Sri Lanka: a paradise lost?

By Irfan Husain

AS THE fighting in Sri Lanka’s unending civil war has intensified, there has been a steady erosion in civil rights and democratic values. President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, bent on crushing the LTTE, the Tamil militant group, has not been above using emergency powers to silence dissent.

The latest victim of this authoritarian tendency is Keith Noyahr, a highly respected journalist and associate editor of The Nation. As he was about to open the gate to his house in Colombo at 9pm last week, a white van pulled up behind his car, a couple of men bundled him in, manacled him in handcuffs, and sped away. His wife, noticing the family car with its lights on and engine running, immediately rang the journalist’s friends and colleagues. They rushed over and began an all-night vigil during which they called people in government and human rights organizations in Sri Lanka and abroad.

Nearly seven hours later, Mr Noyahr staggered into his house, battered and bruised, with blood pouring from his head. His assailants had dropped him back, presumably as the result of the pressure that had been built up. Apart from his obvious injuries, he had been repeatedly beaten on the soles of his feet. Apparently, he was tortured to force him to name his sources for an article he had written recently about a military debacle in the north last month.

This incident is just one of a series of similar kidnappings and beatings that have traumatised Sri Lankan journalists over the last couple of years. Indeed, international media watchdogs see this as part of a pattern. The International Press Institute said: “Sri Lanka’s reputation as a place where violence against journalists goes unpunished continues to grow…”

Despite the promise of an official enquiry, nothing is expected of this government by local journalists. We in Pakistan are familiar with the brutal methods of intelligence agencies, and nobody in Sri Lanka is fooled by the pretence of a police investigation. High-profile incidents like this one add to the general feeling of insecurity that is becoming increasingly widespread. Given these blatant and repeated violations of citizens’ rights, the country should have been prepared for the loss of its seat on the UN Human Rights Council. But the government had spent weeks on lobbying, and had confidently predicted victory. As Colombo’s Sunday Times put it: “The government needlessly made this election a prestige battle, pitting itself given its own highly questionable human rights track record against various forces determined to teach it a lesson, and has now ended up with egg on the face.”

Among these forces were various international human rights organisations and crusaders like Jimmy Carter. Since this government came to power, it has deliberately ended any chance of a peaceful resolution of the civil war. Breaking off the desultory peace talks brokered by Norway, it has formally abrogated the tenuous ceasefire negotiated by ex-prime minister Ranil Wickramsinghe.

Despite predictions of swift military victory, the army remains bogged down in the North. Almost daily, it announces large numbers of LTTE casualties, but these claims are impossible to verify independently. All journalists, local and foreign, have been ordered out of the war zone, as have relief organizations. The latest official move in preventing foreigners to operate in the country has been a toughening of visa restrictions on international NGOs. Already, new employees of UN agencies were facing difficulties in obtaining visas.

Speaking at a recent media conference in Bali, Iqbal Athas, a noted defence analyst from Sri Lanka, said: “The media have to depend on hand-outs from the military. It is well known that official figures of rebel casualties are grossly exaggerated a situation reminiscent of the ‘body count’ scandals in Vietnam. A joke in Colombo suggested that a tally of the government’s LTTE casualties would surely usher in peace, because claimed ‘enemy deaths’ exceeded the population of the North twice over. An unmanageable crisis of credibility continues, shaking public confidence, and demoralising the military…”

But one huge problem Sri Lanka faces is that as a country with few natural resources, it desperately needs tourists to earn foreign exchange in order to pay for fuel and other imports. The war in the north, and the LTTE’s retaliatory terrorist attacks in and around Colombo, have all triggered a number of adverse travel advisories issued by Western countries. Although this is not the tourist season in Sri Lanka, locals in the hospitality business have complained bitterly of falling numbers of foreigners visiting the island. In the south, where I was recently, a number of hotels and restaurants have been forced to close, and others will no doubt follow.

Immediately after the ceasefire was signed several years ago, there was a sharp rise in foreign investments in Sri Lanka, and in anticipation of increasing numbers of tourists, the number of hotels grew rapidly. However, with the change in government, the tsunami, and the sharp escalation in violence, tourism and foreign investment have both nosedived.

As a regular visitor and a friend of Sri Lanka’s, I have watched these developments with sorrow and despair. An island that could so easily be a paradise on earth is destroying itself for reasons that could be sorted out with some goodwill and give-and-take. While Pakistan is coping badly with problems inherent in its creation, Sri Lanka is a far more coherent and stable state. With a population of around 20 million, an economy that is basically sound, it has a literacy rate of above 90 per cent. If it could sort out its political problems, I have little doubt it would do very well.

Unfortunately, the conflict is about race, language and territory, all powerful ingredients in the history of warfare. And increasingly, religion is becoming a factor. Alas, there is little evidence of political will on either side to address these problems. Even if the government somehow manages to defeat the LTTE militarily, it will only drive the Tamil Tigers underground, and be faced with a shadowy conflict it cannot hope to win. Meanwhile, the economy will continue to suffer, and the country’s human rights record will worsen. What happened recently to Keith Noyahr is only an indication of things to come.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm

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