Photo courtesy Vikalpa

The outcome in Geneva last year (March 2011) of the voting on Sri Lanka’s conduct of the war and related human rights record was very clearly in favour of the Sri Lankan government. The line up in the voting and the scale of the majority were such that is appeared that this year too the outcome would be similar, despite some recent wavering by India. But the conduct of the Sri Lankan government in the mean time was so counter- productive that it precipitated the debacle of March 2012. We should have anticipated the disaster but it seems to have taken the Sri Lankan government by surprise.

If the Sri Lankan government had learnt at least the main lessons that it had opportunities to learn in recent years, the voting would have been very different – perhaps even more favourable to the Sri Lankan government than last year. Apart from mindlessly deflecting votes that could have come our way, we alienated many countries and many institutions. Our people will pay the economic price for such aimlessly alienation in the years to come.  Even after the event the Sri Lankan government went on proclaiming the vote as a defeat for Sri Lanka, rubbing salt on its own wounds, and needlessly dragging down the population who were never consulted on this issue.

No two situations are identical but we can learn much from the success or failure of other governments and leaders in crisis situations elsewhere. For example, the impending passage of the historic Voting Rights Bill of 1965 in the USA was in serious crisis but President Johnson and Martin Luther King jointly overcame that crisis. I recommend to those interested in strategic leadership, Ronald A. Heifetz’s “Leadership without Easy Answers” (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass; London, England, 1994;), especially chapter 6 titled, “On a Razor’s Edge”. In this chapter he particularly deals with Johnson “Leading with Authority” and also with King “Leading without Authority”. In other chapters he deals with other leaders such as Gandhi who very successfully and astutely “Led without Authority”.

The unlikely partners and heroes of the passage of the U.S. Voting Rights Act were Martin Luther King and L. B. Johnson. King was handicapped by at least one serious moral failing. Moreover, Kings support base in the USA were mostly voteless Blacks, numbering about 10 percent of the total population, unlike Gandhi in India and Mandela in South Africa who had the backing of massive majorities in those countries and whose triumphs were inevitable in due course. The outcome of the Voting Rights Act remained very doubtful till King and Johnson made it happen against massive odds. It needs to be noted that Johnson entered the US Congress as a Texas based White racist in 1937. As set out by Heifetz: “For nearly 20 years he had voted against every civil rights bill before Congress – laws to end the poll tax, segregation in the armed services, and lynching”.

Johnson gradually modified his political stands thereafter as the Civil Rights Movement advanced, and he began to entertain ambitions for higher office. In the 1960 Presidential election, John F. Kennedy, reputed to be a Northern liberal, picked Johnson as his running mate to provide political and regional balance to his candidacy. President Kennedy initiated the Civil Rights Act, inclusive of a strong Voting Rights Clause, but his Vice President Johnson was not very enthusiastic. The draft Act got diluted and the Voting Rights Clause dropped altogether before the Act was finalized. In the mean time Kennedy was assassinated in 1964 and Johnson became President. Johnson took a political decision to stick to Kennedy’s policies. Accordingly, he successfully steered through the Civil Rights Act but without the Voting Rights Clause.

The Civil Rights Act helped to desegregate and gave Blacks access to jobs and other forms of economic advance but it was the Voting Rights Clause that was vital for political empowerment. Blacks all over USA, led by King and others, continued to demonstrate and insist on voting rights. The town of Selma was one of many flash points. Selma had more Blacks than Whites but even as late as March 1965, only 3 percent of the registered voters were Black. The rest of the Blacks were excluded in one way or other, e.g. by requiring them to pass literacy tests that virtually no one could pass. Blacks organized protests but Governor Wallace ensured that they remained largely vote less. Demonstrations by Black men, women and children were put down very brutally by the State police. TV crews filmed these scenes which were telecast into homes throughout the USA. Horrified Americans urged Johnson to intervene, but he held back.

There were marches into and sit-ins at the White House by civil rights activists but Johnson continued to hold back. There has been, from the times of the civil war, a long history of opposition to federal intervention into the affairs of the states. Johnson did not want to rouse such feelings prematurely till pressure to intervene became irresistible. He knew that the Voting Rights Act was needed but also that for most liberal Whites, especially in the South, the issue of voting rights for Blacks was of low priority. Privately, Johnson encouraged King to mount protests; both knew that these would provoke violent suppression and even killings, but this was a price that needed to be paid. They were using the media to mould White public opinion to accept Federal intervention and an effective Voting Rights Act, and also to promote national unity. In contrast, the media in Sri Lanka seem to be used by the state to obstruct progress towards settling the National Question.

Civil rights activist became very critical of Johnson for failing to intervene. King continued with his protests, but Johnson continued to hold back. At one point King escalated the protest by convening a Clergy March, inviting those in religious orders all over the USA, men and women, to join in a 50 miles march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery. Anticipating violent intervention by the state police, King appealed to the Federal Court to restrain the state police; instead the Federal Court ordered that the march be postponed indefinitely till adequate protection could be assured. This created a crisis, and Johnson sent an emissary to work out a compromise. That compromise was to march to the bridge near the end of the town of Selma, pray on the bridge, and then turn back. King reluctantly agreed but insisted that the march would resume later. In the event two of the protesters were killed, a Black youth shot by state troopers before the march, and a White clergyman brutally beaten to death after the march. When the marchers reached the bridge, as agreed, they stopped and prayed. When they opened their eyes after prayers, the state troops had moved away, virtually inviting the marchers to continue to Montgomery, defying the Federal court order. This was a trap but King did not fall into it. The marchers turned back as agreed but promising to march again all the way to Montgomery on another day.

The pressure on Johnson to intervene kept mounting but he continued to hold back. He was waiting for that pressure to build up to a level that would overwhelm any massive negative reaction to federal intervention. He knew that if he acted prematurely, Wallace would effectively mobilize Southern White reaction to it. But he also knew that widespread violence against Blacks, men, women and children, and against other peaceful protesters, graphically telecast frequently throughout the USA, was hurting the  political prospects of Wallace,who could not hold out much longer. As Johnson anticipated, within a few days of the Clergy March, Wallace asked to see Johnson to request federal intervention to maintain law and order. That meeting and request were promptly agreed to, and the meeting was immediately followed up by a Press Conference convened by Johnson at which he announced, in Wallace’s presence, that the Governor had requested Federal intervention but that Johnson would ensure that the intervention was the minimum necessary to maintain law and order. In one stroke Wallace was defanged and the way cleared for Federal intervention.

The back of the opposition to the Voting Rights Act had been broken, bringing much credit to Johnson. He wasted no time in asking for and receiving an invitation to address a joint meeting of the Congress. In his inspired and historic speech at that meeting he took the moral high ground and urged the Congress, this time very receptive, to quickly pass the Voting Rights Bill that he was introducing. The Voting Rights Act came into law on 6^th August 1995.

Compared to the obstacles that Johnson has to overcome, the problems of President Rajapakse relating to the Geneva resolution are mostly minimal. Within the island his political support base has been unassailable. He has much to gain and very little to lose by implementing the LLRC report, by fully implementing the Constitution (including the 13^th Amendment), by resolving the National Question to the satisfaction of the Tamils and Muslims, by imposing discipline among the unruly members among his followers, and by maintaining law and order. In fact this is what many leaders within his party and almost the entirety of the domestic opposition and the international community have been asking him to do. Accounting for those taken into custody and investigating allegations of unlawful activity (including assassinations, torture, rape and extortion) on the part of the armed forces and para-militia would be more problematic, but if he undertakes to act accordingly and sets about it step by step, his standing, internal and external, will rise except among some fringe elements within the island and among the Diaspora. Those fringe elements will only discredit themselves President Rajapakse surely understands this. It is investigating the past that may be problematic, not the resolution of the political problems referred to in the Resolution. Perhaps some of these political problems are internal to himself, located in a blind spot in his politics, just as President Johnson at one time had problems with several civil rights issues in his political vision. Johnson’s political ambition helped him to progressively shed those inhibitions relating to civil rights issues such as segregation, affirmative action, voting rights for Blacks, etc. For Johnson the residual blind spot was the Vietnam war and it was that blind spot that ultimately ended his political career.

What can the Sri Lankan government learn from the Voting Rights crisis in the USA? As soon as Johnson had decided that he wanted an effective Voting Rights Act, he went on to work out, with King’s backing, appropriate strategies to eliminate or reduce the divergence between that objective and the positions taken by key opponents such as Governor Wallace and Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirkson. Both Johnson and King avoided hurling abuse at those holding different views, as that would invariably be counter- productive. Johnson was a master strategist who kept his eyes constantly on his ultimate objective (a strong Voting Rights Act), refusing to be diverted by the success or failure of intermediate objectives (such as political demonstrations) or by those who crossed his path. That he was a Southern White with a racist past may have helped him to understand and overcome the opposition from that quarter. President Rajapakse too, given his Southern roots and empathy with Southern hard liners, should not find it difficult, if he is so inclined, to overcome opposition to the implementation of the LLRC report and the Constitution (inclusive of the 13^th Amendment in full) , to deal with Sinhalese,Tamil and Muslim communities to clear the way for national reconciliation, and to enforce discipline and law and order.

There is truth in the charges that some of the Western countries have double standards on war crimes but it is also true that some of those countries helped Sri Lanka very substantially to secure international condemnation and isolation of the LTTE, and to win the war. Moreover these charges have little to do with the political issues at the heart of the proceedings in Geneva. A problem with charges of “double standards” and “bullying” is that these will bring ill consequences that will soon hit us. Indeed they have already begun to do so. Unfortunately it is the Sri Lankan people, not the Sri Lankan government, who will be hit. If we are serious about those allegations, are we willing to formulate and present a resolution charging some of the western powers with war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan? I suspect that we would find it very difficult to find co-sponsors for such a resolution. If so, such a resolution will be a non starter and cannot be part of a viable strategy.

Our major handicap is that we seem to have no clear objective. Are we committed to 13 A+ (as Sri Lanka government has frequently proclaimed) or 13 A- (as also frequently proclaimed in respect of police and land powers) or in negotiating a settlement with Tamils and Muslims, or in implementing all of the LLRC report or some of it or none of it? To be credible, such commitment needs to be detailed and contained within specified times frames. The fact that the Interim Report of the LLRC has not been implemented, a complaint detailed in the LLRC report itself, throws doubt on the commitment of the Sri Lankan government. If we do not spell out credible time-bound commitments and make adequate progress within the intervening months, the outcome in March 2013 could be worse than in March 2012. The charges of “double standards” and “bullying” make have helped to gain some Asian votes in Geneva but had less success with African and Latin American governments. But we do over the next few months will determine how the voting will work out next time. If we take the steps referred to above and meet the issues outlined in the Geneva resolution, that could be the core of a winning strategy. We need to engage with all key actors, internal and external, friendly and not so friendly. Perhaps we could even co-sponsor a resolution with India, the West, Japan, China, Russia and other countries and get it unanimously passed at the next meeting in Geneva. But for that to happen many changes internal to the Sri Lankan government are needed and much works need to be done at home and abroad. If it happens, it could helped to transform the future of our Island and our people.

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This paper reflect the views of the author, Devanesan Nesiah, and not those of any of the institutions that he has been associated with.

• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• Sri Lanka and the UNHRC: Implications for India and for Human Rights
• Messiah
• Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka
• The Offer from a Sri Lankan Tamil Man

Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the institutional anchor of Groundviews. He is today one of three human rights defenders senior government ministers consider traitors and would like to, as in ancient times, kill, and, inter alia, break the limbs of. Though Sri Lanka’s foreign minister distanced himself from these remarks, the President and his brother, the all-powerful Secretary of Defence, have not expressed a single word of condemnation, or distanced themselves from the minister’s comments, who has openly and repeatedly said he derives his legitimacy from the Rajapaksa’s.

Much of this hate and harm directed against Dr. Saravanamuttu and other key human rights defenders of late has been on account of their participation at the recently concluded 19th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, and in particular, supporting a US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka. There hasn’t been much informed debate and discussion within Sri Lanka on the contents and genesis of this resolution. Many who joined the protests against the resolution in Sri Lanka, and particularly in Colombo, didn’t even know what they were protesting against. State media launched, and to date, continues with, an incredibly vicious campaign of hate speech not seen since Sri Lanka lost the GSP+ status, which was also due to Sri Lanka’s non-cooperation with, as Dr. Saravanamuttu noted at the time, “what was effectively termed an affront to national sovereignty and pride”. The same ignorance, misplaced patriotism and flawed logic seemingly animated foreign policy and engagement over the US resolution in Geneva.

When Dr. Saravanamuttu is asked as to why anyone should believe his take on, and indeed, support of the US resolution in Geneva, he goes into how the resolution came about and the non-participation of the government in its framing despite an invitation by the US administration. He also flags the history of commissions in Sri Lanka, including a number set up under the present administration, which have failed to result in or influence any meaningful reform of change. We move on to three key questions – the fears of UN interference in domestic affairs as a consequence of the resolution, the perceived hypocrisy of the US in tabling such a resolution against Sri Lanka, when it’s own human rights record is far more blemished and suspect, and why the fullest implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations is championed by those, such as Dr. Saravanamuttu, who when the final report came out, flagged deep flaws and silences over, amongst other issues, the meaningful investigation of allegations of war crimes.

We then talk about how far removed Sri Lanka’s domestic politics and sentiment is from international advocacy and scrutiny of the country’s human rights record, and how whipping up the basest emotions of a largely ill-informed public through propaganda can help Sri Lanka really address outstanding concerns over governance, human rights and accountability into the future. Dr. Saravanamuttu also flags the central challenge of human rights advocacy today, where criticism of government is conflated with, and perceived to be criticism of country.

From this, we move on to address the fall-out of the growing sentiment from government that because the LLRC’s final report has somehow over-stepped its mandate, its implementation will be piecemeal. We also look at what government and some other commentators of late have noted, which is that the US resolution has already led to a hardening of the regime’s stance on reconciliation, and increased the pushback against implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations.

Dr. Saravanamuttu then addresses the question as to why there isn’t greater public agitation and demand for the implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations, and why there isn’t even interest in getting to know the contents of the final report, which to date haven’t been distributed by the government in Sinhala or Tamil (Editors note: Read Who really supports reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka?).

Even though the three human rights defenders who in the past couple of weeks have suffered the brunt of the hate speech campaign published a letter clarifying their position (Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka), the attacks continue. We ask Dr. Saravanamuttu why, in the fact of such a vicious and violent response from government, he continues in his advocacy for human rights.

Towards the end of the interview, Dr. Saravanamuttu looks at the possible implications for Sri Lanka’s political stability and economic growth over the non-implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations. We also pose to him the usual response from government over the insistence of meaningful steps towards reconciliation – that it is being unfair to a government which saw the end to a nearly 30 year old war, that steps and measures are in fact being taken but under-appreciated, and that the implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations will take money the government does not have. Finally, Dr. Sarvanamuttu addresses the perception that international advocacy supporting the US resolution in Geneva and the full implementation of the LLRC recommendation is actually a guise for regime change, and ousting the incumbent government from power.

For video of interview along same lines in Sinhala, please click here or view it directly on Vimeo here.

• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• THE BIG LIE ABOUT THE US RESOLUTION
• Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka
• In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
• Who really supports reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka?

Photo courtesy Vikalpa, from protest against US resolution in Colombo, 27 February 2012

The US-sponsored resolution at the UNHRC had to be defeated. It was not. 24 in favour, 15 against, 8 abstained. Hearts are broken, glasses are shattered, the ‘gods’ have ignored our prayers, there is madness surrounding us; 2012, we are now sure, is when the world comes to an end.

But that was yesterday. Today, the morning after, is once again cold; we need to pick up the pieces, mend our hearts, move on. And there are questions too: what is this resolution? How did we perform? Is it all India’s fault? Where did we go wrong? Are we to be blamed? What now?

Resolution L.2: From US, with love

The resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’ has, during the process of the UNHRC session, undergone considerable change. From being an intrusive and arrogant one sponsored by the US, it now appears rather soft, innocent and caring. The US troops will not be in Sri Lanka tomorrow, no travel or trade embargoes are imposed. The object and purpose is to get the recommendations of the LLRC implemented.

But resolutions, like many other documents, can be interpreted differently. The manner in which it is interpreted depends on the interpreter’s own political predilections. There are numerous objects and purposes; some which are mentioned, some which are not. Interpretations change over time. And that is why all or most interpretations offered today have the potential of appearing to be accurate, or will prove to be accurate, in the future.

For instance, to make the resolution appear soft, the US and other promoters of the resolution can highlight the point that it is only about the implementation of the LLRC recommendations. They can stress in this regard, that they welcome the constructive recommendations of the LLRC, that technical assistance is to be provided “in consultation with, and with the concurrence of” the Sri Lankan Government; that its all about requests and encouragement, etc; that there is nothing intrusive, sovereignty is therefore not violated. There is love.

But others would dispute this. There’s another interpretation which states; that there is no mention of the LTTE which is astounding; that some recommendations are being termed ‘constructive’ because the sponsors have also included their own ‘constructive’ recommendations in place of the not-so-constructive recommendations of the LLRC; that it further internationalizes internal affairs of the State by reference to, for example, provincial-level devolution; that the phrase “requests the Office of the High Commissioner to present a report on the provision of such assistance to the Human Rights Council at its twenty-second session” implies in practice, assistance will need to be obtained; that it is not only about implementing the recommendations but also about taking “additional steps to address alleged violations of international law.”  This kind of interpretation, certain elements within the liberal camp would say, is pure nonsense.

But why is it not? Why do both interpretations seem accurate? Why and how can the former interpretation slide towards the latter, and the latter, in turn, appear to be the accurate one?

It is simply because the latter is, firstly, what the promoters of the resolution do not stress in their interpretations. It is the other half of the ‘truth’. Secondly, it is because the latter interpretation is that which will be adopted if the Government does not implement the LLRC recommendations. Promoters of the resolution will find it difficult to stick to the former interpretation if no action is taken; and with that the entire appearance of the resolution, its object and purpose, will begin to change. And with that change will come the following reminder: that the resolution did note “with concern that the [LLRC] report does not adequately address serious allegations of violations of international law.” The gentle touch and caress now feels like a punch; love turns into agony.

All this is not difficult to understand, of course. It is just that admitting the above makes the promotion of the resolution difficult. But also, this is where the politics of human rights, and the politics of the US, come into play. My point here is not an endorsement of the entirety of the observation made by the SL Representative in Geneva, that: the resolution “reflects a blatant case of politicization that takes the Council hostage to the hidden agendas of the mighty.” The UNHRC, being an inter-State body, is obviously political, and as Professor Makau Mutua once questioned at the American Society of International Law: “How can you politicize that which is political?” It is obvious.

Rather, my argument is that it is necessary to understand that there are “hidden agendas” (and of course, all actors have hidden agendas) of the “mighty” the US. States such as the US have better things to do, than to run around the UNHRC to obtain votes from this or that country to get a resolution passed. And when a super-power such as the US and its allies introduce such a resolution and canvass support, they sure know what they are up to (and up against), diplomatically, politically and even legally.

So there needs to be a more holistic appreciation of the politics underlying the adoption of the resolution. It is said to be a first step towards reconciliation; it is also a first step towards other things unmentioned and unmentionable. In other words: there is love, but it’s not unconditional love.

And yet, to conclude: the challenge is to move on, and that second type of interpretation mentioned above need not worry a Government too much if there is a genuine willingness to implement the LLRC-recommendations.

Performing at the UNHRC

We all know that the UNHRC is about human rights (also, human rights formalism), about international law, about bureaucracy, rules, regulations, procedures and technicalities. But it is far more interesting too. The UNHRC is also about politics, about feelings, about anger and frustration, about the ‘West’, the ‘Third World’, about drama and performance. Like all UN bodies, the UNHRC is a grand stage. It is where the language of international law and human rights is craftily used by actors to articulate their myriad grievances; where the beautiful hypocrisy of actors is played out; where we imagine that human rights problems get resolved; where performance does matter. But unlike in 2009 (Geneva-I), ‘performance’ was not Sri Lanka’s strong point in 2012.

At times, grand theoretical expositions are unnecessary to detect and understand the underlying problems of a country, its diplomatic approach or its foreign policy. What Sri Lanka’s diplomatic approach is, what its image is, where Sri Lanka wants to go and where it is going – are questions for which answers were provided in those few minutes during which Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe spoke. Where, for instance, was the Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in Geneva? Instead, why so many local politicians and Parliamentarians? A Minister leading the way, a not-so-comfortable looking Foreign Minister behind him, an accused Minister close by, a former Attorney General to the left, and a couple of more politicians in front: a sight which does absolutely nothing in terms of changing the attitude and foreign policies of other countries (at least in a positive or pro-Sri Lankan way, and that too, just minutes before the vote was taken); a sight which doesn’t inspire confidence.

And of course, this told us what we had known already: about the lack of autonomy, and perhaps influence, wielded by those who are meant to conduct matters of foreign policy in the diplomatic arena; the utter waste of resources given the futile presence of so many politicians in Geneva, not to forget the sheer waste of their time; also, the irresponsibility and the disregard shown for accountability in including certain individuals accused of crimes and with that, the inability and unwillingness to understand how strategically and diplomatically counter-productive it is to include them in delegations to the UNHRC, especially when matters of human rights and the implementation of the LLRC-recommendations are being discussed.

What of the message? Of course, given that the UNHRC is a stage, ‘mega-phone’ diplomacy is not essentially bad if the big and powerful have difficulty in listening to and respecting the concerns of the small and the weak. But much depends not on ‘sound’ alone, but substance too. And in this regard, what Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe had to say did sound unfortunate at times: it almost implied that there will be no reconciliation in Sri Lanka if the resolution is adopted. As he said: “This resolution if adopted will not add value to the implementation process in Sri Lanka; on the contrary, it may well be counter-productive and, as such, those who have been using extreme pressure tactics in garnering support for this ill-timed and unwarranted initiative should be mindful of the responsibility that accompanies it.”

It was also said: “If this proposed intrusion is accepted by this Council, no domestic process would be free to deliver on its mandate unimpeded. Instead, a superimposition of an external mechanism would become the order of the day.” While external mechanisms should not become the order of the day, the problem here is that Sri Lanka has institutions which have not freely delivered for quite sometime. More importantly, that ability to deliver freely has been retarded by certain legal and constitutional developments that took place after May 2009.

Tackling ‘Incredible India’: SL foreign/domestic policy

Geneva-II was also about votes, numbers and mathematical calculations. The way the members voted, their reasons for voting for, against or abstaining, are known. In all this, India did have a major role to play. And in ‘post-Geneva II’, Sri Lanka confronts some significant questions which reaffirm the importance of understanding that inextricable relationship between domestic and foreign policy.

One such question is the ‘Indian factor’; strengthening ties with India. Much depends on how we perceive India now, its role in the region and the wider world, its past and present, and our willingness to understand that not all actors are either black or white.

To begin with, the capitulation was significant. Pressured by Tamil Nadu, India went from being a country which was against country-specific resolutions to supporting a country-specific resolution. The structure of political argument, between India and Sri Lanka, now becomes fascinating. Sri Lanka thinks that India voted against her; India states that it was in fact a vote in support of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, before the vote, stated that India is a responsible member and will vote accordingly given their understanding of the ancient and historical ties; India has now voted (the way responsible members do!) and having done so informs in turn, that Sri Lanka understands why India did so given their long and traditional relationship. Coalition partners of the Sri Lankan Government state that India’s support for the resolution contradicts its (India’s) own foreign policy; but India can reply that it is India’s business to decide what her foreign policy is after all.

How then do we proceed?

There is a lot of anti-Indian sentiment generated everywhere. That cannot be prevented easily. Already, demands have been made by local politicians to re-think the nature of Sri Lanka’s economic ties with India. India, people will not forget, is well capable of making life ‘difficult’ for Sri Lanka, as history will teach you. There is of course the language of diplomacy: Sri Lanka and India are the best of friends; we are like brothers; ours is a historic relationship; it is a special understanding, a very unique relationship, etc, etc. And yet, India is no innocent bystander.

But playing the ‘China-card’ will not always ensure success. India is a geopolitical reality. A balance needs to be struck. As the late Lakshman Kadirgamar once stated: “… ideally the Tamil question within our polity should be so managed as to preclude the need for Indian concern, far less involvement. However, it would be wholly unrealistic for anyone to claim that under no circumstances could India have a legitimate concern with the management of certain aspects of our internal affairs” (Speech delivered at the Hindustan Leadership Seminar, Dec., 2003).

If then, there is a need to understand not only the complexity of SL-India ties, but the very complexity that is ‘India’; its own secessionist problems; the ‘Tamil Nadu factor’; India’s own strategic objectives, such as gaining membership in a restructured and reformed UN Security Council; about how such geopolitical goals bring India and US closer; and how that partnership, in turn, affects SL-India, and SL-US ties, etc.

Along with that, what also needs to be appreciated is the fact that India is not only capable of making life ‘difficult’ for the Sri Lankan Government, but also, making it ‘comfortable’; as it did in numerous ways during the last stages of the war, and especially diplomatically, especially in Geneva, 2009. That relationship which was strengthened during the last stages of the war, well harnessed and further developed in Geneva-2009 (we remember the support of the Indian Representative in Geneva even after the Special Session concluded) should not have been undermined.

And this latter kind of external relationship can only be maintained if internal policies within Sri Lanka are geared towards addressing the questions of power-sharing and the protection of the rights of Tamil people, especially in the North and the East, in a more sincere and serious manner. Sri Lanka either has to ensure that the political promises made to India are kept [especially regarding the implementation of the 13th Amendment – see, for instance, the ANI report, ‘India feels Lanka has done very little on devolution of power’, 24 March, 2012], or that it is able to move forward peacefully, with sincerity and determination, especially with the Tamil political parties and the TNA, in terms of devising a mechanism of power-sharing which is autochthonous. There are decisions here which Sri Lanka is unwilling to make.

India, then, is neither our best friend nor our worst enemy. Thinking of India in such extreme ways obfuscates the complexities surrounding inter-State relationships, and unnecessarily simplifies the challenge of foreign policy making too. Today, ‘nonalignment’ does not mean that India will always be with Sri Lanka (and against the West) on every conceivable diplomatic and political problem Sri Lanka confronts. That was the old way of thinking. Even the very term ‘nonalignment’, as the former Indian diplomat and politician Mani Shankar Aiyar (MSA) has stated, “was appropriate to a world characterized chiefly by the wooing of the rival superpowers to align with one or the other of their blocs” (MSA, A Time of Transition, p. 257). But after the Cold-War, relationships became much more fluid, much more complex; with such changes, ‘nonalignment’ ceases to become a simple question of voting for or against a State.

Political maturity

In addition, the current situation also demands more maturity in terms of assessing Sri Lanka’s diplomatic debacles.

It is, today, a popular argument (made by the SL Foreign Minister, for example) that Sri Lanka had the support of 23 members (i.e. including the 8 abstentions) of the UNHRC. Spin is fine, and is to be expected from all Governments. But where does this kind of spin take us?

Minister GL Peiris argues, for instance, that an abstention amounts to a vote against the resolution. But of course, the same argument can be raised by the opposing party. The US too has the right to claim that an abstention amounts to a vote for the resolution.

But this argument gets more dangerous, and ignores history. If Sri Lanka is pleased with the current performance, how much more pleased should we be with the result in 2009? To put it differently, how much more worrying should the current performance be, when compared with the solid and overwhelming majority Sri Lanka gained in 2009?

And, in proclaiming that Sri Lanka fought with the US (but didn’t it do the same in 2009?) and got the support of 23 members, the SL Foreign Minister ignores (or forgets) that there has been a serious nosedive from 35 (29 + 6 in 2009, following the logic of Minister Peiris) to 23; forgetfulness or ignorance which is quite dangerous, as it fails to appreciate the kind of degeneration that Sri Lanka’s vote-base at the UNHRC has undergone over the relatively short span of three years. And if this degeneration is not taken seriously, not much effort will be made to mend our own policies and re-build relations with other States.

Security 

Closer to home, there are more problems. There is the continuous labeling of the critic, journalist or human rights activist as ‘LTTE-agent’, ‘Tiger’, ‘terrorist’, ‘separatist’ or ‘traitor’. It is not a novel development, but it takes a far more dangerous twist now with the adoption of the resolution. Also, the time has come when we are exposed to the sight of mad politicians who make public utterances which amount to direct and indirect threats to the lives of journalists and human rights activists. It is highly questionable whether the Government is concerned about such developments. Given the dangerous nature of these threats and the manner in which they seem to be receiving the approval of the public (did we not hear people applauding Minister Mervyn Silva?), the mere condemnation of these utterances and open threats is wholly inadequate.

Debate, argument, and political rivalry are essential and are to be celebrated. But in this case, all this turns dangerous and deadly when critics of a Government who call for accountability, human rights protection and devolution are conveniently labeled and transformed into ‘traitors’ and ‘separatists’. Every criticism becomes a criticism of the State, every critic an enemy of the State; no amount of statements made by such a critic in favour of the need to build a plural, democratic and united Sri Lanka seems convincing to the regime if such an advocate also demands accountability and/or devolution. In such a context, even the rejection of all forms of violence (as Parliamentarian MA Sumanthiran has commendably done, in critiquing the armed forces and the LTTE: ‘TNA faults both govt. and LTTE’, Daily Mirror, 21 March, 2012) might not be enough to satisfy the regime. Geneva or no Geneva, the challenge of securing a more tolerant democracy seems to be a gargantuan task.

Moving on

The UNHRC in Geneva may be a place for the great matters of law, human rights, and justice. But it is also a place that makes us feel human; a place for politics, passions, love and joy, agony and tears. It is a place which gives those of us far away (and would you not agree?) that moment to switch on our computers, to watch the live webcast, to have that drink, to shout whatever we liked at those we saw on our screens. And we do this, not because we are less concerned about peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. Rather, it is because we know that peace will not come with the beginning or the end of some UNHRC-session, far away in Geneva.

If then, reality should set in. The morning after is as cold as the day before. And after yet another UNHRC-session, we are back to where we were. But then, perhaps before leaving, we might need to answer one more question: we talk about victories and defeat, but who really won or lost in Geneva? It is here then that all those who are less-forgiving would need to engage in the politics of re-imagination. The task is to re-imagine, or better still, to recognize that Geneva is where we all win and lose, and that in every victory there is something to be lost, and that in every defeat, there is something to be won, too. Because after all, we need to be there for each other if progress is to be made. At the moment, we are against ourselves. And that has to be changed.

• In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu: The resolution in Geneva and its discontents
• Sri Lanka and its ‘Geneva-problem’
• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• GENEVA-II & FOUR-LEGGED FURNITURE
• Restoring Government in Sri Lanka

Photo courtesy JDS

Let’s learn the right lessons from the Geneva outcome, not the wrong ones. It is not the case that a small country such as Sri Lanka cannot fight a diplomatic battle with the mighty USA and win.  Minutes after the Sri Lanka vote at the HRC this time, the Cubans moved a resolution on the composition of the staff of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the opacity (code-named independence) of which the West regards as a holy of holies. The USA opposed the resolution. The Cuban resolution won with a massive 33 votes.

Last year the USA invested far more effort and political capital at a far higher political level than in the case of the Sri Lanka resolution in Geneva, to prevent Palestine from being granted full membership of the UNESCO in Paris. The US lost that battle, and besieged Palestine, an embryonic or proto-state (unlike Sri Lanka) won a two thirds majority.  The battle was fought by a core quartet comprising two Palestinian diplomats –the impressive Left Bank intellectual Ambassador Elias Sanbar, his deputy Munir –and the Permanent Delegates of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. (The Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki addressed the Council after the victory to thank the member states). I was privileged to be a participant in that historic struggle.

Even in the case of the Special Session on Sri Lanka in the UNHRC in Geneva in May 2009, we have confirmation from Wikileaks that the USA ‘led from behind’, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructing the US Mission thus: “…the USG [US Govt] supports a special session on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and related aspects of the humanitarian situation. Mission is further requested to provide assistance, as needed…in obtaining others signatures to support holding this session…Mission is also instructed to engage with HRC members to negotiate a resolution as an outcome of this special session, if held. Department believes a special session that does not result in a resolution would be hailed as a victory by the Government of Sri Lanka…”[Cable dated 4th May 2009 from Secretary of State (United States)] Sri Lanka won that battle, of course, with more votes (29) than the sole superpower, the US, managed to secure this time (24) even with that of the regional superpower.

A few weeks after our success in Geneva, Prof Emeritus Miguel Alfonso, the pony-tailed eminence grise who, as co-director, trained generations of Cuban diplomats at the higher Institute of International Relations, Havana’s diplomatic training academy, caught up with me in the Council to say that he had just drawn up a three-hour long training module, the subject of which was Sri Lanka’s fight-back at the Special Session, as a model of how a small country can successfully resist a diplomatic offensive by the global North. Meanwhile Emeritus Professor Richard Falk of Princeton also told me that in the High Commissioner’s Office, it was ruefully said that our counter-offensive was a ‘textbook model’.

The classic example of how to beat the US in a diplomatic battle is Cuba, which moves a resolution against the blockade every year at the UN General Assembly in New York and secures a mammoth victory of 190 votes in favour and 3 against.

The examples of Palestine (2011), Cuba and Sri Lanka (2009) have one thing in common: you can resist the West successfully only if you have built a sufficiently broad cross-regional coalition, a global united front. Such a counter-hegemonic bloc is predicated upon support in one’s own region, from among one’s own neighbours. India’s decision to support the US resolution came as a shock. Yet, it shouldn’t have. There can always be ‘black swan events’ but those are pretty much unpredictable. Other events can be anticipated if preceded by accurate analysis. The Indian turnaround was not only predictable; it was predicted and therefore preventable, and yet it wasn’t. I wrote the following, six months ago, ringing the alarm bell regarding the UN Human Rights Council when there was time enough to do something:

“If one has to identify a single critical or crucial variable for Sri Lanka, it is India, but our strategy cannot be reduced to Indian support…A few weeks after we fought and won our battle in Geneva in May 2009, Myanmar lost in the same forum though it had the votes of India, Russia and China. So the secret of our victory in 2009 was not simply and solely India…We will find it almost impossible to win without India’s support, and we cannot win if India ever turns against us, but we cannot win only with India’s support.   We must always remember that many Asian, Middle Eastern, African and Latin American states will take their cue from India. India has a wide presence and is widely respected among Sri Lanka’s friends. We must rally our neighbourhood in our support. We must have the solid support of our continent, Asia. We must balance the South against hostile sections of the North, and the East against hostile sections of the West. India is pivotal in all these defensive moves and it is difficult to implement any of them if India is against or conspicuously on the sidelines. If, as some critical commentaries assert, India’s position has changed, or is changing, or might possibly change, from that of our May 2009 UN HRC victory, we must seek out the reasons and rectify them jointly.

We must certainly strive to countervail the mounting anti-Lankan opinion in Indian civil society and the media, militant opinion in Tamil Nadu and the lobbying of certain Western elements. We must secure Delhi’s support and swing Indian public and political opinion firmly over to Sri Lanka’s side. This cannot be done by purely verbal means but by policy reforms. As a UN based top official of Sri Lanka’s firmest, most powerful international friend told me once, ‘short of capitulating on or compromising its vital security interests, Sri Lanka must do what it takes to help its friends to help it’.” (‘Defending and Protecting Sri Lanka’, Daily Mirror, September 29^th, 2011, my emphasis, DJ)

My warning six months back was no one-off flash of foresight. The danger of an Indian shift and what should be done to forestall it was set out in cold print by me as long as three years ago. In an article that appeared exactly three months BEFORE the death of Prabhakaran, entitled ‘The Indian Reality in Sri Lanka’s Existence’ I wrote:

“…India cannot afford recrudescent Tamil Nadu separatism which thrives on the charge that New Delhi is insensitive to Tamil Nadu’s feelings for their ethnic kin in Northern Sri Lanka. Tamil Nadu… is an important and influential component of the Indian Union, and when push comes to shove, carries far more weight than Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese, in New Delhi, Washington, Moscow and Beijing. If faced with a serious strategic choice, Delhi will choose Chennai over Colombo. It is up to Sri Lanka to prevent matters coming to that…

Sri Lanka needs to countervail and neutralize the anti-Sinhala extremists in Tamil Nadu and the Diaspora…The balanced solution of fullest autonomy within a unitary framework may be opposed by smaller extremist forces among the Sinhala majority. The grim reality though, is that even at their most disruptive and violent, these forces can do much less harm to the Sri Lankan state than a decision by India, under mounting Tamil Nadu pressure, to tilt against Sri Lanka, and a corresponding decision by India’s partner the USA to mount economic pressure on Sri Lanka through multilateral institutions and agencies. Under the unlamented Bush administration there was daylight between the positions of the US and the EU. Under the new and universally welcomed Obama administration there may be no daylight between the positions of the US, EU and India.” (‘The Indian Reality in Sri Lanka’s Existence’, Groundviews, 16 February 2009)

I had quickly returned to the theme in the next month, again before the war was won, in a piece significantly entitled ‘Winning Locally, Winning Globally’:

“The Sinhalese and Tamils are in a Mexican standoff. Locally, the Sri Lankan armed forces have surrounded the Tigers…Meanwhile, globally, from the US Senate to the UN Security Council, from Ottawa to London, from Brussels to Pretoria, from Delhi to Dili, Sri Lanka is under pressure and scrutiny as never before. Are we being encircled globally just as we have encircled the Tigers locally…The Tigers have no exit from military defeat, but do the State and society have an exit from the crisis?” (‘Winning Locally, Winning Globally’, Groundviews, March 11, 2009)

In June–July 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the military victory and, more topically today, our diplomatic success in Geneva at the UN HRC, I repeatedly stressed the point in what turned out to be a polemical exchange.

“…As the paradigmatic victory in Geneva showed, we can win against the Tiger Diaspora and the Western European bloc influenced by it, when we are supported by our neighbours, our continent and our natural constituency the developing world plus Russia. In this strategy the support of India is critical. Without India’s support, the rest will distance itself from us, leaving us wide open to Western pressure and coercion. China alone cannot carry the weight…” (‘13th Amendment: Why non-implementation is a non-option’, Groundviews, 13^th June, 2009)

“..Sovereignty not only has to be asserted, it has to be defended and defensible. Sri Lanka cannot defend its sovereignty against all comers from all points of the compass, North and South, West and East. It can defend its sovereignty only by power balancing in a multi-polar world…” (‘The 13th Amendment, Indo-Lanka, Sovereignty’ The Island, June 27, 2009)

Sadly, this reality manifested itself in Geneva, on March 22^st 2012.

• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• 3rd Anniversary Reflections: Geneva, May 2009
• Sri Lanka and the UNHRC: Implications for India and for Human Rights
• The Geneva II debacle
• India’s Volte-Face: Winners and Losers

Image from The Nation

It is almost a crime to lie to the people and mislead them on a matter of vital national interest. When it is committed by politicians it is an act of unconscionable opportunism. When it is perpetrated by so-called intellectuals belonging to civil society, it is a counterfeiting of the currency of the intellect and the function of the educated, which is to educate the public.

One of the rankest untruths in the public domain today is that the US resolution is innocuous and unobjectionable because it only seeks to commit the government of Sri Lanka to implement its own LLRC report within a reasonable time frame. This untruth is perpetrated by the dominant elements of the UNP, the TNA and the civil society commentariat.

The utter falsehood of this assertion is instantly provable by a mere glance at the Resolution itself. Far from limiting itself to the harmless and arguably even constructive pursuit of merely seeking the implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations, the Resolution actually criticises the LLRC. The fifth and final paragraph of the preamble of the US Resolution, immediately preceding its operative clauses, reads: “Noting with concern that the LLRC report does not adequately address serious allegations of violations of international law…”

It is nothing short of disgusting that this sentence, in plain view in the text, is being hidden by pro-US resolution politicians and opinion-makers. It is one thing to be a critic, however harsh, of the government, quite another to be a supporter of the US Resolution and worse still, to brush under the rug that which is quite overt in the Resolution itself.

The Resolution’s criticism of the LLRC report is itself an untruth. That report not only earmarks issues of accountability which it states should be addressed by the government of Sri Lanka, it contains an impressively thick and closely argued chapter precisely on international law issues pertaining to the conflict. Given that one of the LLRC report’s authors is the former Chairperson of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Terrorism and a former member of the International Law Commission, this assertion by the US Resolution is indeed disingenuous.

Having made this criticism of the LLRC, the US Resolution then goes on to stipulate measures in its operative clauses which range well beyond the LLRC’s recommendations:

“(1). Calls on the Government of Sri Lanka to implement the constructive recommendations in the LLRC report and take all necessary additional steps to fulfill its relevant legal obligations and commitment to initiate credible and independent actions to ensure justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans,

(2) Requests that the Government of Sri Lanka present a comprehensive action plan as expeditiously as possible detailing the steps the Government has taken and will take to implement the LLRC recommendations and also to address alleged violations of international law. (My emphases-DJ)

This plainly gives the lie to the assertion that the US resolution seeks only the (harmless) implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations. It is permissible to argue that the additional measures are good and necessary, but quite another to sweep under the rug, or divert attention from these stipulations which range beyond the LLRC into the domain of international law. That practice of providing a smokescreen for external interventionism is rather like persuading customers, in this case the Sri Lankan citizenry, to participate in a Ponzi scheme.

The third and final operative clause of the US Resolution reads:

(3) “Encourages the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant special procedures to provide, and the Government of Sri Lanka to accept, advice and technical assistance on implementing those steps and requests the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to present a report to the Council on the provision of such assistance at its twenty-second session.”

In other words, the High Commissioner becomes the monitoring authority, with operational functions as well, of the compliance of the elected government of Sri Lanka with the US request to “take all necessary additional steps [beyond the LLRC] to fulfill its relevant legal obligations and commitment to initiate credible and independent actions to ensure justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans…and also to address alleged violations of international law.” This seeks to give the Office of the UN High Commissioner the role of an overseer, in relation to a national process of (national) reconciliation. In the US Resolution, the political and policy implementation process in Sri Lanka changes its circuitry and loops through the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights; an extra-national entity, accountable not to the UN Human Rights Council but primarily to the UN Secretary-General in New York.

• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu: The resolution in Geneva and its discontents
• Who really supports reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka?
• A slumbering LLRC: The image of reconciliation in Sri Lanka?
• What is the bigger lie? US resolution in Geneva or number of people in Vanni in 2009?

Image courtesy South Asia Monitor

I am appreciative of the fact that this is a seminar on geopolitics. I think geopolitics has been underestimated; perhaps overestimated earlier and then there was a reaction, the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. I am not a geopolitical determinist. I do not believe that geography is destiny. If we look at the case of Cuba for instance, it is very clearly a dramatic rupture from any notion of geopolitical determinism. However, if we have a notion of long term history as recommended by Braudel, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, then we understand the importance of place. We are materially and psychologically constituted at least in part by where we are. Though I would not say that who we are is determined in a monocausal sense by where we are, it is certainly one of the decisive and perhaps one of the determinant factors.

So Sri Lanka, as most of us know is an island and this itself is a constitutive factor because Sri Lanka is shaped by the fact that it is embedded in the sea. It has no land borders, and this is important.

In the tourist books, in the journal articles, we would say Sri Lanka is that island off the tip of India. That would be the most obvious introduction, the shortest introduction to Sri Lanka. But that again is a fundamental factor in a geopolitical sense, in understanding the history and the trajectory of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been defined by India but it has also defined itself, demarcated itself, as against India. So it is this dialectical relationship with India that has been the most important single geopolitical component in Sri Lanka’s evolution.

Now, it is usually the case that we tend to forget the specificities, the concreteness of a society, a nation, and we tend to put them in categories -which is necessary- but without due reference to their concrete specificities. However, there is also the other and opposite phenomenon, and this is true certainly of Sri Lanka but it is also true of the Unites States of America. Specificities are often confused for, or give rise to, notions of exceptionalism and of manifest destinies. It is true of Sri Lanka as well.

If we use the notion of the very long term of blocks of several thousand years of history which historians like William McNeill, theorists like Gunder Frank, Giovanni Arrighi and Immanuel Wallerstein have been using, then we would see that to understand Sri Lanka today you perhaps have to go back to an early version of the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism, the struggle between Hinduism –the Brahminic concept- and Buddhism which did not unlike in the case of the Protestant reformation, result in major clash of arms as such. But there was a Counter-Reformation. I say Counter-Reformation because Buddhism had no notion of and even made a critique of the notion of caste, the sociological hierarchy into which one is born, which the Brahmanic or Hindu faith placed great emphasis on. In India after the zenith of the Emperor Ashoka, who was a Buddhist, there was a counter-reformation, and Buddhism itself was pushed back, pushed downwards to the South. It also migrated to the North and to the East; that is: Nepal, Tibet, China, the Far East and Japan. But in the South there was only one place that it could go and that was Lanka, or Sri Lanka.

So the successful counter-reformation or counter-revolution -ideological, sociological, and not violent in terms of well-known great wars (this is of course interesting) – pushed Buddhism to this little island to the South of India. And there, this philosophy was retained, one might even say contained, because unlike to the North of the subcontinent where there was the Silk Route, this was an island. Buddhism either converged or became an over-lay, on an ethnic community, the Sinhalese, who may have been auto-centrically evolved or who may have come from India -this is open to debate.

The Sinhalese constitute the arithmetical majority of the island, roughly two thirds, living in two thirds of the island. Three factors converged: ethnicity, language (which is Sinhala) and the religion of Buddhism. Buddhism appraised itself as a philosophy rather than a religion, but when it was absorbed and retained by this island it naturally took the sociological coloration and configuration of the pre-existing society. And one might even say that it shifted from a cerebral philosophy to a religion. So you had an amalgam of a religion that no longer dominated or was even no longer existent in the vast landmass of the Indian subcontinent and had no co-religionists anywhere around. In any case there were no neighbors; this is an island with only one neighbor, the Maldives, and nothing to the South of Sri Lanka. The next constellation of Buddhism was far away in what you would know as Indo-China, the Far East (Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar). So a religion on an island, adhered to by an ethno-linguistic community which had no co-ethnics or co-religionists. And the language itself, which had some affinities with one or two other languages in the area but not many, is not spoken by a large collective anywhere else in the world. Though for a language that was isolated in the island it developed considerably. It did not remain an underdeveloped language, and it is said that at least one of the texts is among the oldest pieces of history writing: the Mahavansa. Thus the combination of language, religion and ethnicity became a very strong amalgam.

In a strange inversion the domestic geopolitics of the island of Sri Lanka are the reverse, a camera obscura, an upside down image of its giant neighbor India. In India the Southern most part, contains Tamil Nadu: 70 million people who speak the Tamil language, who consider themselves of the Tamil ethnicity and who are for the most part Hindu. On the island of Sri Lanka, which is separated from India by a very thin strip of water, it is exactly the opposite. It is not the Southern tip but the Northern tip that is pre-eminently Tamil. So, one third, the top of the island, is predominantly Tamil, the Southern two thirds is predominantly Sinhala.

This domestic geopolitical configuration has given rise to a certain narrative. Now I would not call it a history because I do not know whether we are talking about objective facts all the time. At least from Nietzsche we know that interpretation is as important and perhaps more important than fact –though that itself is an interpretation. The interpretation or the pre-eminent narrative, the hegemonic narrative of the history of the island has been one of a southward push from South India by the Tamil kings invading the island and leaving behind a residue from ancient times; of constant waves pushing southward and the Sinhalese pushing back northwards and attempting to rule the entire island. So this is partly a story of dual power, of shifting balances in a bipolar situation and much longer periods of uni-polar hegemony. We can see how the geopolitical configuration gives rise to a kind of a domestic geostrategic narrative of competing centers; of bipolarity and the attempt of one pole in the North to be auto-centric, and the other in the South, which considers that it has no strategic ‘defense in depth’ because it is a small island, to attempt constantly to prevail, to re-impose itself in a project of unification or reunification, reconquista.

The point I made earlier about specificity and exceptionalism comes in at this point. There are more than two major communities in Sri Lanka. In terms of religions you have the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Christians -which is the only religion that has both Sinhalese and Tamils (about 7%) as adherents- and you have Islam, the Muslim community. So, four religions, but two major ethno-lingual communities. Each of these two ethno-linguistic communities has a specific, distinctive kind of a collective psyche where both the Tamils and the Sinhalese consider themselves at one and the same time a minority and a majority. The Tamils feel that they are a minority on the island and therefore discriminated against as a minority and oppose that discrimination, but at the same time they see themselves as a majority because there are 70 millions co-ethnics across the water and of course another million in the Diaspora including in the West. This is possibly why the Tamil armed movements and even the unarmed Tamil Nationalist parliamentary parties will not accept the kind of solution that Northern Ireland’s Catholics, including the Sinn Fein, have accepted. This strange duality is true also for the Sinhalese. The Sinhalese feel that they are the majority on the island and therefore they deserve a certain special status, but this is reinforced by the sense of being a minority in the sub-region and in the larger region and in the global space. So there is a striving to assert itself as a majority but also to defend itself as a minority. And the fact that Buddhism in what is considered in a pure or more rigorous form (Theravada) is the most predominant faith among the Sinhalese, gives them a sense of exceptionalism. They are defending, protecting Buddhism in the area in which Buddhism hardly exists, and a Buddhism which they feel is purer than the variant of the doctrine that you find in Japan or China. If you look at it in terms of the history of Christianity, the parallel is the kind of Catholicism that prevailed on the Iberian Peninsula in Portugal and Spain until a few decades ago, a somewhat rigid orthodoxy. This is part of the matrix of conflict.

I would embed the contemporary violence and history in this matrix that I have set out. It is in this matrix that the war took place, the war of 30 years. We have been an independent State for 64 years and a little under half of this has been in a situation of war. Interestingly these wars have not only been between North and South or the two power centers which are preponderantly Sinhalese and Tamils. There have also been wars, anti-systemic wars, waged by an ultra-left insurgent movement, two insurrections in the South of Sri Lanka. Even in the North while the secessionist war was going on, there was a struggle between the left of the Tamil movement which was drastically weakened and the ultra-nationalist right of the Tamil movement represented by the Tamil Tigers. Now we have testimonies from former founder members of the Tigers, testimonies which say that at the beginning of the movement, the leader of the Tigers, Prabhakaran, was already an admirer of Adolf Hitler and that Mein Kampf had been translated and that even the LTTE’s salute was the fascist salute. As a political scientist, I note that in the 1920s and 30s you had in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe, movements that were ethno-nationalist but also of a fascist character- but this is another discussion all together.

The two power centers on the island, almost naturally, instinctively, tried to play the larger geopolitics of reaching out to allies, in the region and outside the region, over the past thirty years. These attempts of alliance and of blocs of power balancing underwent drastic, radical recomposition. It was not the same set of alliances that prevailed during the period of thirty years. Most dramatic is the role of India, which, because of Tamil Nadu, was originally supportive not of the project of an independent Tamil country but of the armed movement as a kind of counterweight to the central government in Sri Lanka, the power centre in Colombo. For one phase of the war, from the late ’70s through the ’80s, Delhi was dragged in by Tamil Nadu. The role that Tamil Nadu played and still plays is rather like the role of Miami in the USA, in relation to Cuba.

There was a dramatic turning point, when the grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, used coercive diplomacy but played a kind of Bonapartist role and got the Sinhalese government to sign a peace accord which provided provincial autonomy to the Tamil majority areas and sent a peace keeping force of 70 000 Indian troops to police this ceasefire. Now, dramatic as that was, what was more dramatic and illustrative of the specificities of the Tamil ultra-nationalist movement and of the Tamil Tigers, was that the Tigers, far from supporting this reform and making it work and perhaps playing a longer term game of greater autonomy, instead fought a war against the Indian peace-keeping forces, and after the peace-keeping forces were withdrawn not least because of the Tamil Nadu politics, assassinated Rajiv Gandhi by suicide bomber, on the soil of Tamil Nadu, exactly 21 years ago. That caused a dramatic shift in all these alliances, and from that point on, it was not that there was a convergence or an open alliance between Colombo and Delhi but there was a steady rapprochement. When the decisive stage of the war arrived three years ago, the enormous -and now, stronger than ever- geopolitical weight of India was on the side of the Sri Lankan State in determining the final outcome.

From the point of view of geopolitics, it is also interesting that not only India but also China supported the Sri Lankan State in the final phases of the war. This is interesting because as we know the relationship between India and China in Asia is not devoid of an element of competition though there is also great economic cooperation as well. Why did India and China put aside their competition and support the Sri Lankan State in the end game of the war? There we come to the term “Eastphalia” because even Dr. Henry Kissinger in his new book on China has made a point -made by others as well- that the classic Westaphalian notion of State sovereignty which is no longer observed strictly, in the West, certainly in Europe, has migrated to Asia. Why? This is another discussion, though Dr. Kissinger does not go into that in his excellent book on China. I would say that perhaps Asia is at that particular historical stage of State-building -which had been superseded by Europe- where national/State sovereignty becomes of paramount importance.

So it is the convergence of a particular historical moment and particular geopolitical balances on the island, in the region and beyond, between the East and the West, you may even say the global North and the South, which jointly determined the outcome of the Sri Lankan conflict.

Of course the story is not over. It is still being played out, in the aftermath of the war, in the debate and struggle on the kind of peace. While Sri Lanka has won the war could it lose the peace? We have seen this happen in the Middle-East in the decades after the 1967 which Israel so brilliantly won.

There are many questions, but I will conclude by saying that while domestic dynamics and dialectics led to the Sri Lankan war and its outcome, we may, borrowing a term from Lacan and Althusser, say that geopolitics played a role of “over-determination”.

###

On 6^th March 2012, Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka participated as a special guest lecturer at a seminar organized by Prof. Michel Korinman, professor of geopolitics at Sorbonne University (Paris IV). Prof. Korinman is also the editor of “Outre-Terre” a French periodical on geopolitics. Among the participants present were French officials, journalists and academics.

• Monks of War – Al-Jazeera on the JHU
• Buying Onions From India & China
• Follies and Fantasies in the Sri Lankan Conflict
• THE INDIAN REALITY IN SRI LANKA’S EXISTENCE
• The Agnostics vs. The Believers regarding karma, reincarnation, nirvana as described in Buddhism being real aspects of this world

“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
• History after the War: Challenges for Post War Reconciliation (Podcast)
• Violating the Madhu Sancuary – Some brief thoughts
• Sri Lanka’s Libyan Spring
• Political Opposition in a Nihilistic Sinhala Society: Responses and clarifications

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
• Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka
• Post Arbour
• Focus on Human Rights
• Youth activists on human rights in Sri Lanka

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
• Delivering on the LLRC Recommendations
• Sri Lanka and the UNHRC: Implications for India and for Human Rights
• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• THE BIG LIE ABOUT THE US RESOLUTION

“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.

• India’s Volte-Face: Winners and Losers
• Sri Lanka and the UNHRC: Implications for India and for Human Rights
• 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

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.

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