An Unhealed Land

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, though in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible”.
Orwell (Notes on Nationalism)

Round II of the local government elections was held, coincidentally, on the 17th anniversary of Black July. Its results embody a stark message: post-war, Sri Lanka remains a politico-psychologically divided land. The Rajapaksas are still popular in the Sinhala-South but utterly unpopular in the Tamil-North.
The Rajapaksas wanted a Northern victory as proof of Tamil-contentment with the status quo. A mix-and-match of bribery and brute force was used to achieve this aim. Killing dogs and dumping excreta intermingled with baby-kissing and freebies. The Mahinda-Basil-Namal trio haunted the North. Huge rallies were held at which the President informed the Tamils how happy they are, post-war.
Attempts at election-theft continued on polling day: “Reports of vote buying, intimidation by armed groups, grabbing of polling cards and a fear psychosis prevented a large number of people from voting in the North… Independent polls monitors said there were blatant violations of election laws…” (The Sunday Times – 24.7.11). The UPFA lost not because the election was unmarred by violence and malpractices but despite such anti-democratic deeds. Had the election been free and fair, the polling would have been higher, the UPFA’s vote lower and its margin of defeat wider.
The Rajapaksa method of electioneering consists of a violence-filled campaign followed by a relative clam on polling day. The manifest failure of this mode in the North indicates the degree of discontent seething under a quiescent-surface among Lankan Tamils. Bereft of even the few trappings of democracy extant in the South, the Northern voters saw the election as the only chance to express their outrage, democratically. This is a protest-vote, the equivalent of a politico-electoral no-confidence vote, and proof-positive that the Rajapaksas’ Northern Spring has been for the Tamils an autumn of disillusionment.
Post-war, the North has experienced a Sinhala-supremacist peace characterised by a glaring absence (no political solution) and a searing presence (a de facto military occupation), augmented by a development model which focuses on mammoth physical-infrastructure projects and de-prioritises the urgent necessities of the war-devastated populace. Had the regime implemented a massive housing programme and focused on job-creation and rebuilding schools/hospitals, the Northern discontent may not have become so intense, even in the absence of a political solution. But without devolution, without pro-people development and without security, what do the Tamils have to look forward to? We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the huge military presence in the North makes Tamils feel safe. Would we in the Sinhala-South feel safe if our localities are ‘guarded’ by armed Tamil soldiers who cannot speak Sinhalese and are all-powerful under the Emergency Rule?
The army is Sri Lankan only nominally; in actuality it is a Sinhala army. The omnipresence of such a military cannot but make Tamils more insecure. If the regime is seriously interested in healing and reconciliation, drastically reducing the Northern military presence is an urgent necessity (after all, the Tigers are no more). A civil administration must be established and the task of maintaining law-and-order handed over to a multi-ethnic police force. These are palliatives which can be implemented while the interminable debate over devolution (including police powers) continues.
The Tamils have signalled democratically their abhorrence of the status quo. Their discontent needs to be understood and addressed, if our future is to be less bathetic than our past.

Shadows from the Past

In a bold reappraisal of Black July, award-winning senior journalist Gamini Akmeemana wrote: “After returning home in 1984, I remember telling a Tamil tenant in my neighbourhood how bad I felt about the whole thing. He didn’t even smile. Giving me a blank look, he quickly disappeared indoors. I felt puzzled then by his behaviour, though now I know that in his place I would have done exactly the same thing. But I belonged to the majority…well meaning but complacent, and hardly in a position to put myself in the lot of a persecuted minority, of someone who has had a family member hacked to death and house burnt down by a ranting mob” (Daily Mirror – 18.7.2011).
Mr. Akmeemana has touched on a perennially important issue – our total incomprehension of the deep insecurity most Tamils feel in the land of their birth. The Black July taught Tamils that they are structurally insecure. This bitter-realisation turned innumerable law-abiding and non-political Tamils into armed cadres willing to fight and die for a state in which they and their kin will not be hounded and killed by marauding mobs just for being Tamil.
The brutal Black July also brutalised the victims, paving the way for a new circle of violence which spared none. The total absence of formal justice for the victims of Black July exacerbated the Tamil armed struggle. When justice is denied revenge becomes attractive. The Tamil perception of the armed groups as instruments of vengeance created a permissive attitude towards atrocities against Sinhala civilians. The resultant abdication of the moral high-ground by the Tamils enabled the ascendance of the Tigers. The Tamils need to deal with their own past errors; this task is clearly beyond the TNA as it is constituted currently and needs to be addressed by organisations such as the UTHR-J. But the task of introspection/self-criticism must be commenced by the Sinhalese, both as the majority community and the victors of the Eelam War (which was also a civil war).
According to Channel 4, two officers who served in the 58th Division have provided eye-witness accounts of the horrors committed during the last days of war and the first days of peace. Last week Channel 4 telecasted parts of their gruesome and harrowing testimonies. The war against the LTTE was unavoidable. But the undeniable monstrousness of the Tigers cannot be used to justify monstrous deeds committed in the necessary war against them. For instance, the regime’s argument that one of the victims, whose naked (and obviously abused) body is shown on the Channel 4 documentary, Ms. Issipriya, was a Tiger cadre and not a journalist is irrelevant. Torture and rape (and killing prisoners) are legally impermissible and morally abhorrent, irrespective of whether the victims are armed-Tigers or unarmed-civilians. In wars such horrific deeds can and do happen, which is why instead of covering ourselves with a threadbare cloak of moral-infallibility we need to make a sincere effort to investigate the war crimes charges. As Slavoj Žižek pointed out, when legal-moral boundary lines are crossed in situations of desperate necessity, it is essential to “retain a sense of guilt, an awareness of the inadmissibility of what we have done” (London Review of Books – 23.5.2002). But such a contrite and apologetic mindset, and the introspection necessary for it, becomes impossible when moral infallibility is taken as the first premise.
Black July was enabled by our collective-denial of the humanity of Tamils. The silent majority regarded Tamils as monsters enabling a violent minority to treat them as such. Our inability to be affected by Tamil suffering during and post-war indicates that that moral failure which enabled the Black July is still with us and within us.