Sri Lanka - camps, media…genocide?

Written by Martin Shaw

What kind of violence has the Sri Lankan state been committing against its Tamil civilian population as the island‘s civil war ended; on what scale and with what intentions? Martin Shaw explores the difficult terrain where war, atrocity and genocide meet. he civil war in Sri Lanka is receding from the international headlines, as crises in Iran and celebrity deaths occupy the media's limited space and attention-span. A very large number of its Tamil victims are still, more than six weeks after the fighting ended, confined in government forces in a complex of forty camps in the north east of the country. An estimated 280,000 civilians - originally displaced from their homes by the fighting between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (TamilTigers / LTTE), and in some cases fleeing from the brutal regime in the LTTE's former "liberated" zone - are being held, generally against their will. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his "victory speech", told Sri Lanka's parliament that "our heroic forces have sacrificed their lives to protect Tamil civilians", and he took "personal responsibility" for protecting Tamils. Yet his government is now scandalously confining this huge population - who have already suffered not only from the LTTE but from Sri Lankan bombardments which caused probably tens of thousands of deaths and injuries - in squalid conditions. The government has officially backtracked, under international pressure, on plans to hold the displaced, while screening them for potential "terrorists", for up to three years; it now says that 80% will be resettled by the end of 2009.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) comments: "The government's history of restricting the rights of displaced persons through rigid pass systems and strict restrictions on leaving the camps heightens concerns that they will be confined in camps much longer, possibly for years."
In the shadows
The eruption in Iran has in a twisted way done the Sri Lankan government a service. In any case, Colombo has been ruthless in restricting international journalists and rights organisations: in May 2009 even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was barred from Menik Farm, the largest camp, and Channel 4's Nick Paton Walsh was deported. Sinhala nationalism remains oppressively dominant within the majority population, and critics of the government face an atmosphere of intimidation and even terror: Sri Lankan journalists have frequently been murdered, assaulted and detained.
Although human-rights organisations and western governments have continued to protest at the situation, the Sri Lankan government has found friends in the United Nations's new Human Rights Council; it was able to pass a resolution there on 27 May 2009 praising its own commitment to human rights (endorsed by such notable bastions of freedom as China, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Egypt). The vigorous campaigns by members of the Tamil diasporas have ensured that the situation has not been entirely forgotten, but the interned Tamilsdon't have the mobile-phone access that (in the early post-election stages at least) so embarrassed the Iranian regime. There are some pictures of the camps on the internet, but no iconic images of Tamil suffering have entered the commercial, established media in the manner of Iran's Neda Sultan - or indeed of Fikret Alic, the emaciated prisoner pictured behind barbed-wire in the Trnopolje camp in Bosnia in summer 1992.
Adire predicament
It is often said that pictures tell their own story. However what is important is the media narrative and the momentum behind the issue: in both the Iranian and Bosnian cases the crises were much more strongly established in the dominant media (and the exposure of the experiences of Neda Sultan and Fikret Alic) fed this. In the case of Sri Lanka, sadly, the level and intensity of coverage - despite the impressive Tamil campaigns - has not matched these.
Moreover, what was important in Bosnia was that Trnopolje was described as a "concentration"camp - so the image facilitated the connection between the atrocious treatment of Bosnian Muslim prisoners and the murderous history of concentration camps in Europe under Nazism. The Bosnian-Serbian government that was responsible for Trnopolje naturally disputed this appellation, describing it merely as a holding centre for "refugees"; today the lowest-common-denominator descriptor seems to be a "detention" camp.
The Sri Lankan government also prefers its camps to be seen as "refugee" camps. However once people are detained, camps are clearly more than that; and where there is a sustained policy of concentrating detainees then the term "concentration camp" applies. In war, these camps - invented at the beginning of the 20th century to describe the enclosures in which the Spanish detained Cubans and the British detained Boerfarmers and their families during the South African wars - are usually designed to corral a civilian population seen as potentially sympathetic to a guerrilla enemy (as Tamils evidently are still seen despite the LTTE's defeat).
Totalitarian regimes, including Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, have also used camps to concentrate other civilian groups -actual and potential political opponents, trade unionists, and ethnic "enemies" such as Jews. The complication in using the "concentration camp" category is that such regimes went on to develop their camps into something more - in the Soviet case, labour camps, in the Nazi case, extermination camps. Clearly, not all concentration camps are "death" camps in the Nazi sense; but all concentration camps tend to produce death, as well as widespread physical and mental harm. Since their premise is enmity towards the interned civilians, the history of concentration-camps has been marked, from the Boerwar onwards, by callous disregard for their welfare, and often worse.
As Human Rights Watch remarked of the Sri Lankan situation on 11 June 2009:
"Virtually all camps are overcrowded, some holding twice the number recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Food distribution is chaotic, there are shortages of water, and sanitation facilities are inadequate. Camp residents do not have access to proper medical services and communicable diseases have broken out in the camps."
What is more, "the military camp administration has imposed numerous restrictions on humanitarian organizations working in the camps, such as limiting the number of vehicles and staff members that can enter the camps, which has delayed the provision of much-needed aid. The military does not allow organizations into the camps to conduct protection activities, and a ban on talking to the camp residents leaves them further isolated.'"
If reports of violence and disappearances are added to this, the situation of the interned Tamils appears dire.
A "rolling" genocide?The western fixation with the Nazi holocaust means that there is an obvious political temptation to link all anti-civilian violence with the Nazi model.The pro-Tamil United States-based academic Francis Boyle,in his posts, sees a sixty-year "rolling" genocide in which Sinhalese governments of Ceylon (the country's name at independence in 1948) and Sri Lanka have sought "to annihilate the Tamils and to steal their lands and natural resources. This is what Hitler and the Nazis called lebensraum - "living space" for the Sinhala at the expense of the Tamils." In this perspective, the camp system is all too clearly the latest stage of genocide - although other Tamil advocates date genocide back to the anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 in response to which the LTTE campaign began.
The idea of "rolling" genocide, first developed (I think) by Madeleine Albright to distinguish the Sudanese campaign in Darfur from the "volcanic" genocide in Rwanda, suggests discontinuity in a history of genocide - albeit, in the Darfur case, within two or three years rather than six decades. However in many cases, there may be genocidal "moments" (as the genocide historian, Dirk Moses, has suggested of colonialism) in stories of oppression - decades or even centuries long - which do not, taken as a whole, constitute processes of genocide (see A Dirk Moses ed., Empire,Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History [Berghahn,2008]).
There may be sporadic genocidal massacres, rapes and expulsions, or even sustained campaigns, at particular points in these histories. Something like this seems to be true in the Sri Lankan case: no one doubts the long history of Sinhalese nationalist oppression against the Tamil community since independence, which includes moments like 1983 which can be plausibly seen as genocidal outbursts. But the history as a whole is not simply one of genocide.
Indeed the dedication of the LTTE to armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state helped turn a history of oppression and resistance into one of brutal insurgency and counterinsurgency (see The trouble with guns: Sri Lanka, South Africa, Ireland", 10 June 2009). We know however that counterinsurgency is one of the most common contexts of genocidal violence. It remains to be seen - since most of the survivors are locked away from the world's media and the Sri Lankan government is blocking all attempts at independent investigation of the recent violence - how far the Sri Lankan army went in the direction of deliberate atrocity as opposed to brutal disregard for civilians. Here, indiscriminate allegations of a long-running Sri Lankan genocide paradoxically blunt the real questions: what kind of violence did the Sri Lankan state commit against its Tamil civilian population, on what scale and with what intentions?
The continuing concentration of over 250,000 people in the camps both blocks the search for answers to these questions, and itself constitutes a most serious crime. If the doors are not opened quickly, this will raise questions of whether the government seriously intends a restoration of Tamil society in the conquered zone. This would indeed pose a question of genocide, in the sense of the deliberate destruction of a population group in its home territory. This article is published by Martin Shaw, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.

http://www.australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11817:sri-lanka-camps-mediagenocide-&catid=132:special-reports&Itemid=273

Sri Lanka carves out economic zone for China

COLOMBO (AFP) – Sri Lanka on Tuesday granted Chinese companies a separate economic zone on the island which has just ended nearly four decades of ethnic bloodshed.
China's Huichen Investment Holdings Limited will manage and bring new investments into the Mirigama zone, some 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of Colombo, for a period of 33 years, officials said.
Over the next three-years, Huichen will invest 28 million dollars to develop roads, power and sewerage facilities in the zone, said Investment Promotions Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa.
"This is the first time the government has given a foreign country a specific area to develop and attract foreign investments into the country," Yapa told reporters.
Huichen's president, Huang Yuping, said nearly 30 Chinese firms involved in manufacturing and IT-related services had shown interest in setting up operations at the Mirigama zone.
With the end of its long-running war with ethnic Tamil Tiger rebels, Sri Lanka has set its sights on attracting one billion dollars in foreign investment this year, Yapa said.
China is an increasingly key military and political ally.
Beijing helped block a resolution censuring Sri Lanka for its handling of the final stages of the war against Tamil Tigers last month and is a main supplier of small arms to the South Asian nation.
Sri Lanka attracted 800 million dollars in foreign investments last year, mostly into IT and telecoms-related sectors.
"With the war over, we have seen a lot of interest from companies to invest in areas like power, telecom, tourism, agro-processing, fisheries, education and IT services," Yapa said.
He said the government plans to carve out economic zones in the former war-scarred northern town of Kilinochchi as well as eastern areas of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara.
"In the north and east, we are looking at boat-building, fisheries, housing and tourism projects. There is also scope for infrastructure projects to rebuild areas once destroyed by the war," he said.

* US to help Sri Lanka with its demining program to facilitate rapid resettlement of IDPs

Tue, Jun 30, 2009, 11:21 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

June 30, Washington, D.C.: The United States is to provide additional funding for the demining organizations in Sri Lanka to help the Sri Lankan government with its demining program, Robert O. Blake, Assistant Secretary of the State Department for the South and Central Asian Affairs said today.
The former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka at a press briefing today said the US is looking forward to seeing a plan from the Sri Lankan government about demining, and how the government is going to work with international NGOs.
Reminding that the Sri Lankan government has pledged to resettle at least 80% of the internally displaced persons(IDPs) by the end of the year Blake said the demining would enable the rapid resettlement of the almost 300,000 IDPs in the camps.
"We hope that these pledges will be met and we look forward to working with the Government to help them meet these commitments, particularly on the demining program," he added.
Responding to a question Assistant Secretary Blake said the Sri Lankan government has taken some steps on the humanitarian side and the government is committed to try to do more.
"International access has improved inside the camps in Sri Lanka. International NGOs and other humanitarian organizations are able to get goods and services into the camps now, largely without restrictions. But there are still some issues with regard to access of the ICRC, which performs important protection works inside the camps," he said.
"Broadly speaking, I think, the government is committed to try to do more. For example, I heard last week that fishing restrictions have been eased all over the island which will help to improve livelihoods for people not just in the North but also in Eastern parts of Sri Lanka," Blake added.
On the subject of South Asia Assistant Secretary Blake said India is a preeminent power in the region and he very closely coordinated with his Indian counterpart in Sri Lanka High Commissioner Alok Prasad on Sri Lanka's situation.

Australia: Recent instability in Sri Lanka is a very big factor of asylum influx

Australia intercepted a boat carrying almost 200 illegal migrants and is warning of a surge in displaced people heading to its shores from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The vessel intercepted is the largest of the 15 boats of unauthorized arrivals detained in Australian waters so far this year.
The Australian navy intercepted the boat carrying 194 people, believed to be Sri Lankan Tamils, about 40 kilometers from Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean.
The suspected asylum seekers have been transferred to an immigration center on Christmas Island, where they will undergo health and security checks. The Christmas Island detention facility can hold 800 inmates and houses asylum-seekers while their claims for refugee status are processed.
In Canberra, officials say there has been a sharp increase in the number of displaced people moving through the region to escape conflicts in South Asia, and that many would attempt to reach Australia by boat.
Coordinator of the Malaysian immigration support group Tenaganita, Aegile Fernandez has warned that up to 10,000 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Burma and Iraq were planning to come to Australia.
Christmas Island can accommodate 1,200 in total.
But Mr Rudd told reporters the Department of Immigration had indicated they had sufficient capacity on Christmas Island to deal with the challenges into the future.
However, Mr Rudd said the government had to go to the core of the problem and increase its police presence overseas.
"The instability recently in Sri Lanka is a very big factor," Mr Rudd said.
"Dealing with problems in source countries is critical. We need to enhance our police and related security representation in countries around the region."
Mr Rudd said the government also needed to maintain a hardline policy when it came to border protection.
"The navy has performed a first-class job at intercepting these vessels at sea and taking them to Christmas Island for processing," he said.
"You need to make sure you've got a proper processing system in place, so that if folk are arriving who are not bona fide refugees, then subsequent to processing, they get sent home."
Earlier Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the government is "very concerned" about the continued arrival of illegal boat people. "We've got an awful lot of people moving through Southeast Asia at the moment; the worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and of course the developments in Sri Lanka means that there's a lot of people seeking safe haven throughout Southeast Asia, and many of them hoping to come to Australia," Evans said.
The arrival of more boat people has renewed accusations by opposition politicians that the government is too soft on immigration. Critics say that Australia has become a more attractive destination for people traffickers and call for an independent inquiry into why more boat people were trying to reach the country's northern waters.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has dismantled some of the more controversial elements to Australia's asylum policy since coming to power in late 2007. Among other changes, the government closed offshore processing camps in remote parts of the South Pacific. Mr. Rudd also relaxed a policy of detaining all migrants who enter illegally, and has allowed full residency visas for those granted refugee status.
The Labor government says that border protection remains a priority and that about US$524 million will be spent boosting surveillance and combating people smuggling.
Australia accepts about 13,000 refugees under official international humanitarian programs every year. (Sources: VOA & AAP

SL Government decides to abolish Peace Secretariat

The Presidential Secretariat Monday directed the closure of the Secretariat for Co-ordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) at the end of July. “We have not been told any specific reason for the decision. However we have been discussing such a scenario since last week,” SCOPP Director General, Professor Rajiva Wijesinghe, told media persons. He declined to comment on the government’s decision to close down the SCOPP. "Winding up process of the SCOPP has started," Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe said though two weeks ago he had said that the SCOPP would not be closed down. He said Monday to media persons that the future of the SCOPP is not in his hands but that of the Presidential Secretariat.He added that SCOPP was going ahead with the process of closing down but the future of the SCOPP staff was uncertain since most of them were employed on a contract basis. He said about half of the operational staff had been laid off a few weeks ago and it was still not clear whether they would be absorbed into public service.The SCOPP was established on 06 February 2002 with the approval of the Cabinet of Minister.Mr. Bernard Goonetilake was the first Director General from 2000 to 2004, Mr.Jayantha Dhanapala from 2004-2005 and Dr. Palitha Kohona from 2006 to 2007. Since 2008 Professor Rajiva Wijesinghe holds the post of Director General.

SL military shoots dead 2 detainees, injures more than 2 in Vavuniyaa internment camp

Sri Lanka military personnel opened fire Sunday morning on detainees in an attempt to stop them making way through the barbed wire fence separating Ramanathan camp and Anandakumarasamy camp located in Cheddikulam, killing two of them and injuring more than two, in a confrontation that developed Sunday morning, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The killers had taken the two bodies away and their identities are not available at the moment, the sources added. In the beginning when a fence was erected separating Ramanathan camp and Anandakumaraswamy camp it was constructed with barbed wires running straight, parallel to the ground. The detainees from both camps had made a stile through the said barbed wire fence so that they could visit their family members held separately in these camps.Whenever such a stile was made it was hastily patched up preventing the detainees passing between the camps and when this fence failed to keep them off it was constructed into a regular fence with posts.But the detainees continued to make a stile through the regular fence and the authorities strengthened the regular fence by running barbed wires crosswise, both horizontal and perpendicular.The detainees, in a frustrated state of mind due to resentment and anger, did manage to get through even the strengthened barbed wire fence separating them from their near and dear ones Sunday morning when the military personnel opened fire on them.

Chile on ICC and "Nationalist" Guerrillas in Sri Lanka, UN Mum on Camps It Funds But Claims To Not Control

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, June 29 -- As Chile joined the International Criminal Court on June 29, Inner City Press asked the Minister Secretary General of the Presidency of Chile Jose Antonio Viera-Gallo if he thought the ICC should investigate this year's surge of civilian death and detentions in Sri Lanka. Viera-Gallo called it a situation of combat against a "nationalist" guerrilla force which should in the first instance be investigated by the government of Sri Lanka.


"If the government cannot do it," he said, "it is easy -- a member state should request it, or any person, to the prosecutor." Video here, from Minute 9:44.

But far from being "easy," the UN has not even been able to stop or comment on Sri Lanka disbanding its own investigation into deaths before this year, including of 17 Action Contre La Faim aid workers near Trincomalee.


On June 26 Inner City Press asked the UN's top humanitarian John Holmes, who has previously spoken about the ACF killing, why he or his department OCHA had not commented on the disbanding of the investigation. Holmes said it hadn't been confirmed.

On June 29, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Michele Montas about OCHA's disputed reports on the number and location of those being detained in northern Sri Lanka. "Those are not UN camps," Ms. Montas answered.Video here, from Minute 23:57.
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, June 29 -- As Chile joined the International Criminal Court on June 29, Inner City Press asked the Minister Secretary General of the Presidency of Chile Jose Antonio Viera-Gallo if he thought the ICC should investigate this year's surge of civilian death and detentions in Sri Lanka. Viera-Gallo called it a situation of combat against a "nationalist" guerrilla force which should in the first instance be investigated by the government of Sri Lanka.
"If the government cannot do it," he said, "it is easy -- a member state should request it, or any person, to the prosecutor." Video here, from Minute 9:44.
But far from being "easy," the UN has not even been able to stop or comment on Sri Lanka disbanding its own investigation into deaths before this year, including of 17 Action Contre La Faim aid workers near Trincomalee.
On June 26 Inner City Press asked the UN's top humanitarian John Holmes, who has previously spoken about the ACF killing, why he or his department OCHA had not commented on the disbanding of the investigation. Holmes said it hadn't been confirmed.
On June 29, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Michele Montas about OCHA's disputed reports on the number and location of those being detained in northern Sri Lanka. "Those are not UN camps," Ms. Montas answered.Video here, from Minute 23:57.

UN's Ban and Chile's Heraldo Munoz, Sri Lanka investigations and value of UN funding for camps not shown

While Inner City Press had not called them UN camps, it gave rise to the question: what percentage of the funding of the camps comes through the UN?
Ms. Montas said she would get that percentage. Inner City Press asked, if it is over fifty percent, can they be viewed as UN camps? "That is a hypothetical question," Ms. Montas said. For now. Watch this site.
Footnotes: Chile's Viera-Gallo said that in Latin America there have been no serious crimes of late, and all governments have independent courts, oblivating the need for ICC inquiry. This was said just after the Honduras court decisions leading to the ouster of President Zelaya, and in the face of immunity offers in Colombia.
Inner City Press also asked Chile's Ambassador Heraldo Munoz about the three person investigation he will head up for the UN of the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Will the report of investigation be made public? He said he will answer later. But here's a question for now: the UN can put together a three person investigation for the murder of a political leader, but nothing for tens of thousands of civilians?

Ploy of Buddhism in nullifying Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 01:53 GMT]
The North and East of the island of Sri Lanka should first be subjected to ‘archaeological’ investigation to prove the land’s Sinhala ownership, before its ‘resettlement’, is the demand of the National Front of Buddhist monks of Sri Lanka, reported Virakesari a few days ago. If archaeology has any say, the entire island having microlithic sites of prehistoric period has to be resettled by Veddas, and if enough Veddas are not found in the island they could still be found among their next of kin outside, ranging from the Austro-Asiatic tribes of the South Asian subcontinent to aborigines of Borneo, Papua New Guinea and Australia, commented an academic of ethnic studies in the island.

The feature article received from the academic follows:

The idea of the Sinhala-Buddhist monks is to show the Buddhist vestiges in the North and East and to use them as a card in the cultural genocide of Eezham Tamils by Sinhalicizing the Tamil homeland.

Buddhism is not a prerogative to the Sinhalese or Sinhalese monks.

The monks need to realise that unlike the Sinhala-Buddhist identity, and for that matter any identity in the island, the Tamil identity by its legacy is secular and inclusive to all religions.

It was a historical process that Tamils, for whom Buddhism was one of the religions, renounced it by their choice centuries ago.

It was a historical process that the Tamils, who were sharing the entire island along with the Sinhalese, ever since the very beginning of the assertion of such identities in the island, evolved the Eezham Tamil identity just like the Sinhala identity, and eventually carved out a homeland for them in the North and East.

Any objective archaeological evidence, beginning from the first written records, i.e., the Brahmi inscriptions of the island, would tell how Tamil clans were actively constituent to the ethnic formations in the island.

From Point Palmyrah in the Jaffna Peninsula where Buddhist vestiges are found to Dondra Head in the south where the ruins of a Saivite temple, Thenavarai Naayanaar, can still be found, was not an exclusive property of those who claim themselves as Sinhalese or Tamils today.

But it was also a historical process in the recent centuries that by the way colonialism, orientalism and nationalism processed, by the way modern state formation took place and by the way post-independence polity operated and suffrage exercised, strong foundations were laid necessitating the contemporary reality of divisive nationalisms in the island.

Archaeology and Buddhism are not problems, despite the fact that the former is understood in the island in its 19th century concept as a tool of nationalism and the latter as it is asserted in the island today is a re-discovery of colonial orientalism. The problem is their exploitation by genocidal elements for the subjugation of one people by the other.

How faith and academic disciplines can be distorted to serve ethnic subjugation, even by so-called learned people, can best be seen in a recent piece of writing by Manouri Senanayake, a Professor of Paediatrics of Colombo University who wrote on History and says that Tamils never had a territorial claim in the island, there is no justification for their own nationalism, no power devolution needed and if Tamils want a homeland they should find it in Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile, a Scandinavian professor in a recent international seminar said that since Buddhism is an inclusive religion and since Tamils were once practising it, they should consider of becoming Buddhists and should be receptive to the efforts of some Buddhist monks in the island preaching the faith in Tamil.

He was not agreeable with the position that the basis of Tamil nationalism in the island, i.e., identity based on the use of Tamil language, is inclusive to religions and said that it is Tamil-Saivite.

How Tamils, whether Saivite of Christians, envisaging secularism in their nationalism as well as Muslims who come out with a separate identity but whose mother tongue is Tamil - all struggling against the genocidal hegemony of Sinhala-Buddhism, are going to look at his proposal is a question.

Two years back a private TV channel was inaugurated in Colombo by Mahinda Rajapaksa to preach Buddhism in Tamil. This venture of telecasting in Sinhala, Tamil and English was funded by a Tamil-Hindu, Muhundan Canagey, with the support of a Buddhist NGO and some Sinhala entrepreneurs, and through technical arrangements with the Malaysian company Dialog, Hindustan Times reported in July 2007.

On the occasion, Sri Lanka president’s secretary Lalith Weeratunga was reported saying: “the coming into existence of this channel is symbolic of the inalienable and irreversible ties between Sri Lanka and India”.

Reflecting such sentiments of culture and imperialism, a Chennai-based retired professor of South Asian Studies, now in the national security advisory team of the Indian Establishment, recently said that Sri Lanka got everything of its culture from India. Similar to the Sinhala academics who refuse to see the evolution of Eezham Tamil identity as something belonging to the island and want them to go to Tamil Nadu, the Indian academics never see that India itself is a part of a larger South Asian cultural phenomenon.

If national boundaries of today mean anything then Buddhism didn’t originate in India but in Nepal, even though it seems the Nepalis have still not learnt to capitalize on it.

The academic cited above also said that the Tamils, retaining their identity, should be able to live in the island as ‘loyal Sri Lankans’. It is possible in India for a person to retain his or her religio-communal identity, if not the state identity, and to live in a state for decades without learning even to converse in the local language, but to still feel as an Indian. It is the impossibility of such a situation in the island that makes Eezham Tamil nationalism a necessary reality.

A few years ago this academic advised the up-country Tamils that they being folk in their practices, don’t need to study the Hinduism textbooks written by Jaffna Tamils.

The up-country Tamils are unable to hold even their temple festivals today.

The probing tentacles of the Indian Establishment, blogs run by ex intelligence officers, while extremely keen in nullifying Eezham Tamil nationalism, have expressed great hopes on the totalitarian regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa for Indo-Sri Lanka cooperation.

Meanwhile, BJP, the leading opposition of India, viewed as the champion of Hindu nationalism, is said to be hatching a new programme based on the promotion of Buddhism for the electoral advantage of luring Daliths on its side. Narendra Modi’s Gujarat is the epicentre where the state government is initiating a World Buddhist Conference in the MS University of Baroda.

Sections of BJP media, especially originating from Kerala, have already started claiming how Hindus of India have saved the Buddhists of Sri Lanka from 'Tamil terrorism'.

The ruling party of Tamil Nadu, the DMK, believed by many as the bastion of secularism of Tamil Nationalism, is seen only hoodwinking superficially in matters such as temple priests, calendar etc., but failing in actually defending Tamil nationalism from those who want to nullify it.

News about Buddhist connections between Colombo and a political party in Tamil Nadu has also surfaced in recent times.

Some political circles supportive of the Eezham Tamil cause are now reportedly advocating for not insisting on Eezham Tamil nationalism.

In the meantime, Mahinda Rajapaksa government, after killing 20,000 Tamils and incarcerating the rest in concentration camps and open prisons, is appealing to Buddhist countries to support its agenda.

A diplomat of a far eastern country is recently reported to have attached credibility to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ‘vision’ for Tamils to resolve the conflict.

While all with vested interests use terror and con for the annihilation of even the basic right of Eezham Tamils to assert to their secular nationalism, Buddhism seems to be imperceptibly emerging as a popular political lure in the service of the axis of imperialism in Asia.

Around the World, Young Tamil Voices Not Quieted By War's End

By VERONICA ZARAGOVIA Veronica Zaragovia – Tue Jun 30, 6:35 am ET
Sri Lanka's 26 years of civil war effectively ended on May 19, 2009 with a single image. Televisions across the globe broadcast a government-issue photo of slain Tamil Tiger head, Velupillai Prabhakaran, lying on a muddy patch of ground with wide eyes and a fractured skull. His life's end terminated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's decades-long fight for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority - about ten percent of the population - and a cycle of violence that Sri Lankans of all ethnicities and religions have been living with for decades.


For the more than 800,000 members of the Tamil diaspora spread out from Toronto to Sydney, the news was met with mixed reactions. Some are fervent supporters of the LTTE and others downright oppose the separatist movement, but grapple with publicly criticizing the Tigers out of fear of a network globally regarded as terrorists. What more Tamils living abroad can agree on is better rights for the minority still in-country. Many Tamils, who are primarily Hindu, have long claimed job discrimination and unequal political power in a nation and government dominated by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist majority. For decades, hundreds of thousands of Tamils have endured life under the crossfire between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, and still today, about 300,000 of the nation's 3 million Tamils remain live in government camps in Sri Lanka's north. Many ex-patriate groups are now lobbying their host governments to pressure Sri Lanka into increasing humanitarian aid to Tamils. And since the war's end about six weeks ago, the most vocal and visible Tamil ex-pats fighting for this cause has been the youth, raised outside Sri Lanka, apart from relatives they now spend much of their free time fighting for. (Read a brief history of the Tamil Tigers.)


For years, young Tamils have been staging protests calling for international intervention in Sri Lanka's civil war to help establish a permanent ceasefire. Now they're shifting their energies to persuade Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa to provide desperately needed resources to war-torn areas across the nation. Many young Tamils have grown loudly critical of Rajapaksa, who they say does not respect the rights of minority groups in the country. On June 17 in London, a 73-day protest calling for an end to discrimination against the Tamils by the Sri Lankan government ended with a series of clashes with police in Parliament Square. "I don't see the current government in Sri Lanka has the foresight to build compassionate and prosperous society based on equality, inclusiveness and accommodating the minority aspirations," says Keta Nannithamby, a 42-year-old Toronto resident who has frequent dialogue with Tamil youth via Twitter, the social media site through which he's developed a following of about 350 under the avatar @TamilDiaspora, and provides frequent links to Tamil-related information.


Many Tamil youth living around the world became committed to raising awareness of Sri Lanka's plight in the West after they visited their parents' country between 2002 and 2008, a period of truce between troops and the Tigers, and saw how their families were living there. Vasuki Guna, a 20-year-old university student in Australia, says she can't forget images of children running through a landmine-cleared field or an infant cousin screaming at the sound of a firecracker, confusing it with a grenade. "You come back and can't get the images out of your mind," Guna says. "After I saw that, I was so much more active in organizing campaigns. We have no control of Sri Lanka's government and its corruption, but we haven't just washed our hands. We're determined to fix it."


The number of young Tamils who are specifically sympathetic to the Tigers' cause is unclear, but they, too, vocalize their sentiments. Sam Pari, a 26-year-old doctor in Australia who also visited Sri Lanka during the ceasefire to volunteer at orphanages and hospitals, regularly meets with fellow activists to plan events and rallies. After seeing what she describes as the "discrimination and racism of the government" firsthand, Pari says she understands why the LTTE's resorted to arms throughout the conflict. "The diaspora is very concerned that the one body that protected the Tamils against oppression by the Sri Lankan government is now very much weakened." (Watch a video about civilians displaced by the war.)


But many members of the first generation of Tamils who fled the country when the war began are relieved by the Tigers' seeming end, and wish that the global Tamil youth were more critical of the LTTE. Nirmala Rajasingam, a first-generation activist with the UK-based Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, says the Tigers were "packaged as martyrs and freedom fighters" to the Tamil people, and that the diaspora's "unquestionable support and loyalty made the LTTE more unaccountable for its military power." Rajasingam, who has spent much of her life in exile having once been involved with the guerilla group, hopes this time following the conflict will be a time of introspection for the war's perpetrators. Her younger sister, Rajani, was also involved with the LTTE until she dissented and was allegedly murdered by members of the LTTE, the subject of the PBS' documentary "No More Tears Sister."


Support for the Tigers or rejection of their violent tactics has potential to divide young Tamils. But "it's too early to analyze and evaluate the divisions that could emerge among the youth," says Shanaka Jayasekara, Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism at Macquarie University in Sydney. "The extreme radical elements of the Tamil diaspora youth will continue to live in the past glory of the LTTE. The more moderate Tamil diaspora youth will use the opportunity to think outside the LTTE-centric worldview, and the less politicized Tamil diaspora youth will become conciliatory advocates promoting trust building on the ground," Jayasekara says.


While many youth would still like to see the eventual creation of an independent Tamil homeland, their short-term grassroots lobbying is intended to get Western governments to influence Sri Lanka into resettling the internally displaced Tamils today."We know that laws have been violated against our people," says Siva Vimal, a 20-year-old university student in Toronto who is involved with the York Federation of Students but has helped out groups like the Tamil Youth Organization in the past. "A lot of us have never been to Sri Lanka or seen the circumstances there, but we know the fundamental laws of human rights."


Some see another way to harness the energy of the youth movement. Ruth Kattumuri, a co-director of the Asia Research Center at London School of Economics, encourages Western Tamil youth to promote peace and development in Sri Lanka, including creating more opportunities for Tamils by teaching them skills, or helping provide medical care. "They can raise the resources they need to go there and work on rehabilitation and education," Kattumuri said, instead of seeking out media opportunities that she says promote violent images of rowdy protestors. "It's about creating projects which gives them employability. That way you're empowering them. It's about teaching them to fish, rather than giving them fish."

Sri Lanka's ethnic conundrum

Martin Regg Cohn

It won the war, but has Sri Lanka lost its mind?

After declaring total victory over the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka remains as combative as ever. Weeks later, it still sees enemies everywhere – and silences them.

The government is overcome by post-traumatic triumphalism syndrome: Its president behaves like a Buddha, gliding across the land of Lanka erecting stupas (shrines) commemorating his victory. Music videos sing the praises of Mahindra Rajapaksa. Billboards hail his inspired rule as a warrior king.

Anyone who is off key had best hold his tongue – or risk having it cut off, as Bob Rae discovered this month. The Liberal MP was denied entry to Colombo airport when the intelligence services (falsely) labelled him a Tiger lackey and security risk. Rae arrived with a visa in his passport, but after refusing to sign an "Orwellian" statement recanting past comments, he was put on the next flight to London.

So if Sri Lanka can offend a future Canadian foreign minister this way, how does it treat its own Tamils? And ours?

It turns out that Rae wasn't the only Canadian to find himself out of place in Sri Lanka. The Canadian Tamil Congress says it is receiving constant complaints from dual nationals facing harassment at Colombo's airport, including demands for bribes. But the trouble goes beyond airport formalities.

At least four dual nationals are being held in the sprawling network of detention camps set up by the government in the wake of its battlefield victory, according to the CTC. These Canadian citizens on family visits were ensnared by the guilt-by-association policy that has placed nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamils behind barbed wire.

Their Toronto lawyer, Gary Anandasangaree, tells me Ottawa is teaming up with Australia and Britain to free dual-nationals in the camps. A Canadian government spokesperson said yesterday that our diplomats are still trying to confirm the reports, but lack of access to the camps has frustrated their efforts. It's an issue that has the potential to further complicate bilateral ties after a mob attacked Canada's High Commission in Colombo last month.

Apart from the harm to Canadian citizens and interests, Sri Lanka's actions shine a spotlight on how it is harming its own people, its own stability and future prosperity.

After so bloody a war against so brutal a foe, it's hardly surprising the military wants to vet the camps for potential Tiger infiltrators. But it is unconscionable to keep so many displaced Tamil civilians locked up for so long.

An absurd two-year timeline for resettling the civilians has now been scaled back to about 12 months. And after barring outside aid groups, Sri Lanka has improved access for humanitarian relief, easing problems with malnutrition and sanitation.

But what the government still can't countenance is outside scrutiny or criticism, no matter how constructive. The tactic was honed by the military during the final showdown with the Tigers, when outside relief groups and independent journalists were barred from the battlefield. It doesn't augur well for the soul-searching dialogue that Sri Lanka now needs.

The nation has long been at war with itself: The Sinhalese make up three-quarters of the population; the Tamils are about 18 per cent. Under British colonial rule, the Tamils received preferential treatment; after independence, the Sinhalese settled scores by restricting language rights and imposing school quotas.

The problem is this: The Sinhalese are a majority group who behave with a minority mentality; the Tamils are a minority who act as if they were the majority.

The resulting polarization has played itself out on the battlefield for 26 years at the cost of nearly 100,000 lives. For Sri Lanka to heal itself, both sides must pull back from maximalist approaches.

By demanding an independent homeland, Tamils have only fed the paranoia of Sinhalese who fear that devolution is death. By treating federalism as a dirty word, Sinhalese have emasculated Tamils who seek only local rule.

Is there a way out? Only if both sides can keep their heads after losing so many lives.

The outside world can also help by prodding Sri Lanka to live up to its human rights obligations – and leveraging its financial obligations. Colombo's treasury is bare after the military campaign, and it needs a loan from the International Monetary Fund to stay afloat. But money alone won't work magic.

Now that the government has won the fight against Tiger terrorism, it needs a winning strategy to combat ethnic intolerance. The battlefield begets military solutions, but ethnic cleavages require conflict resolution. And that means devolution.

Martin Regg Cohn, the Star's deputy editorial page editor, writes Tuesday.
http://www.thestar.com/article/658543

SL not doing enough to rehabilitate displaced Tamils: P Chidambaram

Indian Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said Sri Lanka has not done enough to rehabilitate displaced Tamils and asked Colombo to allow the Red Cross to take up relief and give media access to refugee camps in the strife-torn areas.

India had allocated Rs 500 crore for rehabilitating Lankan Tamils, but the rehabilitation plan was not ready in Sri Lanka, "We regret this," Minister said in Karaikudi, his constituency Monday.

He also said that Sri Lankan Tamil refugees would not be forced to go back but the Indian government will make all arrangements for them to return if they volunteer to go back.

SL Govt says, China a pleasing partner in progress

"China’s association is so respectable, cordial and progressive for Sri Lanka. The Chinese community stood by Sri Lanka at the worst of times with a steady supply of arms and ammunition in the battle fronts. And, the moral support they extended in the international arena is incomparable. Now, battling in the economic fronts, China’s assistance towards uplifting our economy is invaluable," the government news portal said quoting Power and Energy Minister John Senevirathna.

The Minister has paid a special tribute to the Chinese delegation who accompanied him at the announcement of the inauguration of Phase II and Phase III of the Norochchalai Coal Power Project funded by China as a preferential loan payable within 20 years at a minimum interest rate of 2%.

The Phase II of the project consists of two 300 MW power generation units adding a total of 600 MW in the national power grid. This is at a cost of US$ 891 million and includes a pier and a jetty for ships offloading coal. At the end of Phase II, pylons and power transmission lines will be extended up to Anuradhapura substation. And, a modern housing complex with all facilities will be built for the employees at the power plant.

The news portal further boasted this project as a whole, a massive construction set up under Mahinda Chinthana and said that SL government got US$ 1346 million in aids and it will become history as the biggest investment project set up during the past three years.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka on Tuesday granted separate economic zone in Mirigama, exclusively for Chinese companies. China's Huichen Investment Holdings Limited will manage and bring new investments into the Mirigama zone, around 55 kilometres north of Colombo, for a period of 33 years. Huichen's president, Mr Huang Yuping, said nearly 30 Chinese firms involved in manufacturing and IT-related services had shown interest in setting up operations at the Mirigama zone.

Over the next three-years, Huichen will invest US$28 million (S$40.5 million) to develop roads, power and sewerage facilities in the zone, said Investment Promotions Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa.

'This is the first time the government has given a foreign country a specific area to develop and attract foreign investments into the country,' Mr Yapa told reporters.

Sri Lanka's ethnic conundrum

'It won the war, but has Sri Lanka lost its mind?' After declaring total victory over the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka remains as combative as ever. Weeks later, it still sees enemies everywhere – and silences them, writes Martin Regg Cohn.
The government is overcome by post-traumatic triumphalism syndrome: Its president behaves like a Buddha, gliding across the land of Lanka erecting stupas (shrines) commemorating his victory. Music videos sing the praises of Mahindra Rajapaksa. Billboards hail his inspired rule as a warrior king.
Anyone who is off key had best hold his tongue – or risk having it cut off, as Bob Rae discovered this month. The Liberal MP was denied entry to Colombo airport when the intelligence services (falsely) labelled him a Tiger lackey and security risk. Rae arrived with a visa in his passport, but after refusing to sign an "Orwellian" statement recanting past comments, he was put on the next flight to London.
So if Sri Lanka can offend a future Canadian foreign minister this way, how does it treat its own Tamils? And ours?
It turns out that Rae wasn't the only Canadian to find himself out of place in Sri Lanka. The Canadian Tamil Congress says it is receiving constant complaints from dual nationals facing harassment at Colombo's airport, including demands for bribes. But the trouble goes beyond airport formalities.
At least four dual nationals are being held in the sprawling network of detention camps set up by the government in the wake of its battlefield victory, according to the CTC. These Canadian citizens on family visits were ensnared by the guilt-by-association policy that has placed nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamils behind barbed wire.
Their Toronto lawyer, Gary Anandasangaree, tells me Ottawa is teaming up with Australia and Britain to free dual-nationals in the camps. A Canadian government spokesperson said yesterday that our diplomats are still trying to confirm the reports, but lack of access to the camps has frustrated their efforts. It's an issue that has the potential to further complicate bilateral ties after a mob attacked Canada's High Commission in Colombo last month.
Apart from the harm to Canadian citizens and interests, Sri Lanka's actions shine a spotlight on how it is harming its own people, its own stability and future prosperity.
After so bloody a war against so brutal a foe, it's hardly surprising the military wants to vet the camps for potential Tiger infiltrators. But it is unconscionable to keep so many displaced Tamil civilians locked up for so long.
An absurd two-year timeline for resettling the civilians has now been scaled back to about 12 months. And after barring outside aid groups, Sri Lanka has improved access for humanitarian relief, easing problems with malnutrition and sanitation.
But what the government still can't countenance is outside scrutiny or criticism, no matter how constructive. The tactic was honed by the military during the final showdown with the Tigers, when outside relief groups and independent journalists were barred from the battlefield. It doesn't augur well for the soul-searching dialogue that Sri Lanka now needs.
http://www.tamilnational.com/worlds-view/article/1414-sri-lankas-ethnic-conundrum.html

Hostages

Sri Lanka is again trying to make money through Tamil suffering - Tamil Guardian Editorial

Sri Lanka is demanding international aid whilst at the same railing against foreign ‘interference’ in its ‘internal affairs’ and hurling abuse at those who speak of human rights and political solutions.

The latter include the very donors Colombo is pressing. The paradox is striking. In addition to the acute suffering it is consciously inflicting on hundreds of thousands of Tamils incarcerated in militarized prison camps, the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse is systematically wearing down those stumps of liberal governance still standing after sixty years of ascendant Sinhala-Buddhist rule in the island. Democracy, political pluralism, the rule of law and press freedom - long distorted so as to entrench Sinhala dominance over the other communities - are under further violent attack. Yet Sri Lanka is brazenly justifying its demands for international assistance – sought mainly from Western donors - on the grounds it is a fledgling market democracy. The international community must challenge this fiction. Sri Lanka must be subject to international isolation and sanctions until the state complies – in concrete steps –with international humanitarian and human rights norms.

Six weeks ago the Sinhala-dominated state declared it had totally defeated the Liberation Tigers and ended the war. It then embarked on a protracted victory dance, spending lavishly on celebrations which emphasized how the Sinhala had (again) defeated the Tamils. International observers who thought Sri Lanka a multi-ethnic democracy may have found this behaviour bizarre, but those familiar with the racism institutionalized in state, polity and society in Sri Lanka would have understood, even anticipated this. Some liberal commentators optimistically saw President Rajapakse’s inclusion of a few Tamil words in his victory speech as signs of him ‘reaching out’ to the Tamils. If such simplistic thinking need be taken seriously, the government’s ongoing brutality towards the Tamil population and the Sinhala triumphalism engulfing state action and rhetoric speaks for itself and provides adequate response.

Firstly, despite international entreaties and demands, the government continues to intern almost 300,000 Tamils in militarized, barbed-wire ringed camps where they are openly subject to ‘disappearance’, torture, extortion and rape. Amid government restrictions on adequate food and medicine into the camps, disease has broken out. These are not mere ‘Tamil claims’. Human Rights Watch and international media investigations have detailed and condemned the ongoing horrors. Visiting international officials, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Japan’s Special Envoy, Yasushi Akashi, have highlighted the acute suffering in the camps. The Sri Lankan government’s response to international criticism – mild as it is - has been to further restrict aid agencies’ access and accuse them of telling lies. At least two UN agency staff have been abducted by gunmen and later turned up in government custody.

The international community is therefore right to insist that international aid agencies must have unfettered access to these horrific camps. Sri Lanka has long exploited international trust and sympathy to acquire and appropriate external humanitarian aid. The intended beneficiaries have rarely been helped, but the state, its corrupt leadership and bureaucracy (both civil and military) and recipients of its political patronage have done exceedingly well. The flood of tsunami aid into the island after 2005 is a case in point. There is nothing in Sri Lanka’s conduct vis-à-vis the Tamils and, especially, the inhabitants of these camps, to give cause for optimism. Quite the contrary. The watchwords of transparency and accountability must henceforth condition - in substance, not rhetoric - every penny of external humanitarian assistance for the Tamils.

It has long been axiomatic of donor thinking that post-conflict countries must receive swift and substantial aid if a relapse into armed conflict is to be avoided. Sri Lanka is not transitioning between war and peace, but between war and anarchy. The state plans further militarization. The Sri Lankan army is to be expanded to a staggering 300,000 soldiers – three times the size of Britain’s army. The police and other security forces are recruiting. So, as international rights observers point out, are the Army’s murderous paramilitary groups. Meanwhile, despite its smug assurances to the contrary, the government plans to keep the many hundreds of thousands indefinitely in the camps. The only construction taking place in the North is that of new military installations and Sinhala colonies. This, as any scholar of insurgency would attest, is grist to the mill of renewed Tamil militancy.

The Rajapske regime may be indignant that donors – mainly Western liberal states and associated multilateral organizations – are seeking to link respect for human rights to their financial aid. Colombo’s histrionics about infringements of sovereignty are being tacitly or overtly supported by states such as China – which, incidentally, are in no hurry to provide any substantive financial assistance of their own. But sanctions and conditionalities are sine quo non if there is to be a change from dynamics of the past two decades. Having inflicted suffering on the Tamil populace through indiscriminate force and deliberate, scorched earth tactics, the Sinhala-dominated state has then held forth the Tamils’ plight as justification for further demands on international largess.

The Sri Lankan state is institutionally racist and corrupt. Aid destined for the Tamils will simply not reach the suffering without close international supervision. It is no accident that the state is seeking to keep international observers blind and away from the camps, both by official restrictions and the violent silencing of domestic critics. Donors’ past trust and faith in Sri Lanka has resulted in international aid subsidizing the state’s pursuit of Sinhala victory over the Tamils – as the state itself continues to celebrate. If the people in the camps are to be helped, the Sri Lankan state must be compelled to allow international humanitarians, human rights workers, and media ready access to them. Aid must follow, not precede, Sri Lanka’s compliance with international humanitarian and human rights norms