by Somapala Gunadheera, The Island, Colombo, January 17, 2010
"But there is neither East nor West,
Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
though they come
from the ends of the earth!"
from The Ballad of East and West
by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
I preface this essay with some extracts from Special Report No: 34 of University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), (released on December 13, 2009), because of their logical relevance as background to what I want to say. Many a reader might have missed the report on account of its substantial length.
"To be sure, the situation we find ourselves in has a good deal to do with how the LTTE managed society, pushed for war whenever there was a prospect of peace and brainwashed the community through its propaganda monopoly. It also has a good deal to do with how the State has conducted itself. And expatriate LTTE supporters who basked in this vicarious glory are deserving of the highest contempt.
"The LTTE as an organization evinced two minds, showing the different expectations of the Leader and normal cadres and officers. The Leader had driven himself to a point where it would become difficult for him to justify his prolific record of killings if he settled down to a federal settlement, where he would ultimately be held politically accountable. A more immediate problem was the section of the Diaspora that had financed and feted him to deliver Tamil Eelam. Disappointing them would have meant some loss of face that could (not) have been ignored. What the people wanted was a federal settlement offering them dignity and an opportunity to rebuild their lives.
"Today politicians continue to use this war, this monumental tragedy, for political capital in their narrow power game in the South, while the removed and insensitive Tamil Diaspora tries to further polarize people in their home country with their meaningless rhetoric and slogans of Transnational government.
"There is only one way forward. An initiative to forge a broad multi-ethnic and multi-religious movement that challenges these narrow ethnic and religious agendas and Sri Lanka’s climate of impunity"
Diaspora’s Labours Lost
The Tamil Diaspora’s investment on the ethnic war has been evidently wasted as discussed in my article "A comedy of errors", published in the Island of June 30, 2009,
"The ‘stage-fright’ of the Diaspora has already cost them much. Even at the peak of the war they failed to come into open negotiations with the Government. They preferred to act by proxy through Moon, Brown, Miliband and Clinton and it was too late in the day when they discovered how ineffective those cat’s paws were.
Imaginably the bulk of the LTTE investment on the war came from the Diaspora but they did nothing to manage that investment, preferring to remain back-stage. The result has sent billions down the drain. The Diaspora had all the rights and stakes to come forward and negotiate with the Government on behalf of their people when the battle was on. Such direct intervention would have provided a plausible mediator who had a legitimate role to play in the escalating conflict, unlike third parties who were ineffectively praying for peace in chorus.
Perhaps the conflict might have had a happier ending with direct mediation and saved thousands of lives on both sides. This reminds me of the following observation I made in an article published in the ‘Groundviews’ of February 18. 2009; "A prompt hands-on, pragmatic approach by the Diaspora should be more meaningful and fruitful to the Tamils than all the efforts to get Clinton, Brown, Obama and Moon to help by remote control".
It is hoped that at least at this late stage, the Diaspora would manifest itself to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for their less fortunate brethren at home, by filling their leadership vacuum. They have all the brains and resources to play that role better than any other imaginable substitute.
‘Government in transition’ may look fashionable but even for that the foundation has to be laid at home. The immediate problem is to grant relief to the refugees who are suffering ‘untold hardship’ according to them and obtain the best possible berth for their kind at the ongoing negotiations by putting together the infighting leaders on one side. Unfortunately the Diaspora itself appears to be divided.
A Stalemate
Eight months after the end of the war, nothing has happened to remove the root-causes of the conflict and to heal its wounds. The Government that had vociferously promised to put all inequalities behind us after the ‘war’, citing it as the obstacle to action, now promises to do so after the presidential election. No explanation is given for the waiting.
The president is fighting shy of implementing the 13th Amendment in full, despite the fact that it has been on the Statute Book for over two decades. Evidently the hesitation arises from the assumed loss of votes that such action could cause in the South, if taken before the election. Such diffident, hyper-sensitivity to the reaction of the electorate does not auger well for a political settlement even after the election. It is a vagary that is inevitable in a ‘Democracy’ that prioritizes the vote over basic human rights.
The principal challenger to the president is promising to do more. He would implement 13A in full, immediately after the election and even go beyond it. One promise begets a better one from the other side and the ‘bidding game’ goes on outdoing even our share market which is proclaimed to be the best in the world after the ‘war’, although its effect is still not felt by the man in the street. Going by the track record of the contestants, what guarantee can the minorities have that their promises would be kept after the election? And the emergence of a third force to hold the scales evenly does not appear to be a possibility in the foreseeable future.
In this state of uncertainty, the Tamils have to think of a second string to their bow and that string is economic advancement. Now that the end of the fighting is granting mobility to the North and the East, progressively, these regions are getting closer to the means of production. Their long neglected resources can now be exploited to their maximum advantage.
The Tamils caught up in the fighting did have funds to maintain themselves thanks mostly to support from the Diaspora. What is needed now is not charity but equity capital to develop the investment base of the North and the East. Such economic development would certainly consolidate the dignity and self-respect of the war-torn and strengthen their bargaining chips.
In that sense, the vicissitudes of communal strife may become a blessing in disguise. I have seen this happen once. During my travels in Jaffna as a Cadet in the mid-fifties, I saw it as a sleepy, stagnant District with no visible signs of development. My next visit there was in the seventies as Chairman of the IDB. Flying over the District and traveling on its streets, I was taken aback to see profuse building and industrial activity that I had not seen before. Inquiries revealed that the resurgence was the product of enterprising natives who were compelled to get back to base from the South due to communal riots.
When I flew in again in the mid-nineties as Chairman of RRAN, Jaffna was worse than what I saw on my first visit. It was not just sleepy; it was dead. The ‘contribution’ of the 1983 Riots had worked in the reverse direction and devoured the ‘achievements’ of the earlier riots. Management under a dictatorship had starved the economy and sapped its vitality. Time is now ripe to emulate the positive experience of the past and invest freely in commercial activity, untrammeled by a ‘Gestapo’ breathing down one’s neck.
An obligatory investment
The Diaspora has a bounden duty to perform here. Their investment on the LTTE was no doubt motivated by their attachment to their native roots. They would never have expected any material returns from the investment. Now that the input has gone stray, the Diaspora should rethink their role in the new scenario and lend a helping hand to their less fortunate brethren to rise from the ashes as they themselves have done in the rich foreign climes to which most of them came as refugees. They should share their luck with those in whose boats they would have been, if not for their initial ability to migrate.
This contribution does not call for ‘collective action’ on which there appears to be a curse on the Tamils. Each of them must individually think of the plight of the place where he was born. The chances are that it is a modest village in the backwoods. Let him develop that place by investing on a commercial project individually or in association with his country cousins. The superior experience that the investor has gathered abroad should help to make the venture a success.
There is no shortage of investment ideas. Jaffna’s sweet mangoes and bananas can support several export industries. The Palmyra is another unexploited resource. To these and many more may be added hi-tech industries that investors have learnt abroad. If the Diaspora invests on this economic revival, half of what it has put on the LTTE arsenal, voluntarily or under threat, their native place would be turned into a Singapore before long.
Politics will take a back seat in such an affluent atmosphere. Even if it surfaces, a Tamil would have gathered adequate confidence and power by then to talk to his counterpart on an equal footing, granted that by then the Government would have succeeded in bringing at least the ‘counterpart’ to his own.
And when two strong men stand face to face, there will be neither border, nor breed, nor birth, though they come from the South or the North!
The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora after the LTTE
by International Crisis Group, February 23, 2010
For the past quarter-century the Tamil diaspora has shaped the Sri Lankan political landscape through its financial and ideological support to the military struggle for an independent Tamil state. Although the May 2009 defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has dramatically reduced the diaspora’s influence, the majority of Tamils outside Sri Lanka continue to support a separate state, and the diaspora’s money can ensure it plays a role in the country’s future. The nature of that role, however, depends largely on how Colombo deals with its Tamil citizens in the coming months and on how strongly the international community presses the government to enact constitutional reforms to share power with and protect the rights of Tamils and other minorities. While the million-strong diaspora cannot regenerate an insurgency in Sri Lanka on its own, its money and organisation could turn up the volume on any violence that might eventually re-emerge.
Following the defeat of the LTTE, the mood in the diaspora has been a mix of anger, depression and denial. Although many had mixed feelings about the LTTE, it was widely seen as the only group that stood up for Tamils and won them any degree of respect. The Tigers’ humiliating defeat, the enormous death toll in the final months of the war and the internment of more than a quarter million Tamils left the diaspora feeling powerless, betrayed by the West, demanding justice and, in some cases, wanting revenge. A minority in the community is happy the LTTE is gone, since it directed much of its energy to intimidating and even killing those Tamils who challenged their rule.
Funding networks established by the LTTE over decades are seriously weakened but still in place. There is little chance, however, of the Tigers regrouping in the diaspora. LTTE leaders in Sri Lanka are dead or captured and its overseas structures are in disarray. Clinging to the possibility of victory long after defeat was inevitable damaged the LTTE’s credibility and weakened its hold on the community.
Nonetheless, most Tamils abroad remain profoundly committed to Tamil Eelam, the existence of a separate state in Sri Lanka. This has widened the gap between the diaspora and Tamils in Sri Lanka. Most in the country are exhausted by decades of war and are more concerned with rebuilding their lives under difficult circumstances than in continuing the struggle for an independent state. There is no popular support for a return to armed struggle. Without the LTTE to enforce a common political line, Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka are proposing substantial reforms within a united Sri Lanka. Unwilling to recognise the scale of defeat, and continuing to believe an independent state is possible, however, many diaspora leaders have dismissed Tamil politicians on the island either as traitors for working with the government or as too weak or scared to stand up for their people’s rights.
Many now reluctantly recognise the need for new forms of struggle, even if they would still prefer the LTTE fighting. New organisations have formed that are operating in more transparent and democratic ways than the LTTE and that aim to pressure Western governments to accept an independent state for Tamils. These include plans for a “transnational government of Tamil Eelam”, independent referenda among Tamils in various countries endorsing the call for a separate state, boycotts against products made in Sri Lanka and advocacy in support of international investigations into alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan state. The new initiatives, however, refrain from criticising the LTTE or holding it responsible for its own crimes or its contribution to the shattered state of Sri Lankan Tamil society.
So long as this is the case, most Western governments will remain sceptical of the diaspora’s post-LTTE political initiatives. All have kept the transnational government of Tamil Eelam at arm’s length given its resemblance to a government-in-exile, even if the group does not claim this status. Western governments will have little choice but to engage with the dominant, pro-separatist Tamil organisations, even if officials would prefer to deal only with the handful of interlocutors with a record of criticising the Tigers. But until it moves on from its separatist, pro-LTTE ideology, the diaspora is unlikely to play a useful role supporting a just and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka.
Watching the devastation of the final months of the war and the seeming indifference of governments and the United Nations, many Tamils, particularly the younger generation born in the West, grew deeply disillusioned. Governments with large Tamil communities have been worried this might lead to new forms of militancy. In the last months of the war and months immediately following, there were self-immolations by Tamil protestors, vandalism against Sri Lankan embassies, and increased communal tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese abroad. While such events have grown less frequent, risks of radicalism in the diaspora cannot be dismissed entirely.
While Tamils have the democratic right to espouse separatism non-violently, Tamil Eelam has virtually no domestic or international backing. With the Sri Lankan government assuming Tamils abroad remain committed to violent means, the diaspora’s continued calls for a separate state feed the fears of the Rajapaksa administration and provide excuses for maintaining destructive anti-terrorism and emergency laws.
To ensure the current peace is a lasting one, the Sri Lankan government must address the legitimate grievances at the root of the conflict: the political marginalisation and physical insecurity of most Tamils in Sri Lanka. Statements made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa since his January 2010 re-election suggest there is little chance the needed political and constitutional reforms will be offered in his next term. Any significant improvement in the political position of Tamils and other minorities in Sri Lanka will thus come slowly and with difficulty, requiring significant shifts in the balance of political power within Sri Lanka as well as careful but tough persuasion from outside.
India, Japan, Western governments and multilateral organisations can do much more to assist the political empowerment of Tamils in Sri Lanka and press Colombo to address the causes behind the rise of the LTTE and other Tamil militant groups. There should be no blank cheque for Colombo to redevelop the north and east without first creating a political climate where Tamils and Muslims can freely express their opinions and have a meaningful role in determining the future of the areas where they have long been the majority. Donor governments and the UN should also press more strongly for an independent inquiry into the thousands of civilians, almost all Tamil, killed in the final months of fighting. Their aid should be tied to an end to impunity for human rights violations and abuses of political power that undermine democracy and threaten the freedoms of Sri Lankans from all ethnic communities.
Epilogue
From CBC News, Canada
The editor of a local Tamil newspaper says an attack on his office in Toronto's east end left a gaping hole in the front window — and left him worried about his safety.
Logan Logandralingam, the editor of Uthayan, said he got an anonymous phone call Sunday morning from a man who told him to go to his office, where a “message” would be waiting for him.
He arrived at the office around 8:30 a.m. and found the office windows had been broken.
“The scene was very terrible,” he said. “I was very sad and I got frustrated to see the broken pieces everywhere.”
Toronto police are investigating the incident, but Logandrahlingam told CBC News that he thinks the attack may have been a warning from people who are unhappy that some members of the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council travelled to Sri Lanka to meet with President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
He said the caller said Logandrahlingam's "friends" had visited the Sri Lankan president, who was a “killer” and “an enemy of Tamils.”
Logandrahlingam, who launched the community newspaper 15 years ago, said he never expected his office would be vandalized because he didn’t report on the trip.
“I thought working in our community, doing publications, doing something in our community is not dangerous,” he said.
But he said the recent vandalism has made him more aware of his safety.
“I fully understand that I have to be very keen about my personal safety,” he said Monday, adding that he plans to address the vandalism in an editorial.
Toronto Tamil newspaper vandalized after publisher warned of trouble
By ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
From Monday's Globe and Mail
The phone call came at 7:30 yesterday morning: A blocked number and unknown voice on Logan Logendralingam's cellphone.
"They said, 'Okay, your friends went to Colombo and met the president of Sri Lanka - the enemy of Tamils who killed 40,000 innocent people. Go to your office: There is a message for you.' "
So he went to the Uthayan newspaper's offices, a 15-minute drive from his Scarborough home. The publisher said he had been expecting something like this after a week of angry phone calls - fallout from a meeting last week of Tamil-Canadian leaders with high-ranking Sri Lankan officials, including President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
But that didn't make what Mr. Logendralingam found any easier to bear: A sea of glass shards littering the parking lot of the Progress Road office, and a gaping hole left where the double-plated glass windows used to be.
Nothing was taken, and Mr. Logendralingam said it doesn't look as though whoever smashed the windows even went inside.
"Not only the glass is broken - my heart is broken," he said. "It's a painful incident. ... I was shocked and sad and frustrated."
Mr. Logendralingam said it will probably take as much as $12,000 to replace the smashed windows, which have been boarded up with plywood.
Staff Sergeant Kevin Murrell said the Toronto Police Force's 43 Division got the call at 9 a.m. and an investigation is continuing, but is in the early stages: They have no leads apart from the unidentified morning caller, and although they've put a call out for information no witnesses have come forward.
"This is fairly rare, these kinds of things. It's obviously someone who's taken issue with the fact that somebody has supported an individual they don't support. They've taken it upon themselves to damage these windows as a result of it, which is obviously childish and doesn't make much sense."
Staff Sgt. Murrell said the incident could have occurred any time between 7 p.m. Saturday evening and yesterday morning when Mr. Logendralingam got the call.
It wasn't the first time the local Tamil newspaper, which publishes on Fridays and has a circulation of about 10,000, has come under fire: Since Mr. Logendralingam founded it 15 years ago, he says he has gotten plenty of angry phone calls for not being vocal enough in support of an independent Tamil homeland.
Three years ago, the same thing happened at his old office on Ellesmere Road. Then, the smashed glass was in response to an editorial he wrote criticizing politicized violence among Tamil youth.
The recent act of vandalism, and its apparent link to the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council's controversial co-operation with the Sri Lankan government, has touched on the much larger issue of how best to rebuild the Tamil homeland, and whether President Rajapaska is sincere in his desire to work with the country's Tamil community as tens of thousands remain in internment camps.
Kula Sellathurai, prominent Tamil businessman and president of the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council, argues it's time to work with President Rajapaksa's government to help rebuild the shattered northern region of the island, which had been chronically underdeveloped well before the latest conflict.
"[Mr. Rajapaksa] said he's willing to resolve the Tamil and ethnic issues in Sri Lanka; he wants our help, as foreigners, to help to invest and rebuild."
Last week's trip took them from the capital of Colombo to Jaffna in the north and the Tamil refugee camps around Vavuniya. Mr. Sellathurai said he was encouraged by what he encountered: The tens of thousands of Sri Lankan army troops are seen as a benign force rather than a hostile occupation.
"They're carrying guns, but they're not harassing people," he said. "People in the outside world are still carrying a 30-year-old mentality."
Manjula Selvarajah takes issue with that: It's one thing to want to support the internally displaced Tamil community, said the media co-ordinator for the Canadian Tamil Congress; it's quite another to do so through a government that was accused by both Tamils and international organizations of human-rights violations and war crimes well after the Tamil Tigers were defeated in May, 2009.
"We are concerned about the government that's in place right now, because they have a record of suppression of the press, they have a record of possibly war crimes," she said. "We're concerned they would sit down and be meeting with someone who has this kind of a record."
But none of that justifies yesterday's act of vandalism, she said: The attack on press freedom flies in the face of everything her organization is protesting in Sri Lanka.
"An act of vandalism is wrong. And if you consider all the issues that media face in Sri Lanka, both Sinhalese and Tamil journalists ... it's even more vexing to see something like this happen."
Tamil Tiger defeat could lead to bombings here, report says
National Post Canada
Published: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Canadian security officials are concerned that last year's defeat of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels could trigger attacks like the 1985 Air India bombings, says a new report.The International Crisis Group study quotes unnamed Canadian law enforcement officials saying that supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam might resort to terrorism.
"While there are no signals yet that the rump LTTE is planning a terrorist act, it only takes a handful of committed cadre in the diaspora bent on violence to have a deadly impact," the report says.
"For example, Canadian law enforcement officials have been concerned that, if left unchecked, LTTE activities could result in an event similar to the terrorist bombing of an Air India jet in 1985, which was planned and funded by Sikh separatists in Canada."
Canadian Tamil Congress spokesman David Poopalapillai called that "pure speculation" and said that "we as Canadian Tamils and we as Canadian Tamil Congress are opposed to any form of violence, not only in Canada, anywhere, any part of the world."
Based in Brussels, the ICG is one of the world's leading think tanks. Its President and CEO is Louise Arbour, the former Supreme Court of Canada justice, and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is a board member. It is funded partly by the Canadian government.
The report examines the state of the Tamil diaspora almost a year after the end of the brutal Sri Lankan civil war, which routed the Tamil Tigers rebels who had been fighting for independence.
Canada has the world's largest Tamil diaspora and was a major Tiger fundraising base. Several Canadians were also involved in procuring arms for the rebels.
The report says the defeat of the rebels has left the diaspora feeling "powerless, betrayed by the West, demanding justice and, in some cases, wanting revenge."
An unnamed Canadian security official was quoted in the report saying that, "Because of what we learned from Canada's connection with Khalistan we're compelled to look at issues concerning the Tamil Tigers here differently.
"As much as it's a law and order issue in some regards, we also are compelled to treat the Tamil Tigers as a national security issue because we don't want another Air India disaster."
The comments are attributed to federal enforcement officials in Toronto and says that French, British and American officials had expressed similar concerns during interviews.
The report says while the diaspora remains committed to an independent homeland, there is little appetite for a return to fighting in Sri Lanka itself, where Tamils are exhausted by war and focused on rebuilding their lives.
It says, "until it moves on from its separatist, pro-LTTE ideology, the diaspora is unlikely to play a useful role supporting a just and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka."
The Sri Lankan government also must deal with the roots of conflict, notably the insecurity and political marginalization of Tamils, while the UN and Western aid donors need to press for independent investigation of the killings of thousands of civilians in the final months of fighting, it says.
Speaking from London, where he was attending the inaugural meeting of the Global Tamil Forum, an international diaspora group, Mr. Poopalapillai said he supports the calls for an investigation but sees no sign the Sri Lankan government intends to resolve Tamil grievances.
"This government is jailing a man who polled four million votes," he said, referring to the recent arrest of opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka. "Can you expect any justice from this government at the moment?"
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