTE in its communiqué on the Report.

Media reports show that Colombo is preparing for a campaign to raise a strong public opinion (read ‘Sinhalese’ public opinion) critical of the Report. Key arguments put forward to defend this position would be that the Report, the UN and UNSG are all elements of an international conspiracy against GoSL and Sri Lankans, and the Report is a vicious document intended at tarnishing the ‘image’ of the state military forces. Among the dominant arguments is the fact that the security situation in the ‘Sinhalese south’ has considerably improved since May 2009, with the virtual absence of a fear psychosis, devoid of suicide bomb attacks and frequent checkpoints. A quick look at comments made by readers on many a news website may suffice to notice that this view is strongly espoused by a significant segment of the Sinhalese community. Moreover, there can indeed be members of the Tamil and Moor communities who also subscribe to this viewpoint. In any case, it is clear that the Rajapakse administration will not face major problems in mounting a strong public outcry in Sri Lanka against the Report.

Some analysts have indeed touched upon the issues of credibility and transparency in terms of the international community. The West, and the UN for that matter, where Western power bases operate in a dominant position, with the veto of Russia and China in the Security Council being the most notable exceptions, tends to have an international agenda that responds primarily to Western interests. The best of current examples in this respect would be the Western intervention in Libya, as opposed to its tongue-tied and blindfolded attitude towards the extremely violent repression of popular protests in Bahrain, ruled by a trusted ally of the West, who, it is reported, will grace the British royal wedding coming Friday. One can also notice a Western media blackout on Bahrain, with only media houses such as Iranian Press TV broadcasting news regularly on the carnage in that country.

In terms of Sri Lanka, the Rajapakse regime has been at odds with the West for a good while. Relations with Washington DC have been ailing, while Assistant Secretary Robert Blake’s meeting with representatives of the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) seems to have added hay into the fire. Relations with the European Union (EU) have been slack since the days of Eelam War IV, with the rejection of a diplomatic visa to Swedish Foreign Minister Karl Bildt (during the Swedish presidency of the EU), and Colombo’s stern resolve to go ahead with its own agenda despite the Miliband-Kouchner combined effort to make Colombo change its strategy. The GSP Plus exportation benefit was brought up as a shield, which once again did not bring expected results. The infamous ‘Oxford debacle’ was yet another incident which, despite being a mere invitation from the Oxford Union – a student association at Oxford University and not an event that concerns UK-Lanka diplomatic ties, hinted at the ‘unwelcome’ reception of Colombo in the West. The ‘state’ of the Rajapakse regime’s relations with the wider ‘West’ can be glimpsed by comparing it with that of the Kumaratunga administration. Those were years when the President of Sri Lanka was a frequent and welcome guest at Palais d’Elysée and Hôtel Matignon (and in other Western first residences) regularly met with senior officials of governments and opposition groups, and maintained close links with the EU’s foreign policy bodies and international organisations such as the Commonwealth of Nations, where the UK occupies a historically significant position. The situation was quasi identical in the Ranil Wickramasinghe government (2001-2004), when the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka was warmly received at the White House, No 10 Downing Street, in Brussels and elsewhere in the West.

The clock has turned a full circle, with the West’s Sri Lankan allies of yesteryear in the opposition, and the Rajapakse regime colliding with the West. This situation can be explained as an ultimate consequence of a transformation of Sri Lanka’s internal politics vis-à-vis the ethnic conflict since 1994. While a strong public opinion in favour of a negotiated settlement dominated when President Kumaratunga was elected that year, it gradually diminished with the failure of the peace process of 1995. The situation further deteriorated with the failure of the Norwegian-facilitated peace process (2001-2006), when the government was accused of infringing territorial integrity, Norwegian facilitation was negatively perceived, and violence escalated, providing Sinhala nationalists fertile grounds to sow the seeds of a pronouncedly Sinhala nationalist political discourse – one that clearly maintained that only an exclusively military strategy could effectively address the ethnic conflict. In the persona of President Rajapakse, such forces found the ideal Sinhala Buddhist (and Sinhala nationalist) leadership to execute this agenda. The ultimate consequence has been paradoxical: strong and unprecedented power of President Rajapakse within Sri Lanka, and the Rajapakse administration’s international relations, especially with the West, not in the best of shapes – to say the least. The new order has had a profound impact on foreign policy, with the development of new strategic partnerships with southern states and emerging power-blocks. The conflicting relations with the West stand in contrast with friendlier ties with Libya, Iran, Myanmar, China and Russia, among others.

It is in such a situation, with Sri Lanka’s international relations at crossroads, that the Report has been handed over to UNSG. Latest news reports state that despite Colombo’s requests, the UN is planning to publish the full report. As legal luminary G.L. Peiris contends, the panel that investigated the issue of war crimes and drafted the Report was an ‘advisory’ panel appointed by Mr Ban-Ki Moon in his capacity as UNSG, and therefore does not equal an investigative body sanctioned by international law. Legally speaking, the Report per se could do little to press legal charges on the Rajapakse administration on war crimes.

Reconciling domestic pressures – when domestic groups pursue their interests by pressurising the government – and foreign policy concerns is a fundamental challenge that central policymakers cannot avoid. The Rajapakse administration’s dilemma with regards to the Report and the wider realm of foreign policy largely lies in its efforts to manage ‘the local’ and ‘the international’. The dominant political discourse that brought it to power, facilitated its major policy decisions and ensures its continuity, and those espousing that discourse need to be favourably dealt with on the home front. In terms of foreign policy and international relations, the administration faces new challenges in the backdrop post-May 2009 developments. Herein lies the rather tough task of managing domestic and foreign concerns. A news website with a dissenting voice reported a few days ago that President Rajapakse had expressed his dissatisfaction to the Attorney General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs over the failure of their mission to reach a working compromise with Mr Moon. The same news item also quoted the President noting that it is at such circumstances that the absence of the late Lakshman Kadirgamar is deeply felt (i.e. in this case, the Report issue). While the veracity of this news item remains questionable, the very fact that there remains space for it to be in the news points at a problematic situation in terms of foreign affairs and foreign policy management. While the ministerial portfolio in question is in the hands of an outstanding scholar and experienced politician, the problem seems to stem from a wider complication, related to the overall policy orientation of the Rajapakse administration, and to its strategies of effectively managing domestic concerns and what Robert Putman describes as adverse consequences of foreign developments.

One columnist notes that the Rajapakse administration will develop the ‘anti-UN’ discourse to keep the general public occupied, as prices of essential goods are on the rise. The point would be to stress and re-stress the fact that the ‘freedom’ prevalent in present-day Sri Lanka is a hard-earned one, that the people should be grateful to President Rajapakse, and that he (and his government) should be protected in the name of freedom and peace. This may certainly be the objective of the Rajapakse administration on the home front. As the Report stems from the realm of Sri Lanka’s international relations, what is the Rajapakse administration’s strategy on the international front?

One of the most advisable suggestions that this writer has come across so far is from a citizens’ group called the Friday Forum. In a communiqué drafted on behalf of the Friday Forum by distinguished retired diplomat, it is noted that Colombo ought to exercise minimum restraint, effective diplomacy and dialogue in responding to the Report and to UNSG.

The focal point raised by the Report is that of reconciliation, coupled by a repeated highlighting of the challenge of reaping the best dividends of peace. In order to reach this objective, a sustained strategy is required, and such a strategy essentially calls for a consistent national policy on reconciliation. Such a policy should be sufficiently multi-faceted to encompass the complexity of the issue – ranging from public security in the Northern and Eastern Provinces to the management of hardline nationalism/s and engaging with diaspora communities. A reconciliation policy cannot take off in the absence of sufficient engagement by the highest authorities concerned over public security situation in the North and East (especially the North – which has lately witnessed an upsurge of crime including murder and assault). Despite political positions and affiliations, citizens of all ethnic and religious groups should be enabled to feel and live the sense of ‘freedom’ and ‘peace’ felt by Sinhalese people in the Sinhalese south, as referred to earlier in this article.

A starting point of this nature would enable Colombo to keep on the right track, and maintain a level of balance in terms domestic and foreign policy – and avoid questionable gaps. Intense military activity inevitably results in casualties, and it is not detrimental to the state or to the security apparatus to carry out transparent and impartial investigations into questionable policy decisions and acts during Eelam War IV and include the results of such processes in the public record. It is also of primal importance to develop a strong public opinion in favour of a collective reconciliation process, similar to the movement that facilitated the collective public endorsement of Eelam War IV within Sri Lanka. Reconciliation is a quintessentially two-way process, and despite Colombo’s victor-psychosis, it is not well disposed to carry out a one-way reconciliation drive, exclusively on its own terms. Inconsistent measures of that nature will result in the West seeking possibilities of exercising leverage on the Rajapakse administration, which they perceive, as leaked Wikileaks amply show, a rather boisterous and uncontrollable entity.

In the final reading, this writer maintains that Colombo has every right to question the Report and its underlying motives, thereby questioning a broad range of hypocrisy that characterises the international system. Nevertheless, such questioning needs to take place in the backdrop of a consistent post-war reconciliation policy, that constructively brings the pieces of the messed up puzzle together, thereby ensuring that next to no cracks are left for any external force to infringe what could be deemed ‘Sri Lankan interests’ by all Sri Lankans, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or divisions of any other sort.

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• The official report of the LLRC

Original photo from JDS

Ensuring ‘accountability’ is important, but doing so is a complex task. Who is to ensure accountability, when, where, how? – are questions which have always aroused serious debate, and will do, in the future. While there may be no ‘independent/internal’ investigations, one need not be starry-eyed about ‘independent/international’ investigations. For example, ‘Nuremburg’ was an important start, but was never a suitable model. What, for instance, is ‘international’ and who decides the form and nature of this mechanism? Can we go with Chinese/Russian investigators, and if so, would they be independent? Can we go with US/UK investigators, and would they be independent? Also, can we simply investigate the ‘last stages’ of the armed conflict? What about India’s role in the conflict, and are we to forget the manner in which India nurtured armed groups hostile to Sri Lanka? Are we to investigate only the leaders (of the present regime) who defeated the LTTE, but not those of previous regimes who may have contributed to the prolongation of the armed conflict for so long?

‘Accountability’, yes: but when and why? When ‘peace-talks’ took place, wasn’t ‘accountability’ necessary? Were we not asked to forget ‘accountability’ in the name of peace? Had there been a serious ‘accountability’ process which prosecuted those alleged to have committed serious crimes, would the LTTE’s top leaders been able to discuss ‘peace’, unless negotiations were to be held inside prison? Wasn’t that why peace-facilitators ignored the importance of ‘accountability’? But suddenly, when one party is eliminated, there emerges the need for ‘accountability’. And then, the government states what the peace-facilitators stated then: forget ‘accountability’, let’s move on.

The manner in which this ‘accountability’ issue was approached by past regimes and the peace-facilitators has been disturbing. The true intentions of all these actors are questionable. Yet, ‘ground realities’ need to be acknowledged – but, not to the extent of saying that ‘accountability’ is totally unnecessary.

In short: a serious internal or international accountability mechanism will not succeed in the present context, and that needs to be accepted and acknowledged. The more suitable (and under current circumstances, the most practical) option available is the establishment of a credible truth and reconciliation process, with maximum legal protection afforded to those who are willing to come before such a commission (i.e. victim/witness protection), with the so established commission having no powers to prosecute. Opportunity should be provided to all those affected by the armed conflict, especially the Tamil people in the North and the East, as well as the Sinhala and Muslim people in those areas and elsewhere, to come before such a commission, without fear, and point out to all in the country the immense suffering they underwent due to a bloody conflict for nearly 30 long years. This seems to be the least divisive compromise that many people within the country would wish to arrive at, given recent developments.

What then of the report of the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts? How has the Government reacted, how has the UNP responded? What now: will everything end up at the International Criminal Court (ICC), or the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)?

UNSG and the Panel Report

The role of the UNSG Ban Ki-Moon has been a truly unfortunate one. Prodded, pushed and pressured by certain Western powers, and with hopes of being re-elected for another term, UNSG Moon established a Panel of Experts, thereby setting a serious precedent. The Panel was supposed to “advice him [the UNSG] on the issue of accountability” and to “look into modalities, applicable international standards and comparative experience with regard to accountability processes, taking into account the nature and scope of any alleged violations in Sri Lanka” (as per the Statement attributable to the UNSG’s spokesperson, 22 June, 2010).

But, of course, didn’t the Secretary General of the UN really know what had to be done? Did he really need a Panel of Experts to tell him what he [the UNSG] should do about accountability, and that too, only in Sri Lanka? No. And if the intention was not to ‘investigate’, then why another Panel which only corroborates what is already stated by other organizations?

Therefore, it seems that the sole intention of establishing the Panel was not simply to receive ‘advice’, but to open up space for a more detailed report to be prepared which, in the eyes of certain influential members of the ‘international’ community, would have some persuasive authority since the report comes now in the form of ‘advice’ given to the UNSG. So, while the UNSG’s spokesperson stated that the panel’s advice (report) “will be available as a resource to Sri Lankan authorities should they wish to avail themselves of its expertise in implementing its commitment” and while many argued that the Panel’s report will complement the work of the LLRC for example, the UNSG-Panel’s Report complements more the work of the human rights organizations.

The Panel consisted of eminent persons. The only concern about the composition was that there still was that ‘appearance of bias’, given the inclusion of Mr. M. Darusman (even though he is undoubtedly a respected and eminent individual). And it needs to be noted here that this ‘appearance of bias’ taints even the LLRC. Critics of the Panel conveniently ignore this fact.

But of course, the most unfortunate aspect of the Panel is that it seems to have engaged in an exercise of simply re-writing the material they may have received from different sources, known and unknown. If the sources were the already known sources (e.g. AI, HRW, etc.), then why a new, detailed, report? If there are other additional sources, what are those sources? And were these latter sources the sources which helped the Panel determine “a very different version of the final stages of the war”? But then again, wasn’t that the version of other human rights groups as well? So we return to the question of ‘intention’ (not of the Panel, but rather of the UNSG): what was the real intention of establishing this Panel? The answer seems to be all too clear.  

The Government

From the very beginning, the manner in which the government approached the issue of ‘accountability’ was deeply disappointing. One main argument raised by the government is: ‘accountability’ is unnecessary as no civilians were killed during the final stages of the war. An absurd assertion, given the fact that the group which the Armed Forces had to confront was a most ruthless terrorist organization in the world, which, during the course of its terror campaign, did its utmost, intentionally and deliberately, to blur the distinction between LTTE combatants and ordinary civilians. So it doesn’t make any sense, and is indeed illogical, if the government still states that however difficult the task was, not a single civilian was harmed. This argument raises serious questions about the true intentions of the government, and if any truth and reconciliation process is to succeed, the government needs to stop making such unbelievable, incredulous and absurd statements.

Also, the government has been unable to respond effectively and comprehensively to the numerous allegations leveled against the Armed Forces. It had enough time, since May 2009, to issue a detailed report on the allegations leveled against it (note, for instance, that even Israel issued a somewhat detailed report titled Gaza Operation Investigations: An Update, in January 2010 in response to the Goldstone-Report, highlighting, inter alia, that 150 investigations had been launched by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), pointing out that by the time the Goldstone Report was published, Israel was already investigating 22 of the 34 incidents contained therein.

Yet, the manner in which the government has handled many of the issues concerning ‘accountability’ and especially foreign policy has ceased to cause alarm. That is perhaps all that needs to be said, since much of this is stale news to any observer or follower of Sri Lankan politics.

ICC and the UNP

With the release of the UNSG-Panel report, debate on Sri Lanka and the ICC seems to be intensifying in certain quarters. The report does have, in the eyes of the Western powers, some persuasive authority, but whether Russia and China would think so is still very questionable (going by the statements already made by Russia, in particular). One reason why these two veto powers might not yet be ready to do a Sudan or Libya may be due to the fact that doing so would be an implicit acknowledgment, even endorsement, of the precedent set by the UNSG in convening a Panel, getting its ‘advice’, and making the ensuing report a tool which allows Western powers to exert pressure on small and less-powerful States.

Since Sri Lanka is not a Party to the Rome Statute, it cannot be brought before the ICC. Sri Lanka should either be a State Party, or the situation in Sri Lanka should be referred to the ICC by the Security Council. Even the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC cannot successfully launch an investigation proprio motu (as per Article 15 of the Statute), since Sri Lanka is not a State Party, and therefore does not fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC. It was the Chief prosecutor himself, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, who stated somewhere in 2009 that he cannot do anything since Sri Lanka is not a State Party, and that one would have to convince the UNSC (see, video on YouTube, titled: ‘prosecutor for the International Criminal Court discusses the situation in Sri Lanka’).

Here, then, comes the United National Party (UNP), which has been quite fascinated by the Rome Statute. For quite some time, ever since 2009, the UNP (especially MP Mangala Samaraweera) has been tossing around an interesting claim. The recent version is contained in the UNP’s statement (The Island, 20 April 2011): “The people of a country can be subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court only if the said country is a signatory to the Rome Convention … During the tenure of Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe’s premiership in 2002, there was international pressure for Sri Lanka to be a signatory to this convention. However Mr. Wickremasinghe steadfastly refused” to sign.

The flaws contained in the statement above are obvious to anyone familiar with the fundamentals of treaty law, and the Rome Statute. For instance, a signatory is not a Party (a State becomes a Party only upon ratification or accession), and cannot be strictly bound by the provisions of the Statute. Also, this does not say anything about the power of the Executive President. Moreover, Mr. Wickremasinghe’s signature would have been immaterial had the UNSC decided to refer the matter to the ICC. Also, in any case, the crimes that the ICC could investigate are crimes committed after the Statute enters into force, i.e. 1 July, 2002, so obviously, the situation in 2002 was not so serious as to move the ICC (or the UNSC) to initiate an investigation in Sri Lanka.

Furthermore, the UNP does not state the following: that like in the case of Cote d’Ivoire, any government could, through a Declaration, accept the jurisdiction of the ICC (as per Article 12(3) of the Statute). Would, for instance, ‘President Ranil Wickremasinghe’ (note: this is a purely hypothetical case), under pressure from Western or other powers, accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, and enable the ICC to investigate the situation during the last stages of the armed conflict? If the intention of the UNP is to show that it is truly ‘patriotic’, or that its current leader is the great saviour of Sri Lanka, then it might be necessary for the UNP to state clearly that under no circumstances will it accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, anytime in the future too, through signature, ratification, accession or declaration.

Revisiting UNHRC?

Are we to return, then, to the UNHRC? Recommendation 4A of the UNSG-Panel Report is explicit: “the Human Rights Council should be invited to reconsider its May 2009 Special Session Resolution (A/HRC/S-11/1.1/Rev.2) regarding Sri Lanka, in light of this report.”

It seems that the UNHRC will be the forum that decides the true impact of the UNSG-Panel Report, at the geopolitical level. The recommendation shows how critical Sri Lanka’s ‘victory’ in May 2009 was, how strong an impact it had on the direction in which the debate on ‘accountability’ went. Is Sri Lanka ready to re-open, to revisit, the old debate? How confident is Sri Lanka of securing a ‘victory’, as she did in May 2009? What, for instance, does this tell us about the importance of the UNHRC, about the manner in which the Government of Sri Lanka acted soon after the ‘victory’ in 2009? In any case, if the UNHRC decides to revisit the matter, it will emerge as one of the most significant foreign policy challenges for the Government.

Conclusion

At present, the problem of ‘accountability’ seems to be set to be ‘resolved’, temporarily, at the UNHRC. It ought to have been ideally resolved in Sri Lanka, through a proper inquiry, through domestic mechanisms.

However, what remains to be done, at best, given the nature of the domestic situation, is the establishment of a credible truth and reconciliation process. Furthermore, serious measures need to be taken to ‘advance accountability’ in the short term. In this regard, the government would do well to implement the measures referred to in ‘Recommendation 2’ of the Executive Summary of the UNSG-Panel report. The short-term measures contained in ‘Recommendation 2’ are measures that can and should be adopted, irrespective of the serious concerns one may have with regard to the veracity of some of the accusations contained therein.

• Getting lost in The Hague: UN, Sri Lanka and an ICJ-Advisory Opinion
• Tamil National Alliance statement on the leaked UN report: An irrefutable confirmation of events
• Petition against UN Panel’s report on accountability: Opposing what exactly?
• Waiting for the end of the LLRC
• Not signing the Rome Statute is not enough! (A response to Ranil Wickremasinghe and Mangala Samaraweera)

Of late there have been several critical comments levied against the manner in which Sri Lanka has conducted her diplomatic relations.  Traditional alliances with the Western world have become somewhat stilted, new alliances have been forged, while fortunately the tempo of our relations with the SAARC countries, our regional neighbours, have remained stable.  The shifts in the balance of power relations have created a certain amount of suspicion and hostility among the Western Powers.  The entry of China, the bête noir of India, has also introduced heightened alertness, but not disharmony into the Indo- Lanka relations.  Sri Lanka needs to fine tune her diplomatic skills as we are dependent on the West for much of our trade, financial aid and investments as much as we are on India, especially with the need to keep the regional balance.

Some of the charged atmosphere in Sri Lanka’s international relations, have not always been the   consequence of our actions, although a significant number of them certainly are.  However it must be reckoned that small countries like Sri Lanka with no significant clout in size, economic power or strength in weapons technology, military arsenal or nuclear capability have to consciously steer diplomacy with an eye to win friends and influence them to keep our strengths and weakness in balance.  For  Sri Lanka, a small country, diplomacy remains the only tool to manoeuvre her international positioning; successes and failures in the international market places have to be measured by the way diplomacy is used to establish and nurture alliances, to secure political, economic and security advantage in today’s complex environment .  Diplomacy is a fine art; it has to be constantly fine tuned to face the challenges in the globalised world.  No country can behave as if it is an island (even if it is one) that can shut itself from outside influences and intrusions. International relations thus become a live performance, the rules of conduct to be strictly adhered to.

The Foreign Ministry is traditionally responsible for the nation’s international relations based on the policy statement and directives of the government. Today following the end of the cold war and the fast engulfing globalised world the nomenclature of diplomacy has changed dramatically.  While the traditional role of diplomacy remains important the area of concerns for the nation and the international community has grown in scope.  Consequently new players have entered the field and are producing an ever enlarging canvas for the formulation of foreign policy. Foreign poilcy is no longer viewed from a prism of only diplomacy but is viewed through a multi pronged focus both in terms of agenda and action, each player  paying attention  to  one or more issues.  This new approach needs to be wrapped for in the study and fusion of all the salient factors raised by the different players to formulate and gain a comprehensive view of the whole

Impact of intra conflicts on international relations
Sri Lanka has undergone great stress over the past three decades.  The nation state has been under continuous armed challenge from dissidents both in the South as well as in the North and East of the island.  The southern contest was based on the rich poor divide, on antagonisms built around elitist control of the economic and social base, with English used as the instrument of discrimination and deprivation to those largely educated in the vernacular.  The Northern and Eastern conflict grew around ethnic identity and the discriminations that resulted in restricted public service recruitments, admissions to universities, and to the private sector.  The southern rebels were vanquished and they have come into the democratic process and now, ironically, produce the biggest sound bites for the protection of human rights and human security.

The ethnic conflict has ended with the elimination of Prabhakaran and the destruction of the LTTE forces. These two challenges to State authority installed the culture of violence as a ‘resource’ for disgruntled elements to use at will and for the state to respond with state violence, used with impunity to restore law and order.  Dismantling the violent forces from these two areas, was accomplished over different periods in time, one towards the end of late 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s and the other, in 2009.  South has settled down and relative order prevails in the North East.  The cessation of war in the latter has not restored the equanimity of the peace dividend essential for a country to function unhindered. This background is necessary to understand the multifaceted context within which foreign policy has to be crafted for Sri Lanka.

In today’s complex environment a couple of divisive forces with agendas peculiar to their own particular narrow needs tend to create fissures in the process of peace building and reconciliation that puts additional demands on the government’s diplomatic skills.  The opposition is permanently on an adversarial mode looking to raise controversy wherever possible, within and externally, to gain electoral advantage with no concern for nation building and cohabitation.  The southern rebels who have now formed themselves into a political party are still on agitation politics (Since some of the causes for which they rebelled have still not been addressed) focussed on destabilising the government, any government in place.  The Ethnic war has thrown up new forces with financial resources and/or potential to make wealth, to contend with.  One the Diaspora, an amorphous entity spread in various parts of the world but mostly in the West have at their command access to financial, intellectual, engineering and communication skills.  They have also through their financial and electoral presence become a powerful entity to be reckoned, exerting influence far in excess of their numbers in the developed countries where they are in residence.  Their whole focus is on destabilising Sri Lanka by maligning the country with critical accusations not always substantiated with proof, but since such accusations are often unquestioningly accepted it makes Sri Lanka vulnerable.  Their aim is to secure international support for the two nation agenda of the Diaspora.

Two, the war has also brought about a whole host of unsavoury elements to the forefront: those who profited from the war economy and therefore would like the war to continue; the war environment under which breaches of the law is possible which unfortunately has created a culture of impunity whereby lawlessness has become the norm; the law enforcement has become increasingly ineffective while governance practices are falling short of the ideal.  These individuals and groups have created untold damage to the image of the country, no doubt in some instances the outcry has a backing of truth but most of the time they are laced with half truth and lies.

Three, there are any number of individuals and organizations in the West ready and anxious to be the torchbearers for causes they believe to be built around human rights and human security, freedoms, particularly that of personal freedoms and the media.  Mired in the host of problems facing a post war period the government continues to grapple on many different areas and it is here that informed leadership is essential to guide the institutions of public policy and its implementation on a focussed manner.  Fresh look at diplomacy has to be taken to review new and more effective techniques in keeping with modern trends.

Inclusion of new players and agenda
Sri Lanka must realize that in the globalised world territorial borders have lost its rigidity and weight since there is a convergence of concerns by the entire international community on the political, military, economic and social contours of all countries in a more intrusive manner.  The tentacles that reach out preclude the nation state from making claims of sovereignty to exclude the international community from its ‘surveillance” mode.  There are no longer agendas that are exclusively nation state bound; they have emerged as a focus for common interest and are interdependent or linked to national and international welfare.  This calls for not only transparency and accountability from the national governments in all their activities within the country but also provides space for dialogue within the country and abroad.  Diplomacy is no longer confined to political matters conducted on the bilateral and multilateral platforms.  The new areas of international concern are directed at nation’s security as well as human security within the nations as essential categories of commitment to the countries and people.  As referred to by  Milan Jazbec, the UN High Panel Report of 2004 has listed ‘economic and social issues as threats’: poverty, health hazards, human and food security, climate change, migration, interstate and internal conflict, nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons as well as terrorism, transnational organized crime as matters of concern to the international community.  These issues vie for primacy along with the traditional diplomatic agenda, to be tackled by national governments in complicity with one another.  The new players on the field of international relations are the non governmental organizations like the civil society, media, NGOs, and the private sector working in concurrence with the traditional sources of diplomacy.  No country can wish these new players away without incurring the suspicion and wrath of the international world.  These grass roots organizations have opened up a ‘listening route’ which in turn has brought to attention the urgency to feed the public with information, an omission missing in the conceptualisation of public policy in the past and at present as well.  The new players have the advantage of expertise and resources often unavailable to the state particularly in the small countries.  The nation state shares sovereignty with the regional powers and the international agencies in the public interest of all the people.

This is the context in which Sri Lanka has to function.  There is a failure to fully comprehend that after the ‘global and structural changes’ in the late 1990’s the  “state is squeezed by the global and regional processes of international integration”(Jazbec 2001,35) and has been compelled to find a balance between the needs of internal governance and the requirements of an ever more interdependent world.  The nation state’s reliance on ‘ absolute and exclusive sovereignty has passed; “its theory was never matched by reality”.  Had Sri Lanka been more conscious of these parameters many a pitfall of the recent years and even today could have been avoided.

Having generalised thus far it is time to look at the Sri Lankan profile vis a vis the international community. The accepted formula for any crisis a country faces is to make effective use of the three f’s : “to focus, to be flexible and to act fast.”  Sri Lanka did not always make timely use of this dictum.  We have in the last decade or more lost the close ties we have had with a number of friendly states within the international community.  Our long standing friends of many years standing in the developed countries, in the developing countries (facilitated by our leadership and effective participation in the non- aligned movement since its inception), within the Commonwealth countries and in the regional associations of SAARC and even of ASEAN (where we were invited to join, which offer was not taken up by Sri Lanka).  Of late there has been an adventurous attitude of taking on the West and posing challenges that could not be sustained, while making tactical moves to diversify the nations’ international relations base.  This could not be faulted had soft diplomacy been used to send some of the punches which indeed were more often than not richly deserved.  It is not what you say but how you say is what maters and we failed in the way we gave voice to our dissent.

In the field of communication technology particularly with the media we failed to make use of this important medium to be our spokesperson and provide ‘precise information’.  Sections of the media with serious security concerns, became estranged and therefore magnified out of proportion some of the controversial issues within the country that the international community subsequently picked on.  Sections of the media that owed unreserved commitment to the government presented exaggerated versions of the ‘truth’, so much so that their cases were laid to rest even before one perused their presentations.  The country unfortunately has to deal with groups of people and organizations who have their own agendas which constantly portray negative issues that are best left within the country to be sorted out and agitated over for remedial action.  While this forms only a part of the picture, it is vital that the state also restrains itself from the temptation to see everything in black and white permitting no grey areas or any overlap.  Either one is a friend or an enemy is a nursery concept played out by children in their early formative years.  Listening to criticism, reviewing and responding on the basis of facts that the review process brings out on such criticism is the only way for movement forward to strengthen foreign policy perspectives.

Post conflict factors
It is essential now to turn to the power play of realpolitik in the practice of international relations which has affected Sri Lanka adversely and placed us in many difficult situations.  It is an unspoken admission that often countries act in their own interests regardless of the much touted statements that the conduct of international affairs is based on the objective assessment of international concerns.  The relative and perhaps the temporary success of the politics of the Sri Lankan Diaspora should be scrutinised on the platform of the many fragmented concerns of the local political interests in the countries where the Diaspora is domiciled.    By exploiting their unique strengths in finance and the block vote bank they have in the western countries, they have successfully gained support from influential persons and organizations to highlight their anti- Sri Lankan posturing of the infringement of freedoms and security for the minorities within Sri Lanka.  The western powers have not given much credence to the lack of sufficient evidence to support some of the claims made by the Diaspora.  It is however, to the credit of the Diaspora that they have used the three F’s effectively to secure timely and favourable responses, unlike the state channels that have failed to use them in any convincing manner.  Unfortunately Sri Lanka does not see critical evaluations of policy from an objective standpoint.  The foreign policy lead players would be well advised to view opposing points of view as a point of departure from which controversial issues can be assessed with relative level of detachment and alternative positions sought, acceptable to all or to many, to put the contentious matters to rest. Had this been done, a more realistic approach to the post conflict peace building program could have been worked out with greater focus, flexibility and speed.  International disapproval for government inaction in critical areas under question will be a thing of the past and the country could have moved on, perhaps without the intrusion of the UN probe too. Instead of resentment in the face of a lack of substantial international support Sri Lanka should have remained friendly and proceeded with the peace building measures introducing effective constitutional changes to satisfy the long standing demands of the minorities.  This is perhaps the only reasonable way by which Sri Lanka could have put an end to the negative propaganda of the Diaspora and placed the country at a vantage point to strengthen relations with the Western powers.  It must also be said that remedial steps towards reconciliation and remedial action should be pursued because it is the right thing to do and not because we need to win the West over. Perhaps some of the criticism will still remain but at least the tenacity with which the international community is pursuing issues of human rights, freedoms particularly that of the media and reconciliation with the minorities on a permanent basis would have lost its steam in the event of constructive action being taken.

It is vital to bear in mind that “that the basic tenor of diplomacy have not been learnt” by politicians, foreign policy experts, sections of the media and the opposition.  It is vital that “those who know better must not speak in the undiplomatic language of the novice, estranging international opinion against us.” Sri Lanka has obviously quite unintentionally estranged many of our former allies by having the phobia that all the Western Powers are antagonistic to us and are intent on destroying our credibility in the international platform.  Such fears were given wide publicity not thorough diplomatic channels, but in the public domain, at political meetings, through the media and in the course of interviews to public organs for wide dissemination regardless o f the adverse consequences to the country.

Joseph Nye’s soft approach
Some options however are still open to Sri Lanka which we should seriously consider adopting.  Joseph Nye’s formulation of soft power is one such method that can be used to make friends among the international states and influence them.  Nye refers to the “…. ability to get others to do what they would otherwise not do, to act the way  you want them to act without coercion, payments, carrots or sticks”.  This could be the tactic for the government to pursue.   According to Nye soft power has three sources- a country’s culture, its values and its policies.  Unfortunately what appears to be the positive factors in Nye’s construction, has turned out to be negative features in the Sri Lankan context, because of the aggressive and partisan way in which what is good and noble in the religious and cultural values and policies have been used and continue to be used.

But where India is concerned Sri Lanka has taken the right steps.  Our relations with India have been strengthened; there is mutual trust and respect and healthy interaction in several important areas.  This is a unique example of the effective way in which we have consciously and constructively used the three f’s to focus, to be flexible and to act fast, while public diplomacy has been used to reap a significant measure of success.  In dealing with India a clear goal and a message of friendship has been relayed in the words of the President “we have many friends but only one relation” cannot fail to resonate in the south Block. India was always kept informed of important moves made by the government through special envoys, closely connected to the President which in itself was expected to convey a message of friendship.   Frequent visits are made to keep the dialogue alive, Indian dignitaries are welcomed as well as much publicity is given to the development assistance given by India and the lead role India plays in rehabilitation and reconstruction.  The unprecedented request of the Indian government to establish consulates in Jaffna and in Hambantota were accommodated.  These were some of the confidence building measures built to strengthen  Sri Lanka’s ties with India, the regional power.  This message of friendship gave confidence to India that friendship with other nations sometimes perceived as hostile to her were not part of a realpolitik move by Sri Lanka, but one of grave necessity for the country. Consequently India never turned her back on us throughout this period, before the end of the war or after.  Even the massive protests staged periodically in Tamil Nadu were contained with conciliatory moves to appease the very important southern constituency of India while giving Sri Lanka substantive confidence that India is a friendly ally on whom she could depend.  Matters could have got complicated had the situation been different.  The effectiveness of soft and public diplomacy had paid off. If we make the effort to use these techniques and win our friends in the developed world it will usher in a more productive period for the country.  If similar focussed measures are taken we can still repair our relations with the West.

Institution Building
Since the Foreign Service institution needs to be strengthened on acceptable credible international standards it is not out of place to quote once again ( I have used this excerpt in another article some time back) to quote from Sir Harold Nicolson’s classic treatise Diplomacy where he lists the qualities of a modern diplomat:  he has to be truthful and by this he means “not merely abstention from conscious misstatements but a scrupulous care to avoid the suggestion of the failure or the suppression of the true”; he has to have qualities of intellectual integrity, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, ….courage and tact.  Above all the diplomat “must have a special loyalty to his country, a loyalty that will prompt him to tell his government what it ought to know rather than what it wants to hear”.    In the selection of diplomats and experts to guide foreign policy intellectual competence cannot be short changed to accommodate favourites to plum positions in the service.  There should be no compromise in this as officials have to work with the best in the international world.  We have evidence in the past how our competent Officers pulled the country out of many pitfalls during the height of grilling process over human rights violations.  To successfully steer the country’s affairs in the international arena the qualities mentioned above are vital to the players both as individuals and in the collective.  It is time to realise that foreign service is not the prize for loyalty, for ridding the system of individuals who have passed the period of peak service but need to be recognized for their past contributions nor is it an employment pool for sons and daughters of individuals who have to be subsidized for their political support.  Foreign service by definition should come to mean as the ‘experts terrain’ of those who have to deal with their counterparts in the developed world, in the developing world, with the multi lateral organizations from whom we need to gain every ounce of advantage we can extract.  This is therefore no play centre for babes in the woods to be used for experimental learning experience. It is also not a cushy job to entertain and be entertained.  The diplomats have to come as streetwise as possible- comes from years of experience in the service-, intellectually equipped to grapple with the most complex issues and  use skills of negotiation to secure the best for the country. This certainly is not a public sector corporation to be filled with those brought in through the mismatch in the educational system. The leadership needs no tutoring on this, they should have arrived at the peak point in leadership with this lesson well ingrained. Then there is always hope for calm in our international relations.

National Interest a dominant factor
While portraying the ideal scenario for skilled diplomacy it is of immense importance to give expression to the other side of the coin, that is, that international players do not always adopt altruistic standards of measurement to assess country reviews. There were some pointers in the Economist of December 11, 2010 to justify the above statement.  The reference to the write up on “Dealing with Russia – Be critical not hypocritical”.   Issues raised in this article, is based on the writer’s evaluation of the ‘State’ of the Russian State.  He states that “the political system itself has fostered the growth of organized crime and corruption which even endangers lives…as an American diplomatic cables released on Wikileak note, the Kremlin is at the centre of a virtual mafia state.  This means that reforms in Russia cannot happen without a shake – up of the country’s system”.

Writing further on the human Rights abuses the columnist writes that the reluctance of the Western powers to condemn Russia is regrettable.  “There are countless examples of such pusillamiunity over the years;  a refusal to speak out against the war in Chechenya, a silence over the jailing of Mr. Khodorkovsky and theft of Youko’s assets;  France’s decision even after the Georgia war to sell Russia Mistral –class assault ships; most recently the failure of British Ministers to complain about the suspicious death in jail of Sergei Magnitskym a lawyer representing a London – based investor, who had uncovered  a massive fraud by Russia’s officials”.

This article is not about Russia or the acceptance or the rejection of validity of the critique on Russia but it is about the fact that in diplomatic relations narrow self – interest colour judgement of the ‘truth’.   There is a moral decadence in judgement with different measurements used for different countries.  The explanation the news item gives for such moral rectitude is that the West’s  “fear of upsetting the Russians whose help they wanted over Iran, led Western political leaders to bite their tongues this year”.

It is clear that relatively less powerful nations have no status in the conduct of diplomatic relations.  In this light Sri Lanka has no weight in the calculations of the West.  It would seem therefore that the country gets no credit for vanquishing a rebel group that challenged the nation using violence as its technique; that the President was slighted by the withdrawal of the invitation to address the Oxford Union because of protests staged in and around London and the possible threat of such protests in Oxford itself.  The respect due to Heads of Nations was appallingly overlooked; and so was the over indulgence for the protest staged by the Diaspora that brought about the denial of protocol to a visiting Head of State.

Equally pathetic was the cancellation of the Memorial lecture for the late Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was felled down by the terrorists, to be given by the Defence Secretary Liam fox, who has longstanding ties of friendship with Sri Lanka.  This period in time in which so much money and effort is put into demolishing the forces of terrorism, it is a sad record that the lecture had to be cancelled for a flimsy reason offered by the British foreign ministry.  This is the fate of small counties that have no bargaining value that could be traded in the international arena profitably to service other nations.

Wikileaks raises questions of “principle, practice and priority”.  But it does expose some of the contradictions in the perception and actual application processes; in integrity and realpolitick; the differentiation in the open and concealed face of diplomacy.  What is proclaimed as the principled policy stance to the world is frequently disclaimed in application through the machinations in state craft. “the big danger is that America is provoked into bending or breaking its own rules, straining alliances, eroding credibility and – it will not be able to muzzle Wikileaks- ultimately seeming impotent” (Economist Dec.11,2010  The Right reaction.)

Post war liberalism
But small nations can garner power if they begin within their own environment to reinforce “ humanity’s  belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all”.  Sri Lanka has faced the natural disaster as well as the uprisings in the north and the South.  Having introduced relative peace Sri Lanka can speak the words of Mandela “that the spiritual and physical oneness we all have with this common homeland explains the depth of the pain we all carried in our hearts when we saw our country tear itself apart in a terrible conflict …precisely because it has become the universal base of pernicious ideology and practice of racism and racial oppression.”  Sri Lankans must ensure that our victory over forces of destabilisation brings us just not the end of conflict but with it justice and the much desired human dignity.   It is vital that we do not continue to divide for there will be many occasions when transgressions are made which will tempt those subjected to injustice to want to divide. However having known the ravages of war and the toll it had taken in human suffering it would be foolhardy to whip up feelings to stage opposition stance; it will be wiser counsel to project the shortcomings and bring about an end to inequalities; efforts must be made to open up opportunities for development of the individual and the community and the emphasis must be on pacification rather than the arousal of anger in a charged atmosphere.  We could also in this period of transition learn many lessons from Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to non violence.  It is vital that we use the best skills in diplomacy to international relations as well as in the domestic sphere if permanent progress is what we have in mind. An understanding of these realities will give us a chance to forge ahead and be counted in the comity of nations. “A great nation cannot long be governed by wishful and simplistic thinking, denial, obfuscation, and deceit.  Cost mount, grievances accumulate, and there comes a reckoning”. (Paul Starr, Freedom’s Power)The country has to move on, emancipated  and forward looking strengthened by value based leadership to use diplomacy as the sharpened tool to toss away all the cobwebs in the system.

[Editors note: The author is the editor of Challenges for Nation Building: Priorities for Sustainability and Inclusivity. Nation building post war was written by the Editor of Groundviews for this publication.

• The Government’s farcical international relations
• The post-Prabhakaran government strategy in Sri Lanka and overseas
• Bell Pottinger and Sri Lanka: Millions spent for what?
• Taking note of the Lisbon Treaty
• India: ‘Hands on’?

Few in Sri Lanka care to know what is said in Parliament, and it is only when India vehemently denied the Prime Minister’s claim that there were LTTE training camps operating in India that most realised he had actually said it. The first media reports of the PM’s statement in Parliament noted that he had expressly said ” the LTTE has three training centers in Tamil Nadu and one is where the Tigers are being trained to assassinate VIPs” and that “intelligence information regarding this has been confirmed and warned that the Tigers may attempt to carry out small scale attacks in Sri Lanka as well.”

Emphasis ours.

The UNP questioned this assertion, noting that “this information regarding the LTTE being trained in Tamil Nadu seems to have been shared with the PM by the Defence Ministry in Colombo” and that “it is protocol for Sri Lanka to share such information with its neighbour considering that the claims are very serious.”

Later on 10th March, AFP and other international media carried a story that was the first egg on our PM’s face. Noting the unequivocal rejection of our Government’s claims, the article quoted Indian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Vishnu Prakash who said that India “…categorically denies [the] existence of any LTTE camps in India” and urged “Sri Lanka to desist from reacting to speculative and uncorroborated reports”. Interestingly, the rebuttal came via Twitter, which can be either read as as a sign of utter contempt at our confounded farrago of ‘confirmed intelligence information’ or being so annoyed as to use whatever media at their disposal to quickly allay any fears of an LTTE threat within their borders. The Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police Letika Saran went a step further and categorically denied every single assertion the PM had made in parliament.

This wasn’t good. In attempting to save face, our imaginative PM then claimed that he had based his submission in Parliament on two media reports, that had later turned out to be false. The Daily Mirror story on this is worth a fuller excerpt,

Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne said yesterday that his parliamentary speech, which asserted that there were three LTTE training camps in Tamil Nadu, had been based on some reports published in local newspapers; but that these reports had later been found to be false. Commenting on India’s rejecting his allegation, the prime minister said: “It was a thing mentioned in two newspaper reports. There appears to be false information in these reports. It was nothing more than that.” However, in his speech, he had said that there were intelligence reports regarding these camps.

After what was tantamount to a diplomatic slap in the face, trying to blame local media wasn’t very original. However, we decided to take his word and scoured the Sinhala print media for anything he may have misinterpreted to be a ‘confirmed intelligence report’. We found one article in the Divaina, published on 25th February, worth translating.

Download a high-resolution scan here (~3Mb).

The article, published on page 9, flags an Indian Home Affairs Ministry intelligence report which had stated that by 20th December 2010, a group of LTTE cadre in India had completed weapons training and procured arms. Later on in the article, quoting the same intelligence report by the Indian Home Affairs Ministry, the scribe notes that this group was going to target the Indian PM, Minister of Defence, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and others. We could not find any other reference to an armed LTTE presence in India in the Sinhala press.

We wonder what the Indians would have to say about a Home Affairs Ministry intelligence report that our government seems to know more intimately than they do. A report in the Daily Mirror today claims that the PM had made a statement acknowledging his mistake. However, there is no record of this statement on the Government’s official news portal, the Prime Minister’s official website (tellingly last updated in September 2010) or the Official Website of the Government of Sri Lanka.

We can only deduce that the PM’s retraction is an official secret, and while the government’s mistakes are free to misinform the public, the facts are kept well hidden. To add insult to injury, the Sri Lankan government actually believes that this kind of baseless allegation actually strengthens the friendship between India and Sri Lanka. As noted in the Daily Mirror today,

The government today said it was glad that the Indian government rejected the claim made by Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne that there were three LTTE training camps in Tamil Nadu. “The denial of the existence of LTTE camps in Indian soil strengthened the friendship between the two countries,” Youth Affairs and Skills development Minister Dullas Alahapperuma said.

Come again? Is this then an invitation to make all sorts of wild statements concerning the LTTE and India in the expectation of stronger bi-lateral relations? Or was this all a ploy that horribly backfired intended only to prolong emergency rule in Sri Lanka by the worst sort of fear-mongering?

After this fiasco, we can only hope India sees our PM’s pronouncements more as yarns for voters than informed commentary, for ours is a government that all too often neither knows nor means what it says.

Updated: 12 March 2010

A report published in the Island newspaper yesterday suggests the PM’s statements were based on reports published in the Indian media. LTTE’ camps in TN: PM’s statement based on Indian media reports by Shamindra Ferdinando, who we have flagged on this website earlier for his outrageous coverage of submissions to the LLRC, notes that

“a senior government official told The Island on the condition of anonymity, that the Premier Jayaratne had gone by what was reported in the Indian media. Premier Jayaratne had based his statement on Indian media reports dated Feb. 13, 2011 reproduced by local press the official said.”

The story alluded to is one published in The Hindu newspaper on 13 February 2011, titled “LTTE plans to target VVIPs during Assembly elections”. Long excerpts of the Hindu article that appear in the Island article prima facie suggest that the PM was right to believe and say what he did. However, it only takes a cursory reading of the original report in the Hindu to see that the PM, the Island and the Divaina only highlight what is convenient and match their own bias, ignoring other key points made explicitly. For example, nowhere in the Island or Divaina articles are the following paragraphs included in the Hindu report mentioned,

Ruling out the possibility of LTTE cadre regrouping in Tamil Nadu, [a senior police officer] said there was information about some “ex-Tigers organising human smuggling (of Sri Lankan Tamils staying in Tamil Nadu as refugees) to Christmas Islands (Australia) or Canada.”

Tamil Nadu Director General of Police Letika Saran said there was no presence of LTTE cadre in the State. “We take every alert message seriously…police investigate and go into the finer details of every input. The Coastal Security Group police are in constant touch with ‘village vigilance committees’ and will know of any suspicious activity along the coast.”

“As of now there is no specific input indicating any design of VIP security or internal security implications…there are general inputs which are being followed up,” Additional Director General of Police (Intelligence) M.S. Jaffar Sait said.

Emphasis ours. The more the government and their apparatchiks try to make out that this was the media’s fault, the more they look very silly. But for a government that got away with calling Sri Lankan Tamils jokers, there is no shame in continuing with business as usual.

• Curated updates from Indian Foreign Minister’s official visit to Sri Lanka
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• Sri Lankan refugees in India: “Are we the ones to bear this shame, are they the sacrifice”

The “Godayata magic“ of Oxford

There is a storm engulfing this country “ not the incessant rains and consequent floods that have brought much suffering especially to the rural poor and urban slum dwellers. Rather, it is a storm over the failure of our Head of State (somehow “President“ seems inadequate to describe Our Great Leader) to gain access to the podium of a student debating society in a distant foreign land “ a debating society that does not even speak our languages at that! This comment focuses on the cultural contradiction we are seeing being acted out in this reversal of Orientalism: the plague of Occidentalism.

All the hue and cry and Parliamentary fisticuffs currently on-going seems to be about expressing outrage at this humiliating exclusion, condoling the Great Leader for his great loss, probing the causes of this huge debacle, identifying the operational lapses that led to it, and finding and targeting of the officials and other individuals deemed responsible for this violation of This Nation“s Right to be heard on that distant and exotic podium. Everyone who could be blamed is not merely being blamed but is being summarily dealt with “ no due process, let alone dignified process here. Rather, in true accordance with our great civilisation, nothing less than the august legislative chamber of our Dharma Dveepa was the first scene of a violent reaction. And then, of course, in the very name of our Great and Sovereign Nation (or “Race“? Am never sure since the all the sloganeering and shouting is in Sinhala), there is the, now ritual, raucous public agitation against the embassy of the Suddaa. I wonder whether there will be a “fast-unto-death“ (how ridiculously Biblical English is this Sri Lankanised re-wording of “death fast“!). In every way, clearly, the focus of outrage is this loss access to the podium at Oxford, not anything else. The anger against the Tamil Diaspora in this instance is about the stymieing of entry to Oxford. So, it is all about “Oxford“. Why is Oxford so important?

The Sinhalas may deprive the defenceless ethnic minorities of national recognition of their language, Tamil, but the Sinhalas themselves are busy frantically learning English and insisting that everyone in the country must learn English. In my childhood “Elocution“ was the fetish, although my most Anglicised parents disdained sending us for Elocution classes like other parents did their children on the grounds that our English is “perfect“ both in pronunciation “ sorry, enunciation “ as well as in grammar and idiom.

In later years I did thank my parents for my “perfect“ kaduva, as I watched far richer, infinitely more powerful, panjandrums and clawing and cloying would-be potentates cowering and struggling to match my impeccable enunciation (they didn“t even know what it meant) as they talked of “biscuts“ and wrote “looser“ when all they should have written was “loser“. The new rich still insist that “we need English to develop“, and send their children to English tuition at age 5 years!“ This mentality, of course, plays into the hands of the Anglicised (some post-Anglican) elite, who, worried about their waning cultural supremacy and ignorance of the vernaculars, promote English as the “link language“ and language of “development“ (another Occidentalist fetish) for all Sri Lankans!

Now we find that the most Sinhala supremacist and ultra-nationalist governing regime this country has seen (so far) is unashamedly going ga-ga over their favourite Bhoomiputhraya being invited to London (streets paved with gold) to speak to the “most prestigious“ Oxford Union of the “great“ Oxford University. Just days before Mahinda Rajapakse emplaned with tax-payers“ money to London, other government politicos were continuing their lambasting of “western imperialism“ and of imperialist “conspiracies“ using the Tamil diaspora and Tiger terrorists to undermine glorious Sri Lankan (read Sinhala-Buddhist) “civilisation“.

Just look at what the country“s First Gentleman, Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and prosecution-immune, all-powerful Executive President has done. Notwithstanding having previously emplaned at taxpayers“ cost to Oxford the first time he was invited a few years back, he got set to go, yet again, to a second invitation by that university student debating society. And His Excellency goes to all the trouble to strategise over weeks and months over the most opportune moment to visit the United Kingdom (I think “Kingdom“ increasingly touches a chord these days) without being arrested for war crimes and evading Tamil protests. He even spends more taxpayers money (both logistical costs as well as paid public service time) to send the country“s Minister of External Affairs merely to check out the lay of the land before his own private foray West. I am certain many officials of the External Affairs Ministry as well as the Presidential Secretariat (not to mention Srilankan Airlines) spent considerable taxpayers“ time and resources in consulting, communicating, analysing and assessing; all on this single project of getting Mahinda Rajapakse to “ what?

That is the question I raise: what has been the objective of all this Presidential effort; our First Public Servant“s endeavours? The objective has been to speak not just once, but twice, on the podium of a university student debating society! “Haaa“!“ some people might say, “This is not any old student society, but the OXFORD University student debating society!“

And THAT is the whole point of this comment. What exactly is the significance of the OXFORD student debating society over, say, the Jawaharlal Nehru University student debating society or the Beijing University student debating society, or the Columbia or Princeton University student debating society (if they have this kind of student extra-curricular activity), or, for that matter, the Colombo University student debating society? It must be noted that the Oxford Union is not any serious university student political movement, as such. The Oxford Union is merely an extra-curricular activity body “ a debating society – just like it is in Mahinda College or Royal College or Ananda College. The people who would attend a session of the society would be the student undergraduate and graduate members (usually more undergrad kids than grad) “ certainly not the bulk of the university“s student body nor the bulk of the faculty.“ And certainly no major opinion leaders of the UK or business leaders or political leaders would be attending. Thus the influence of the speaker making the speech hardly goes beyond the young minds of those students attending the lecture and, via a sycophantic media of the speaker“s own country, the minds of the Sri Lankan media audience “ especially the Sinhala rural masses.

If, for example, President Obama addresses the Beijing University student body, he does not aim to influence Chinese business or policy makers. He does that by meeting them directly. In addressing Chinese students in a staged session on campus he aims at creating a certain “social outreach“ which, too, depends on massive media coverage which then transmits the session to a large Chinese general society audience. And that is why such special sessions with students are deliberately staged by the host country and is done so as an item on an official visit agenda.

The Sri Lankan president was not functioning in such circumstances of a nationally staged session with students with massive media and public attention at all. Thus his Oxford speech would certainly not have made headline news in the UK. Even the Tamil agitation, sensational as it tried to be, did not make major headlines in the UK “ fortunately for Rajapakse and for our country!

Then what is the significance of “Oxford“, if it does NOT provide a major influence platform? The significance is the perceived social acceptance and recognition given to someone who places major value on such recognition. Recognition by what and whom? Recognition by the mainly undergraduate students of one of the world“s elite educational institutions, but more so, by an institution which, among certain social circles, has a very high social class status. Oxford, along with Cambridge, is where the British Lords and Ladies were educated and sent their children to be educated (if they made the grade); it is where the world“s rich society and aristocratic-rich society gets educated and sends there children to be educated.

Because Sri Lanka was colonised by the British, Britain, more than any other imperial western power, looms large in the yet colonially subservient mentalities of many Sri Lankans “ fortunately a decreasing number. For people of former Francophone Africa, the Sorbonne may loom similarly large “ at least among those who place value on such colonial attributes. But the Sorbonne, in republican France, cannot boast of patronage by royalty or aristocracy. For colonised Sri Lanka “ the most westernised society of all SAARC countries “ Oxford obviously is a much desired goal, just as much as “England“ is a desired goal. I have heard stout Sinhala-Buddhist patriots argue that they would much prefer a second colonisation by Britain to domination by India!

And such is nature of human desire and aspiration, that when one so intensely desires something and yet one cannot and never will achieve that desire, one can begin to hate and revile the object of that intense desire. I suspect that it is this spiritual subservience and the desire arising from it and, consequently, the rage of frustration by those social classes with no hope of attaining such goals, which gives rise to the extremity of ultra-nationalism, of xenophobia and anti-European anger that is encouraged and bursts forth from may corners of our country.

President Premadasa played to this gallery of “godayas“ when he went about the country implanting bits of dazzling “Kolamba“ and bits of “hi-tech“ magic in his various “Gam Udaava“ exhibition sites. We see the same in the current “Deyata Kirula“ tamashas. But Premadasa himself was politically sophisticated enough not to be too naively subservient to such cravings himself.

Not so the current social groups that have clawed their way (at long last) to state power in our democratic socialist republic. To them the “magic“ of “Engalanthaya“ “is real. It is the land of The Queen and the Lords and Ladies, and the fairy tale Prince and Princess. Such is the construct of Occidentalism. Just as much as the Europeans, arising from the colonial experience, have their construction of the “Oriental“ Being, so do the Orientals have their own, colonially mediated “Occidental Being“ construction of the Europeans, the Suddaas. And it is an interesting irony that some of the very people who, out of their ultra-nationalist and xenophobic fervour, revile the West, are those who now set so much store in “attaining“ Oxford and feel so deprived and humiliated that the grapes of Oxford are not theirs for the plucking. That is the paradox of Sinhala supremacism, a paradox that reveals the inner dynamic, the inner pathology, of the supremacist mentality: the Sinhala supremacists so lust for what they revile and reject.

The Anglicised elite, as it sneers at the “accents“ and misspellings and mixed metaphor of the “yakkos“ and “godayas“, is also subservient to such a Occidentalist construct and their own obsession with “bling“ serves to perpetuate the neo-colonial ideology among the masses who yearn and rage at their failure to attain what the elite already possesses.

And so our country must suffer the ignominy of botched attempts by the socially deprived and the socially depraved to attain the illusion, the mirage, of Oxford.

If our President had managed to evade the demonstrators and sneaked out of side doors and entered through back doors and made his speech in Oxford, he would have brought to Sri Lanka the dubious honour of being the only head of state of any country who has gone to all this effort and public expense to speak at a distant foreign student debating society for a second time.

Is this the “honour“ that Sri Lankans, mainly Sinhalas, sought when they voted en masse in 2004 for a politician who promised “peace with honour“? Is this the greatness of Sinhala civilisation that is now being hailed in the aftermath of a “great“ military victory?

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Dr. Marasinghe’s suggestion, in turn, raises greater problems, and is a risk that Sri Lanka cannot afford to take at this stage.

The unresolved ‘problem within a problem’

An AO from the ICJ, even if it is to be ‘favourable’ to Sri Lanka, would not be one which addresses the root of the problem; the problem of accountability and investigations. Dr. Marasinghe detects only the ‘international’ problem (i.e. the appointment of the Panel by the UNSG), and not this enduring domestic/internal problem of the inability to carry out investigations. Why so? It is because the Government, for quite some time now, believed that there was no problem, i.e. that there is absolutely no need to seriously investigate any of the allegations of IHL/HR violations because it argued that no such violations occurred during the last stages of the conflict. It is not very clear whether this position has changed, and one awaits in this regard the recommendations of the ‘Lessons Learnt’ Commission on the issue of ‘investigations.’ Even the response to the US State Department’s report is yet to be published (one could only ask ‘haven’t we replied yet?’ – as Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha MP seems to have asked, as mentioned during a recent interview with Radio Australia).

If Sri Lanka had resolved this problem, neither the West nor the UNSG could have raised any concerns regarding ‘accountability’. As long as that problem remains unresolved, there is nothing much to be gained by approaching the ICJ and seeking an AO (which is not legally binding).

UN Charter

Dr. Marasinghe seems to believe that the UNSG, by establishing the Panel, has violated certain specific provisions of the UN Charter, especially Articles 33 and 34 of the Charter. But, how could the UNSG violate these provisions when the establishment of the Panel has nothing to do with the subject matter covered under Articles 33 and 34?

Articles 33 and 34 come within Chapter VI entitled ‘Pacific Settlement of Disputes’. Article 33(1) basically states that parties to any dispute, the continuation of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall first seek solutions (by negotiations, enquiry, mediation etc.) or other peaceful means of their own choice. Article 33(2) states that the Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means. Article 34 states that: the Security Council may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.

These provisions refer, in the main, to ongoing disputes which are likely to threaten international peace and security. But what the UNSG has done is to appoint a Panel, one year after the conflict. So the UNSG’s clear argument would be that there is neither a dispute, nor one which threatens international peace and security, and therefore, Articles 33 and 34 are simply of no relevance. Even if one is to argue, as Dr. Marasinghe has done, that the panel appointed by the UNSG is ‘international’, Chapter VI doesn’t broadly cover the unique Sri Lankan case (The better provision to have cited would have been Article 100(1), of Chapter XV).

Now, it should not be forgotten that there are serious concerns with regard to the mandate of this particular Panel, or rather concerns regarding the understanding of the mandate by the members of the Panel. But this does not necessarily mean that specific provisions of the UN Charter have been violated (an accusation which gives rise to a serious legal argument), because the UN Charter does not seem to cover what a UNSG could do with regard to issues of ‘accountability’ in a ‘post-war’ situation when the conflict has ended and there is no dispute whatsoever between the conflicting parties. It is a problem of the largely outdated UN Charter, and this is exactly why the UNSG was able to appoint a panel and draft a mandate which seemed to please all actors concerned (the West, the panel, and even Sri Lanka, by stating that the Panel is available only as a resource), and still survive without any serious or strong condemnation (Note, in this regard, that even though news reports stated that Russia had ‘slammed’ the UNSG, Russia concludes the statement by pointing out that it hopes that the UNSG Panel would not complicate the investigation being conducted by the Sri Lankan authorities. That, I would argue, is good enough for the UNSG to carry on with the process).  If the UNSG-Panel had been established during the time of armed conflict, i.e. before May 2009, then certainly a strong legal argument could have been raised. But this is not the case. Therefore, when the provisions of the Charter are so vague and unclear, it is not in the best interest of Sri Lanka to take the matter to the ICJ.

Reaching the ICJ: the political process

Another factor Dr. Marasinghe ignores is the political process involved in taking the question to the ICJ. Dr. Marasinghe has not clarified this issue. The impression the reader gets is that any State could easily approach the ICJ and seek an AO on any legal question. No.

Article 96 (1) of the UN Charter states very clearly that it is the General Assembly or the Security Council which may request the ICJ to give an AO on any legal question. Article 96(2) states that other organs of the UN and specialized agencies may also make similar requests. Thereafter, Article 65(1) of the Statute of the ICJ affirms this position in stating that the ICJ may give an AO at the request of whatever body may be authorized by or in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations to make such a request.  Therefore, it is clear that Sri Lanka first needs to win over a majority of the General Assembly (in particular), and without such support, its efforts would not succeed. In any authoritative work on the ICJ’s jurisprudence (especially by the foremost authority on the ICJ, Shabtai Rosenne) one could find how requests for AOs have been made in the past (eg. Res. ES-10/14 of December 2003, adopted by 90 votes to 8 with 74 abstentions as regards the question of Israel’s illegal construction of the wall, Res. 49/75K of December 1994 adopted by 78 votes to 43 with 38 abstentions, as regards the question of illegality of nuclear weapons, etc. etc.).

But is this possible for Sri Lanka? Even the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has been so far reluctant to come out with a statement critical of UNSG’s decision, and in addition to this, the impact of Minister Weerawansa’s fast has been an extremely negative one, further damaging Sri Lanka’s credibility in the eyes of her friends.

Furthermore, what is interesting to note is that certain members of the NAM (as numerous news reports suggest) are observing this development from a different perspective. While Sri Lanka may be adversely affected, the precedent that the UNSG has set is extremely interesting and useful for some of the NAM members, because they could now exert pressure on the UNSG and request him to take similar action re. other cases: e.g. Israel (This, I would argue, is the only positive outcome of this whole exercise). So, even if the NAM supports Sri Lanka in taking the question to the ICJ, there is no guarantee that the NAM will be overly worried by the outcome, because given NAM’s interests, some of its members could benefit from any kind of AO that the ICJ decides to deliver. These are some of the considerations not raised by Dr. Marasinghe.

ICJ: the politics of law

Another serious factor that needs to be noted is the ‘politics of law’, or rather, the politics of the ICJ.  What makes approaching the ICJ risky is that one cannot be sure of what the Judges would state in response to a question as one posed by Dr. Marasinghe. There is certainly no guarantee that all of them would clearly hold that the UNSG has exceeded his powers. One reason is because, as pointed out above, the Charter provisions are unclear. (And do not forget, it was the ICJ which held in its Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996 that in view of the current state of international law it cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence. So holding that the law is unclear is nothing new!).  Even if the majority holds that the provisions are clear and that the UNSG has exceeded his powers, what would the impact be of a strong Dissenting Opinion of any single judge? And in such a scenario, wouldn’t there be judges who would come up with such individual opinions?

Take the composition of the court, and the ‘geo-politics’ surrounding the Sri Lankan issue. The US, for instance, has publicly welcomed the establishment of the Panel. In such a context, could one expect the US judge on the ICJ bench, Judge Buergenthal, seriously hold that the UNSG had no power to appoint a panel which advices him, and thereby ridicule the US’s decision to support the establishment of the Panel? Take US’s closest ally, the UK. Now, the present UK judge on the bench is not Judge Higgins (as Dr. Marasinghe seems to imply when he refers to her as “the judge”), but Judge Christopher Greenwood who is a strong defender of the UK government and its policy on humanitarian intervention. Judge Greenwood (then, as Prof. Greenwood, QC), strongly defended the NATO intervention in Kosovo and in this regarded defended the UK government in the ICJ as UK’s counsel, when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia sought provisional measures directing a halt to the NATO operations (he held similar controversial views concerning the Iraq invasion, and in this regard see The Evening Standard report titled ‘Easy Justice for QC who took us to war in Iraq’). Now, given the politics surrounding the issue and the response of the West with regard to the establishment of the UNSG Panel, how would these judges approach the issue, what would they say?

It is due to the above – which seem to raise more problems (and not any meaningful solution) for Sri Lanka – that I fail to agree with the suggestion proposed by Dr. Marasinghe.

Conclusion

There was, and there is, a simple answer to these numerous ‘international’ problems which seem to be piling up: the investigation of all serious allegations of humanitarian and human rights law violations. This was not done, and whether it would be done in the future is unknown. But as long as that problem remains unresolved, different and difficult problems will continue to trouble Sri Lanka. Going in search of Advisory Opinions to The Hague without seriously addressing that enduring domestic problem is of little use. In fact, going anywhere near The Hague could be pretty dangerous.

(Kalana Senaratne, LL.B, LL.M (University College London), is a post-graduate research student at the University of Hong Kong)

• UNSG Panel Report on Sri Lanka: Revisiting ‘Accountability’
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• A tragi-comedy? The UN Advisory Panel and war crimes in Sri Lanka

This short essay attempts to analyze the impact of Indian policy on the Sri Lankan political and military developments for the last 30 years through the rearguard in Tamil Nadu and how it has shaped our political agenda on the ethnic issue.

Role of the rearguard

The Tamil armed struggle had a trustworthy, stable and dependable rearguard which was easily   accessible by sea from the North and East. It became their main supply line throughout the war. It was politically and militarily supportive and culturally compatible since it was historically connected with the Sri Lankan Tamils. Such a rearguard for guerilla warfare is an ideal one for sustained protracted guerilla warfare against a militarily and politically powerful enemy if used strategically. However, the LTTE’s   lack of political maturity and the pursuit of unprincipled and dangerous application of violence changed the political support they could enjoy in Tamil Nadu. The decision to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi proved to be a costly mistake for the LTTE. The LTTE’s political and military ruthlessness has often been seen as strength, feared but also admired. While it has sometimes been as seen as bad for their image, the role that the LTTE’s violent politics played in placing them into a strategically weaker position both politically and militarily has not been sufficiently considered. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Tamil Nadu could no longer be counted on for the level of support it had once provided the Tigers. .  When the LTTE leadership was cornered and decimated by the Sri Lankan army on 18 May 2009, in Vellamulaivikkal the Tamil Tigers paid in full for their past mistake. Had not the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, the conclusion of the Eelam war could have been entirely different.

The protracted guerilla war against the Sri Lankan state has been possible due to the existence of    the Indian rearguard and its stable base in Tamil Nadu. The Indian rearguard had a twin purpose, military as well as political throughout its existence. Firstly it enabled a group like the LTTE to conduct a war using a rearguard in a foreign soil with a relative safety.  The Sri Lankan    state had no capacity to place a watertight naval blockade to stop any supply lines. As a consequence, the feared Sea Tiger wing was able to establish a complete domination of the sea across Falk Strait until the last phase of the war. Secondly, the Eelamists were able to exert pressure on the Indian Government through Tamil Nadu to gain political and military advantages when the war was not going well in their favaour. The Indian rearguard would have been the envy of any guerilla leader elsewhere but Prabaharan showed his inability to understand or appreciate its value in political and military terms for the LTTE’s future when he ordered the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in1991.

The Indian government had its own political reasons for allowing Tamil militant groups the use of Tamil Nadu since 1979. The LTTE’s activities there would not have been possible without the knowledge of RAW. After the 1983 riots in Colombo, the Congress party allowed the training of guerilla fighters in Tamil Nadu for use against the Sri Lankan state, enhancing the party’s support in that region.    In addition to this internal political advantage it also provided greater possibilities for India to re-balance the   regional political forces in the South Asian region. The Indian contention has been that the Tamil grievances among Sri Lankan Tamils were    unresolved. The sharp contrast between the basic democratic rights enjoyed by people living in Tamil Nadu as opposed to the Sri Lankan Tamils gave a legitimate weight to India’s efforts to resolve the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka.

Military intervention

In 1987, Indian troops came to North and East following the Indo-Lanka Agreement signed between Rajiv Gandhi and President J.R. Jayewardene. This led to the second JVP rebellion as they portrayed the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) as an invading army   of the Indian imperialism supported by the USA and its imperialist policies. The Indo -Lanka Agreement   pushed for the devolution of power to the Tamil community in the North and East through the 13^th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution which inflamed anti-Tamil and anti-Indian sentiments in the Sinhalese south. The JVP led armed struggle against Jayewardene and the UNP became destructive and    the JVP was able to deepen its Sinhalese political and social base. Some sections of the SLFP and Buddhist clergy were attracted by anti-Tamil and anti-Indian ultra-nationalist passions and proved responsive to the JVP’s message.

The JVP also assassinated left activists and others who supported the devolution of power under the 13^th amendment. All the democratic and left activists who supported the devolution package were branded as the fifth column of the Indian imperialism by the JVP. The IPKF was not prepared to leave Sri Lanka but they found no one on their side either militarily or politically except the EPRLF which could not assert its political independence .The IPKF was militarily vulnerable and politically isolated. The LTTE also fought   against the Indian Army in the North and East until the IPKF was finally withdrawn from Sri Lanka by the end 1989. President Premadasa who was elected as President after Jayewardene had provided   weapons to Tamil Tigers secretly to fight against the IPKF. His political naivety in trusting the LTTE was disastrous and his misjudgment was probably driven by his desire for regaining Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. Later on 1 May in 1993, the LTTE assassinated President Premadasa in Colombo. Rajiv Gandhi had also become a victim of a LTTE suicide bomber in Tamil Nadu in 1991.  India had her own bitter lessons in the destructive nature of Sri Lankan politics. Nevertheless, they remained vocal in support of the devolution of power to the North and East. At the same time the militant groups also learnt their bitter lessons. They could not go beyond India’ political interests and never agreed for a separatist political solution to the Sri Lanka’s ethnic issue. When the LTTE refused to accept a solution based on the 13^th amendment India committed its troops to fight against the LTTE.

Even after the IPKF withdrawal the Indian influence on Sri Lankan politics has not diminished. The Indo-Lanka Agreement signed in 1987 and its political objectives of devolution of power still drive our political process and this will continue in the foreseeable future and beyond. The Indo-Lanka Agreement and its political proposals have made a lasting impact on the issues of political democracy and pluralism despite the bitter and destructive civil war it generated in both communities in the country.

Closing the rearguard

Closing down the Indian rearguard is primarily a political act .The Indian request for the devolution power to the Tamil community in Sri Lanka is a prerequisite in this endeavor. Unless Sri Lanka is prepared to do their bit, the political closure of the Tamil Nadu support for a separate state in the North and East will not simply go away. Even after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi the Tamil Tigers were able to get the support in order to get the war going against Sri Lanka.Howver   following the defeat of the Tigers a political solution to the Tamil community will offer a greater capacity for India to close down the rearguard in Tamil Nadu. India has assured the Sri Lankan State time and again that it will respect Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity to allay the Sri Lankan fears and to encourage political devolution of power. However, the Sri Lankan leadership so far has not made a firm commitment to devolution despite the Indian assurances.

The problem has been the lack of political courage and imagination on the part of the Sri Lankan leadership to overcome the opposition by the Sinhalese chauvinist political forces in implementing a package of devolution to the Tamil community in the North and East. As long as a solution is not offered the external threat of political interference remains   and that will continue to destabilize Sri Lanka. India will bring up the issue again and again as it has done so far at the diplomatic front. This will encourage the Tamil community to action as they realize in their day to day existence that the Indian diplomacy is morally and politically correct and India has been advancing solutions to their grievances since the Eelam war has begun. It is politically ironic and nationally   embarrassing in a democracy when your neighbor has taken up the issue of political democracy on behalf of a community that lives within your own political borders. When the Indian diplomacy is exhausted the Indian rearguard will re-emerge even without the Indian patronage. This is a vicious cycle that    Sri Lanka cannot politically and militarily afford experience again.

The Sri Lankan political leadership needs to understand that the defeating the LTTE is not going to resolve the democratic rights issue and we need to address it not simply   because of the Indian concerns but because the devolution of power is morally and politically correct .We need to be realists and India is our powerful neighbor . Given the regional political balance of forces and the political history of ours we need India on our side. Political stability in Sri Lanka would benefit both India as well as Sri Lanka.

Conclusion

The LTTE’s comprehensive military defeat at the hand of the Sri Lankan military has taken us back to the fundamental political issue that is the test of our resolve and courage to offer a reasonable political solution to the Tamil grievances. When this was not forthcoming India redefined its role as Sri Lanka’s neighbor. The Indian intervention in Sri Lankan    politics through the Indian rearguard and the shadow of its long arm should be dislodged .However, in order to remove this Sri Lanka should act in a way that it fulfills the democratic aspirations of the Tamil community within a united Sri Lanka.The devolution of power through the 13^th amendment will be a basic democratic requirement in this exercise. Our sovereignty as a democratic nation will be safer only when we resolve the Tamil community’s grievances. In the absence of a political solution, will the history repeat itself?

Time will tell.

• India: ‘Hands on’?
• On the Air to Tamil Eelam?
• Crossing Red Lines: The New Tamil Consensus in Sri Lanka
• India, Sri Lanka and the Minority Question
• Sri Lankan Identity in a Time of Seige

Download the 162 page compilation of content as a PDF in high quality (25.4Mb), or low quality (3.7Mb). The low quality version is good enough to read, but the photos will look and print much better in the high quality version.

From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of commentary. Tens of thousands more have read and commented on this content since, making the special edition a sui generis archive of intelligent debate, incisive critique and vital perspectives that mainstream media in Sri Lanka, even post-war, is too fearful to feature.

For example, one memorable and particularly hard-hitting comment inspired by the content in this special edition came from Tathagata Bose, an Indian medical doctor who based on direct experience with the treatment of large civilian casualties at Menik Farm just after the end of war averred:

“I am an Indian pediatrician who served with the Indian Medical Team at Menik Farm IDP center. The point I am trying to raise is this – we were managing scores of infants with bullet / shell blast injuries (some festering, mostly healed). It gives an idea of the extent of collateral damage suffered by the civilians caught in the last days of the conflict. If an infant could not be protected, imagine the plight of older children and adults. The so-called “Sri Lankan Solution” being touted as the panacea for dealing with terrorism worldwide needs a thorough relook.”

A significant challenge when publishing web content in print form is to capture the vibrant nature of online debate and discussion. Because of the sheer volume of reader generated commentary, this volume only contains the original contributions by the authors. Links are provided to each article on this site, and readers are very strongly encouraged to engage with online comments.

The articles are published in the order they appeared on the site. However, the final three essays were not part of the special edition online and are included because the authors anchor their key arguments to issues, processes, people and events flagged in the special edition.

Groundviews was set up to bear witness, contest the status quo and document inconvenient truths. The comment by Dr. Bose alone is a cogent example of the site’s unique role, recognition and continued relevance post-war.

The content in this special edition alone is a compelling record of hope that risks disappointment, defiance that trumps despair and a resilient, indefatigable search for identity, truth, accountability and closure – vital narratives that need to be heard and which can’t be censored, curtailed and contained.

Veritas vos liberabit.

• 1,000 posts on Groundviews: Bearing witness, shaping peace
• Groundviews back online, with new features and enhanced for mobile phones
• Long Form journalism: An invitation to contribute
• Launch of Groundviews 2.0: New features, enhanced readability, comprehensive search
• Scheduled downtime for Groundviews

Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I begin this interview with a pointed question, asking Dr. Saravanamuttu to flag anything the government has done well since it assumed power in 2005, in the domains of governance and human rights. I go on to ask Dr. Saravanamuttu why it is that what he sees as enduring challenges to human rights, peace, development and governance are not issues the majority of voters agree with, or are able to discern.

We also talked about the nature of economic activity and development in the North and the East, where Dr. Saravanamuttu noted that “economic development by itself cannot be the sole instrument of national unit, reconciliation, integration”. Sri Lanka’s political culture and the growing intra-party violence within the UPFA, the future of Tamil politics, reconciliation, the role of the international community, prospects for dissent and democratic debate post-war and modes of progressive engagement between the Tamil diaspora are also issues broached in this interview.

Speaking on the mandate the President and the UPFA have received from the presidential and parliamentary elections, Dr. Saravanamuttu at the end of the interview flags three key issues the government should be concentrate on with this popular support in mind.

• In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
• Prospects for post-war human rights in Sri Lanka: Interview with Sunila Abeysekera
• Ground realities in Jaffna and its environs: Two key perspectives
• On Lasantha Wickremetunge, media freedom and human rights in Sri Lanka: Interview with Dilrukshi Handunnetti
• Human rights: Hackneyed or heightened in post-war Sri Lanka?

Members of the Sri Lankan military who were engaged in the war against the LTTE, members of the Ministry of Defense, and the Sri Lankan president are in no real danger from being prosecuted by the ICC. The ICC, based in The Hague, The Netherlands, is the first ever permanent international institution with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals responsible for the most serious crimes of international concern: genocide, crimes against humanity, the crime of aggression, and war crimes. The ICC treaty, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, went into force in 2002.  To date, 139 states have signed and nearly 100 states have acceded to or ratified this treaty. In order for a country to be under the jurisdiction of the ICC, it the Rome Statue has to be ratified. Asia is poorly represented at the ICC, and countries such as India, Pakistan, and China are not signatories.  Sri Lanka is not party to the statute.

The ICC only has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, the crime of aggression, and war crimes under the following circumstances:

1. If the state is party to the Rome Statute.  Sri Lanka is not party to it.
2. If the alleged crimes have been committed in a country, or, if the crime was committed onboard a vessel or aircraft which is party to the statute (all alleged crimes have occurred in Sri Lankan territory).
3. If the alleged individuals are nationals of countries party to the convention.  All possible members are either Sri Lankan or American.  Because neither country is party to the convention, the ICC does not have any jurisdiction.
4. If Sri Lanka requests the ICC investigate such crimes which may have occurred due to its own inability to do so.
5. If the alleged crimes committed are referred to the Prosecutor by the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.  Any such move by any member of the United Nations Security Council would be blocked by either China or Russia.  Both are permanent members of the Security Council, due to our close diplomatic ties and due to their own internal considerations and these two countries would not ago ahead with any such investigation.

To date, three states party to the Rome Statute – Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic – have referred situations occurring in their territories to the Court. All three states are Party to the Rome Statute and thus fall under the jurisdiction of Rome Statute.

In addition, the Security Council has referred to the ICC the situation in Darfur, Sudan – a non‐state party. The Prosecutor has opened and is conducting investigations in all of the above-mentioned situations. Nearly 80 percent of the cases that are referred to ICC are turned down because they are manifested outside the jurisdiction of the Court; only 20 percent actually warrant further analysis.

Also of note, is that even if Sri Lanka were a signatory of the ICC, the jurisdiction of the ICC would be complementary to national courts, meaning that the Court would only act when countries themselves are unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute. Thus, even if we were signatory to the statute, if these alleged crimes were investigated in Sri Lanka there would be no room for the ICC to step in.

Taking these facts into consideration, there is no real danger of any case being brought against the members of Sri Lankan Military or the current administration. Such fears are simply unfounded.

Shakya Lahiru Pathmalal is a Political Consultant.

• Much ado about nothing: Is Sri Lanka in danger of being held accountable by the International Criminal Court?
• Not signing the Rome Statute is not enough! (A response to Ranil Wickremasinghe and Mangala Samaraweera)
• UNSG Panel Report on Sri Lanka: Revisiting ‘Accountability’
• Assessing the Validity of Legal Challenges to the UN Panel Report
• Violating the Madhu Sancuary – Some brief thoughts

It is being reported in the local press and local electronic media that the Rajapakses have gained popularity among Sinhala voters in recent days because the UN Special Reporter Philip Alston, the UN Secretary General, and the Western press, have reinforced their accusations of human rights violations and war crimes against the Rajapakse regime. UN and other agencies and officials, and the press, in many countries, now say that the Channel-4 execution video is authentic, and that it conforms to a larger pattern of violations.

The accusers are not LTTE extremists and only the mentally retarded will suggest that these parties and persons are in the pay of the LTTE, or that they are motivated and impelled by the Tamil diaspora.

I just don’t get it! The world seems to be standing on its head! How do you become more popular when criminal accusations against you are reinforced? Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Shouldn’t decent people become cautious, if not sickened, and demand investigation?

Indeed this goes for Fonseka too, if investigations reveal an involvement; and of course it goes for the LTTE leaders as well. This was my reaction upon reading the UTHR(J)’s recent report about the horrors the LTTE committed in the closing months of the war.

There are two possible explanations for this weird display of public sentiments.

These reports of enhanced popularity of alleged war criminals are false; actually people are sickened, but a biased media paints a false picture.

Alternatively, this is a psycho-pathological phenomenon, a case of mass neurosis, what Freud called the madness of mobs, sweeping across sections of our society. Germany in the 1930s during the rise of fascism was a previous example. I hope the former explanantion is truer; otherwise my confusion will need to turn to dismay

• The brutality of our times: After the Delgoda massacre
• Amnesty Campaign: Some quick thoughts
• Exceptional responses to questions from media
• Speaking lies to power: Sri Lanka’s PM and the LTTE in India
• The Government’s “Eastern Rising”

Prof Schalk should spend his time analysing how the armed movement and the leadership he thought were militarily so superlative as to be undefeatable by the Sri Lankan state’s armed forces, were decimated earlier this year. When we last met at breakfast at the faculty club of Georgetown University in late 2005 I had just told the audience of the seminar we attended and Prof. Schalk personally, that by any international standard the LTTE’s strategic achievment was unimpressive and that this time they would lose.

In this article, he clearly caricatures me in category or type 2. As an academic he should not be so careless. I challenge him to quote with sources, one – just ONE – use by me of “filthy …language” in my “capacity as a diplomatic representative of Sri Lanka”. He says my language “alienated him completely from a sophisticated diplomatic and academic-critical discourse.” Since I have just now finished reading a review in the latest issue of the Journal of Latin American Studies, Cambridge, in which a Brit academic says my Fidel book “makes a profound philosophical argument” and uses as a counterpoint, the great thinker Alasdair MacIntyre, I am hardly likely to be fazed by the prospect of “complete alienation from academic-critical discourse”. Prof. Schalk, on the other hand, has earned the reputation of a slightly eccentric fellow traveller of the Tigers.

Prof. Schalk also says that ” in international diplomatic circles [I am] known as “Bully”. Now which circles would those be? The states that unanimously elected me Chairperson of the Inter-Governmental working Group on the Effective Implementation of the UN’s flagship anti-racism document , the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action? Maybe I bullied over hundred states into so electing me, after having been proposed by South Africa? Maybe he means the powerful EU, which inclufes NATO members, which I somehow “bullied” into defeat at the Special session? Or the 29 states, including Russia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba — hardly eminently “bulliable” states which I could have “bullied” into voting for Sri Lanka?

• Bully Boys and Bully Girls
• In conversation with Prof. Anil K Gupta: Grassroots innovation and development
• Circles of Violence: A Return to Sri Lanka
• VIOLENCE AND ITS MORAL DILEMMAS: FIDEL ACCORDING TO DAYAN JAYATILLEKA
• The Responsibility to Protect