Civilians caught in Sri Lanka's 'clean war'
By Sreeram Chaulia
COLOMBO - Fighting between government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) intensified in northern Sri Lanka this week, displacing thousands
more civilians and prompting the government to order all non-governmental
organizations to vacate the besieged rebel stronghold of Vanni.
According to reports on Wednesday, government fighter jets pounded the LTTE
command center inside the rebel-held Kilinochchi region and carried out at
least four other bombing raids in retaliation for the LTTE's pre-dawn attack on
Tuesday that devastated a key military complex and left 25 people dead.
In recent weeks there has been intense media focus on the
offensive, with different versions of the battle and the gains. On Monday,
official state reports claimed that the Sri Lankan army had surrounded the
headquarters of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE's reclusive leader. But, as
reported by Inter Press Service and rebel Internet sites such as Lankawin.com
and TamilNet.com, there is a different picture of the conflict. Independent
reports are hard to come by.
What is clear is that offensives since April-May have displaced tens of
thousands of civilians. Amnesty International (AI), in an August 19 statement,
said the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE place thousands of civilian lives at
risk with each day the fighting continues. According to AI, there is no safe
haven for the families trying to escape the shelling by Sri Lankan forces as
they push towards Kilinochchi.
Fleeing humanity
The Sri Lankan army's alleged tactic of forcibly displacing Tamil civilians by
firing heavy artillery and aerial bombs has generated a mass of fleeing
humanity with many sheltering under trees and in the Wanni's jungles. The
LTTE's order to stay put and offer "resistance" to the advancing army has left
civilians facing certain death.
Still, the Sri Lankan state is hardly a paragon of virtue. With the objective
of luring Tamil civilians into "cleared areas" (territory retaken from LTTE
control by the state), the government is setting up reception centers in
Vavuniya district. These camps are strictly policed and offer very limited
freedom of mobility for inmates. Since civilian escapees from Wanni are all
suspected of loyalties to the LTTE, the camps are subject to screening and
"weeding out" operations by security forces. One informed international aid
official likened them to Nazi concentration camps.
While the plight of civilians in the north has been receiving attention due to
the statements of the United Nations, a grinding low-intensity campaign against
civilians rages on in the east. Since the districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa
and Amparai were "cleared" by the Sri Lankan army in the past two years,
harassment of civilians has increased. The more the army is in control of an
area, the less secure it feels about its newly conquered terrain.
In one instance, the farming village of Ichalampattu in Trincomalee district is
now surrounded by army posts and its residents face unimaginable hurdles to
liberty and livelihood. The ramping up of military installations and
infrastructure across eastern Sri Lanka evokes mortal fear among Tamil
civilians, whose lives have been shattered by intimidation, extortion, torture
and disappearances. The guns and personnel carriers that have been inserted
into the area are protecting the army and its affiliates from a resurgence of
the LTTE, rather than enhancing a sense of safety for locals.
Promises and provincial councils
A new feature on the political landscape of eastern Sri Lanka - after it was
"cleared" by the army - is the creation of a new layer of government through
elections to provincial councils.
A leader of the state-abetted breakaway faction of the LTTE, the Tamil Makkal
Viduthalai Pulihal (TMVP), is in the saddle of the provincial chief minister's
office. The council mechanism is being trumpeted by the Sri Lankan state as the
first step towards the devolution of power for the Tamil-speaking people. At a
recent South Asian summit in Colombo, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa
publicly "promised" India that he was intent on carrying the council experiment
forward and implementing the constitution's 13th amendment provisions for
autonomy of the North and East.
Actual happenings on the ground in the East, however, leave little doubt that
the councils have boomeranged on their supposed beneficiaries. While greater
self-governance to Tamil-speaking people in the North and East is theoretically
the only solution to Sri Lanka's 25-year-long internal war, its implementation
is a sham beneath which the deep-rooted anxieties of the state vis-a-vis ethnic
minorities limit the scope of devolution.
A crucial example of the mistrust that the state holds towards allowing
Tamil-speaking people a chance to run their own affairs is the lame-duck
condition of the new chief minister's office in the East. It has been saddled
with five ministries, but the Sri Lankan army still calls most of the shots in
administration. The victory of the TMVP in the provincial council elections in
May this year was tainted by gross irregularities committed with the army's
assistance. The moniker of "puppet" is permanently associated with the TMVP in
the eyes of ordinary Tamil people, making a mockery of genuine autonomy.
The TMVP's "warlordism", wherein Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Amparai are carved
up among commanders for exploitation and abuse of civilians, has added dread to
people's minds. Sexual violence against Tamil women by the TMVP's cadres is a
new dimension to the scarred memories of local people. As if the LTTE's
abductions of children for conscription were not sufficient, the TMVP is
manipulating its state-designated legitimacy to carry out its own forcible
enlistment of civilians with impunity. The TMVP hails from the same
militaristic tradition as the LTTE and is proving no better in assuring an
accountable and humane government.
Veil of propaganda
While the realities in the North and East augur badly for civilians, a surreal
veil of propaganda has enveloped coverage of the war in the Sinhalese South.
State persecution of media personnel, peace activists and academics has reached
alarming proportions in order to preserve a sanitized picture of events in the
North and East.
A fist-pumping Sinhalese chauvinist narrative is monopolizing news space and
airwaves. According to press coverage, Tamil civilians are happy to be rid of
the LTTE's terror and are appreciating the provincial councils' work. The war
in the North is being presented as a march of endless victories for the brave
soldiers who are said to be annihilating the LTTE forever.
State propagandists like the head of the Peace Secretariat, Rajiva Wijesinghe,
have launched a drive to convince the Sinhalese public that the army is
conducting a "clean war" with maximum deference to the rights of Tamil
civilians. Claims of successful separation of enemy combatants from
non-combatants, as the army penetrates the Wanni, are "laughable" to
eyewitnesses.
Yet, the Rajapaksa government has managed to muster a Sinhalese consensus that
the war must be "fought to the finish" and that the LTTE will be "wiped out"
before the end of the year. As long as the lid on war weariness among the
Sinhalese people is tightly maintained, the state has the political license to
pursue military solutions.
Internationally, the Rajapaksa government has realigned with forces that are
less bothered by the human costs of war. It is a remarkable sight in Colombo to
behold giant billboards of Rajapaksa shaking hands with the Chinese President
Hu Jintao, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Pakistani Prime Minister
Yusuf Raza Gilani. Rajapaksa's "devil may care" defiance of international calls
for political solutions is a product of the presence of these sympathetic
leaders whose military and diplomatic backing has enabled the army to outgun
the LTTE.
As the experience of the East illustrates, a possible final defeat of the LTTE
in the North is unlikely to bring a peace dividend as long as institutional
biases persist in the Sri Lankan polity. International actors, who calculate
narrow self-interests and chant the sovereignty mantra to give the Rajapaksa
government a blank check, bear partial responsibility for the unfolding
catastrophe.
The policy of the regional superpower, India, remains largely motivated by the
need to counter China's strategic encroachments in Sri Lanka. New Delhi is
afraid that its advocacy for civilian rights in the North and East will drive
Colombo deeper into Beijing's embrace. Like India's mealy-mouthed policy
towards restoring democracy in Myanmar, its compromised attitude towards Sri
Lanka's deadly war is compounding a human tragedy that shows no end in sight.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship in Syracuse, New York. He has just completed a month-long
tour of Sri Lanka.
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