Sri Lankan civil war

[ampanai]

Sri Lankan civil war

Full and equal membership of a political community is called citizenship. Citizenship is not merely a legal concept. It is also closely related to larger notion of equality and rights. In modern times it shows the relationship between state and its members. Equality of rights and status is one of the basic right of citizenship. As T.H.Marshall mentioned in his book "CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL CLASS" a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed.

In a democracy there is a huge role of protest and struggle in achieving rights. Oftenly it is set up to change public opinion by drawing attention to their needs as well as to ensure equal rights and opportunities. Sometimes these struggle for ensuring rights, status and opportunities turned violent and may also convert into armed conflict or civil war like Naxalbari movement, Arab spring and one of them was Sri Lankan civil war which lasted 26 years of bloodshed. In a democracy culture and language are important features of its national identity and all citizens are expected to assimilate into it in the public aspect of their lives. The core issues which gave birth to this civil war was were issues of equality, equal status and opportunities, language based discrimination etc.

The Sri Lankan civil war was an armed conflict fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on 23 July 1983, there was an intermitted insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an independent militant organisation which fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam inthe north and east of island.

Origins:

The origins of the Sri Lankan civil war lie in the continuous political rancour between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils. Seeds of this conflict was sown during the colonial rule in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). During colonial rule Tamils were brought into the island for labour works mainly as labourer for tea production. When missionaries came and they started spreading Christianity, Tamils were the most benefitted community by such conversions organised by missionaries. They were given privilege in area of government jobs, they were taught English from which they were easily hired by British government for secretariat jobs and in many official works. By getting these benefits Tamils dominated the socio-economic activities comparatively to the majority Sinhalese. Sinhalese take it as a discrimination by the Britishers with the help of immigrant Tamils.

In 1948, immediately after independence a controversial law was passed by Ceylon parliament, called Ceylon citizenship act which deliberately discriminated against the Indian Tamil ethnic minority by making it virtually impossible for them to obtain citizenship in the country. Approximately over 7,00,000 Indian Tamils were made stateless. Over the next decades 3,00,000 Indian Tamils were deported back to India. Up to 2003 all Tamils living in Sri Lanka were granted citizenship but by this time they only made up 5% of the island’s total population. In 1956 Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike passed the "Sinhala only act", an act which replace English with the Sinhala as the only official language of the country. This was seen as a deliberate attempt to discourage the Sri Lankan Tamils from working in Ceylon civil services and other public services. The Tamil speaking minorities of the Ceylon (Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian and Sri Lankan Moors) viewed the act as linguistic, cultural and economic discrimination against them. This was a prelude to 1956 Gal Oya riots and the 1958 widespread riots in which thousands of Tamil civilians perished. This civil war was a direct result of the escalation of the confrontational politics that followed. Resurgent Sinhala Buddhist nationalism allowed little leeway for ruling politicians to give too many concessions to the Tamils.

 

During the 1970’s, an act of institutional racism known as the infamous policy of standardization was initiated. Under this policy, university admissions were standardized to correct the disproportionately higher number of Sri Lankan Tamils entering universities. The number of Tamil students entering universities fell dramatically. Although the policy was abandoned in 1977. Other form of official discrimination against the Sri Lankan Tamils included the state sponsored colonisation of traditional Tamil areas by Sinhalese peasants, the banning of the import of Tamil language media and the precedence given by the 1978 constitution of Sri Lanka to Buddhism, the main religion followed by the Sinhalese.

These were the main issues that play a huge roll in the militant upsurge of Tamils which lasted more than 26 years. The war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and economy of the economy of the country, with an estimated 80,000-1,00,000 people killed during its course. During the early part of the conflict, the Sri Lankan forces attempted to retake the areas captured by LTTE. After two decades of fighting ad four failed tries at peace talk, including the unsuccessful deployment of the Indian Army, the Indian peace keeping from 1987-90, a lasting negotiated settlement to the conflict appeared possible when a cease-fire was declared in Dec 2001. In 2006 LTTE was driven out of entire eastern province of the island. The LTTE then declared they would remain "resume their freedom struggle to achieve statehood". On May 18, 2009 Velupali Prabhakaran was killed by Sri Lankan armed forces. Colonel Soosai, the leader of "Sea Tiger" navy and Pottu Amman, his intelligence chief were also killed in attack. 19 May 2009 saw President Mahinda Rajapaksa giving victory speech to the parliament and declared that Sri Lanka is liberated from terrorism.

 

War crimes:

There were allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the conflict (majorly in last years). The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian building by both sides; executions of combats and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers. The 26 year long Sri Lankan civil war cost more than 80,000 lives. This include more than 23, 327 Sri Lankan soldiers and policeman, 1, 155 Indian soldiers and 27,639 Tamil fighters.

Sri Lanka after war:

Following the LTTE defeat, Tamil National Alliance, the largest political party in Sri Lanka dropped its demand for a separate state, in favour of a federal solution. Sri Lanka emerging after a 26 year war, has become one of the fastest growing economies of the world. Presidential elections were completed in January 2010. Mahinda Rajapaksa won the elections with 59% of votes, defeating General Sarath Fonseka who was the united opposition candidate. Under Mahinda Rajapaksa large infrastructure projects and mega projects (international ports, hydro, coal and solar power stations)were carried out. By 2010 Sri Lanka’s poverty rate was 8.9% while it was 15.2% in 2006. Sri Lanka made it into the "high" category of the Human Development Index during this time. However, the government came under fierce criticism for corruption and low transparency. In 2015 presidential election, 2015 January Maithripala Sirisena won the election with 51.28% of the votes and took oath as president. He removed politically appointed officials and launched a major anti-corruption campaign.

UN Investigation on civil war:

The UN set up a panel of experts to investigate on civil war crimes. This panel was given responsibility of the accountability with regard to any alleged violation of international Human Rights and Humanitarian Law during the final stages of war. After long investigations the panel presents a report, called Darusman Report after the name of the chairman Marzuki Darusman (an Indonesian politician).

The panel’s report revealed a very different version of the final stages of war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka i.e. LLRC ( Lessons’ Learnt and Reconciliation Commission 2012 ). The panel found "credible allegations" which were against humanity. The panel concluded that "the conduct of war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace". The panels’ work also revealed the fact that as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war, most as a result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan military. This panel called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international investigation into the alleged violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights law committed by both sides. The top UN Human Rights body has approved by a consensus a resolution aimed to increase accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. UN blames Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tigers for atrocities. Authorities there have long avoided investigating alleged war crimes by its forces, and victims’ families have been futile in their attempts to seek justice.

UN Report 2015 (conducted by UNHRC)

A long awaited UN report has detailed horrific abuses committed in Sri Lanka’s civil war and said the country needed international help to probe the crimes to enable reconciliation. A statement was given by UNHRCchief towards this issue "a purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fuelled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises". The UN Human rights remarked that the Sri Lankan government has made little progress in providing accountability for wartime abuses. The government failure to comply with a March 2013 United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution led to a new Resolution 2014. The resolution calls on the UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to investigate serious violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian law and related crimes by both sides during civil war, which ended in 2009. In response, the Sri Lankan government has publicly stated that it will not cooperate with the international investigation and will deny visas to members of the investigation team seeking to enter the country. Members of the government also warned that Sri Lankan nationals who provide information to the UN investigation will be regarded as traitors. In July 2014, the government announced the appointment of an International expert team to assist its own "disappearances" commission, and authorized the commission to investigate allegations of law-of-war violations and enforced disappearances.

The UNHRC 2015 report (published on 17 Sept.) has pointed and checkout issues of four groups along with major international actors for reconciliation in their report.

(1)Crackdown on civil society and critics

(2) Attacks on religious minority

(3)Refugees

(4)Migrant workers

@ Crackdown on civil society and critics.

Arbitrary arrests of Sri Lankan activists who advocated for accountability continued. The government also widened its crackdown against independent media and human rights defenders. Media, particularly in the northern Tamil-majority areas, continue to face restrictions on reporting. While various development, resettlement and reconstruction projects have been undertaken in former war zones in the north and east, government pledges to address the rights concerns of the ethnic Tamil population remain largely unfulfilled. The government has blocked simple gestures, such as allowing Tamil communities to hold commemorative services for their dead or sing the national anthem in Tamil.

@ Attacks on religious minorities.

Number of attacks lower down in recent year but fear of insecurity continues in minorities. The ultra nationalist Bodhu Bala Sena escalated small incidents into violence many times that result into destruction of numerous Muslim home and businesses along with deaths. Although government announced some arrests but had not filed charges against any suspects at the time of working.

@ Refugees

Serious concerns remain about the forced return of Sri Lankans who seek asylum abroad. Many of the forced returns took place in the midst of intensified government security operations since March 2014, which saw scores of arrests and several deaths due to hazardous conditions at sea. Human Rights Watch and other have documented the authorities use of torture against people suspected of links to the LTTE, including those returned as failed asylum seekers from the United Kingdom and other countries. In, recent years, the government also began forcibly returning individuals from other countries seeking asylum in Sri Lanka, including some persons registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

@ Migrant Workers

More than 1 million Sri Lankans are employed overseas, and many remain at risk of abuse at every stage of the migration cycle from recruitment and transit to employment, repatriation and reintegration. Recruiters and unregulated subagents charge exorbitant fees leaving migrants indebted and often with inaccurate information about their promised employment overseas. The government has taken some steps to protect their rights abroad, but many continue to face long working hours with little rest, delayed or unpaid wages, confinement in the workplace, and verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

@ KeyInternational Actors

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC), adopted the recommendation of then-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillai to create an international inquiry into war crimes and other serious abuses committed during Sri Lankas’ civil war. The United States and the United Kingdom called upon Sri Lanka to ensure accountability for war crimes. India, as a regional partner, continued to press for reconciliation and protection of Tamils, but it abstained from the HRC vote. Japan, a key donor, also abstained and in other public statements commended Sri Lanka on post-wartime developments. The Chinese premiere visited Sri Lanka in an ongoing show of financial and political support for the government absent any human rights concerns. Australia and Sri Lanka colluded to ensure that asylum seekers leaving Sri Lanka were either returned or else were not allowed onto Australian territory.

 

Conclusion:

Citizenship is about more than the relationship between states and their members. It is also about citizen-citizen relations involves certain obligations of citizens to each other and to the society. Disputes are a part of democracy but how to resolve it, is big question. Is violence the only mean to resolve disputes? Citizens are free to try and influence public opinion and government policy by forming groups, holding demonstrations, using media, appealing to political parties, or by appealing the courts. A basic principle of democracy is that such disputes should be settled by negotiation and discussions rather than force or violence. This is one of the obligations of citizenship. A welfare state should not do any type of linguistic and religious discrimination as done by Sri Lankan government by passing legislations against the linguistic minority Tamils. Political scenario changes time to time but the situation remains same to the Tamils in 1983-2009. Now the current political situation is different from the past till the regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa. The government has changed along with different state councils. Recently train services restarted in Jaffna since the attack in late 80’s. The new president M. Sirisena have given assurances for affirmative actions towards the social, political and economic upliftment of Tamils after winning elections in early 2015. It is not only duty of government to co-opt Tamils in main stream society but also the Sinhala community to change environment of their country. Whatever happened in Sri Lanka will be a darkest phase in their History.

AAMIR ZEYA

B.A 3^rd YEAR

Roll no: 15/51/SA/013

CENTRE FOR ARABIC AND AFRICAN STUDIES