Archive for the ‘Post-War’

People in glass houses…

“Where you from” asked the precocious teenager from Jane, a World Bank official I was escorting to a remote hillside community in the middle of Sri Lanka to show a community based micro hydro system. She proudly said, “America”. She and I were both shocked at the response that followed; “Boo Bush Boo Bush!” accompanied by a thumbs down. Jane had just told me how embarrassed she was to call herself an American after Bush’s tragic unprovoked attack of Iraq soon after 9/11. We were both amazed at this teenager’s knowledge in this remote corner, yet he knew and he had formed an opinion. Such is the result of a communications revolution that is making the world truly global village. No longer can the west have an advantage over others by hoarding information and knowledge. World is becoming level. Yet, it amazed me when the likes of Milliband, Koucher and other western nations tried to force Sri Lanka to stop…

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Mass Graves: Nothing new to Sri Lanka

The recent discovery of mass graves  at Ganeshapuram in  Kilinochchi and at Nachchikuda in the  Mannar Districts  has  been very much in the news during the past weeks.  Such finds need not  surprise anyone.  Following an analysis of satellite images taken during the height  of the war, the American Association for the Advancement of Science  has already  reported  that on  19th April , 2009 the images showed the roads in the ‘Civilian Safe Zone’  to be  mostly deserted. The images taken on the 24th April, 2009 showed a large grave yard in the same area.  The report adds, that the analysis identified three different graveyards, counting a total of 1,346 likely graves. The satellite images can neither reveal if these graves contain civilians or Tamil Tiger fighters,.. In the circumstances, it is likely that more and more graves would be discovered, if free access to the area is available to the people and the security forces do not  take any…

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Learning Old Lessons from a New ‘Lessons Learnt’ Commission: the ‘Home-Grown’ Way?

One year after the war, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has established another commission; known as the ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’. Eight eminent members have been appointed. The Commission is chaired by a former Attorney General. The Commission is to ‘inquire and report’ the following: the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA); whether any persons/groups/institutions bear direct/indirect responsibility; ‘the lessons we would learn’ in order to ensure there would be no recurrence of such events; a methodology through which restitution to persons affected could be effected; the administrative/institutional measures which need to be taken to avoid recurrence/promote national unity and reconciliation. ‘Lessons Learnt’ When, and how, did this idea of ‘lessons learnt’ come into being? Is this Commission, as popularly claimed by the Government, an entirely ‘home-grown’ mechanism, a ‘home-grown’ solution? A careful examination would show that the Government had the intention of establishing some mechanism which took into account this aspect of ‘lessons…

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WHY RADICAL PLURALIST IS RADICALLY WRONG: ‘PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL’ PONDERS ‘PUBLIUS’

I must thank Asanga Welikala (‘Publius’) for a reasoned and literate critical engagement with my views.  I respond for the twin purposes of clarification where I think my views have been misunderstood, and advancing the discussion, indeed debate. Asanga chooses to take Colin Irwin’s latest statistics as a one off, ignoring my references to the Marga survey of 2007 and numerous surveys of public opinion in Sri Lanka starting from the Research International Pvt Ltd surveys of 1997 running through the many Peace Confidence index surveys of the last decade.  Furthermore, he parleys Colin Irwin’s survey of 2008, which shows a majority in favour of radical decentralisation provided the term federalism is not used, into a real or potential endorsement of federalism. In so doing he not only conflates devolution, decentralisation and federalism (“federal type decentralisation”) as do the Sinhala chauvinists, but also ignores the results of repeated surveys that give federalism a support base of around 5%. Now it…

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SRI LANKA’S POST-WAR FUTURE: A RADICAL PLURALIST RESPONSE TO THE ETHICAL REALIST VIEW

I had not intended contributing to Groundviews’s commemoration of the first anniversary of the end of the war, for the simple reason that there having been no movement whatsoever on post-war constitutional reform, I did not wish to add another gripe of a general nature to this ‘liberal echo chamber’ of ours. Two publications in the past few weeks however have persuaded me that perhaps there is something worthwhile to discuss about constitutional reform from a liberal perspective. The first was the Peace Poll conducted by Dr. Colin Irwin of the University of Liverpool, which contained some astonishing findings about the state of public opinion with regard to power-sharing, and second, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s nuanced conceptualisation of a ‘sustainable peace’ in post-war Sri Lanka elsewhere in these pages. Dr. Irwin’s questionnaire is based on the APRC proposals of 2009 which envisage, at least notionally, a measure of devolution and power-sharing that exceeds what is presently provided under the Thirteenth Amendment,…

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The latest Commission of Inquiry in Sri Lanka: Another Exercise in Deception

Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group is reported to have  said during an interview in the BBC that the government violated the laws of war by blurring the line between combatants and civilians, and that its killings of civilians were not accidents.   Perhaps in response to this, speaking to the BBC Tamil Service recently,  the Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Palitha Kohona is reported to have said that  the commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation  set up  recently by the government is sufficient to investigate the allegations of humanitarian standards and human rights violations  during the war. Let us therefore have a look at some of the commissions of inquiry appointed by the governments in the past to check  how effective they have been to understand the veracity of the statement made by Dr. Kohana with regard to the current commission. It is common knowledge that several commissions of inquiry had been appointed from time…

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Eelam experiments: The transnational versus local realities

‘Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.’[1] Chimamanda Adichie I was inspired by the above words of Chimamanda Adichie talking about the ¨Danger of a single story’ and I reflected on how true this has been and will be in the case of Sri Lanka and its instrasigient history of political misfortune and human suffering. It’s been a year since the decisive end of the military offensive that had succeeded in re-claiming territorial sovereignity of the Sri Lankan state, but it was a victory that failed in claiming the Tamils as an integral and respected part of it is citizenry. The recently concluded elections in Sri Lanka which registered a low voter turn out in the North & East  draws focus to a deeper political malaise. While procrastinations and empty promises along with an impotent Tamil political representation within the country symbolise a crisis in Tamil political…

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Fighting Windmills? Diaspora and Militarism in Post-Conflict Lanka

“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.” “What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.”Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.” “Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn…

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FROM NECESSARY WAR TO SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN SRI LANKA

Interestingly of the four best pieces I have read on the first anniversary of the war, three are by Indian analyst/commentators, of whom two are military professionals: Gen Ashok K. Mehta’s Manekshaw paper No 22 for the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (New Delhi) on ‘How Eelam war 4 was Won’ (which cannot be read by any patriot or anti-fascist without a lump in one’s throat or mist in one’s eyes), the piece by Col R Hariharan in The Hindu and by PK Balachandran in the Indian Express. The fourth is by a youthful security researcher Sergei de Silva Ranasinghe writing in the respected Australian periodical, The Diplomat. Within Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, the debate on the war may be differentiated into four positions: Those who condemn both the war and the voices that justify it and approve of its results (such as mine), Those who applaud both the war and its aftermath, condemning both the critics of…

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Capturing HOPE in Sri Lanka through photography

Anj.

The HOPE in Sri Lanka after war was in 2009 Deborah Philip’s first photo-essay to Groundviews anchored to a novel and compelling idea – to photograph people holding up a sign board titled HOPE. As Deborah notes in her first submission, “Where is the hope?” is a question that the writer encountered quite a few times when she asked people to pose with the HOPE board. The culture of impunity prevalent in post-war Sri Lanka paints a rather depressing picture of a country that has lost the ability to hope. Human rights continue to be violated, there is an upsurge in criminal activity, media freedom is severely restricted and nationalist rhetoric continues to be the theme of those in the highest echelons of power. Hope has been replaced with a sense of hopelessness and apathy that has gripped society. In order for positive change to take place the nation needs to regain their ability to believe in the power of…

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Sithuvili: On war’s end and a year later…

Prelude: The following is a ‘fragmented reflection’, on present-day Sri Lanka, war’s end and related issues. The objective was to capture the thought process of a citizen ‘thinking’ about these issues as realistically as possible, hence the fragmented nature of the rendering, and the frequent passage from one point to an(unrelated)other. A war was thus fought. It all started decades ago, when the colonial alcohol was well-absorbed into her, leading to inevitably sheer tipsiness, and the long-lasting ‘hangover’ was just about to begin. As some said Sinhala should be the national language of independent Ceylon and Buddhism the state religion, some others felt insecure and concerned for their future in the island. Insecurity is a dangerously devastating feeling that’s always better avoided but virtually impossible to avoid, when going through tough times. The rest is largely history. Key events in the storyline include the following, among a trillion others: triumph of one shrewdly intelligent man at a Westminster style general…

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WINNING THE INVISIBLE CONFLICT: Is Sri Lanka headed for sustainable peace?

Background On Tuesday 19th May 2009 – the day after the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka, declared victory over the Tamil Tigers, bringing to a close 26 years of conflict. With the routing of the LTTE, and the reclamation of all occupied territory, it was announced that the conflict in Sri Lanka had come to an end. The cost of this declared victory was immense. At least 90,000 people were estimated to have been killed, the majority of those innocent civilians; hundreds of thousands were internally displaced, and interned, having lost everything they owned; tens of thousands of families were left without an adult who could earn a livelihood; and over 10 percent of the population were estimated to be suffering from trauma – many of them orphans, widows, and ex-combatants. The cost of conflict was not merely human. For decades Government spending has…

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Vanni in the year after war: Tears of despair and fear

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About six months after the end of the war, in November 2009, the government of Sri Lanka relaxed restrictions on travel to the Vanni[1] and started to allow some of the displaced people to go back to their villages. Although the government still maintains some restrictions on travel, I managed to visit these areas many times. My visits including overnight stay in Vanni without beds, attached bathrooms, running water, electricity, helped me to better experience and understand life there after the war. It also increased my admiration for some of my friends, Catholic priests and sisters, who warmly welcomed and hosted me and my friends every time we visited, despite the very basic and difficult life they had opted to live. My visits took me to interior villages deep inside the Vanni. From Paranthan on the A9 road to Ponneryn, and then further south on the A32 road, down to Vidathalthivu, visiting villages such as Mulangavil, Thevanpiddy. We also visited…

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Post-war Sri Lanka: Challenges and opportunities

This Government, as it commences to address the many challenges facing post – war Sri Lanka, stands today at a watershed of major, unprecedented and possibly never to be replicated, opportunity. Wherever one is located in the Sri Lankan political firmament that obvious and pre eminent condition would have to be admitted. The sense of overall stability about the new Government  pervades all thinking, writing and action, both local and foreign. How valid is this assumption of political, economic and societal stability that the Government so bountifully enjoys today – the first anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE, or of ‘separatist terrorism’, as the government calls it and would like it to be known? The elements of that apparent stability which both local and foreign observers prefer to comment on are well known. They are broadly the massive majorities obtained by the President and his Party at the recently concluded elections. The arguments of the many who contest the…

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Will ‘Peace’ Arrive Before Death?

It was, unfortunately, a necessary war, for terrorism had to be defeated, eliminated. After some thirty long years, on or around the 19th of May 2009, Sri Lanka gained liberation; liberation from the clutches of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), from the clutches of terrorism (May, 2010: The Prime Minister states in Parliament that a new military wing of the LTTE is being formed, is getting ready to raise its ugly head). ‘Terrorism’, however, was only one facet of the problem. The moment that ugly facet becomes non-existent, the moment there is an absence of a violent armed conflict, problems which remained unresolved, problems which could not be resolved through the use of force, re-emerge, re-surface. Political developments which soon followed the defeat of the LTTE proved this, to some extent. An acrimonious debate ensued concerning the 13th Amendment (Did not, for a brief moment in our history, the 13th Amendment become something like the 6th Amendment, like…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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