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INTERNATIONAL FRAME &
THE STRUGGLE for Tamil Eelam
Sri Lanka's Strategy of Terror has International Backing
[together with comment by
tamilnation.org]
Tamil Guardian, 15 November 2006
Sri Lanka’s Sinhala dominated state is escalating its military
campaign to destroy the Tamil struggle. As it does so, its contempt for the
Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) and
international humanitarian
law is undisguised. As ever, there are two components to Sri Lanka’s
strategy – attacking the Liberation Tigers on the one hand and inducing terror
amongst the Tamil populace on the other. These elements have always been part of
counter-insurgency in Sri Lanka. And they have always had the approval of the
international community.
Despite its rhetoric of
multi-ethnic plurality the reality is the state of Ceylon/ Sri Lanka has,
since independence, functioned on the logic of us-and-them when it comes to the
Sinhalese and the Tamils. And the 2002 peace process has pointedly failed to
corrode this racial hierarchy. The state’s response to the devastation wrought
by the 2004 tsunami – to ignore the Northeast and prioritise the South – is
archetypical. The point was underscored last week by a frustrated Operation USA.
But it is the state’s escalating violence against the Tamil population that is
doing most to illuminate contemporary ethnic relations in the island. Sri
Lanka’s artillery
targeted a refugee camp in Vakarai. At least 40 people were killed and 100
wounded.
 
As ever, mimicking justifications of atrocities in another part
of the world, Sri Lanka said it was counter-attacking LTTE gun positions – a
claim
rejected by international ceasefire monitors and human rights groups who
spoke to survivors and residents. But the Army also blocked the ICRC and other
aid agencies from the area for several hours. It refused to let the badly
wounded civilians out to reach hospital. And for the past six months, the Sri
Lankan military has been brazenly blocking food, medicine and other essentials
to Vakarai and other Tamil region. The protests of international aid agencies,
Tamil parliamentarians and
human rights
groups have been derisively ignored.
And apart from meting out this collective punishment against Tamils in areas
controlled by the Tigers, in its own controlled areas, the state is waging a
murderous campaign against anyone even slightly inclined to agitate against it.
It is not simply a matter of LTTE cadres or supporters, but anyone dabbling in
Tamil political activity.
It is inevitable perhaps that parliamentarians of the Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) are targets for the Army-backed paramilitaries and death
squads.The
assassination of Nadaraja Raviraj, MP, last Friday is, as his colleagues
say, an attempt to silence their vocal criticism of the state. But it is more
than that. The killing, and the wider campaign of terror, is intended to send a
message to the wider Tamil community that it is the state, not the international
community or the LTTE that controls their fate.
The
begrudging and feeble criticism of Sri Lankan atrocities by the international
community is shameful and revealing. It confirms what the Tamil sceptics
have always said about the Norwegian peace process – that it is an exercise in
counter-terrorism, rather than conflict resolution, that it is about
hamstringing the LTTE and bolstering the state, rather than ensuring a just
solution.
Comment by
tamilnation.org
see also
Dr.S.Sathananthan in A to Z of Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka,
22 September 2004 "..At first intermittent "talks" with the national
movement are mooted to legitimise the State's military onslaught as
unavoidable and indeed made necessary by the "lawlessness" of the
national movement. But when a military stalemate ensues, then
"talks" become the continuation of war by other means. Having failed
to disarm the national movement through force, the State then
manoeuvres to draw the movement into "talks" with the principle
objective of forcing it to decommission weapons. This continuation of
war by other means is the so-called "peace process". If armed
conflict is the power struggle at the military level, "peace
process" is the power struggle at the political level..."
In the past few years, there has been much public berating and
lecturing to the LTTE about human rights, child rights, political assassinations
and so on. But now these formerly strident voices have gone silent.
The point is that these international principles are raised only when they serve
to undermine the Tamil struggle, but not when Tamils are victims. After all, we
remember the approving international silence during the ‘war
for peace.’ Those days are back.
Dozens of ordinary
Tamils are being murdered each week.
Tens of thousands are being harried daily
by military
bombardment. Hundreds of thousands of our people are suffering shortages of
food and medicine.
And it is the international community’s tacit collusion in this onslaught that
we must come to terms with. The Sri Lankan state is behaving in the same manner
it always has. As President Junius Jayawardene blithely observed in July 1983:
“The more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be
here. Really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.”
What the Tamils need to understand is that if such brutality
against our people will result in us abandoning our demands for our political
rights then the international community will also be happy. Which is why there
has been no real pressure on Sri Lanka to desist. Which is why the international
response to Sri Lankan violence against us is a mocking call for the state to
investigate and punish itself. Which is why, even now, there is no international
diplomacy to avert the violence.
Comment by
tamilnation.org
The question that the Tamil people will increasingly ask is: why
is it that the international community seeks to avoid supporting
the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam to be free from alien
Sinhala rule? Here see
Nadesan
Satyendra in Sri Lanka - Tamil Eelam: Getting to Yes,
27 October 2006
"...In an important sense for the past 25 years and more, it will be true
to say that two conflicts have raged in the island of Sri Lanka. One is the
conflict between the Tamil people and the Sinhala people... We need to examine the interests behind the stated positions of
the US and India. We need to do so despite the apparent preference of the US as
well as India to advance their
interests by asserting that they are disinterested good Samaritans concerned
simply with bringing peace to a troubled island. But the facts belie these
assertions. We need to address the strategic interests of the US and India
because the political reality is that a conflict resolution
process in relation to the Tamil Eelam-Sri Lanka conflict will
not succeed without resolving the US-India conflict in the
Indian Ocean Region.... Stated broadly,
US foreign policy
is directed to build on its current position as the
sole surviving super power and secure a
unipolar world
(with a 'multi polar perspective' -
a la Condoleezza Rice) for the foreseeable
future. And this means, amongst other matters,
preventing the rise of independent regional hegemons. On the
other hand, the
central plank of
New Delhi's foreign policy is to deny any
independent intermediary role to extra regional
powers in the affairs of the Indian region and also
to further the
emergence of a multi lateral world. In
this latter objective, New Delhi may count on the
'calibrated' support of the
European Union,
Russia,
China
and Iran amongst others.
Given the difference in the end goals that US and India
have, it should not be surprising if
the policies of the United States and
New Delhi in relation to Sri Lanka and the LTTE are not always congruent. But that is not to
say that the United States will not cooperate with
India. It will. It will seek to cooperate 'as a super power' - and
the US believes that it has sufficient instruments in its
armoury to do just that. One
such instrument is the
Norwegian
sponsored Peace Process. This explains the consistently
enthusiastic support that the Peace process has received from the United
States and the more muted (and calibrated) support from India.
This also helps us understand the covert operations of RAW
in Tamil areas in the island of Sri Lanka and the material support
extended by India to Sinhala governments and Sri Lanka political
parties. In the 1980s, RAW gave covert material and financial support to
the Tamil militants to secure the same end - Indian hegemony in the
Indian Ocean region. It appears that New Delhi's interests
remain permanent, though its 'friends' may have changed from time to
time. Because New Delhi does not have the clout of a super power, it
seeks to manage the Tamil struggle to progress its own ends by
infiltrating the Tamil struggle - both in Tamil Eelam and abroad. That
is what it did in 1980s and that is what it is doing today.
Today, both India and the US state openly that they are intent on
securing the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. They do not do so
because of some generalised statist disdain for the emergence of new
states. Did the international community have the same 'statist disdain'
in the case of Croatia? Or for that matter in the case of Latvia,
Lithuania and the Ukraine? The reason is to be found in the specific
strategic concerns of the US and India in relation to the Indian region.
And we need to understand the inter play if we are to progress the
conflict resolution process in Sri Lanka. ...The uneasy power balance in
the Indian Ocean region must be assessed in the light of
"...two geopolitical triangles juxtaposing on the Indian
Ocean's background: U.S.-India-China relations and China-Pakistan-India relations. In this complicated geopolitical
configuration, New Delhi is not simply a partner of China or the
United States: India is emerging as a major power that follows its
own grand strategy in order to enhance its power and interests..."
India's Project Seabird
and the Indian Ocean's Balance of Power - PINR, 2005
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