Human Rights and the Peace Process in Sri Lanka:
A Sometimes Resident Alien's Perspective
-- Alan Keenan
With the Sri Lankan peace process now approaching the six month
mark, human rights concerns have taken center stage. Allegations
of violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Tamil Tigers -
most prominently in the form of forced recruitment of children
and the extortion of "taxes" from both Tamils and Muslims
in the north and east of the country - have received considerable
attention in the media and in political discussion. The recent
visit to Sri Lanka by a delegation from Amnesty International
has further placed human rights issues on the political agenda.
Despite the complexities that human rights issues add to the negotiation
process - or rather, precisely as a way of better managing them
now that they have entered the fray - there have been increasing
calls for the government and the Tigers to sign a preliminary
agreement specifically on human rights, to be enforced by an international
monitoring mechanism, perhaps under the auspices of the United
Nations. The proposal forms a remarkable point of convergence
between two important Sri Lankan political NGO's that rarely have
agreed on such matters before: the National Peace Council, which
has long endorsed direct talks with the LTTE, and the University
Teachers for Human Rights, which has warned repeatedly of the
risks of negotiating with the Tigers without effective political
or human rights limitations placed on their power.
There exists a rare window of opportunity in Sri Lanka for human
rights discourse to be used not as a political weapon against
one's opponents but instead as a lever for all Sri Lankans to
carve out increased political and democratic space throughout
the country. Such a scenario is, no doubt, an optimistic one.
Keeping the window open for any length of time will not be easy.
There is little reason to believe that either the government -
members of which were implicated in the massive human rights violations
of the previous UNP regime in the 1980's and early 90's - or the
LTTE have any genuine desire to see strong human rights standards
enforced as part of any peace settlement. A robust practice of
human rights monitoring and enforcement would be a threat to the
traditional sources of power of both organizations.
Still, to the extent that the enforcement of effective human
rights standards and democratic norms can be shown to be necessary
to maintaining the peace process itself - by stemming worries
that the LTTE is simply consolidating its power before further
attacks, and by acting as a further confidence builder that the
Sri Lankan state has learned to treat its Tamil citizens fairly
- both the government and the LTTE would seem to have an interest
in limiting their own anti-democratic tendencies. This argument
works, of course, only to the extent that each party is, in fact,
committed to the peace process. Thus a government-LTTE human rights
accord, and its effective enforcement throughout the country,
would be a crucial and revealing test for the peace process: are
the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government committed enough to peace
to really put their own power - at least in their present less
than democratic forms - at risk?`
Most of the recent discussion of human rights concerns has centered
on the actions of the LTTE and on the difficulties and risks involved
in attempts - which are central to the government's "interim
processes" approach to negotiations - to bring "the
LTTE into the democratic mainstream," or simply to help shift
its methods away from those of violence and intimidation and towards
those of politics and persuasion. The hope is that by allowing
unarmed Tiger militants to open political offices, hold political
rallies, and non-violently recruit members to their cause the
Tigers will themselves be transformed into a more fully political
organization. The Tamil people, in turn, will have a better opportunity
and greater willingness to hold the LTTE accountable to their
needs and wishes, especially the longer that war is kept at bay
(and the more that various independent "monitoring"
mechanisms are established and prove themselves to be effective).
But this scenario raises very difficult questions about what is
involved in "politicizing" or "democratizing"
an organization founded on violence and terror. In such a situation,
what precisely would constitute a good faith attempt on the part
of the LTTE to "come into politics?" How would one recognize
politics, as opposed to violence and coercion? Against which standards
will such judgments be made? Those of the Sri Lankan state and
political parties, or of South Asian politics more generally,
neither of which conform very well to democratic principles strictly
defined? Most important, how quickly and completely must the "politicization"
or democratization of the LTTE take place in order to safely say
that they have now entered politics?
Some of the difficulty of making such judgments can be gauged
by the responses that the LTTE's initial "political"
work has received from many quarters. The LTTE's first move into
explicitly political terrain came prior to last year's elections
with the consolidation of four independent Tamil political parties
into the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The central platform of
the TNA consisted of the acceptance of the LTTE as the sole representative
of the Tamil people and an endorsement of the LTTE's entire political
platform. Given that all four parties had previously guarded their
independence jealously and that their political activity had frequently
earned them the title of traitors and "quislings" by
the LTTE -to the extent of ordering many of their leaders assassinated
- it is hard not to see their acceptance of the leadership of
the LTTE as largely a matter of capitulation to superior force.
And yet, while it is highly unlikely that the creation of the
TNA was anything like a voluntary act by the parties concerned,
it has also plausibly been read by some as the first tentative
admission by the LTTE that they do in fact need to have political
representation in Parliament and in the larger political arena
of Sri Lanka as a whole. This admission of the necessity of politics
to their vision of the Tamil liberation struggle is, potentially,
a major step.
Similar ambiguity surrounds the other major "political"
activities of the LTTE. Particularly controversial have been a
series of mass rallies and demonstrations under the banner of
"Pongu Thamil" (variously translated as Tamil "upsurge,"
"awakening," or "boiling over"). These have
officially been staged by consortia of "civil society"
organizations throughout the North and East; these groups, however,
are generally seen as taking their cues directly from the LTTE.
The rallies, billed as celebrations of Tamil culture, drew huge
crowds in all the major towns of the North and East, with signs
pledging allegiance to the LTTE and its leader Prabhakaran and
endorsing the LTTE's claim to be the sole representative of the
Tamil people. One rally took as its central theme the slogan that
"Tamil is our spirit; that spirit is Prabhakaran." The
rallies generally featured fairly strident Tamil nationalist rhetoric,
including strong indictments of the Sri Lankan Army (a symbolic
Army boot has been ceremoniously burned at a number of recent
rallies). The emotional fervor of the rallies, and the mass identification
of the demonstrators with the LTTE and its leader, especially
in a context where it would be risky for any independent minded
Tamil from the area not to attend, has led a number of observers
to compare the "Pongu Thamil" events with Nazi rallies
from the 1930's and '40's.
This ominous interpretation of the rallies gains much of its
force by placing the rallies in the context of a number of other
critical developments: 1) the complete control by the LTTE of
all "civil society" and local development/relief agencies
in the North and East, together with the absence of any non-LTTE
Tamil political organizations (an absence ratified by the disarming
of the anti-LTTE Tamil paramilitaries under the terms of the ceasefire);
2) the fact that even as the government has lifted its restrictions
on the movements of Tamil people within and out of the North and
East, the LTTE itself maintains a pass system that makes it very
difficult for Tamils (esp. men of fighting age) to leave LTTE-controlled
areas; 3) evidence of the establishment of a system of widespread
and often severe taxation by the LTTE, including forced abductions
of both Tamils and Muslims for ransom; 4) the numerous reports
- accredited by local and international human rights organizations,
as well as by the Scandinavian monitors with the SLMM - of forced
military conscription of Tamil children, some as young as 12 and
13; and 5) the strong evidence that the LTTE continues to import
weapons, train recruits, and consolidate military positions on
its side of the ceasefire's "line of control."
For many observers, then, the particular form that the LTTE's
"coming into politics" has taken so far has confirmed
what they see as the Tigers' essentially anti-democratic, even
fascist, character and has stoked fears that the "political"
work of the LTTE is merely part of a larger plan to strengthen
itself for a final, decisive, round of war aimed at winning "Thamil
Eelam." It is, of course, too soon to tell how likely this
apocalyptic scenario is. More important, though, whatever risks
there are at this stage, there is no viable alternative to continuing
with the peace process as it is presently designed: the government
and people of Sri Lanka simply can not afford - economically or
socially - continued war. Yet advocates of a negotiated settlement
nonetheless run serious risks in refusing to address in detail
the concerns expressed in such nightmare scenarios. So far, they
have largely been silent, or dismissive of such concerns, a stance
which only confirms the fears and paranoia of many nationalist
Sinhalese and thus undermines support for negotiations.
Nonetheless, rather than leaving the discussion at the stage
of arguing about whether the LTTE can ever "change its stripes"
or whether it is sincerely committed to the peace process - questions
which by their very nature can never definitively be answered
- there are other more interesting and productive ways to address
the same set of concerns. This would be to ask - and begin to
propose concrete answers to - the question of how the LTTE's "coming
into politics" - can be structured and channeled in ways
that lower the risks of renewed fighting and are thus beneficial
to long term peace and stability. This would be a way for advocates
of a negotiated settlement to address a range of human rights
issues in a way that opens up larger issues of democratization
that all parties to the conflict need to be pushed to consider.
Indeed, it would also offer a way of addressing the reciprocal
concerns of many Sri Lankans (and not merely Tamils) about the
trustworthiness and sincerity of the Sri Lankan state - can it
ever change its stripes and make a lasting commitment to pluralism
and inter-ethnic fairness?
At this point, though, we run up against one of the weaknesses
of the Norwegian approach. As Sumanisiri Liyanage has argued,
the Norwegian-sponsored peace process is very much a bi-lateral
one between the two major actors, the government and the LTTE.
With the possible exception of the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress
(or some other representative of the Muslim people) being given
a place at upcoming government-LTTE talks, there are no official
avenues within the Norwegian sponsored process for other voices
to be heard, especially those of average Sri Lankans or of "civil
society" organizations. Indeed, this limitation has been
in the interests of both parties to the process. The Sri Lankan
government has been afraid of opening up the process to political
forces it doesn't control, in part out of fear that effective
- perhaps even violent - opposition to the peace process from
Sinhala nationalists might emerge, as has been the case in each
previous such process. The LTTE, in turn, has built its power
on the ruthless elimination of all other Tamil political voices
and will be loathe to weaken its hard-won monopoly on Tamil politics
even if it might seem to be in its immediate self-interest. From
where, then, will the necessary pressure come to establish strong
human rights standards and enforce them on both the government
and the Tamil Tigers?
Both Sri Lankan "civil society" organizations and the
international actors involved - Norway, India, and the United
States being the most important, but also Japan, Great Britain,
Australia, Holland, Sweden, and other international donors to
Sri Lanka - will first have to work to convince the government
and the LTTE that the peace process is endangered unless the basic
liberal and democratic rights of all citizens are respected, not
just on paper, but in practice, both in the North and the East,
and in the "South," or Sinhala-majority areas. Here
it is crucial that the standards and accountability extent to
both parties - not just to the LTTE, but to the government too
- both to avoid appearing part of a one-sided attack on the Tigers
and to help establish stronger democratic norms throughout the
country. And the pressure will have to be more than just rhetorical;
it will require more than just strong rational arguments in the
form of convincing position papers and seminar presentations.
It will also require the establishment of political space for
effective monitoring of both parties and for the establishment
of real forms of accountability. This, in turn, will take more
than just the "mass education" that [Sumanisiri rightly
calls for in his same essay] [some commentators have called for].
It will also depend on some degree of mass mobilization, or at
least political organization beyond the confines of Colombo's
elite-based civil society organizations.
For these reasons, "human rights issues" must be viewed
as more than simply matters of proper "timing" within
a larger, basically technical, process of negotiation - a narrow
vision encouraged by the heavy reliance of Sri Lankan intellectuals
and activists on the academic discourse of conflict resolution
- but instead as an integral part of a larger struggle and movement
for democratization. To argue this, however, is not to suggest
that any rapid or significant degree of democratization is likely
in Sri Lanka any time soon. Given the active targeting and destruction
of democratic political organizations - whether "mass,"
"popular," or "civil society" - over the past
twenty-five years, it is too much to expect that the Sri Lankan
people will soon rise up to reclaim their democratic sovereignty.
The kind of political work necessary for this to happen is both
dangerous and slow. But some amount of this work, despite its
great difficulty, seems necessary if the peace process is to be
nurtured into a sustainable peace. Even if there is no quick or
obvious route to achieving such a democratic transformation of
Sri Lankan society, all who are truly interested in a long-term
and stable settlement need to acknowledge the issue and do what
they can to expand the role and stake of average Sri Lankans in
the process. This is especially true of the international actors
involved, who are even less democratically accountable to Sri
Lankans than Sri Lanka's political parties and other elite political
actors. (This is, in addition, an issue that lurks in the background
of much of the criticism of the peace process; it needs to be
more forthrightly addressed by both foreign donors and by the
Sri Lankan NGO's that receive a lot of their money).
In the meantime, though, the various foreign governments involved
in Sri Lanka's peace process are playing a variety of roles that
will be crucial in shaping the possibility and the contours of
any settlement, whether interim or final. Chief among the "good
cops" are the Norwegians, whose role as brokers of the talks
is to keep the ship of peace steady whenever various waves seem
ready to capsize it, and the World Bank and Asian Development
Bank (along with various donor governments), who are itching to
establish enough peace to start pouring in significant amounts
of money for various "development" and "relief
and reconstruction" projects in the war-devastated North
and East. Much of this money is expected to end up in the control
of the LTTE, and thus operates as one of the major "carrots"
in the whole process. Playing one of the "bad cops"
is the US, whose job so far has been to support negotiations all
the while wielding its proverbial big stick to warn the LTTE against
backing out of the process or abusing it in ways that threaten
to lead back to war. The other bad cop is India, which not only
still threatens to try forcibly to extradite Prabhakaran for the
1991 LTTE assassination of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, but
will also be acting to prevent any agreement with the LTTE that
might grant a degree of regional autonomy that would set a dangerous
precedent for India, given its own numerous restive territories
and national minorities (e.g., Kashmir).
The US role has been a controversial one so far, especially among
Tamils. Many Tamils have publicly criticized the US warnings as
putting unfair pressure on the Tigers and as endangering the possibility
of talks. Other Tamils have both publicly, and more often in private
conversations, expressed satisfaction with the US (and Indian)
pressure as a way of keeping the Tigers honest and more committed
to the path of negotiations. Nonetheless, there is a real danger
that the US role - especially given a recent agreement that will
increase US military support and training to the Sri Lankan armed
forces in exchange for the use of Sri Lankan ports and air bases
and air space - could give the Sinhalese-dominated government
unhealthy levels of confidence when actually negotiating a final
agreement with the LTTE (if things ever get that far). If talks
were to break down due to the refusal of Sinhalese political elites
to agree to a fair and workable form of power-sharing with a Tamil-controlled
North and East, any ensuing warfare could easily see the LTTE
branded as nothing other than a "terrorist group," worthy
of US-assisted annihilation like so many others around the globe.
The results for Tamil civilians in the North and East, and for
Sri Lankans as a whole, would be terrifying. Thus, once more,
the importance of ensuring that in whatever negotiation process
takes place, human rights and democracy will be front and center,
and will be used to hold both the government and the LTTE accountable
to all the people on the island now known as Sri Lanka.
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