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Checkpoints
Years
ago, when the CFA was freshly in effect, I spoke with a
Tamil colleague, when he was giving me a lift back home
from work, to specifically find out how he felt about
the dismantling of military checkpoints in Colombo.
Checkpoints are now back and part of our normal, urban
landscape. I was interested to find out what impact
these structures had on Tamils.
Possibly aided by a name that is relatively rare and
unmistakably southern and Sinhala-Buddhist, I find
checkpoints a breeze to negotiate and have never feared
them. Some friendly chatter about the war and prospects
for peace, or even just a ‘kohomada ralahaami?’ asked
nonchalantly with a warm smile is enough to secure ‘Ah
yanna yanna’, with the most cursory check and quick
signature on file.
Yet,
we all know of many examples to the contrary, where
blatant racism and racial profiling have combined to
harass, detain and delay Tamil citizens in particular.
Checkpoints are a telling barometer of violent conflict,
in size, location, number and nature. For many Tamils,
they are symbolic of the underlying causes fuelling
terrorism, reflecting a mentality that sees Tamils as
suspect, inherently violent and tolerable only if they
don’t clamour for their rights as equal citizens. This
was cogently articulated by Gen. Sarath Fonseka last
year and through their silence, wholly endorsed by the
Rajapakse regime.
Military expression
This
mentality sees fuller military expression in the Wanni
today, where the outright murder and dismemberment of
Tamil children, women and men by the security forces and
not just by the LTTE, is rendered unproblematic since it
is vital to and inextricably part of a larger strategy
to wipe-out terrorism.
Checkpoints dotted around the country in their thousands
are absolutely vital to this task, because terrorists,
and their supporters, live amongst us.
Years
before the situation today and the violence against
Tamils under the Rajapakse regime, my colleague told me
that the removal of the checkpoints felt like a dark
cloud over
Colombo
that had dissipated. The mental freedom associated with
the dismantling of checkpoints exceeded by far, my
colleague noted, the physical freedom of unhindered
travel.
My
colleague had grown up and lived in a country that had
systematically marginalised his community, and in those
naively optimistic first days of the CFA, he felt that
for the first time, there was some hope for a political
process that could address the alienation of Tamils. The
colleague with whom I had this conversation on
checkpoints was Kethesh Loganathan. Today, he is dead
and checkpoints very much alive. I wish it was the other
way around.
Checkpoints remind me of Neelan Tiruchelvan, the Central
Bank bombing and the attacks against Gen. Sarath Fonseka
and Gotabaya Rajapakse – the bloody violence, trauma and
war that has defined our lives for decades. It reminds
me that while we may abhor them, their relative absence
contributed to an environment ripe for exploitation by
the LTTE.
For
some, they are symbolic of the “humanitarian operation”
in the Wanni, carried out by brave and behaved soldiers
under the direction of a benevolent, Buddhist
leadership. For others, they are enduring and unpleasant
markers that we are still very far from peace and the
eradication of terrorism.
Election results
The
results of the recent Western Provincial Council
elections demonstrated that voters are largely
supportive of these structures and what they symbolise
and are willing to countenance their increasing
establishment. This is very worrying.
What
should be temporary structures are now turning into
permanent fixtures, with advertising to boot (fancy a
new high-definition TV while you are being strip
searched?). Just as permanent structures are rendered
gradually invisible (do you really notice the
architecture of any of the buildings you pass by on your
daily commutes?), the violence of cocked guns, bunkers,
barrels and military fatigues in our every day lives
becomes far more dangerous when we stop seeing them as
extraordinary.
It is
a vicious cycle – dismantling mechanisms and structures
that give us a sense of security leads to a heightened
anxiety, fear and racism, giving rise to violent social
and political circumstances that require their
re-establishment on a larger scale. It is not a stretch
to see checkpoints as visible building blocks of a
totalitarian state, the foundation for an architecture
of oppression and coercion under the guise of public
safety and national security.
Democratic governance
If we
accept that in order to win the war, the Sri Lankan
state today is, and needed to be very akin to the LTTE
in spirit and form, we must also realise that
sustainable peace is never a consequence of suspended
democratic governance. The Rajapakse brothers and their
regime assume that more checkpoints, more militarisation,
more regulation, more hate against the international
community, more harm directed against NGOs guarantees
sustainable development, stability and peace. They are
very wrong.
President Barack Obama, in a recent speech to the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley fully
acknowledged the challenges of going up against enemies
with no moral scruples, who willingly and gladly kill
innocents, have no appreciation of human rights and no
constitution to bind them to the rule of law. He
mentioned al Qaeda, but it could have been the LTTE.
However, he also went on to stress the importance of
being on the better side of history, noting that, ‘I
believe our nation is stronger and more secure when we
deploy the full measure of both our power and the power
of our values, including the rule of law.
Governments that believe socio-political and economic
conditions necessary for war are those that secure and
sustain peace suffer from the same cognitive dissonance
as terrorists. Peace and development require more
democracy, not less. The Rajapakse regime has amply
demonstrated how it can win wars by killing more than
terrorists. It now has to prove that it can win peace by
supporting more than its apparatchiks.
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