Breaking Taboos: Speaking about Rights and Intimidation in Toronto-- Asha
On December 12th 2004, Human Rights Watch (HRW) held a meeting in Toronto to present their report, “Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers”. Featuring the writer of the report and former Premier Bob Rae, the meeting was intended to generate awareness among the 200 000-strong Tamil diaspora in Toronto, a significant source of financial and political support for the LTTE. The meeting, however, was disrupted by a small, organized group that shouted slogans at the panelists and at any one else who asked them to sit down. After thirty minutes of shouting, the panelists were allowed to speak and various members of the audience were then allowed to pose questions. The meeting did not generate the thoughtful, respectful discussion that was intended. What was generated, however, was a rather ugly snapshot of how coercion and intimidation operate in the wider Tamil community in Toronto, and the strong undercurrent of dissent that nevertheless persists. Reports of intimidation in Toronto often seem ludicrous, but this intimidation, stemming from the fear of social ostracism undergirded by the very real threat of physical violence, is a reality with which Tamils in Toronto are well acquainted. To disagree with the mainstream political line – to be a dissenting Tamil – is a costly endeavour that carries with it heavy social stigma, violence and, for those activists who are profoundly committed to Tamil rights, the painful irony of being labeled “anti-Tamil” or “traitor”. Dissenting opinions or mere expressions of curiosity are met with a powerful and hostile reaction that can include late-night telephone calls, broken car windows, and assault. All alternative expression is thus forced underground and coated with a veneer of illicitness, so that alternative ideas cannot circulate among the public sphere. Tamil public civil society in Toronto is seemingly vibrant – there are numerous newspapers, radio stations and TV shows and an ever-increasing number of non-governmental organizations that cater to the Tamil community. This civil society, however, operates within an atrophied public sphere, where the same views, and rhetorical devices, and indignant outcries are regurgitated ad nauseum. Here, it is impossible to indulge the normalcy of asking questions or expressing reservation and confusion – all these become loaded acts of political defiance carrying heavy penalties. You learn very quickly in Toronto to keep quiet, and you soon lose sight of the fact that this is not a normal state of being, this constant biting of tongues. The danger of this is not simply that those asking questions must do so in the privacy of their homes, but that in doing so, others forget that there are questions to be asked. Instead, the ready rhetoric of the mainstream media and the convenient ethical and mental shortcuts they provide, make it very compelling to subscribe to the dominant political structures and ideologies so that they become articles of faith. Now, there is not simply the challenge of thinking outside the dominant worldview that is jealously guarded by the political elite, but the challenge of realizing that such thinking exists. Between the options of being a mainstream ideologue and a dissenting Tamil lie, I imagine, the majority of Tamils in Toronto. And in the heavily regulated and sterilized public sphere of Tamil politics, opinions that counter the dominant party line, or that simply nudge it a little, are automatically discounted and rendered suspect. Instead, it is far easier to accept the party line, not only for the trouble one avoids, but also because of the ethical out this provides: if the political elite are guaranteeing the rights of those Tamils remaining in Sri Lanka, it frees the rest of us to focus on our own lives, to send our children to universities and boast of their many successes, and to worry about the mortgage. We don’t have to work for Tamil rights – with the exception of the occasional nationalist gesture – because someone else is taking care of it. This tacit understanding, between the Tamil political elite, the Tamils who look the other way, and the Canadian political elite – that choose to throw their hands up in helplessness for electoral gains – needs to be publicly challenged. It is the publicity of these challenges, of, say, talking about human rights in the North and East, that removes their unwarranted veneer of illicitness, and that then forces an active re-evaluation of received wisdoms. The HRW event in December presented the Tamil community in Toronto with the forcible recruitment of children by the LTTE and the image of our sole representatives entering homes at night and abducting children from unwilling parents. For many in Toronto, who are dependent on the LTTE-controlled Tamil media, this would have been a revelation. For those who have access to the reports of international organizations and the international media, but have opted to ignore them, the event confronted them with the hypocrisy of their silence on the issue of child recruitment. And the attempts to stop the meeting, and the threats and intimidation relied upon, revealed how this silence is often a forced one. And so, a little space opened up that evening: long-time dissident Tamils were emboldened to speak out, and innocent bystanders were forced to confront the moral implications of being mere spectators dutifully buying the party line. The necessity of this space, and the heavy toll it takes, is daily reiterated through the political killings being carried out today in Sri Lanka where, just like the Canadian state, the Sri Lankan state dismisses the violations of Tamil rights as an ‘internal matter’. The human cost of these daily killings is poignantly captured in the story of Rajani Thiranagama, whose life and death was the subject of a National Film Board documentary, “No More Tears Sister: an Anatomy of Love and Betrayal”. When the documentary premiered at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto this April, the line of Tamils waiting through the spring chill to buy tickets wound around the building. When Rajani’s sister, long-time activist and one-time LTTE member Nirmala spoke at the end, she was greeted with standing ovations. In making this film, Rajani’s family broke the taboo of talking about private family matters in public. This same powerful taboo often applies to the Tamil community, where the myth of the nation-as-family makes it socially unseemly to talk about community problems with ‘outsiders’. This social injunction, that what happens in the community should stay in the community, is perpetuated by the powerful and serves their interests alone. Rajani’s life, and the film made about it, show the importance of breaking these taboos and the dignity, and danger, inherent in doing so. In many ways, the film is sobering: it tells the tale of youth, dedication, fervour and integrity silenced by the power of a gun. But the film also suggests something else for, at the end of the final screening, a lone Tamil gentleman stood up and spoke, his silver hair glinting in the dimmed lights. He spoke at length about the human rights violations daily meted out to Tamils in the North and East, about the oppression and fear, and the denial of basic rights and dignity. The fact that this film was made, that this story could be told, and that this man could stand up and speak, suggests that some things might endure through the fleeting path of a bullet. |