Page 2 of
2 Clouds
on the Sri Lankan horizon for
China By Peter Lee
The
International Crisis Group recently described the
situation in the defeated Tamil territories:
The slow but steady movement of
Sinhala settlers along the southern edges of the
province, often with military and central
government support and sometimes onto land
previously farmed or occupied by Tamils, is
particularly worrying. These developments are
consistent with a strategy - known to be
supported by important officials and advisers to
the president - to change "the facts on the
ground", as has already happened in the east,
and make it impossible to claim the north as a
Tamil-majority area deserving of
self-governance.
Deepening
militarization of the province presents a threat
to long-term peace and stability. Far in
excess of any
legitimate need to protect against an LTTE
revival, the militarization of the north is
generating widespread fear and anger among
Tamils: indeed, the strategy being executed runs
the risk of inadvertently resurrecting what it
seeks to crush once and for all - the
possibility of violent Tamil insurrection. The
construction of large and permanent military
cantonments, the growing involvement of the
military in agricultural and commercial
activities, the seizure of large amounts of
private and state land, and the army's role in
determining reconstruction priorities are all
serious concerns. [6]
Today, Rajapaksa presides
over a triumphalist Sinhalese state that is
largely defined by its near-total victory over
the Tamil Tigers, a heavy handed occupation of
Tamil regions in northern and eastern Sri Lanka,
a reputation for dispatching unmarked white vans
to disappear critics, and a commitment to
manipulating and intimidating the press that
places it in the unenviable position of 163rd on
the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom
Index. [7]
Its primary public relations
preoccupation is deflecting attention from the
civilian victims at Vanni, since acknowledgment
of their victimhood and the circumstances behind
it would quite possibility implicate the Sri
Lankan Army and its entire command structure up
to the president in complicity in war crimes.
In March of 2011, the United Nations
made a powerful effort to breach the political
and legal defenses of the Rajapaksa government
with its "Report of the Secretary General's
Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri
Lanka".
In
addition to persuasively documenting the suffering
at Vanni, the report made the explosive assertion
that, because of the inadequacies of the
government's quaintly named Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission in particular (deficient
in "best practices of truth seeking"; "deeply
flawed ... does not meet international standards
for an effective accountability mechanism" sniffed
the report) and the Sri Lankan legal system in
general in getting to the bottom of the war crimes
issue:
The Secretary General should
immediately proceed to establish an independent
investigative mechanism ... to monitor and
access the extent to which the Government of Sri
Lanka is carrying out an effective
accountability process ... conduct
investigations independently into the alleged
violations ... collect and safeguard for
appropriate future use provided to it that is
relevant to accountability for the final stages
of the war ... [8]
In other words, the
recommendation is that the UN conduct an
independent investigation that undermines the
claims of the Rajapaksa administration as the
savior of Sri Lanka, openly discredits the
military and threatens its personnel with
prosecution ... and preserves the dossier for
"appropriate future use" ie criminal prosecution
against Rajapaksa and his associates for war
crimes if and when they leave office, no longer
enjoy immunity, and are vulnerable to the judicial
attentions of an unfriendly, opportunistic, or
righteous successor government.
No wonder
the Rajapaksa government fought the March 22 UN
Human Rights Council resolution that uses the
expert's report as its foundation: if implemented,
it is not only a gun to the head of Sri Lanka's
government and military elite; it is an attack on
Sinhalese chauvinism that would provide
desperately needed political oxygen to the Tamil
opposition.
International pressure on the
Sri Lankan government was intensified by the
release and extensive international circulation of
two documentaries in 2011 and 2012 by Britain's
Channel 4 on the theme of "Sri Lanka's Killing
Fields." Non-Governmental Organizations arranged
screenings of the original program for US,
British, and EU parliament politicians. [9]
The programs appeared to be the result of
close synergy between Channel 4 and sources in the
UN, with the documentaries replicating the
narrative of the expert's report and intensifying
it through the presentation of horrific videos,
including trophy footage of summary executions and
the apparent aftermath of rape-murders taken by
Sri Lankan army soldiers.
Chinese support
in the Security Council should protect the
Rajapaksa government from international war crimes
prosecution. However, the main threat of the human
rights campaign is political, not legal.
With the Tigers and the moral and
political conundrum of their enthusiastic
commitment to terrorism out of the way and the
focus lasered on the brutality of the Sinhalese
regime, Sri Lanka's embattled Tamils - and the
vociferous Tamil diaspora - are once again
advancing their claims to improved treatment,
greater political autonomy ... and meaningful
support from the international community.
It is a call that New Delhi, now that Sri
Lanka's Tamil community has shed the hateful
incubus of the anti-India LTTE, is prepared,
however cautiously, to heed.
It is a call
that the United States, for its usual complicated
reasons, appears ready to echo.
As the Sri
Lankan situation evolved, the US State Department
gently prodded the Sri Lankan government on the
issue of reconciliation and kept a wary distance
from Tamil politicians. As late as November 2011,
the State Department snubbed a delegation from the
Tamil National Alliance, which has disavowed Tamil
independence and represents Tamil interests in the
Sri Lankan parliament. UN chief Ban Ki-moon did
not meet with the delegation, either.
This
was apparently a demonstration, sincere or not, of
US and UN willingness to let Sri Lanka put its own
house in order before tabling the UNHRC
resolution.
However, by late February 2012
the Obama administration's key point man for Sri
Lanka, Assistant Secretary of State for South and
Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake met with the
"Tamils for Obama", a rather marginal and misnamed
political grouping whose primary enthusiasm is for
Tamil independence rather than President Obama's
policies:
"We also handed him a copy of our
Referendum in Sri Lanka to Gain
Self-determination for Tamils," said a press
spokesman for Tamils for Obama, "It is modeled
on the one that was recently voted on in
southern Sudan, and which led to the creation of
the new country of South Sudan. We hope for a
similar referendum and result in northeastern
Sri Lanka.
"We also gave him a second
copy which we asked him to pass along to
Secretary of State Clinton. He promised it would
be done, and immediately passed the copy along
to a subordinate official to take to Secretary
Clinton." [10]
As to where all this
combination of domestic oppression and righteous
international finger-wagging might lead, maybe it
is "Springtime in Colombo", as the Lanka Standard
speculated on February 20:
There is also a growing apprehension
within the government that they are at the
receiving end of a possible strategy of "Regime
Change" propelled by external intervention.
Government members have been seeing a foreign
hand not only in the issue of war crimes but
also behind the economic unrest that is growing
amongst the general population ...
In
his Independence Day speech, President Rajapaksa
warned against those who aspired for an "Arab
Spring" type of uprising… [11]
An Arab
Spring-style eruption against Rajapaksa is
unlikely in the short term. Despite his
government's excesses, he still basks in the aura
of the victory over the Tigers and strong support
from a Sinhalese majority that has limited
sympathy for the Tamils. At the same time, he is
headed into a political cul-de-sac.
His
government lacks the credibility, will, and
resources to achieve reconciliation with the
Tamils. If the Sri Lankan government's callous
policy of oppression of the Tamils and military
occupation and creeping Sinhalization of the Tamil
homelands backfires and a new political crisis
erupts, any attempt to repeat the military
solution of 2009 will be met with a united chorus
of international condemnation and Chinese arms and
support will avail him little.
It will be
India that possesses the ability to act as an
honest broker and offer a measure of protection,
support, and a future to the embattled Tamils of
Sri Lanka.
This Indian role - and
displacement, at least in part, of Chinese
influence in Sri Lanka - is something the United
States will be keen to promote, using its ability
to orchestrate pressure on the Sri Lankan regime.
One gets a picture of the levers available
to the United States when one considers that Sri
Lanka purchases over 90% of its oil from Iran and
currently relies on a waiver graciously granted by
the United States in order to continue its imports
without suffering sanctions to its banking system.
America's benevolence has its limits,
however.
Assuming that Rajapaksa continues
with his current policies of Sinhalese chauvinism
and political repression, whatever he tries to do
in the area of reconciliation will probably be
judged inadequate by the United States - until he
is enticed into a process of reconciliation that
place India's good offices, and its ability to
manage the Tamil brief more effectively than the
Sri Lankan government itself - at the center of
Sri Lanka's ethnic politics.
Ironically,
it may be China's contribution to the destruction
of the Tamil Tigers that opens the door to New
Delhi's return to a position of significant
influence in Sri Lanka and a decline in Beijing's
clout.
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