A Dark Paradise - The Genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils

Note-This article was first published in April 2007 "The violence was vicious and bloody. In street after street in Colombo groups of rioters hit only at shops and factories, as well as homes owned by Tamils. Troops and police (almost exclusively Sinhalese) either joined the rioters or stood idly by. The events were so well organized no one doubts that there was a master list of targets." - Financial Times, 12 August 1983. The Sri Lankan Airlines in its travel brochure enticingly invites tourists with the blurb 'Visit Sri Lanka: A Taste of Paradise.' The lavishly illustrated brochure is replete with seductive pictures of the brand new hotels with expanses of beach and ocean and tables overflowing with lobsters and tropical fruits. Beneath the idyllic picture of paradise there is an ethnic struggle between the dominant Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority locked in a deadly embrace of death and destruction. The recent daring air attack of the Sri Lankan military base north of the Colombo International Airport by the LTTE signifies a new escalation to the civil war waged between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE. The deadly antagonism 'The antagonism between Tamils and Sinhalese,' says Professor Gananath Obeysekara, Head of the Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, 'is rooted in the country's history but has been exacerbated into interethnic violence only since 1956.' The old file photos of the particularly vicious anti-Tamil riots in 1983, recorded in stark images of gutted buildings and burnt Tamilian bodies, is a poignant reminder of man's inhumanity to man. 'The brutality was unbelievable,' adds Gananath Obeysekara, 'homes and shops were burnt, cars were doused with gasoline and lit, sometimes with the occupant inside; some people were hacked to death, others burnt alive.' Another gruesome eyewitness account of the anti-Tamil pogrom lays bare the brutality of riots: 'Mobs of Sinhala youth rampaged through the streets, ransacking homes, shops and offices, looting them and setting them ablaze, as they sought out members of the Tamil ethnic minority.' Some 'motorists were dragged from their cars to be stoned and beaten with sticks... Others were cut down with knives and axes.' Conservative estimate place the figure of about 3000 Tamils killed in the riots. Roots of the Conflict In order to fathom the roots of the conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils, one has to turn the historical clock back to 1948 when Sri Lanka gained independence from the British. The first act of the independent Sri Lankan government was to strip the Tamil plantation workers of the citizenship rights. These workers were descended from people brought to Sri Lanka from India by the British in the 19th century to work on coffee and tea plantations. As a result, at least a million Tamil workers were deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. This hostile act did not completely disenfranchise the other Tamils living in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka for thousands of years. But soon other laws were pressed into service, which adversely affected the prospects of all Tamils living Sri Lanka. The government made Sinhalese the sole official language rendering people speaking Tamil as second-class citizens. The Tamils were excluded from most government jobs and access to education was denied to them. At first the Tamils began their peaceful protests against the repression by staging demonstrations, sit-ins and by fighting elections. These demonstrations were met with mob attacks of incited by Buddhist monks and politicians. As no progress could be made to roll back the anti-Tamil policies of the government, the youths increasingly took to violent means to make the government. 'The LTTE was formed in 1972,' notes Chris Lee, 'and carried out its first major armed action in 1978. After the 1983 pogrom, the LTTE gained increased support from the Tamil community and dramatically stepped up its war against the SLA.'

Birth of Tamil Tigers The failure of moderate Tamil political parties to improve the plight of Tamils living in Sri Lanka saw the growth of LTTE as a fighting force. This fact should be borne in mind to understand that LTTE is a product of Tamil Nationalism. 'The Tamil Tigers (LTTE),' observes A. J. Wilson, a noted authority on Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 'today appear to hold the key to their people's future. While they have suffered setbacks, including the loss of the Tamil capital, Jaffna, they remain a potent guerrilla force, able to strike with impunity at both military and civilian targets.' The Tigers' grip on the Tamil population seems secure, as does their overseas support and funding from Tamil exiles in Britain, Canada, and Australia. Systematic repression and torture The inability of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) to quell Tamil Nationalism led to large-scale repression against civilian Tamil population. This terrible fact could be gleaned from Human Rights reports on SLA atrocities committed on Tamils. A statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reports: 'in recent decades, Sri Lanka has had one of the worst records in the world concerning forced disappearances. In 1971, around 10,000 persons disappeared in the south of the country. Between 1987 and 1991, over 30,000 disappeared in the south, and since the early 1980s there have been constant disappearances in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The exact number of such disappearances remains unknown.' The Tamil militants also unleashed its brand of terror by killing service personnel and indulged in disfiguring the bodies and desecrating corpses. Moreover, under the draconian Emergency Regulations and Laws, the security forces have resorted to pervasive torture. Some of the bizarre tortures inflicted include - insertion of chili powder in the nostrils, mouth and eyes and on the genitals of the suspect, covering the victim's head with a plastic bag soaked in petrol, prolonged beatings especially on the soles of the feet while victim lies stretched out on a bench or while hanging by the knees from a pole or hanging by feet. 'What we are emphasizing in this second report is that the gruesome torture still being practiced in police stations across Sri Lanka indicates the almost total breakdown in policing in the country,' remarks Basil Fernando, Executive Director of The Asian Legal Resource Center and 'to describe policing in Sri Lanka as being in crisis would be to understate the current situation; it is nearing collapse.' Dubious legacy of Rajiv Gandhi The controversial decision of Rajiv Gandhi to send Indian troops to Sri Lanka was a tragic event, which led to his untimely death at the hands of a LTTE woman suicide bomber. As A.P.Venkateshwaran, former Indian Foreign Secretary, recalled, 'the war against the Tamils was escalated. When the then Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayawardene met Rajiv Gandhi in 1986 during the SAARC conference in Bangalore, Jayawardene warned Rajiv that it would be dangerous for India if a separate state were to be established in Eelam and then extended by merging Tamil Nadu. Rajiv easily believed what Jayawardene said. I said that things would never develop the way Jayawardene's predicted. 'This was rubbish. Tamil Nadu will never be separated from India'. But he, Rajiv, believed what the head of a neighbouring state said than what I said. The Indian Peace Keeping Force was sent to Sri Lanka within a few months after I resigned my job. You all know what happened after this - thousands of Eelam Tamils were killed and more than 1500 Indian troops lost their lives. In the end, the Indian troops were asked to withdraw from Sri Lanka without any gratitude...' Ultimately, the Indian government withdrew its troops in 1990 but the damage done to its reputation was considerable as the troops were accused of widespread rape and indiscriminate killings. The end game

The brief respite to the conflict in Sri Lanka came in 2001 after the intense fighting for nearly two decades made both the factions war weary. The United National Front led by Ranil Wickremasinghe won the elections and promised to bring peace to his war torn country. Both sides formalized MOU on February 22, 2002 and then signed the permanent ceasefire agreement. Norway was appointed to act as mediator. Wickremasinghe ended the ban on LTTE to pave way for negotiations. The optimism for lasting peace proved illusory as hard-line Sinhala factions within President Kumaratunga's party distrusted Wickremasinghe's peace overtures. The talks broke down on April 21, 2003. President Kumaratunga dismissed Wickremasinghe and declared a state of Emergency. In the fresh elections that followed, United People's Freedom Alliance opposed to LTTE won and Mahinda Rajapakse was elected Prime Minister. The peace did hold, though tenuously. The LTTE split and Colonel Karuna became the commander of its eastern wing. After a brief struggle Colonel Karuna retreated but still remains a presence in the East. Peace still held as no major clashes were reported between SLA and LTTE. In the beginning of December 2005, fighting broke out between LTTE and SLA killing as many as 150 government troops. In December 2006, the Sri Lankan government launched an offensive to drive LTTE from the eastern sector and then to defeat the LTTE in the north. The monsoon intervened and the operation was aborted. On December 8, 2006, the army resumed hostilities and it took Vakarai - a principal stronghold of the LTTE in the East. Though there were speculations that the LTTE was weakened there was a daring air attack in recent days on a Sri Lankan military base near the International airport. Hopes of finding lasting peace appear to be a remote possibility as the country again explodes in an orgy of violence. The tragic civil war in Sri Lanka brings to mind the words of John Adams who aptly said: "That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world" C R Sridhar