Tamils Face Life After War
Vaughan Yarwood explains that, following the end of armed conflict in Sri Lanka, the political situation remains volatile.
When, late at night on 8 February 2010, soldiers acting on Government orders entered General Sarath Fonseka’s office in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, and forcibly removed him, it marked a new level of intolerance in the country towards political dissent.
Fonseka (pictured), who brought to a successful conclusion a decades-long war against the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was arrested — his supporters say ‘abducted’ — over allegations that he had meddled in politics while head of the armed forces and that he liaised with party leaders ‘working against the government’. It did not help that in December 2009 Fonseka had got offside with the Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a brother of the newly reelected President Mahinda Rajapaksa, by hinting that he might have been implicated in war crimes. Nor that he had written to Sri Lanka’s Elections Commission accusing his opponent of intimidation and the abuse of state resources in the presidential poll that returned Rajapaksa to office.
Prior to his arrest, and fearful for his safety, Fonseka had announced plans to temporarily leave the country. He is currently in detention at navy headquarters facing a probable court martial. A recent decision by the country’s Supreme Court dismissing an appeal for his release, along with a statement that the army would soon finish gathering evidence against him, raised concern in some quarters about the general’s fate. It remains unclear whether he will be permitted to contest the parliamentary elections in April 2010, as head of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led Democratic National Alliance.
In total some 53 supporters of Fonseka, including many active and retired military colleagues, were arrested after he lost the January 2010 presidential election and half remain in custody.
Fonseka’s imprisonment represents more than the Government-orchestrated removal of a political rival. It is a serious blow for the country’s Tamils, who saw the general as the best means of bringing an end to what they claim are discriminatory Government policies favouring the majority Sinhalese population. Though Fonseka remained a champion of the Sinhalese, he was nevertheless backed by the leading Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance, which had once supported the LTTE.
During their armed struggle the rebels had also waged an internal war against dissent, eliminating many potential future leaders. With the senior LTTE hierarchy dead, including the group’s leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, and the movement itself broken, the Tamils now find themselves increasingly divided.
The civilian suffering caused by the Government’s military offensive — waged in the face of international calls for restraint — and the slowness of the post-conflict resettlement of displaced Tamils, may have served to radicalise young Tamils. But the arrest in August 2009 in Southeast Asia of a new Tamil Tiger leader, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, has dented hopes of the military campaign being renewed in the near future.
Meanwhile, Tamils in the million-strong diaspora of Asia, Europe and North America appear out of step with the sentiment in Sri Lanka. The diaspora supplied much of the funding for the rebels and, despite some among them appearing content to see the demise of the LTTE, they remain broadly committed to the idea of a separate state of Tamil Eelam within Sri Lanka.
A recent report by the International Crisis Group concludes that in order to be effective the diaspora must repudiate violent methods and recognise that Tamil Eelam has ‘virtually no domestic or international backing’.
Ahilan Kadirgamar of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, which attempts to bridge the country’s ethnic divide, agrees, saying that Tamils have been so battered by the war that basic concerns such as resettlement and jobs are uppermost in their minds. ‘It is not that the desire for a political solution is gone; it just needs to take account of the ground realities of today’.
However, the International Crisis Group notes that the Sri Lankan government must address the legitimate Tamil grievances and that the international community should press more determinedly for political and constitutional reform. The group’s Asia Program Director, Robert Templer, warns that ‘should the Sri Lankan state continue to fail to respond to their collective aspirations, some may eventually seek a solution through violence and could find willing partners in the diaspora’.
- by Vaughan Yarwood
A Bad Place for Journalism
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, an ardent Sinhalese nationalist who presents himself as a man of the people, is said to be ruthless in achieving his political goals. During his first term as president, his supporters were implicated in violence against journalists critical of his regime, including newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was murdered in January 2009.
In a postumously published editorial, Wickrematunge vilified Rajapaksa, saying: ‘in the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other president before you’.
Hopes that Rajapaksa’s reelection would see an end to such repression have been dashed, with media organisations and human rights campaigners fearing that the arrest of Sarath Fonseka prefigures a further crackdown on dissent in the lead-up to the April parliamentary elections.
Commenting in February 2010 on a list of at-risk journalists drawn up by the London-based Amnesty International, the advocacy group’s Asia-Pacific regional director Sam Zarifi said ‘we could document 56 journalists facing threats in Sri Lanka. The number could be more’.
Police recently shut down the offices of the pro-opposition newspaper Lanka, and detained its editor for several weeks and the website Lankanews.com is still looking for one of its journalists who disappeared shortly before the presidential poll. A number of other media workers, including several belonging to the Free Media Movement and the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, are said to have sought safety overseas.
N. Vidyadharan, the editor of Tamil-language newspaper Uthayan, told the BBC ‘there is a fear that we are going back to the dark ages’. Vidyadharan, who lost nine reporters in the civil war who and was himself released without charge following detention in 2009, claims that the focus of repression has now shifted to journalists working for English and Sinhala news media.
Sri Lanka’s media minister Laxman Yapa Abeywardhana has admitted to ‘some issues in the government media’, but claims they relate to a struggle between unions and that media freedom has not been restricted.
- Vaughan Yarwood
Please note that the views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views of Asia:NZ.
Photo sourced from Wikimedia Commons
