Satire

The similarity in different approaches

We the Sinhalese are euphoric about the imminent annihilation of the LTTE. We believe that any day now we’ll hear the wonderful news that Pirapaharan himself has been captured or killed, ending his reign of terror of over two decades.

We are anxious to discuss the impending changes that will take place in a post-LTTE environment. We see a brave new world ahead of us marked with peace and prosperity. We are quick to identify the military defeat of the LTTE with the disappearance of the ethnic problem in its entirety.

There are a number of Tamils who share many aspects of this view, if not all of its naïve optimism. Tamils who have suffered so long at the hands of the Tigers’ cruelty and worse will wish, no doubt, to celebrate the end of this terrible epoch. Muslims who were arbitrarily and brutally chased away from their homes and villages in the north will understandably see the current events as liberating them from the yoke of tyranny.

Sinhalese in the border areas may be less hopeful in the light of the recent massacres which took place far away from the little strip of land where we are told the LTTE is vainly prolonging its inevitable end.

The dominant argument in favour of the full-scale war that the government has prosecuted with a vengeance during the last year, suggests that the LTTE is neither willing nor able to negotiate in good faith, and that military force is the only language that they understand. Yet, the exclusive pursuit of this war to the finish by a regime anxious to score political victories in the south has only served to blur the more difficult but nonetheless crucial underlying issues.

Grievances

What has all but disappeared from the public discourse on the subject is the need to address legitimate and long-standing Tamil grievances, to provide meaningful devolution of power, and to decriminalise ‘Tamilness’ and to ensure the safety and security of all citizens. Supporters of Tamil militancy claimed that without the use of violence the Lankan Sinhala-dominated state would not even recognise the grievances of minority groups.

The response of many intellectuals was that violence inevitably creates its own pernicious dynamic and that other means are necessary to ensure non-discrimination and fundamental rights. However, government rhetoric appears to mirror the former thesis.

Military victory has become a means of denying legitimate grievances; terrorism has become the only problem to contend with, and the history of majoritarian betrayals, ethnic and linguistic discrimination and targeted violence that created the conditions for the emergence of such terrorism is ignored. Surely, we don’t need the LTTE’s ruthlessness to remind us that not all the citizens of this country are equal, that not all have been treated justly? 

Yet, media propaganda notwithstanding, what assurances do the thousands of IDPs and conflict-affected Tamil populations have that the Sinhala state is serious about their rights as citizens and their basic needs as human beings?

Currently Lankan mass media bombards its audience with a parade of the suffering and trauma of the rivers of people who have managed to escape from the clutches of the LTTE. Exhausted, even injured, civilians who have just crossed over from the “safe zone” to the army-controlled areas, are made to recount their tribulations, and to pronounce that their saviours are Sri Lankan armed forces.

Used as pawns

The point is that these people are being used by the state machinery as pawns in a political propaganda exercise, aimed both at a local and international audience. The government, and its exemplary military forces care so much for the welfare of these IDPs. Yet, these are the same people whose friends and relatives can be found in a number of hospitals in the north and east with government-inflicted shell and mortar wounds.

These are the same people who were merely unavoidable ‘collateral damage’ in the earlier stages of this phase of the conflict. These are the people whom the government denies having wounded and endangered.

Is there anything fundamental that has changed from their being dispensable, deniable, unimportant in the very recent past to their current status as the cynosure of all attention and as the source of the moral superiority of this military offensive? I believe that the only difference is the propaganda value of the Tamil civilian population as they desperately seek a moment of tenuous physical safety after months (even in some cases, years) of acute suffering.

Showing the military providing emergency first aid and food rations is all very well, but what is much less transparent and acceptable are the government’s plans for their longer-term relief and rehabilitation. International humanitarian agencies are still not provided free access to the IDPs, while severe restrictions have been imposed on the freedom of movement and communication of the IDPs themselves.

Suspicion

The fundamental logic of the entire IDP support system remains one of suspicion in which narrow military concerns dominate. It is true, certainly, that among the IDPs are bound to be members of the LTTE – many who have ceased to be combatants and perhaps others who seek to infiltrate and hide among civilian populations. This is inevitable, and there is no easy way of identifying genuine IDPs from LTTE cadres who are hiding in their midst.

Does this mean that these IDP populations will be subjected to unacceptable levels of confinement and suspicion for an indefinite period of time, in order to weed out ‘non-civilians’? Judging from the government response so far this would appear to be the most likely scenario.

This means that our country will be turning back the clock to the period when the Tamil insurgency was visible as a shadowy guerrilla movement. All that would have changed since then is the relinquishing of territorial control and LTTE-controlled areas functioning as a quasi-state.

The sad reality is that Tamils will remain suspected terrorists even in the much-vaunted new dispensation, until they can prove themselves innocent (which we know from experience is a continuous and painful process that is never adequately accomplished). They will be recipients of ad hoc charity and some handouts from elements in the southern polity, but they will have no real rights or voice.

The state, in claiming to “protect” them and to “save” them will continue, albeit in a humanitarian guise, to control and manipulate them in ways startlingly similar to the modus operandi of its arch enemy, the LTTE. During the height of the war, these civilians were human shields with the LTTE forcing them to remain in the line of fire. The government fired anyway, claiming that there were no real civilians in these areas. Now these same people have been rescued by the military forces who have invented a new humanity for themselves for the benefit of the television cameras.