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The Undertones Of The Sri Lankan Conflict
Contemporary Review, Oct, 2000 by Shyamon Jayasinghe
SRI LANKA, 'Ceylon' during the days of the British Raj, has been in the grips of a civil war where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), acknowledged as one of the world's most ruthless guerrilla groups, has been battling with the Sinhalese-dominated government over the last 17 years in order to form a break-away state ('Tamil Eelam') comprising the island's northern and eastern provinces as homeland for its Tamil inhabitants. In this country, 65,610 sq km in size, the Sinhalese constitute about 74 per cent of the total population of 18 1/2 million and Tamils constitute about 2.6 per cent. The Sinhalese are mainly Buddhists while the Tamils are mostly Hindus. It is estimated that the war has already cost over 60,000 human lives and has brought political disintegration to what was once a vibrant and thriving democracy.
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The emotional power of appeals to ethnicity has created a curious dichotomy in a contemporary world characterised by the forces of globalisation and the shrinking of boundaries. Demands by ethnic groups in several countries for secession from the wider polity have become a fashionable political development. 'Should we allow a secessionist free-for-all?' asked a writer in the Economist in an interesting article appearing in its issue of 29th January--February 4th of this year. This poses a critical question for today's global and regional leaders. Are there rules which could guide us through the darkness of these conflicts?
Indeed, the ethnic bomb is easy to explode. The primary inputs are twofold: a few perceived lapses on the part of the dominant group of the given state and some Machiavellian leaders among the uprising group. Then the fire is ablaze. Business interests, arms dealers, even drug dealers as well as regional power politicians come into play. Some of these elements may remain in hiding for obvious reasons and conceal the growing complexity of a campaign which to the unsuspecting public manifests itself only as a straight-forward struggle for self-determination. The morale of ordinary followers is kept up by romanticism and a halo built around the cause and its leader.
Human Rights activists and influential writers who have hitherto supported separatist movements as a matter of routine on the basis of the old argument about self-determination, find their enthusiasm waning partly due to the human rights violations blatantly carried out by such organizations against civilian populations. Salman Rushdie, the well-known novelist, disenchanted with the LTTE campaign against the Sri Lanka government, recently wrote thus in Australia's Age newspaper (issue of 27th January 2000): 'terrorism isn't justice-seeking in disguise. In Sri Lanka it's the voices of peace and conciliation who are getting murdered'.
The doctrine of self-determination is no longer regarded as valid in all situations. The writer in the Economist enunciates four 'rules' for determining support of any given secessionist movement, and self-determination is not one of them. The first rule is 'that secession should neither be encouraged nor discouraged: it is in itself neither good nor bad'. It depends on the circumstances.
The second rule is that the decision to secede should be 'carried out only if a clear majority have freely chosen it, ideally in an unbiased referendum held in tranquil circumstances'. We shall apply these rules to the Sri Lankan case: Would the LTTE, for instance, allow such a referendum? They would have to quit their 'controlled areas' and guarantee a vote under tranquil circumstances. The LTTE is a totalitarian organization and it would be foolish to imagine the Tigers laying down their guns and participating in a democratic exercise of this nature exposing themselves to competition from other rival Tamil groups that are bound to assert themselves freed of constraint in a democratic environment. Other than ascertaining through the mechanism of a referendum there is no available objective indication of the general stand of the Tamil community with regard to the issue of autonomy. It is clear that their stance falls in a political spectrum beginning with indifference at one end, through a demand for simple autonomy and going onto secession at the other extreme.
The third rule enunciated in the Economist is that 'the secessionist territory must offer guarantees that any minorities it drags along will be decently treated'. In the Sri Lankan scenario there are the 'low-caste Tamils', the Tamils of Batticaloa who constitute a subculture of their own, the Sinhalese themselves who inhabited those regions until the LITE expelled them, the Portuguese descendants in Batticaloa and the large block of Muslims in the eastem province. These groups would all constitute local minorities in 'Tamil Eelam'. History has many an example of a successful secessionist group denying the very fundamental rights which they purportedly fought for, toward minority groups within their newly won jurisdiction. In the Sri Lankan instance, the very wording of the proposed new State with the prefix 'Tamil' would obviously rule out minorities who are not Tamil.
