What is the situation in Sri Lanka a year after the civil war officially ended. Three citizens, journalists, human rights advocates share their views. First published by Lanka Advocacy.

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To introduce our magazine we asked three of our Srilankan partners to answer four questions: questions on what in their opinion is to be done now and on what probably will happen next – in the worst case independently from what is to be done. We asked Sharmila, a women’s right activist working in the North for over 20 years; Sarath Fernando, Co-Founder and Moderator of the Movement of National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR, www.monlar.net), social activist since more than four decades; and finally Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, one of the country’s leading human rights-defenders, Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA, www.cpalanka.org). Even though all three address themselves deliberately to the whole Srilankan society, they have different focal points defined not only geographically: Dr. Saravanamuttu works most of the time in Colombo, Sarath Fernando mainly in the South, Sharmila mainly in the North. All three address always and on principle also to the international public. Dr. Saravanamuttu answered all questions at once, so his contribution is to be found at the end.

1.) A year ago, 30 years of war ended. The situation in the north is well-known: overly militarized with authoritative structures that dominate civil administration and development, many thousands are still living in camps. What should have been done first to come from one side’s victory to a peace process?

 Sharmila: Perhaps a reparation mechanism that should have been facilitated by a pool of international experts combined with some concrete government’s actions towards devolution of power to the peripheries especially to the north and the east. The bloodiest war in the north lasted about eight months (Sept 2008 to May 2009) and during this period international norms were breached by both sides (Government and LTTE), which by trapping people in the conflict zone wrought large scale death and destruction. The manner in which the war ended effectively foreclosed any discussion of a new post war social order or a new social contract between citizens and the state, unlike in the case of negotiated settlements of civil wars in, for example, South Africa and Liberia, which then opened up opportunities to redefine and claim citizens’ rights. In Sri Lanka the immediate post-war reconstruction neither has provided the opportunity to promote efforts with a minority perspective nor allowed war affected community to participate actively in the processes of reorganization of the society, resources and war structures. There is no accountability process or any form of reparation mechanism for these affected civilians.

Look at the recently appointed lessons learnt and reconciliation commission, there are eight confederates of the President have been appointed as the commissioners and its chairperson C.R. De. Silva is also a member of another commission appointed by the President this year to look into the US state department’s report on allegation of war crime. In addition no commission appointed by the President is going to point figures at its architect and accuse him of violating international laws and ask for accountability. Sri Lanka has a long history of appointing commissions and when they come under extreme diplomatic pressure for violating the rights of its citizens all most all of these commissions have served to derail international criticism. I see the appointment of this commission as Rajapaksa’s ultimate effort to save the GSP plus and repair the tarnished image of Sri Lanka specially in the west. Besides every post war structure that has come up to date does not show Rajapaksas having any intention of sharing administrative power with minorities, instead it exposes their effort to consolidate power through militarization of civil administration in the war affected areas.

Sarath Fernando: The government succeeded in having this one side victory since there was no visible solution to the military conflict other than a complete defeat of the LTTE militarily. In creating this environment for the military victory the government had to suppress not only the voice of the Tamil forces but also all other voices in the country that were asking for a negotiated political settlement.  Earlier the proposals for devolution of power were largely based on the understanding that the LTTE was militarily undefeatable and the government has now proved that LTTE was defeatable. Now the Government uses this environment to say that now there is no need for any form of devolution of power in the form of a Federal State since it has now reached a situation where there is the possibility of “one country one state”.  This claim for a unified state is being used to have centralized control over the economy and development plans that are designed at the top.

While it is necessary to campaign for immediate solutions to the state of militarized control,(demilitarization),  resettlement of people back in their own villages as normal citizens and to have a rapid process of rebuilding of the destruction that has been caused by the war, this campaign should be able to win the support of the rest of the population who are also in need for a situation of power being devolved into their own hands. The campaign should be able to combine the struggles of people in other areas and other sectors of society for their right to decide on and plan their own development, utilize the natural resources in their own areas to their benefits and for the benefit of all people in the country. For instance the plantation people must have the control of land in the hill country to benefit their livelihoods and to improve the natural environment, the forests, the water, soil fertility and the overall productivity of land in a manner that would benefit them, better food production, prevent ecological destruction, pollution of water, prevent floods, erosion, earth slips and droughts  in the rest of the country. The coastal fisher communities must have the right to design their own development utilizing the coasts and the sea in a sustainable manner, the rural farmers in the rest of the country must have the right to design the use and development of their land and natural resources in a manner that would help them to overcome hunger, poverty, malnutrition and have poison free food and unpolluted water etc. The struggle for devolution of power should be a struggle that combines all these efforts. Such an approach would help the people in the rest of the country to understand that struggle for devolution of power is a general overall struggle against centralized control of a single state.

 2.) Government’s victory is not only a military one earned in the north, it’s the result of two victorious elections. How do you think that this election victory contributes to reconciliation and a peace process?

 Sharmila: The electoral victories, both at the Presidential and General elections, achieved by President Rajapaksa and his party if utilized properly can pave the way to a long term political stability instead of continuing polarization. However many spectators of Sri Lankan politics have expressed troubling concern over the lowest ever voter turnout at April 2010 General Election, particularly in the north. Their observation is that a government formed by the Sinhala majority vote will not have inclusive democracy if country’s Tamil (including upcountry Tamils) and Muslim minorities are not well represented in governance. President Rajapaksa and his ruling coalition now control all levels of the island’s polity: the executive, the legislature, the provincial assemblies and the municipal authorities. This makes Sri Lanka, once a multiparty democracy with a very competitive two party system to a one-party–dominant system. With government having 2/3 majority in Parliament actually Rajapaksa and his party is well positioned to take leadership in addressing many deep-rooted problems of Sri Lankan society today. However it all depended on how the current regime will opt to invest this political capital arrived due to their cumulative victories including the winning a two and half decades old war.

 President Rajapaksa’s broad economic strategy was outlined in his election manifesto “Mahinda Chintana” (Mahinda’s Thoughts), which now guides government economic policy. Government constantly talks about “peace through development” specially in former war-torn areas and justifies the need to bring large investment in order to tap the abandoned resource in these areas. However if one looks at the recently held two nationwide elections it is clear that all ethnic minorities, namely Tamils of North & East and from the hill-country and Muslims have rejected it. It is a sharp reminder to the southern polity that bridges, highways, roads, schools and hospitals alone cannot reconcile the ethnically polarized Sri Lankan society and establish durable peace. Thus development of the formerly war-torn areas will continue to be a challenge since there is an inability and unwillingness to address the root causes of the conflict in the south; a simple example is the on-going resettlement and development programs that completely disregard people’s concern in the north and the east. There have been reports and evidence that these new development activities are taking away fertile paddy lands of the minorities and converting them into industrial lands to attract foreign investment. One such example is the handing over of more than 1000 acres of land to India’s National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to establish a thermal power plant in Sampur (north of Muttur in Trincomalee district). This has made many war displaced Tamil farmers from Sampur be relocated and permanently give up their traditional livelihood. Even after the end of war there are high security zones and there is this post-war phenomenon of creation of new cultural and development zones in the north and east. These acts of acquisition of lands, taken in isolation, might seem purely bureaucratic or in the interests of national security or post war robust development, however if one approaches it from the perspective of the history of the minority communities, these acts emerge as part of a history where state-aided programs have brought about demographic changes that favors mostly the majority community.

Sarath Fernando: These victories of the government in all elections held recently were largely based on the victory that was achieved in the war against “terrorism” that everyone wanted to overcome.  This political victory and the authority will however be used to carry forward a development agenda that would look after the interests of the local and foreign capital and would be detrimental to the interests of the ordinary, poor, people. The country is already very heavily in debt and this debt burden is likely to increase with the continuation of the economic agenda of massive infrastructure development programmes and other benefits granted to the rich and with new incentives to attract more foreign and local investment. Therefore, it is necessary for people to get together and formulate their own agenda for poverty eradication and economic survival and to launch on a massive campaign for such economic reforms. Such a joint agenda that can bring together the struggles of all oppressed people is essentially the way in which a broad movement of the people for peace could be developed. Such a movement should combine the interests of all oppressed sections of society such as the economically oppressed groups such as the workers, the peasants, the fisher people, the plantation workers, the urban and the rural poor, the women and also the ethnically oppressed people , the Tamils, the Muslims and so on.

It was very obvious in all the recent election campaigns, the provincial council elections, the Presidential and General elections that no political party put forward any clear agenda of the poor and oppressed people in their election manifestos. This is a marked trend compared to most of the previous elections in Sri Lanka when the left parties put forward the demands and proposals of the poor in their election campaigns. In the absence of such an agenda the poor and the oppressed people are compelled to give legitimacy to rulers who represent interests opposed to those of the poor and oppressed.

 3.) Some people argue, that a peace process in any case has to be started by South – the more so it seems, as if the Sinhala government is not prepared to do so?

 Sharmila: At least in theory the end of civil  war and armed conflict signifies a break and the opportunity of a transformation from violence based forms of conflict resolution to those based on a political solution and building of good governance structures, and most importantly moving away from authoritarianism to more inclusive participatory nation building. Nothing of this sort has happened in Sri Lanka since one year of end of the war. We still see politicians with nationalistic mindset continue to use the ethnic conflict (and the divisions it has created) for political capital in their narrow power game in the South. Till Rajapaksa government comes forward to genuinely address the root course of the armed conflict and give the minorities an acceptable solution, the minorities will continue to be at the receiving end of marginalization and discriminatory treatment and the ethnic-conflict will remain unsolved or even get worse.

 Yes, you are right. Any change to the current way of dealing with the minority grievances in this country can only come from the south. I see two prominent groups that can mobilize masses in the south to bring about this change and challenge the current consolidation of power. They are the business sector and the Buddhist religious leaders. Despite many attempts by Rajapaksas to keep these two stakeholders at a distance in the recent past I see some resistance against this abuse of power, specially when the opposition presidential candidate got arrested. They should come forward to challenge the narrow political, ethnic and religious agendas that have diminished democratic spaces, destroyed the good governance structures and demeaned our moral values. As violence escalated from January 2008 after four years of relative peace, the need for a broad popular movement from the south for peace was repeatedly yearned for, specially to mobilizing mass-based protest against escalated violence specially beginning of last year. This failure has further deepened mistrust between the parties and between ethnic communities. There is an urgent need to rebuild confidence in all sections of the population specially in the south that true democracy is about the wellbeing of every citizen of this country.

Sarath Fernando: In order to get a Sinhalese voice for peace such a voice should also represent the interests of the Sinhala people.  There should be an understanding among the Sinhala people that devolution of power is a demand not only of the Tamil people but also of all others. For this to happen it is necessary to understand that centralized power in the hands of a centralized government would be for the interest of the rich and the powerful and decentralization of power is a need of all poor and oppressed people of all communities. Unless this is done the demand for decentralization or devolution of power into the hands of one community, the Tamils is likely to be understood and interpreted as an agenda of the separatists and could be interpreted as a revival of the idea of terrorist forces. This requires a wide analysis of the neoliberal agenda of capitalist exploitation and an understanding that such an agenda would take away all rights of all poor people, irrespective of their ethnicity or geographical location.  Lack of this interpretation was one of the weaknesses of the earlier peace movements which could be branded by the Sinhala extremists as pro Tamil or even pro separatist. For proper peace there has to be economic justice too.

The big business interests want peace or a no war situation so that their businesses could expand into all parts of the country. Such a peace is not going to bring peace to the poor and the oppressed people of any ethnicity.  Unity among the oppressed people of all races is possible in an agenda for economic justice. Such an agenda demands that people must have ownership and control over land and natural resources to be utilized in a sustainable manner for the benefit of the people. Such a voice will be not only of the Sinhala people but of all people, the workers, peasants, the fisher people, the plantation people, the rural and urban poor, the women and youth. Such a voice must also demand that we work in a manner that does not destructively exploit nature. It is possible to get the majority Sinhala community to give leadership to such a movement and integrate people of other communities too in a joint struggle.  It should be guided by an agenda of development that restores the regenerative ability of nature. An essential aspect of such a process is that people in any particular area should have ownership and control over the land and natural resources so that they could use them in a non exploitative (regenerative) manner. This means that those in the North and East, those in the plantations, those in the rural villages , those in the coastal areas and those in the urban areas will have such control

 4.) Beside all the questions on what is to be done: What do you think will happen next?

Sharmila: The way this country is moving I don’t see much of a positive future for any of us including the Sinhalese. May be we will become like Burma. The opposition parties have no voice and the main opposition party should be blamed for the status of this country today. It was not Rajapaksa’s good time or clever war tactics that brought him all these victories but it was the weak opposition leadership and diminished people’s support to LTTE that made the current regime so successful. Well, I am afraid to think about a future for this country. Once the proposed constitutional amendments come into practice, this country will be set on a path to ensure Rajapaksa family a solid ascendancy for another decade and the breeding ground of their politics: the Sinhala nationalism in addition to bribery, corruption and nepotism (which they have already made as the norms of this nation) will supersede and erode the little democratic space we have now.

Sarath Fernando: Unless pressurized to do otherwise the present government would continue the same way as all the other previous governments to follow the economic and development agenda of neoliberal economic processes which will require that they have a regime that can control any form of resistance to the reforms that they want to do.

The intensification of military control in the North and East is part of their agenda to get private investments to expand in the North and East. Whether the richer sections of the Tamil society would agree to this agenda and whether the Tamil Diaspora would want to toe the line and benefit from this situation is to be seen. TNA has already begun to negotiate with the government and has removed all those who were seen as supportive of LTTE from the party (Tamil National Alliance, 2001 von verschiedenen tamilischen Parteien bzw. Rebellengruppen gebildetes Wahlbündnis, gegenwärtig wichtigste Repräsentation der tamilischen Minderheit. Vgl. hier den Beitrag zu den Ergebnissen der April-Wahlen. Editor’s note). The Government would continue its military control over the North and East in the name of fighting against terrorism. The proper resettlement of people back into their villages would be a slow process. The Government has already begun to follow the policy demands of the IMF and have reduced the import taxes in the process of liberalization of imports. It has indicated its desire of continuing the process of building infrastructure facilities saying that it would make Sri Lanka the miracle of Asia. All these would add further burdens on the poor and there is very little opposition to this policy from the major opposition political parties. Therefore there is much that needs to be done in order to build a movement of the people for inter racial justice and economic justice.  In the absence of a major political opposition to these policies the future situation is very dark and much will have to be done by the movements of the people to unify the forces of all oppressed groups. The challenge is to build a movement of all oppressed people that can unify those who are oppressed economically and racially .

Dr. Saravanamuttu:

Sri Lanka is currently, a year after the military defeat of the LTTE, in a post-war phase. The challenge is to move to a post-conflict phase – one in which the causes of the conflict are not sustained and definitely not re- produced. This requires the prioritization of peace, reconciliation and unity – in other words meeting the needs of the IDPs, a political settlement and facing up to the question of as to whether there can be unity without reconciliation and reconciliation without accountability. The latter is the most controversial given the allegations of war crimes and the persistent culture of impunity in respect of human rights violations.

It is important that the needs of the people of the north and east are given priority over the large scale development projects which the government seems to favour. The latter are designed without sufficient consultation with the people of the north and east and implemented from Colombo from within the presidential secretariat through a presidential task force, particularly in the north headed by Basil Rajapaksa. The task force was initially a pan-Sinhala one and more recently it has been announced that a district development committee for Killinochchi will be headed by the president’s son, first time MP from Hambantota, Namal Rajapaksa. In the east the situation is compounded by the rivalry between Pillayan and Karuna and between Pillayan and the Governor, fostered by the government. (Pillayan and Karuna are two former LTTE-commandants leading the rebel’s Eastcoast-wing. In 2004 they changed sides and formed a new military-political organisation named Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal/Tamil Peoples Liberation Tigers, TMVP, which than supported the Government forces. Today part of the President Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition, TMVP is marked by the rivalry between its two leaders. Editor’s note)

Government prioritization of mega development projects stressing tourism in particular in the east raises questions among the local population of farmers and fisherfolk as to what its priorities are. There are a host of issues that still persist with regard to IDP return, of those still in camps and those let out who are living with host families, land issues relating to High Security Zones and to access to documentation as well as access to the sea, the type of boats to be used and the hours of fishing. Moreover, the current situation and the prospect of people from outside the province being brought in for development projects raises suspicions about intentions of long term demographic change and “colonization”.

It would seem that the government is prioritizing economic development above all else and from this perspective treats political rights as irrelevant at best and subversive at worst. It vows to pursue this with the singlemindedness of purpose it applied to the defeat of the LTTE. It hopes that development will eventually precede political rights and blunt political aspirations. In this respect it is a government that looks to the Malaysian model of political design and culture and as such risks replicating a Myanmar type model.

On the political front we are told to expect a provincial council election in the north but not told when. There is also some suggestion of a second chamber along provincial lines but with no real substantive powers. The priority re constitutional reform is regime consolidation and the speculation is that constitutional reform will come in three stages. In the first stage the term bar on the presidency will be removed and the 17th Amendment effectively dismantled with the president having the power to make appointments to the range of oversight commissions.

The government needs to come out with its proposals for a political settlement and avoid the triumphalism of military victory and majoritarian democracy. We are under the rule of one party and one family – a framework not conducive to democratic peace and governance.