FRIENDS FOR PEACE IN SRI LANKA
An Association convened by concerned Australian Sinhalese and Tamils to work for lasting peace in Sri Lanka
Reg. No. A2916
'A Lasting Peace for Sri Lanka'
Proceedings of the workshop held on 31 August 1997
at
85 Havelock House, Canberra
49 Lexcen Avenue
Nicholls ACT 2913
Australia
Chairperson of the workshop
Dr James Jupp
Director, Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies
The Australian National University
Panel of the workshop
Mrs Michelle Harris
Director, Torture Rehabilitation and Network Services of the ACT
Dr James Jupp
Director, Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies
The Australian National University
Dr John Powers
Senior Lecturer, The Asian History Centre
The Australian National University
Ms Nancy Shelley
Quaker Peace
(All panel members take part in this workshop in their individual capacities only)
Agenda
Introduction
Chairperson's speech
Mr H L D Mahindapala 20 mts
The Sinhalese Cultural Foundation and Community Services in Sydney
Speech of Mr Ranjit Soysa 20 mts
(assisted by Mr Asoka Subhawickrama)
The Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka (SPUR) in Victoria
Speech of Mr P. Sivasubramaniam 20 mts
The Tamil Christian Community in Sydney
Additional comments by the above three speakers 15 mts
Discussion 60 mts
Summary of the proceedings by Dr John Powers
Final statement of the workshop
IN LIEU OF A FOREWORD
(The open invitation made by the Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka)
We, Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka, are an organisation incorporated in Australia. Our main objective is to promote a durable and peaceful settlement of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, that recognises the legitimate aspirations and the security needs of all the peoples in the island. We also aim to create awareness amongst the concerned persons about all facets of this conflict so that a just resolution can be reached.
We are extremely concerned at the escalation of human rights violations in Sri Lanka. The continuation of the war has already brought death, destruction, and suffering to many thousands of innocent civilians. Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka believe that the prolongation of the war will lead to further alienation and make the reconciliation process more difficult.
All Sri Lankan expatriates respect their own cultures and want their relatives, friends, neighbours back at home to live in peace and dignity. As Sri Lankan Australians, we live in a multicultural society and would like everybody in Sri Lanka too to protect and cherish their heritage, cultural values, and religious beliefs. Multiculturalism is about the harmonious co-existence of different cultures for the benefit of the society. We have to understand the suffering and hardships undergone by the people who are living under war conditions. People have lost their relatives, friends, and their property because of this conflict. Should we allow those matters to spill over here to perpetuate misunderstandings among us in Australia?
Whatever solution is eventually peacefully worked out, for it to be successfully implemented and made durable, it is imperative that the current strained relations between the peoples of Sri Lanka are overcome. This can be achieved only through improving mutual understanding and confidence building measures. The expatriate Sri Lankan community of different ethnic descent could play a significant role in this.
So let us join hands in this effort today and now itself. To achieve peace we have to work for peace, with a positive and constructive vision and in a committed manner.
Dear Friends,
The Peoples' Alliance under the leadership of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunga, in accordance with the clear and strong mandate it received to use a consultative approach, courageously attempted to end the deadlock by holding unconditional talks. After a short period, the hopes and expectations of the people for a durable and just solution through a negotiated settlement were shattered. The current military stalemate and the death and destruction this war had inflicted on both sides unambiguously indicate that both the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE cannot win this war. We believe that it is necessary to evolve radical changes to the constitution to recognise and accommodate the diversity amongst the Sri Lankan people.
The quite uphill task of building bridges between the Tamil community and the rest of the Sri Lankan expatriate community has been moving forward but extremely slowly. There have been better and closer personal relationships between all groups of Sri Lankans. However, we should look at other methods to build closer relationships by finding common grounds on the issues affecting us. These relationships have to represent a higher level of understanding of each other's problems and a genuine desire to overcome prejudices.
The coming year will be a challenge to all of us. We look forward to this challenge and hope to improve upon the work we have already done. We are quite happy to hear from anyone who has any ideas or suggestions on how we could march forward towards achieving the set goals.
We invite you to attend a workshop and an open discussion on 31 August 1997 (Sunday) 2-5 pm at Havelock House, 85 Northbourne Av, Turner.
With best regards,
Siva Bhaskaradas 242 8243 Lionel Bopage 283 2153
Asanka Perera 281 1001 Kathir Ravichandra 019 387930
Willie Senanayake 242 7430 Joe Sothinanthan 242 9994
Anura Weereratne 259 2426
03 August 1997
Introduction by Mr Lionel Bopage of the Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka (verbatim)
Dear friends, Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka I welcome you to this workshop on the theme
"A Lasting Peace for Sri Lanka". Our organisation commenced its activities in mid 1994 with the following objectives in mind. The objectives are
(a) to create awareness and understanding amongst concerned persons about all facets of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka;
(b) to promote a durable peaceful settlement of the ethnic conflict recognising the aspirations and the security of all peoples in Sri Lanka;
(c) to promote respect for fundamental rights as defined in the United Nations Charter and with special reference to the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and
(d) to seek the support of as many people and organisations as possible who subscribe to the aforesaid objectives.
Since 1994 we have conducted ten seminars with regard to the situation in Sri Lanka, addressed by persons with different affiliations and points of view. Among them were: Mr Bibile Kuda Bandara, Professor Carlo Fonseka, Dr Siri Gamage, Mr Anton Muttukumaru, Dr Arjuna Parakrama, Mr Kumar Ponnambalam, Dr Sunil Ratnapriya, Mr Kathir Ravichandra, Mr Vasantharajah, and Mr Bernard Wijedoru.
I also note that as an organisation we have condemned any terrorist activity conducted against the civilian population anywhere in Sri Lanka.
This workshop is intended to play a constructive role. Please respect each other's views and be courteous. As the paper in front of you states, we appreciate if one person speaks at a time, focussing on today's theme, without disrupting the right of others to listen to the proceedings. We appreciate your open mindedness and request everyone to contribute.
The purpose of this workshop is to help identify thorny issues involved in achieving reconciliation of the peoples in Sri Lanka. The theme "A Lasting Peace for Sri Lanka" will bring different perspectives of achieving peace. The issues identified at this workshop will be used as the basis for conducting a major workshop planned for the next year. We wish to invite specialists on those issues to address the future workshop. We appreciate your contribution in this regard.
The material coming out of this workshop will be published in order to generate more discussion and for that we seek your permission to record the proceedings of the entire workshop.
The panel will assist in identifying the major issues evolving out of the different perspectives presented today. All members of the panel take part in this workshop in their individual capacities only.
It is with great pleasure I invite Dr James Jupp to chair this workshop.
Thank you very much.
Dr James Jupp, Chairperson of the workshop (Verbatim)
Thank you very much Lionel, I think Lionel exactly said most of things that I should say as Chairman, which is my function to conduct the meeting in a rational and orderly manner which I hope you will find easy and to introduce the speakers, and most importantly I think to maintain the timetable and also to allow a considerable discussion, I think you all have the groundrules. One at a time speaks, so I will be certainly insisting on that, honesty, I cannot judge that, so I will leave that to you, courtesy, which I do not think you will have a problem, focusing on the issues and I think that is very important, because we are really trying to look at the current situation in terms of remedying the current situation which most of us, certainly I do, regard as totally unsatisfactory. So I would prefer if people talked about positive suggestions which the panel will be noting for a possible solution of the present situation rather than to go back in the past; because Sri Lankan past go back two and a half thousand years so the time will certainly not permit it. So if you put papers on the key issue, that is how to resolve this highly unsatisfactory situation. Remain open-minded, well I guess we all have our view on this, so listen actively and respect other’s views. I do not think we will have any difficulties with any of those having been to some of these forums. Each speaker will be given twenty minutes and may be allowed to clarify points raised by other speakers. Afterwards we will have a break and the general discussion will come after the break.
The first speaker will be Mr Mahindapala who is the spokesperson for the Sinhalese Cultural Foundation and Community services and was the editor of the Ceylon Observer, also the secretary of the South Asia Media Association, President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association from 1990- 1994. And he is currently engaged as a free-lance journalist in Melbourne, and is a graduate of Melbourne University.
Speech of Mr H L D Mahindapala of the Sinhalese Cultural Foundation and Community Services in Sydney
I must begin by thanking the Friends for Peace for inviting me to participate in this workshop on the theme of “Lasting Peace for Sri Lanka”. Of course, I must mention that the experiences of the Sinhala community in Australia has been frustrated time and time again each time they tried to open a dialogue with the Tamils in Australia. I speak here as a Sri Lankan who came here in 1970 -- long before I think anyone of you here arrived here. My relationships with the leaders of the Tamil community have been very close in the past and we tried strenuously with the Tamil leaders to bring about some sort of reconciliation here. But again and again they refused to shake our hands of friendship offered to them. For reason best known to them they decided to act separately. The expatriate Tamils in all parts of the world would join only those Sinhalese who support their political line of promoting separatism in devious ways and I sincerely hope that Friends for Peace are committed to a broader programme of genuinely seeking peace and not promoting any particular political line of one side or the other. I will be presenting some proposals at the end of my speech which I hope will be regarded as a few preliminary steps needed to pave the way for all parties to meet and advance further in the direction of peace.
But leaving the local history aside, our efforts today, if it is go anywhere in the direction of peace, must necessarily focus on two issues: 1. find out who declared war and provoked communal tensions and 2) to identify clearly and objectively the real enemy of peace. I shall try to quote from leading Tamil or non-Sinhala authorities wherever possible so that I will not be accused of quoting partisan or biased points of view from Sinhala authorities. I think this is important because I represent the Sinhala point of view.
As the Chairman pointed out it is not necessary to go way back in time to the origins of Sri Lankan history to unravel the latest crisis. So let me begin at the latest starting point of the current north-south conflict which is 1976. This is critical landmark year for the Tamils and the Sinhalese. It is undoubtedly the turning point for inter-ethnic relations between the Tamils and Sinhalese. It was the year in which the Tamils declared war on the Sinhalese. It was the year in which the leaders of Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) meeting in Jaffna passed the Vadukoddai Resolution. The 1976 Vadukoddai Resolution stated categorically and explicitly that it would abandon the parliamentary process and take extra-parliamentary measures to attain their separate state. In that resolution they declared a racist war aimed directly at the Sinhala people. Mr. Amirthalingam openly declared that the youth must be armed and be prepared for the battle ahead. In the end these leaders who unleashed the hounds of war were devoured by them. Mr Amirthalingam, who succeeded Chelvanayakam as the leader of the TULF was gunned down by the Tamil Tiger terrorists, on July 13,1989. A Tamil expatriate poet, A. Kandasamy, summarised the plight of the Tamils who despaired about the devastating consequences of the war when he wrote: “Suttathennavo avarhalakkuthan; vilunaththennavo naangal thaan” (It was “they” at whom we fired; but it was “we” who fell) (Sunday Leader, July 13, 1997 - p.6).
Having declared war on the Sinhala people, the second tactic was to deliberately provoke the Sinhalese into anti-Tamil violence to derive the maximum political mileage nationally and internationally. Nationally, it would bring the Tamil community closer to the TULF demanding a separate state and internationally it would make them appear to be the oppressed underdog who needs refuge in safe western countries not to mention their sympathy. As told to me in Melbourne by a leading Tamil activist for a separate state, the Tamils were also hoping that anti-Tamil violence would drive all the Tamils out of Colombo into Jaffna which would then clearly demarcate the existence of two separate communities. Clearly, the Tamil leadership was deliberately provoking this anti-Tamil violence for their own political gain.
Now coming from me this statement of provoking the Sinhalese to attack the Tamils may seem far-fetched. So let me quote the highest authority on Tamil politics on this critical aspect hardly known or acknowledged by those who accuse the Sinhala people of unleashing communal violence. There isn’t a better authority on early Tamil politics than Prof. A. J. Wilson, who is not only a political scientist of some repute but is also the son-in-law of the father of the separatist movement, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam. By no stretch of imagination can he be considered to be a pro-Sinhala academic. In his analysis of the tactics adopted by the Tamil leadership, he meticulously described the tactic of the Tamils to provoke the Sinhalese in 1982. This is what he wrote: “A second tactic is to destabilise the internal political situation. Political murders, acts of sabotage, and inflammatory and provocative speeches are the established forms and these have been tried. The Sinhalese masses and their lower-level ethnic leadership are needled by such acts and urge their rank and file to take retaliatory action. Nothing is more satisfying to the Tamil militants.” (Sri Lanka and its Future: Sinhalese and Tamils - p.301) (speaker's emphasis)
This Machiavellian tactic of the Tamil leadership to provoke the Sinhala masses against their own Tamil people is reprehensible and unpardonable. Their attempt to gain political mileage nationally and internationally is inhuman. But the Tamil plan, described by Prof. Wilson in 1982, worked very neatly in July 1983 when the Sinhala masses, reacting emotionally to the killing of 12 soldiers in an ambush in Thinaaveli, Palali Road, Jaffna, exploded by running amok in the streets of Colombo. As a Sinhalese I do not justify the actions of the mindless mob however provoked they may have been. The remarkable feature since 1983, however, is that the Sinhalese have refused to fall for that Tamil trap. But the LTTE continues to attack sensitive centres -- Buddhist temples, Buddhist monks, Sacred Bo Tree, innocent Sinhala babies and women sleeping in villages -- mainly to provoke a backlash. And the Sinhala people have restrained themselves with commendable patience since 1983.
Now the Vaddukoddai declaration of war and the provocation of Sinhalese have a political motive. Both tactics are aimed at establishing the Tamil separate state. This leads us to the third point. To establish a separate (state) there is also a need for an ideology to make the people believe that their struggle will be rewarded by a homeland even though there was no homeland of their own in history. So in the Tamil leadership invented the myth of a homeland and called it Eelam, the promised land of the Tamils. The historical fact is that neither the concept of a separate state nor a movement for nationhood never existed in the political agenda of the Tamils either in the colonial times or in the post-colonial times. This myth came into being only in the sixties and seventies. Mr. Chairman as a reputed scholar of Sri Lankan issues you no doubt would have read Prof. Kingsley de Silva’s book, Separatist Ideology in Sri Lanka: A Historical Appraisal exposing the myth of the Tamil homeland. I don’t have to tell you that he is Sri Lanka’s foremost historian respected internationally. But as promised earlier, I will not quote him because he is a Sinhalese. I will quote one of the most respected, non-Sinhalese, left-wing historians of the world, Eric Hobsbawm, who took the claim of a Tamil homeland in his celebrated book, Nations & Nationalism Since 1780 -- programs, myths and reality, and debunked it wholesale in pages 6 and 7. He states quite bluntly that “the criteria of language, ethnicity etc. are fuzzy, shifting and ambiguous” .." though, of course, these “are convenient for propagandist and programmatic purposes.” He quotes in toto the resolution of the Federal Party which stated the criteria for “nationhood” and tears it apart almost line by line. And he adds: “As for the separate historical past, the phrase is almost certainly anachronistic, question-begging or so vague as to be meaningless.” That is the objective judgement of an independent historian on the Tamil claims to a separate homeland (speaker's emphasis).
It is clear from the history of Eelamists that it is this invented myth that feeds the violence of Eelamists -- and this theme of inventing myths of nationhood is explored by Hobsbawm at length among other communities. The tragedy of this invented myth was driven home other day at a meeting in Colombo when Mr. S. Thondaman, the leader of the Indian Tamils, turned to Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, a leader of the TULF, and said that it was your Federal Party that misled the Tamil youth with the promise of Eelam and Dr. Tiruchelvam maintained a grim a silence. By and large, racist violence is rooted in myths like the pure Aryans of Hitler. Any friends of peace, therefore, must come to grips with realities in Sri Lanka and not the myths. Friends of Peace cannot afford to dabble in illusions which can only lead to further death and destruction. Furthermore, all attempts to build a racist state exclusively for one community must be rejected because it is the fear of the separate state that is a major stumbling bloc to even modest proposals for devolution.
Lastly, I come to the role of Mr. Velupillai Prabahakran. Prof. Rajan Hoole, perhaps, one of the leading intellectuals who had studied very closely the role of Mr. Prabahakran and the LTTE in Jaffna, and he is also the leading light of the unimpeachable University Teachers Human Rights of Jafffna, has labelled Mr. Prabhakran as a “totalitarian monster.” The New York Times called him "the latest master of terror" -- Asia's’ latest "Pol Pot". Now the question is: Is it possible to negotiate peace with him? As we all know, three rounds of peace talks earlier failed because Mr. Prabhakaran has broken off peace negotiations unilaterally relying on the gun to achieve his goals. He has, of course, never been a part of the democratic process ever. He enters peace talks when it suits him and withdraws after regrouping and consolidating their military position. Why does Mr. Prabhakaran refuse to end the war and negotiate for peace? The reason is simple: he has nothing to gain from peace. This is a fundamental fact that must be recognised by any friend of peace. Mr. Prabhakaran. has promised Eelam and he knows that peaceful negotiations will not give him Eelam or his own security. He is wanted by India, his own Tamil people whom he persecuted, the Sri Lankan government and the Muslims. So he must continue fighting for his own survival. Now will peace give Mr. Prabhakaran the kudos, the power and prestige he enjoys now. Peace is the greatest threat to him personally and to his political ambitions. So who is the enemy of peace? And where do we go from here?
Here I must deviate a bit and personally commend Mr. Prabahakran for his greatest achievement which no other Tamil leader had the guts to handle. His greatest achievement is in dismantling the vicious and fascist caste system that dehumanised the poor low-caste people in Jaffna. However, his biggest mistake was in rejecting Chandrika’s peace proposals. If he had accepted Chandrika’s proposals he could have remained easily as the supremo in Jaffna and Chandrika would not have had an opportunity to oust him from Jaffna. If he accepted the peace proposal he could have driven Chandrika’s government to the wall. Had he accepted the peace proposals -- not that he ever will but even as a tactical manoeuvre -- he could have been bargaining from Jaffna with his position intact. Instead of which he foolishly rejected unilaterally Chandrika’s proposals thus pushing the Chandrika government to go on the offensive. It is his folly and intransigence which lost the war for the Tamils. The international community turned against the Tamils because they realised that like in the case of Saddam Hussein it is not possible to negotiate with a man who understands only brute force. The Tamil expatriate which had done a splendid job in building up the Tamil propaganda as the underdog suddenly found himself rejected by the international community as a gang of terrorists. The work done by them for years were lost in one foolish stroke of Mr. Prabhakaran.
Of course, no one can expect anything but violence from Prabhakaran. He is a school drop who had never known the democratic process, or peaceful negotiations. He had known only the gun and come up only through the gun. Tragically, some Tamils -- particularly the expatriate Tamils -- endorse and applaud his killings. According to the independent Indian daily, the Indian Express (January 13, 1977) and according to the authoritative human rights activist and Jaffna academic, Prof. Rajan Hoole, Mr. Prabhakaran has killed more Tamils than the Sri Lankan army. He is the cause that led to the killing of more children in Sri Lanka in its entire history -- and all of them are Tamils. No friend of peace can tolerate these violations of human rights or be silent about it. What I cannot understand is how the Tamil expatriates who go round the world pleading for compassion from the world not only excuse but hero-worship what Prof. Rajan Hoole called “this totalitarian monster”.
Peace must come not so much for the sake of the Sinhalese or the Muslims but mainly for the sake of the Tamils. If this war goes on for another forty fifty years, as some Tamils claim boastfully, how many Tamils would be left to fight the war? Of the 950,000 Jaffna Tamils the population has come down to 500,000. All the able-bodied men have migrated either to the south or gone abroad. So who is left in Jaffna? The old and the very young -- and the young are dying by the hundreds. The primary duty of the Tamils and all Sri Lankans abroad, if they genuinely want peace, is not go behind parliamentarians and church groups shedding crocodile tears about those left behind but to come forward and face truth. As long as you hide from the truth and propagate myths you will inflict further suffering on all Sri Lankans and Tamils in particular.
I come to the last part now and ask
What steps can the friends of peace take to promote peace? As a friend of peace I wish to present some modest proposals as a prelude to peace talks:
The friends for peace agree
1. To take every positive step to promote the Australian government’s initiative to urge AFTA (Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations) and the Australian Human Rights Foundation and the LTTE to abandon violence permanently and join the democratic process to pursue negotiations peacefully. Following this, work actively for a cease-fire on both sides with either an independent local body or a foreign body supervising the ceasefire and the decommissioning of armed groups.
2. Endorse unequivocally the recent UN initiative to abolish and prevent the recruitment of children under 18 to “baby" brigades.
3. Like UNHCR, Red Cross and other NGOs condemn without reservation the attempts of the LTTE to block the supply of food and medical supplies to the people of Jaffna as a step that is not only to ease the suffering of the people of Jaffna but also to give them in advance the benefits of peace.
4. To take all necessary steps -- through the media and personal contacts -- to urge the LTTE to abandon its claim of being the “sole representatives of the Tamil people”. This is not only an unrealistic claim not acceptable to the Tamils but also one of the basic causes that obstructs multi-party peace negotiations. As everyone would agree there cannot be peace without a multi-party agreement.
5. Condemn unequivocally the planting of anti-personnel mines which are maiming and killing innocent civilians in the Jaffna and Vavuniya areas.
6. To establish the fundamental principle that the aspirations of all communities must be taken into consideration in resolving the current crisis as no lasting peace can be founded on the aspirations defined by only one community.
7. That all communities should agree to the verdict of the sovereign will of all the peoples of Sri Lanka on the new constitutional arrangement for power sharing as it is the only alternative to the continuation of the war.
8. That all communities should agree to work within the framework of a united Sri Lanka by rejecting all separatist claims which not only has no future but is also the prime cause of violence.
9. To establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the South African model to investigate publicly the violence and injustices of all communities as a primary means of healing the wounds of the past and to prevent vindictive and punitive measures of the future. All community leaders to apologise to each other for their mistakes of the past.
10. That all Tamil leaders must apologise to the Tamil people for the suppression and oppression of their own people for three centuries through the inhuman and vicious caste system and by the LTTE since 1983.
11. That the Constitution should lay down entrenched legal provisions which guarantee the fundamental rights of all citizens (irrespective of race, religion, caste or creed) appealable to the highest international courts.
12. To establish a joint committee of all communities to promote this programme in Australia and abroad.
I thank you all for giving me a patient hearing.
Speech of Mr Ranjit Soysa of the Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka (SPUR) in Victoria
A LASTING PEACE FOR SRI LANKA
We all are in agreement that Sri Lanka needs peace and it is time that we all exert our efforts to examine how we can reach this objective. It is also important for us not to change our plea for peace according to the dictates of the parties in power or other actors who push for peace only when they are cornered. If we do so even due to practical reasons or any other motive we become a party which wittingly helps to prolong the war and create anticipated opportunities forces of evil. Therefore, the organisations and individuals praying for lasting peace in Sri Lanka should naturally have a clear understanding of what is happening in Sri Lanka at this moment. Any ulterior motives of others, who shrewdly hide behind the humanists’ cry for peace, if not correctly identified will only make us delay in the proverbial “ambalamas” (traveller’s resting places) on our way to peace. Lasting peace is important for all in Sri Lanka except the insane. A peaceful Sri Lanka will be able to play a very positive role in South Asia, Asia-pacific and in the international arena.
One of the main objectives of The Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka (SPUR) in Victoria, an organisation of Australians of Sri Lankan origin, is to take all possible steps to help Sri Lanka achieve meaningful and lasting peace. In this connection, we have at all times exerted our efforts to help Sri Lanka’s peace efforts and expose forces operating in countries such as Australia who denigrate Sri Lanka as a country, demonise the Sri Lankan nation, especially the Sinhalese, the majority community who comprises 74% of the population and elevate ultra-communalists who have committed deplorable crimes against humanity in their quest for power. Contrary to the misinformation churned out by the international propaganda lobby of Tamil communal politicians and their NGO allies Sri Lankan minorities enjoyed a very high participative rate in all areas of Sri Lanka’s sociopolitics. In fact, historically and statistically the Tamils in Sri Lanka can be proven to be one of the most privileged minorities in the whole world. Some problems that existed in education and the use of their language in official correspondence have been solved. The myth of a Tamil homeland peddled by the communal propagandist has been deplored by even the Tamil historians. It is indeed encouraging to observe that what the ordinary Tamil wants is not one third of Sri Lankan territory and two thirds of the coast line for a mere 6% Tamils in the north and the east but a peaceful Sri Lanka where everybody is equal. Therefore it gives us great pleasure to make our contribution at this seminar to explain our point of view in regard to a lasting Peace for Sri Lanka.
We yearn for a lasting peace. AND, we are aware, that peace does not arrive whether it is in Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland or Afghanistan in response to mere wishes or prayers. The forces which cannot, or do not want to, settle problems through discussion and negotiation choose violence and war as their means to achieve their objectives. While it is necessary to relentlessly pursue meaningful peace it is also equally necessary to understand and comprehend the history, objectives and modus operandi of any organisation that has waged an extremely violent war against all. democratic forces in Sri Lanka, be it the democratically elected government, or the seventeen parliamentarians (11 of them Tamils) killed so far. Therefore, let us pose a valid question? Who is throttling peace in Sri Lanka and how can we bring them back to their senses? Without finding the answer to this question of paramount importance, attempts at finding a lasting peace would only be groping in the dark and cries for various “initiatives” or actions could very well help push it further away in the time domain. More importantly, it should be realised that every such well- or ill-intentioned campaign had only caused the sacrifice of thousands and thousands of human lives that would otherwise have been saved if the problem was correctly identified and remedial action pursued sedulously (speaker's emphasis).
Let us consider three recent attempts to bring “peace” to Sri Lanka as a starter.
(i) In 1987 under the Indo Sri Lanka agreement the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President, J.R Jayawardena with the consensus of the Tamil political leaders and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as Tamil Tigers initiated a number of steps, including the confinement of Sri Lankan forces to their barracks, to bring an end to the war in the name of peace.
At an opportune moment the Tamil Tigers walked away from the agreement killing 1700 Indian soldiers and hundreds of Sinhala civilians. For his contribution towards peace, Gandhi was subsequently assassinated by the Tigers using a human bomb in 1981.
(ii) In 1989, the Sri Lankan President Premadasa invited top Tiger leaders to Colombo, showered them with hospitality in 5 star hotels and discussed the concerned issues for 14 months! All the time, Tamil Tigers used delaying tactics to prolong the lull in fighting only until they regrouped, rearmed and gathered vital intelligence of defence installations and remote Sinhalese and Muslim village defences. Finally, when they were ready, Tigers demanded that police officers in all eastern stations must surrender as a prelude to further peace talks. Further, in his genuine quest for peace, Premadasa ordered the police to surrender their stations. Then the Tigers spit venom: against all universal conventions, 600 surrendered police officers were rounded up, their hands were tied behind their backs shot and were buried, some alive, in mass graves. Subsequently, for his troubles, President Premadasa was blown to pieces, against using a human bomb, by the Tigers in 1993.
(iii) Finally, the present President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Kumaratunga ordered an unconditional cease-fire and opened negotiations with the Tigers as soon as she assumed office. In her sincerity- or naivety- she even allowed armed Tigers to roam at will wherever they wanted and ordered security forces into inaction even if the terrorists appeared at their door step. Tigers gathered intelligence as never before and surveyed the defence installations as well as the villagers which would be the targets in their next round of ethnic cleansing. Then, out of the blue, they unilaterally declared an end to the cease-fire and immediately staged simultaneous attacks on the defence forces and the villages. Within a matter of days, ships were sunk, planes were blown out of the sky, hundreds of soldiers and policemen were killed and inhabitants of villages- men, women and children- were massacred without mercy. The gains in strategic territory was a bonus to the Tigers.
The fact that Tamil Tiger terrorism hops another giant leap forward during every round of peace talks was driven home at last.
It was realised that beyond any doubt that every time the Tigers are cornered, or are on the run in the battle field, their international agencies, masquerading as peace loving organisations lobby the world community to bring pressure upon the Sri Lankan government to stop the war immediately and enter negotiations. Experts on the Sri Lankan conflict now concede that any realistic conflict resolution exercise should exclude a pull back of defence forces in the front (speaker's emphasis).
Political analysts from the West to the East tend to agree that as long as Velupillai Prabhakaran is in command of Tamil tigers there cannot be peace.
The New York Times on 28 may 1995 said “He has shown a blood thirstiness in dealing with his opponents that has been compared with some of the cruelest figures in recent Asian history including Pol Pot of Cambodia. His ruthless tactics led to the liquidation of thousands of Tamil, Muslim, Sinhalese civilians and scores of moderate Tamil politicians.” In the article titled “Asia’s Latest Master of Terror” correspondent, John F Burns comparing Prabahkaran’s record of killings with that of Pol Pot said that what LTTE lacked in scope they made up in brutality. He says “For years, the Tigers have been notable for their expertise with bombs, in particular in which militant Tigers, very often women from a squad known as Freedom Birds, have detonated body belts packed with explosives at public gatherings, killing themselves, their political and military targets, and almost invariably large numbers of civilians besides.”
Tiger suicide bombers-both male and female agents of mass destruction- child infantry personnel, female cadres who generally form the first wave of attacks are characteristic tools of Prabahkaran’s “liberation struggle.” Both human rights organisations and Tamil intellectuals have voiced their opinions on the incalculable damage caused by the Tigers’ preoccupation with death. Radhika Coomaraswamy, well known Tamil intellectual laments that unless feminism is linked to humanism, to non-violence, to hybridity and celebration of life over death it will not provide society with alternatives that we so desperately seek.
The combined impact of dehumanising strategies used in the war and the autocratic control that Prabhakaran exercised over his organisation is having an alarming effect on the Tamil society in particular and the rest of the world in general. What is practised in Sri Lanka today by Prabhakaran is put to wider usage in London and New York tomorrow.
In the New York Times article another reprehensible aspect of Prabhakaran’s rule is discussed when it refers to his treatment of political opponents. “Meanwhile Mr. Prabhakaran has established a rule of terror in the city of Jaffna. According to scores of accounts from defectors and others who have escaped the Tiger tyranny, many of his lieutenants have been murdered. Tamils who have criticised him, even mildly or jest, have been picked up, tortured and executed; others have been held for years in dungeons, half starved, hauled out periodically for battering by their guards.” The ease with which he got rid of Mahattaya (Mahendra-rajah), his second in command, and his one time colleagues such as Uma Maheswaran, Sri Sabahratnam and others who opted to carve a path of liberation based on violence enables any independent reviewer to fathom correctly Prabhakaran’s capacity to run a state as we approach the year 2000.
Very recently, the Tamil Tiger warlord improved on his record of silencing Parliamentarians by collecting scalp of Mr Mohamed Maharoof, the Muslim MP for Trincomalee on 20 July 1997 when Tiger killer squads went on a murdering spree. First parliamentarian victim of the LTTE was Mr Alfred Duriayappa, Tamil MP for Jaffna, who was killed on 27 July 1975. Since then the Tiger guns have silenced 17 democratically elected Parliamentarians. Ironically, of these 17 victims of Prabhakaran - “the Tamil Liberator” - 11 have been Tamils. No parliament in any other part of the world has scarified so many Parliamentarians in so short a time to a group of terrorists who still masquerade as a liberation front. The Tigers, in reality had been pursuing a policy of targeting parliamentarians who were seen as a threat to their politics of totalitarian separatism. Prabhakaran does not tolerate any political rivals in his area of control and all Tamil political parties except the Tigers operate only from majority Sinhalese areas. Even though democracy and dissent are considered norms of civilised political culture, to Prabhakaran democracy itself is anathema. The leading Indian daily, The Indian Express (13 January 1997) editorially commented that, “Prabhakaran has no time for niceties of pluralism and dissent, the reason why more Tamils have been killed by the LTTE than the Sri Lankan army. The LTTE cannot countenance a situation where it will have to compete with other groups for the affection of the “Tamil community.”
After the Tigers called of the last truce the Sri Lankan President, Kumaratunga said that the fundamental problem is less the Tigers’ military strength than their intractable leader and she described Prabhakaran as a megalomaniac in need of psychiatric treatment.
As a group interested in lasting peace for Sri Lanka it is incumbent upon us to analyse the phenomenon of LTTE rationally. Can the Tigers be considered as a serious political group with whom a peaceful and fruitful dialogue can be built up? How should one deal with Tigers? If one clinically examines their violent attitudes, cruel militancy and the shrewd renegade behaviour in the failed conflict resolution exercises in the past and learns from not only the Sri Lankan experience but also from the lessons from the West and the East the answer is obvious: The Tamil Tiger terrorists should be handled the same way the world handled Hitler, Saddam and Pol Pot. Did the conflict resolution experts enter peace talks in Berlin, Kuwait or in Pnom Pen?
As the first essential step towards a lasting peace in Sri Lanka we must complete the military annihilation of the Tiger terrorists without giving them a breather to regroup.
Secondly, once the main force of terrorism that bled the country for the last one and a half decades is erased from the equation, stringent steps should be taken to eradicate racism that parented terrorism. Sweeping legislation that prohibit racial discrimination, dissemination of racist sentiments, calls for territorial separation on the basis of race should be drafted and strictly enacted. A high powered permanent commission (such as the Election Commission) should be empowered to stringently implement the laws with regard to any one including the highest politician or the executive. It must be admitted that in the past, political leaders belonging to Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim communities had used the racist sentiments only to increase their power base, mostly making unreasonable claims and demands but sometimes patronising or giving in to them in their bid to secure power in the parliament. This should stop when it is made clear that no one is above the anti-discrimination legislation (speaker's emphasis).
Therefore, finally our proposal is to create an acceptable environment to have Sri Lanka as a single country with diverse groups protected by justiciable human rights and prohibit any abuse of ethnicity. Any division of the country through devolution of powers or any other means to create ethnic territories will ultimately lead to more instability and border wars. Sri Lanka which is smaller than Tasmania with a high population figure of 18 million does not leave much room for division. “it is morally indefensible to expect the interests of all communities to be sacrificed in order to satisfy the changing visions of one community. The vision of all communities should be to develop institutional framework that ensure full citizenship for all, without devolving power to the regions to ensure fuller the participation at the center. The territorial approach lays unwanted emphasis on the sovereignty of the territory, when the emphasis should be the sovereignty of the people. Let me quote a former senior civil servant of Sri Lanka, S.L. Neville. "THE GOAL SHOULD BE TO SHARE THE PEOPLE’S SOVEREIGNTY WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF A COMMON TERRITORY.”
Thank you very much.
Speech of Mr P. Sivasubramaniam of the Tamil Christian Community in Sydney
A LASTING PEACE FOR SRI LANKA - A Tamil Perspective
In presenting the Tamil perspective for a lasting peace in Sri Lanka, I want to place before you some basic and fundamental principles which a majority of Tamil people hold dear to their hearts and minds.
They are in no particular order.
1) The Tamil and the Sinhalese originate from the same common megalithic culture and have inhabited the island as two distinct nationalities since at least 1000 BC.
2) It is a well accepted fact among all parties to the conflict that when the early European settlers came to the island, they did not find a Ceylon or a Sri Lanka as some would have us believe, but two or three distinct kingdoms, based in the North East of the island, being Tamil, and in the South East of the island, being Sinhalese. I will not venture at this stage to speculate whether the third - the Kandyan kingdom was in fact Sinhalese or Tamil. Suffice to say they were Sinhalese who probably believed in having Tamil kings from the South of India rule them.
3) When the last of European colonials, the British, left the island in 1948, they left behind one administrative region which they called Ceylon. The date of the British withdrawal from the island bears note, 1948 - February the 4th - for in August 1947, a mere five months earlier, they were forced to "Quit" India, our Northern neighbour. In doing so (they) gave the Indians two countries, India and Pakistan, divided along religious lines, when the Indians wanted one country. In Ceylon, however, they merged three separate kingdoms and left behind one country. Ever since, the Sinhalese have paraded the international stage pleading for understanding among Western nations, to preserve the island as one nation. It is similar to the Israelis asking the Americans to help them to keep the West Bank as part of Israel for the sake of national unity, or the British asking the world to help keep Ireland, British. You would laugh at these suggestions, more because the Palestinians living in the West Bank do not want to be Israelis, nor do the Irish want to be British. However, when the Tamils want to have their own land back, some countries seem to accept the Sinhala propaganda that Sri Lanka is one country, indivisible, and that the Tamils by virtue of the fact that they are a minority in a nation that they do not want to belong to, have to settle for peace - an unjust peace - and be oppressed subjects in their own homeland, and be ruled by a group of politicians based in the South of the island, who are incompetent, corrupt, and above all are weak and captive to the undemocratic special interest groups in the country; the groups who both finance and deliver votes at crucial elections to keep the incompetents in power.
If one looks at the history of the Tamils and the Sinhalese in the period leading up to and following the departure of the British from the island, one cannot help noticing that the Sinhalese paid lip services to the rights of the Tamils and lavished promises on them in the past. But, in every instance, they betrayed their own pledges made before they came to power, and once they lost power they suffered total loss of memory. This amnesia has become the characteristic of all Sinhala politicians, irrespective of party affiliations.
The oppression of the Tamils by the Sinhalese has led to the burial of democracy in Sri Lanka. Democracy cannot flourish if the culture and the identity of the other communities are not respected and valued.
The fact is born out even more by what happened during the pogroms carried out shamefully under State sponsorship in 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983. Subsequent governments turned Tamil inhabited areas into killing fields. This gave the armed forces the necessary expertise to kill the democracy of Sinhalese. The lesson, my friends, is plain and stark - there can be no democracy in Sri Lanka with out democracy for the Tamils. Only if the State ceases to oppress the Tamils, can the much needed political and economic reform be carried out, and the cause of democracy be advanced in Sri Lanka.
The average Sinhalese tends to confuse nationalism with racism, as the Sinhala word “JATI” which denotes a race, is the same word used to denote nationalism in modern Sinhala usage.
The corrupt politicians who rule the country have taken advantage of this semantic confusion to conflict the poison of racism in to the minds of the ordinary Sinhalese. The Sinhala masses have been conditioned to think that the armed struggle of the Tamil people is the root cause of the ethnic problem; they are unable to conceive that the Tamil militancy is a response to the conditions of oppression imposed on the Tamil people by their political leaders who are bankrupt of ideas for peace or for the prosperity of the nation.
It is against this background of the mindset of the Sinhala masses that one should understand Chandrika Kumaratunga’s "Peace" slogan. She believes that she is playing a game of chess where she is thinking ten moves ahead. The duplicity of her juvenile antics is in fact patently obvious for all to see. She wants the Sinhalese to construe her devolution package as a small “concession” to induce the Tigers to lay down their arms, so that ethnic harmony may prevail.
Chandrika’s "other face" is designed to give the Tamils and the international community the impression that it is only she who can provide, and is genuinely seeking to provide, and equitable solution to the ethnic problem.
I would like to bring to your attention some recent history. At the parliamentary elections held in 1994 and at the Presidential election, Chandrika waxed eloquent about “Peace”; yet she did not place before the people any concrete or detailed program for the solution of the ethnic problem. The fact is Chandrika is not genuinely concerned about peace. Those who are naïve enough to believe that Chandrika can bring about Peace in Sri Lanka, reckon without certain realities. Chandrika is under pressure from all quarters; the Armed Forces, the Bureaucracy, the Press, the Buddhist clergy who killed her father, the intelligentsia, and factions within her government and party. Her attempt to propose a solution while trying to placate all these forces is doomed to end in failure.
Chandrika’s pronouncement that the ethnic problem will be solved in a manner which is not detrimental to the rights of the Sinhalese is, when you look at it closely, a kind of euphemism, a mask of racism.
What is the solution to the problem, and then how do we achieve Peace, you may ask.
My friends, I have but one answer. We, the Tamil people, want a Just Peace. Not Peace for you and continued suffering for us!
We want lasting Peace- not Peace now and another pogrom in a few years time as you delivered!
The only Peace we will accept will be a Peace negotiated by two equals who recognize each other's territorial claims and the aspirations of their people. The only equal you have on our side of politics is the LTTE. You must negotiate with them. For, as your father said in the 1958 Pogrom- and I paraphrase - If it is Peace you want, we will give you Peace- but if it is a Fight you want, Fight We Will
Additional comments made by the speakers
Mr H L D Mahindapala clarifying some of the observations made during his speech said that the quotations he made during his speech are not his views or opinions but are from the best Tamil authorities who know inside-out of Tamil politics better than anybody else. He took the example of Prof Jeyaratnam Wilson, who is the son-in-law of father of the separatist movement. He also said as a Sinhalese, he did not condone the actions of mindless Sinhalese mobs, however provoked they might have been. He also said it was not the Tamil people Prof Jeyaratnam Wilson was referring to but the leadership who went about manipulating them for political mileage. He also mentioned the efforts of this leadership to go to the international community, obtain refugee status, bring Tamil people over here, extort money, increase their tax base and finance the war. He further said majority of Tamil people-even in Jaffna-do not want the war.
He said his criticism and attack were directed to leaders of Tamil politics not the Tamil people.
He also expressed his surprise about the remark made by Mr Sivasubramaniam to the effect that Pirabhakaran is not his problem but is a problem for the Sinhalese. He maintained that Pirabhakaran is the problem for all communities of Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. He said whatever the solution to be worked out it has to be a military one. He also said there are people like Pirabhakaran who are stubborn, intransigent and refuses to enter any democratic process or negotiations. And he said like Saddam Hussain, Pol Pot, Hitler he has never been in democratic process, and they can only understand violence and are not amenable to reason.
Referring to Mr Sivasubramaniam’s claim that President Kumaranatunga did not place any concrete proposals, he said it is true, because Sri Lanka is a democratic country and one ought to have a process of consultation in solving a complex problem like the present one. He said the real stumbling block to this process has been Pirabhakaran who claims that he is the sole representative of Tamil people when even Tamils themselves like Dr Neelan Thiruchelvan, EPDP, TELO, EPRLF do not subscribe to this view. He said anybody or any political party opposed to Pirabhakaran could not live in Jaffna because of the fascist regime he ran there. He said according to Prof Rajan Hoole, a leading Tamil academic, about 4000 people had been detained in a concentration camp in Jaffna just because they opposed Pirabhakaran’s regime. He said these people come to south to escape his persecution. In conclusion, he posed the question whether the security -the biggest cry of Tamil politicians- was ever provided under Pirabhakaran’s rule.
Mr Asoka Subhawickrama: (verbatim)
We are all here to try to find a way to resolve the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka. I think it is unfortunate our friend Siva took this opportunity to blame my colleague, Ranjith, that Prabhakaran was his creation. If we attack each other like this, and antagonise each other like this, I do not think it is very constructive in the search for peace. So, I will try to answer very logically one issue raised by Siva, that there have always been two nations in Sri Lanka.
As a student of history, I understand that except for a very brief period, there was no kingdom in the east or in Jaffna throughout the history of Sri Lanka. However it is the claim of the Tamil Eelamists or the Tamil separatists that nearly of �13 of Sri Lanka is their homeland. Please remember that Sri Lanka is a country smaller than Tasmania with a population which is more than the whole of Australia. The Tamil communalists claim more than 1/3 of Sri Lanka their homeland. According to this 18th century map of Sri Lanka, except some maritime areas controlled by the Dutch, the entire island was under the Kandyan kingdom. If we go back further into the history, according to Ptolemy’s map of Taprobane (name of ancient Sri Lanka), we would not find any reference to a Tamil kingdom or a Tamil homeland. All these misconcepts have been construed by Tamil communalists and their agents. The notion of a Tamil homeland was created only two decades ago by the Tamil politicians who wanted power by sacrifying their own people in the ethnic troubles we had back in Sri Lanka. I must also say that as an engineer worked in the northern division, including Jaffna and Trincomalee, that I was able to witness through my own eyes how these communalists, now led by Prabhakaran, started ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka.
If there is anybody in here who is faint hearted, I must warn you that I am going to show you a photograph, which can be offensive. This is how Tamil liberators try to carve out Tamil homeland, killing out very young babies and infants. If they continue their killings like this and if we try to stop the war against there terrorist activities now, this kind of killings which will definitely eventuate a homeland throughout Sri Lanka only for terrorists.
Finally, I would like to quote from a Ph.D. Thesis of a Tamil historian, Dr. Karthikarusu (Indrapala):
“ Until the 9th century, with the exception of megalithic remains of Padrippu and the exception of Kadiravelli, there is no definite evidence of any Dravidian settlement in the island. There are no evidence regarding the existence of significant Tamil settlements in Batticaloa district of the Eastern Province.” Where was this homeland? The root cause of the problem now is that we are trying to divide the country on an ethnic basis. This is what we are against. This is why we have to first defeat terrorism and then start talking about equality. We propose the appointment of a full powered committee, which would have authority to even overrule the Sri Lankan President herself, to fulfil the task of creating a multicultural, multiethnic Sri Lanka, as it was before Prabhakaran was born.
Mr Sivasubramaniam said in reply to Mr Subhawickrema’s speech that he is not going to debate about the existence of Tamil kingdom in the north and believes historians would be able to enlighten him on that aspect. He said Tamils do exist today in the north and the east of the country and have always lived there, have had a homeland and whether one likes it or not it is an indisputable fact. In reply to the points raised by Mr Mahindapala, he quoted a passage from the foreward written by Lord Soulbury who drafted the first constitution of Sri Lanka, to B H Farmer’s “Ceylon, a Divided Nation” in 1963. "My commission.devoted a substantial portion of its report to the minority question and stated that it was satisfied that the government of Ceylon was fully aware that the contentment of minorities was essential not only to their own well-being but the well-being of the island as a whole. Recent years have shown that these observations were only too true. Had Mr D S Senanayake, the first prime minister of Ceylon lived, I cannot believe that the shocking event of 1958 and the great tension that now exist between the Tamils and Sinhalese, would have ever occurred. Mr Senanayake would have scorned this electoral advantage the less far-sighted Sinhalese politicians might expect to reap by extorting the religious, linguistic and cultural differences between the two communities for it was his policy to make Ceylon a united nation and as he told the state council in November 1945, in his great speech, recommending the proposal of the British government that the Tamils are essential to the welfare of this island. Unhappily, for reasons indicated by Mr Farmer, the death of Mr D S Senanayake led to an eventual adaptation of a different policy which we would never have countenanced. Needless to say, the consequences have been a bitter disappointment to myself and my fellow commissioners. While the commission was in Ceylon the speech of certain Sinhalese politicians calling for the solidarity of the Sinhalese and threatening of the suppression of the Tamils emphasised the need for constitutional safeguards on behalf of that and other minorities, despite the confidence held by the commission on Mr Senanayake and any government under his control...”.
Replying to Mr Ranjith Soysa he said he did not mean that Mr Soysa is personally responsible for creating Pirabhakaran but that Tamils have been pleading equity from 1947 and the pogroms carried out each instance against them was to say that Tamils have to accept the majority rule and subjugate all their wishes and aspirations to it. He also said there are some people in his community with whom Sinhalese governments are very comfortable dealing with, but that does not mean they represent the aspirations of Tamil people. In conclusion, he said the reality is today the LTTE represent the aspirations of the Tamil people and if one genuinely wants lasting peace one must deal with them and posed the question if LTTE were to be destroyed, with whom the peace will be negotiated.
Discussion
(after the tea-break with the participation of members of the audience)
Charles David (Sri Lankan Tamil expatriate) said that he left Sri Lanka in 1973 because he was forced to. He said the ground rules laid down for the discussion, namely, honesty, focus on the issues, and open-mindedness were sadly missing from the speeches he witnessed so far and thus he has serious doubts whether there will ever be peace in Sri Lanka. He observed one should not point out the wrongs done by others in the past without acknowledging what they have done specially since 1958.
He said Tigers are killing people and nobody is going to deny that. He recalled that although he was a victim of discrimination he turned down an approach by Tigers to join them in 1973 because he did not believe in violence as means of solving a problem. He said from 1947 to 1983 lot of Tamil people had been killed and if we keep talking about who got killed by whom we are driving ourselves further and further from resolving the problem. He also said the past governments did take positive steps to treat all its citizens equally and fairly Pirabahakaran would not have come to focus at all. He also admitted that Pirabhakaran may be a monster but a single person cannot control so much of power if he is not supported by so many people who feel that without him they cannot live in peace or respect and all what the previous governments have been doing is to push Tamil people to feel that way. He also queried whether the people killed in the photograph Mr Subhawickrema displayed were Sinhalese or Tamils. In conclusion he pleaded everybody not to dwell in the past, be honest and try to solve this problem with some common sense and in a constructive manner.
Ms Shoba Joseph (Australian of Indian origin) said she spent the last year in Vavuniya and in Trincomalee attached to UNHCR. She noted the emotional content of the first three speeches and agreed with the last speaker(Charles) that something has to be done about the whole crisis. She said there are millions of “displaced people” who by UN definition would become “refugees” only if they crossed international borders. In her stay there she had been appalled by the hatred among people. She said she is not blaming anyone but the human rights situation there is much more worse than what is being reported, even the Amnesty International misses some of it because they get buried.
She also recounted about two boys she had seen playing in a beach and about a lesbian couple living in Colombo, where in both cases they were a Sinhalese and a Tamil each who wanted the war to stop because they could not understand or identify with it. She also noted, especially from the previous speeches, that different people have a different definition of democracy, and she was not sure what President Chandrika’s definition of it.
She recalled the two days ceasefire her organisation obtained from both sides for a mass vaccination program for children. In conclusion, she suggested two solutions: one is to have a multi-national team, preferably not from the sub-continent, go into Sri Lanka and try to get LTTE, Sri Lankan government and the Muslim community to the table; the other is try and stop money pouring to both sides from other countries to keep this war going on and stop people with vested interests reaping benefits from the war. To this end she pleaded support from all present and make that a subject for the next forum.
Mr Siva Bhaskaradas (The Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka) said he too was forced to leave Sri Lanka and after working for more than twenty years in a high position in the government, he still did not get his pension whereas he receives one now in Australia. He quoted Vijaya Samaraweera “...the establishment of a separate Tamil kingdom in Jaffna in the early 12th Century had important ramifications. The de-facto situation made the cry of Sinhalese sovereignty over the entire island somewhat meaningless and it also enabled the Tamils to develop their own independent civilisation and political organisation.”. He said in “Political Systems of the World” a publication with annual updating, in Asia only India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka are classified as liberal democratic countries. He said in the Human Rights ratings where one has to get 70% to pass the test, as in 1986 and 1991 India from 60-54%, Japan 88-82%, Malaysia 53-61%, Singapore 59-60%, and Sri Lanka had a record 52 to 47% indicating it was the worst among this five nations.
He quoted Prof G L Peiris who had recently indicated that under the present constitution it was very difficult to devolve power because of the follwing two articles: Article 2 ("The Republic of Sri Lanka is a unitary state"), which defines the unitary status of the Republic of Sri Lanka and Article 76 ("Parliament shall not abdicate or in any manner alienate its legislative power, and shall not set up any authority with any legislative power") where it prohibits the Parliament of devolving power. He said it was not Mr J R Jayawardene but the present Prime Minister Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike who brought these articles in the first place in the 1972 constitution. He said that is why Pirabhakaran did not participate in the Indo-Sri Lanka accord as Mr Ranjith Soysa pointed out earlier. Referring to Mr Mahindapala’s speech he said as a Tamil person there is nothing he has to compromise whereas the government who has everything should compromise. He drew an example from Bangladesh where Mujibar Rahman, father of modern Bangladesh did not compromise to the end under different leaders of Pakistan. He also cited the situation in Cyprus where the political equality in a negotiation was emphasised and said Sri Lanka needed such a political equality in order to have successful peace. This, he concluded, does not mean numerical equality to a minority, but merely a right to veto any legislation or subject matter.
Dr Willie Senanayake (The Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka) said although it is important to understand what happened in the past we must look into the future and also what is happening at present. He said the reality, as far as he can see, is the dark side of the war and whether we like it or not nearly one million people are refugees and lot of others are getting killed. He said it should not be an academic exercise to debate about whether to eliminate Pirabhakaran or not - which is not the important point at the moment - but instead we should think about what are we going to do about the results of the brutal war which Shoba pointed out from her first hand experience. In conclusion he also appealed the expatriate community living in Australia to get together and as a first step, to stop this war and try to bring this warring parties together and bring about a negotiated settlement.
Mr G Meganathan (Sri Lankan Tamil expatriate) said he was born and bred in Colombo and had very good relations with his Sinhalese friends. But he said that does not mean they were equals and differentiated between the personal relationships and his lack of political rights. He referred to a recent statement made by Prof G L Peiris that Buddhism will be given the prime place in the future years to come and questioned why should a religion be given such a status in a community and whether we are not discriminating the other religions by virtue of that. He also referred to one of the conditions laid down by the government to resume talks namely asking the LTTE to lay down their arms. He questioned since there are two parties fighting the war if one party get asked to lay down the arms whether it is not logical to ask other party to do the same.
Mr Kathir Ravichandra (Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka) said he would support Dr Senanayake’s observation made about why we are here today. The obvious reason is to identify what the different views are and to see whether we can reach common grounds. He said peace can come only through reconciliation and as in the case of Australia's attempt to reconcile with the Aboriginal past, unless we acknowledge the history and repent for bad things whoever had done to others, we will never understand why some of the things are happening the way they are happening now and how we can overcome them in the future. He said although the history is important and we can argue as to whether there was a Tamil homeland or not, to a lay person the concept of a homeland is an emotional thing. He recalled that in 1958 and in 1977 when the anti-Tamil riots started he had to go back to Jaffna and not to anywhere else in the island because he treated Jaffna as his homeland. So one cannot remove this emotional attachment from people. It is an inalienable right and an emotional issue and therefore has to be recognised and respected. For example, he cited the case of Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka where three Tamils and four Sinhalese could actually sit down and talk to each other in a civilised manner without much of a difficulty because they understand and respect each other's existence. He asked how one person exerting his/her fundamental and inalienable right should be a threat to other person’s existence. He said as he has observed in the peace forum, once we understand this fundamental thing, the rest of the issues are very cosmetic and easy to deal with. He believed we can always workout civilised structures for people to live together without killing each other. He cited South Africa as an example where intractable situations have been overcome where once everybody was considered as equals, they could sit down and solve the problem. He posed the question when are we going to do that and perhaps this workshop will lead the way.
Mr Asoka Subhawickrema observed that the speeches by Mr Ravichandra and Ms Joseph were very beautiful and heart rending. But he wanted to point out that these type of peace fora and negotiating committees seem to think there are only two parties to this conflict, i.e. the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils. He begged to differ and wanted to include average Sinhalese and average Tamil people too in the equation, the other parties then being the government and the Tamil separatists. He said the average Sinhalese who comprises 74% of the population of Sri Lanka is ignored in peace meetings, even in the present one. He said even back in Sri Lanka decisions are taken by the Sri Lankan government not by the Sinhalese. He thanked for including Mr Mahindapala even at the last minute as this corrected this anomaly. He asked whether the organizers have forgotten the Sinhalese community as he noticed all the speakers who from the audience were non-Sinhalese. He said the Sinhalese probably were boycotting this workshop because the cry to stop war at this juncture was not well received by them.
Answering the question raised by Mr Charles David as to whether the photograph showed was of Sinhalese or Tamils, he said it does not matter whether they are Sinhalese or Tamils it was a crime against humanity. But he said they were in fact Sinhalese who were killed by LTTE in the village of Mahadivulgasweva in November 1995.
Referring to the absence of Sri Lanka’s government’s point of view he said the audience deserves an explanation from the organisers. He also referred to Mr Ravichandra’s speech and said sadly every 10-15 years there is a cycle of violence in Sri Lanka. He said this violence is not the prerogative of the Sinhalese but common to all ethnic groups. He said his brother-in-law was hacked in the north and in 1983 he sheltered five Tamil friends in his home in Kandy as his best friends were Tamils and Muslims. Therefore he pleaded not to blame only the Sinhalese for violence.
Ms Sue Bull (Democratic Socialist Party of Australia):
I agree with Mr Ravichandra in that I do not think that you can actually ignore history, in as much as we should not dwell on deeds of the past. Instead of ignoring history we must learn from history and from the struggles of other nations and peoples who have similar struggles, not that you can say that every struggle is same, and in fact there are lessons that we can learn from Ireland, from Palestine, and from East Timor and things that happened in many countries after the first and second world wars. The struggle for self-determination is not just a struggle that is found in Sri Lanka but it is a one which is faced world wide, if you look at Middle East for instance, before the first and second world wars, there were many people in those countries who previously have lived happily side by side. But with the intervention of colonial and imperial powers, and with the carve up of those countries and discrimination against the needs of the many people who lived there, we begin to find that the new nations emerge and people consider that they are nations. There were the Kurds, the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Palestinians and I am sure there is a dozen more.
And what happens is, today these people consider themselves as nations, as they no longer see themselves as Turkish or Syrians; they consider themselves as Kurds or whatever group they belong to. What we see is the development of new nations that emerge that we cannot ignore. I personally feel that there is a similar situation now happening in Sri Lanka. I think that although in the past maybe LTTE did not represent the views or aspirations of Tamils, but I think today the Tamil people think they do represent their aspirations. And we have to learn from situations in Palestine or in Ireland, governments were in the end forced to deal with the IRA or the PLO despite the terrorist tags or all the labels that were put on these people. They were forced to actually negotiate with them. And in the end we know sometimes the outcomes of the negotiation do not necessarily suit the people, we cannot see into the future. So these groups whom the governments are being forced to deal with do represent the aspirations of most of the people who now see themselves as nations but did not 10, 15, 40 or 50 years before.
The second thing I wanted to say is that the definition of the democracy is a very important one. My definition of the democracy is, yes the majority rules, but the rights of the minorities are taken into account. No democracy can work if the rights of minorities are trampled. Unfortunately in Sri Lanka we see that majority of Tamils feel that (they) have been repressed. They do feel that their rights have been trampled. I think the world community can no longer sit by and ignore these demands coming from Tamil people. Actually we have to look at it what their rights are and how do you actually have a democratic society.
A final point I want to make is that I do not know a great deal about Prabhakaran, but I feel that it is a terrible thing to label him of being a Hitler or a Pol Pot or whatever. Obviously this is a person who is seen as the leader of the LTTE and they represent Tamil aspirations; to write him off as a Pol Pot when this man did not even have state power seems to me that there is no ability to negotiate almost from the outset. I think it is recognised that history is not made by individuals but by groups of people and individuals in the end represent groups of people. They are not there by some mystical power by which they come into being; they represent people. I think in the end that there is a negotiated settlement for Sri Lanka. The groups that represent Tamil people are able to talk to Sri Lankan government and proceed from there. We cannot foresee the outcome. The solution or the beginning of the solution has to be these groups are recognised and they can talk really to each other.
Mr Lionel Bopage (The Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka)- (verbatim)
It was very good that those points were raised (by Mr Subhawickrema). Actually at the onset I wanted to clarify the position of the representative of the Sri Lankan government. But I will deal with that later. According to my dear friends Ranjith and Asoka we do not represent Sinhalese. I pose one question. Does the Sri Lankan government represent the Sinhalese? Does the Opposition in Sri Lanka represent Sinhalese, at all? Beacause the “war for peace” launched by the government, the ultimate objective, President Chandrika has said, is to weaken the LTTE politically and militarily and bring them to table for discussion, not to exclude the LTTE; and yesterday the leader of the opposition, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe has declared in public that they should talk to the LTTE. That is the majority Sinhalese view. The President of the country and the Leader of the Opposition, they represent the Sri Lankan population, as a whole. If someone accuses us of neglecting Sinhalese, I would like to point out to you that it was the collaboration you have with the Sri Lankan High Commission here, I am very sad to say that, I see there are strong links between the two. (Messrs Soysa and Mr Subhawickrema obstruct the speech and demand a withdrawal of the accusations). OK, I will withdraw that statement; sorry about the misunderstanding, what I said was not referring to you two as individuals. What I say is, that the government and the opposition, I think, they represent the majority Sinhalese and the (majority of the) whole population of Sri Lanka. They want to discuss with the LTTE, the government does not have means to talk to the LTTE, and that is why they are fighting the war. That is according to them.
Here, we posted and manually delivered more than 200 letters to the Sri Lankan community in Canberra. It is unfortunate that most of the Sinhalese are not interested in these things. We want them to come. As one of you mentioned, may be Sinhalese are boycotting. I will tell you the reason (why). There was a targeted letter campaign, I am not referring here personally, by SPUR, about one month back, saying Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka is a frontal organisation of the LTTE. Then, we had a multi-faith gathering about two years back. From the very inception we have been telling to stop the war. It is not something new. The multi-faith gathering was described as an attempt by the LTTE to celebrate Pirabhakaran’s birthday. We did not even know that it was Pirabahkaran’s birthday.
On behalf of the Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka, I will now read out what happened with the government representative:
We sent the invitation on 26th June 1997 requesting the Sri Lankan High Commission to send a speaker to this workshop. As far as I know, in the past, the Sri Lankan High Commission has taken part in all the seminars and the multi-faith gathering we organised. The former Deputy High Commissioner Mr Samsudeen used to be the representative. When we contacted the High Commission one-week later, we came to know that they are awaiting instructions from Colombo. In order to expedite matters we sent a further request to the Foreign Minister's office in Colombo. When we contacted the High Commission, before organizing publicity for the event, they allowed us to mention that there will be a representative from the High Commission. About four days back the situation was that they had not yet received a response from Colombo by then. Therefore they had taken the unprecedented step of sending two observers from the High Commission.
I contacted the Minister's (Foreign Affairs) office in Colombo to find that he was not available. I spoke to his private secretary, explained the situation, and she wanted me to send a fax message which I did. The secretary of the foreign ministry or the additional secretary in charge of the Australia desk was also not available. Next day when I contacted the High Commissioner he told me that my fax to Colombo has been referred to him. Since then he had contacted Colombo and still awaiting a response. I contacted the Minister's residence yesterday and left a message. They promised to come back to me. Still I am awaiting this call.
Yesterday I met the High Commissioner at our community Spring Get-together and according to him, because of lack of response from Colombo, they have decided to withdraw sending observers. It is not appropriate for me to criticise anyone in this regard. But we believe there had been many dealings. We know that many things that are not in line with the current Sri Lankan Government policy are done apparently without permission from Colombo. Furthermore I have to state that if a High Commission cannot represent the position of the Sri Lankan Government to their own expatriate community that tells us many things.
I invite the chair to conclude the proceedings. Sorry about this. Thank you.
Summing-up Speech by Dr John Powers (verbatim)
As an outsider who does not have a personal connection with the conflict at all, I am very much interested in the Sri Lankan conflict because I see there is number of important human rights dimensions to it which is one of the reason why I am engaged in doing lot of research and presenting papers and things like that.
I guess as a historian and somebody who works in a history department, I tend to think that history is important as Ravi said and I think that personally I tend (to) agree with the people who feel that simply looking to the future or looking to the present is not going to be sufficient in that the present and the future is going to be determined by a large extent by the past. I do not think that there is any possibility of any sort of resolution to the conflict without being honest about what the past history is.
And it seems to me, again very much as an outsider, that there is plenty of blame to go around and it is very unlikely that anything positive is going to happen if both sides spend their time pointing fingers at each other or recounting the atrocities from other side. This could go on for an awfully long time and is unlikely to have any positive effect on either side. And when you get into a conflict as messy as the present Sri Lankan civil war, there is plenty of atrocities to point to you from either side, and it is not a very constructive way of going about things. I think it is one of the problems of the fora I attended that there is plenty of blame, name calling and so forth. I like to reflect particularly on couple of opening speeches; it is not personal criticism but I think that one of the problems is that the language is very emotional and very much intended to whip up emotions and so forth and is very unlikely to bring any positive results. For instance, referring to again Prabhakaran as a totalitarian monster is very unlikely to bring about any positive results in any sort of real discussions. I think that categorising people on opposite side in absolute and negative terms is not likely to provide any positive effects. In order to have real dialogue there has to be a very conscientious move beyond name calling and blaming and so forth. And a recognition that this conflict is moved along courses...
I also teach courses on Buddhism and one of the things I talked about with my students is karma. And karma as you know is one of the things which operates. that once the things start going the karma keeps the thing going. And violence starts to get more violence, name calling starts to get more name-calling and animosity begets more animosity. And unless somebody comes along and breaks that cycle, it is very unlikely that it will ever do get broken. And one of the problems of the Sri Lankan conflict, as I see it, is that there is a real lack of political will on both sides, there is a real need of someone who comes along and breaks the cycle of violence, breaks the cycle of incrimination, breaks the cycle of looking to the past and so forth and says that we really need to move beyond this, we need to make some positive constructive step for peace. And simply blaming the other side is not going to achieve that.
One of the things that has come up number of times in these discussions and one of the things I see as a problem of the whole Sri Lankan conflict is a basic breakdown of democracy. And this is, I think, the root of the whole conflict. In successful democracies all over the world, the breakdown of democratic parties does not operate along ethnic lines; they operate according to political persuasions. So for instance, in US, which I am most familiar with, you have Republican Party which serve conservatives and Democratic Party which serve the liberals. And they attract people across the racial and political spectrum and the way the democracy works, for instance, it is very important for Republicans to attract whites, blacks, Hispanics and so forth, in order to win the election. What you find in Sri Lanka, for instance, is that Sinhalese parties have tended to appeal to Sinhalese chauvinism and Tamil parties have tended to appeal to Tamil chauvinism, so as you have a very strong breakdown along ethnic lines, but not according to political persuasions. And this is the basic problem of the democratic process when you have that kind of ethnic polarisation, there is no way that any democracy can work in that sort of situation. And as long as these fora are propelled down along polarised ethnic lines it is very unlikely that there is going to be any kind of consensus.
Now having said all that, it seems to me that we have not addressed to any large extent the main purpose of this forum, that is to put forward concrete proposals to bring peace in Sri Lanka. Most of the speakers has spoken about the wrongs done by the other sides and demonised leaders of the other side, but I have not yet heard any actual proposals for how to move beyond this, any concrete proposal for how a peace can be negotiated.
It seems to me, looking at the situation again very much as an outsider, as somebody who does not have a personal stake in it, that the lines of agreement for potential peace are very clear, ie. you have unfortunately very intractable positions from both sides, the LTTE has made clear that they would not settle for anything less than a separate state of Eelam and it is not conceivable that any Sri Lankan government is going to permit that, everybody knows this. Similarly the Sri Lankan government seems to be committed to the idea that the only way to have any sort of peace negotiation is to bring LTTE to its knees-which is again very unlikely to happen. The LTTE is very well funded, it is a highly disciplined organisation, it is very unlikely that it is ever going to be militarily defeated. So somewhere between these two extremes is where some sort of peace negotiations is going to have to happen, and until both sides are going to talk to each other, I cannot see how it is going to happen.
This (is) my rather depressing summary.
FINAL STATEMENT
The Workshop on 'A Lasting Peace for Sir Lanka' organised by the Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka, held on 31 August 1997 at 85 Havelock House, Canberra adopted the following statement:
Having listened to the Sinhalese Cultural Association in Sydney, the Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka (SPUR) in Victoria, a Tamil spokesman, and other participants' perspectives of the fundamental issues associated with the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, this Workshop is of the view that:
· the current war has only brought about death, destruction and immense suffering to the civilian population and combatants and economic disaster to the country;
· the prolongation of this unwinnable war can only further alienate the peoples and;
· it will make reconciliation which is fundamental to achieving lasting peace, all the more difficult.
This Workshop, therefore, calls upon the warring parties to stop the current war immediately and to negotiate a just and lasting peace.
Given the gross mistrust prevailing between the warring parties, the peace process could be facilitated by a third party acceptable to all parties to the conflict. To this end, this Workshop calls upon the international community to take steps towards affording facilitation for negotiations.
Two representatives of the Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka registered their disagreement with the above statement.
Dr James Jupp
Chair of the Workshop
02 September 1997
Publisher's note:
On 08 September 1997, the Speaker of the Sinhala Cultural Foundation in Sydney informed us that their organisation has decided not to agree with this statement.
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