MINORITY RIGHTS  And human rights in Sri Lanka |
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Sri Lanka's pogrom
Sri Lanka erupted in an orgy of mass violence against the minority
Tamil population
last July. But what began as a ‘minority problem’
is rapidly becoming one of
human rights for all Sri Lankans.
R.L. Pereira reports.
 IF I WERE in Sri Lanka today I could not publish this article. As a
Sinhalesejournalist, I could not even visit Jaffna, in the North of my country, where tens
of thousands of Tamils have fled since the brutal attacks on them last July. The
blood-letting, according to Tamil sources, cost over 2000 lives. Few Tamil homes, shops or
businesses in the South of Sri Lanka escaped unscathed and thousands of refugees still
wait in makeshift camps to be transported to the North.
The pro-Western government has responded to the crisis by claiming that
a foreign-backed conspiracy was trying to engineer its downfall. It also banned political
parties advocating a separate Tamil state and confiscated damaged Tamil property.
The Tamils constitute 20 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 15 million
population. Slightly over one million of them have lived there as long as the Sinhalese,
who make up the majority. The Tamils (Hindus) are Dravidians from South India, while the
Sinhalese (Buddhists) claim to have come from the Aryan North of India. The so-called
indigehous Tamils have traditionally lived in the Jaffna peninsula and the eastern areas
of Trincomalee and Batticoloa. Only the plantation Tamils, brought by the British as
indentured labourers from India, have arrived in the last 150 years.
Discrimination against the Tamils, indigenous and indentured, has its
roots in the divide-and-rule policy of the British. The British used them - as they used other minorities in Nigeria, Cyprus and
India - as a source of second-tier civil servants. At Independence in 1947 the new
Sinhalese middle-class resented Tamils for holding 30 per cent of posts in the
administrative service, 50 per cent of clerical posts and 60 per cent of professional
jobs.
Racism at every level
The 1956 ‘Sinhala-only’ Act which made Sinhala the national
language was a conscious attempt by the government to redress what was perceived as an
imbalance in favour of the Tamils. In 1970 the government, in a bid to appease the
disgruntled, unemployed Sinhalese youth, introduced ‘standardisation’ in
education. Though meant to discriminate in favour of rural children, it effectively meant
that Tamil students had to score higher marks than Sinhalese to enter higher education via
a quota system.
Each government since Independence has tried to appease the Sinhalese
peasants by encouraging land colonisation schemes in traditional Tamil areas. Tamils
allege that 1,500 of a total 7,000 square miles of ‘their’ territory has been
brought under Sinhalese control. Such a claim to separate Tamil lands is a very recent
phenomenon, brought about by the growing racisim of the state. For thousands of years
Tamils and Sinhalese lived side by side - sharing kings, customs and foods, worshipping each others’ gods and entering
into each others’ celebrations.
But successive governments have turned the ‘Tamil question’
into a political football, vying with one anotherto gain the votes of the Sinhalese
majority. Racism is now becoming institutionalised at every level. A recent survey by the
Movement for Racial Justice and Equality showed that Sinhala schoolbooks stereotype the
Tamils and provided children with only a partial, Sinhalese history of the country. The
outbreaks of communal violence against Tamils are often incited by politicians cashing in
on Sinhalese fears, suggesting that the Tamils are about to swamp the country and
annihilate the Sinhalese Buddhist state forever. Recent speeches by one such politician, a
cabinet minister, are circulating freely in Sri Lanka under the title Diabolical Conspiracy.
Traditionally the Sinhalese are a fair-minded and tolerant people,
their religion one of non-violence. But this year’s riots brought disgrace to the
country and made a mockery of Buddhism. Motorists stopped by Sinhalese mobs were dragged
from their cars and hacked to death if they were unable to recite a Sinhala gatha (religious verse). Children have been burnt
alive, women raped. Rioting spread from Colombo, the capital, south as far as Galle, east
to Trincomalee and into the hill country around Kandy and the plantations where the
poorest Tamils eke out an existence.
In previous years, Tamils fled to Jaffna, where they felt safe. Today
that is a less happy prospect. The people ofJaffna live in a state of near siege, with a
massive army presence on their streets and a virtual blockade hindering the delivery of
essential food and fuel supplies. Sent to restore law and order, the armed forces are
themselves a prime cause of Tamil insecurity.
Rise of Tiger movement
Years of racial discrimination and oppression have spawned the
‘Tiger’ movement, composed of young Tamils despairing of the old methods of
parliamentary pressure, pacts and round table conferences. The old methods have yielded
nothing but disappointment for the Tarnils over the past 35 years. The Tigers call for a
separate state of Eelam, and have taken to armed resistance. The government has replied
with massive repression. Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, people can be held
‘on suspicion’ for 18 months. Confessions obtained under torture are regarded as
admissable evidence in court. According to Amnesty International, detainees have been kept
in solitary confinement for over eight months and torture is said to include hanging
victims upside down from hooks, beating them with metal bars and driving needles under
their nails. Since last June special regulations allow the armed forces to dispose of
bodies without a post mortem examination.
The Tigers have responded to state repression by choosing military and
political targets. But every incident brings down massive reprisals on the heads of
ordinary people. Last May, after the shooting of a policeman at a polling booth, the army
burnt 150 houses. Last July’s riots were sparked off when the army kidnapped three
girls, raping them and killing one. In retaliation the Tigers ambushed and killed 13
soldiers. This incident set off the nationwide vidlence.
In Jaffna the army took revenge on civilians, shooting at bus queues
and groups of protesting schoolchildren. In Colombo the police and army stood by as mobs
went on the rampage. Sinhalese prisoners at Colombo’s Welikade jail, armed with
staves, clubs and knives, twice attacked Tamil prisoners in their cells, murdering 52
inmates. One of those killed in the jail was Dr S Rajasundaram, a founder of the Gandhiyam
Society, which has helped thousands of Tamil refugees who fled the South after racist
attacks in 1977 and 1981. Gandhiyam is run on Gandhian principles and is supported
financially by international agencies including
NOVIB, Oxfam, Christian Aid and the World Council of Churches.
Government officials and service personnel also attacked the Society’s property - farm buildings, houses, offices and
vehicles. Dr Rajasundaram had been in jail since last April and his body bore unmistakable
signs of torture prior to his murder.
President J R Jayawardene, who hoped to make Sri Lanka a capitalist
showcase in the Third World, came to power promising to root out corruption. But he has
ushered in a new era of gun-law and thuggery. With opposition political parties and
newspapers banned, dissidents imprisoned and parliamentary elections suspended for six
years, the President has created a virtual dictatorship - albeit
by ‘constitutional’ means. What started off as a ‘minority’ problem is
increasingly becoming a problem of human rights for all Sri Lankans.
R L Pereira is a Sinhalese freelance journalist living in London.
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A Tamil soliloquy
The time by my watch is 2.13 in the morning. The date: 26th July 1983 –
the day after the holocaust. The place: a little room in a Sinhala home in a suburb of
Colombo. Except for my wife’s fitful sobbing as she lies huddled on a settee, only
occasional army jeeps and the intermittent staccato of machine guns in the distance
disturb the silence of the night. I feel a deep and unutterable peace come over me, such
as religious leaders and mystics say is vouchsafed only to those who are totally liberated
from attachment to worldly goods. Well, yesterday evening my Sinhala brethen liberated me
from all my worldly goods.
A gang of Sinhala youth, roaming the streets during curfew hours under the very noses
of army patrols, put torch to all my worldly belongings. My house, which has been in my
family since 1900, all our furniture and clothes, all my wife’s jewellery, our books,
passports, bank statements, birth certificates – everything except the clothes my
wife and I are now wearing and the 26 rupees in my pocket – all went up in flames. We
have lost more than all our property. We have lost our identity. Now I cannot even prove
that my wife and I are Sri Lankan citizens.
My wife and I are Jaffna Tamils. We have been Christians for two generations. My
great-grandfather came down to Colombo from Jaffan in 1882, to work as a cashier in a
European bank. My father studies law and I took after him. My family has been in Colombo
for a hundred years. We have no property in Jaffna. So where so we go from here?
I do not see how we can continue to live among Sinhala people. And there must be at
least 250,000 Tamils in our predicament throughout Sri Lanka. Overnight, a whole layer of
Sri Lanka’s society has been disowned by their own country. Do the Sinhala people
even dare to understand what they have done? Aren’t there even tremours of conscious
deep within their hearts?
I try to comprehend this holocaust with all the spiritual resources I can draw on. But
understanding evades me. My son advocates a separate Tamil state as the solution to our
problem. But I am not sure. It is true that Sihaal and Tamils exist as separate kingdoms
before the British brought them under one administration. But I do not think it is
practicable to roll back two centuries of common history, ignoring al that has happened in
the intervening years – the motorways, the railroads, the telephone and telegraph
links, the interdependent commercial links and the shared struggles against colonialism
– all of which make separatism a juvenile fantasy. The Sinhala and Tamil territories
are no longer inhabited by simple self-subsistent farming communities, separated by
impenetrable forests. We cannot undo two centuries of history overnight. Besides, where
are the half-million Tamils now living in Sinhala areas supposed to go if a separate Tamil
state is set up? It is easy to churn out facile slogans but I have yet to see a viable
political and economic programme for the Tamil state of Eelam.
On the other hand, how can we Tamils continue to live with and among the Sinhala
people? This is no longer a question of survival, of life itself.
I do not know the answers. But I do know that unless the Sinhala people and their
leaders can rise above the barbarity they have shown these past few days, the Sinhala
people themselves cannot long survive as a civilised community. This can hardly be the and
of peace-loving people who revere the Buddha.
While I don’t share my son’s solutions, I understand his frustration. He is
in the University, where he is already discriminated against and isolated. His career
prospects are marginal. And there are thousands of Tamil youth who share his frustrations
and incandescent anger.
What have my Sinhala friends to say to all this? And truly some are still my friends,
risking their own lives by sheltering me here. But their friendship must count for more
than that is they which to rescue us from perpetual fear.
As I look out of the window I see thin streaks of silver and red climb up the eastern
sky. Soon it will be day. I do not know what this new day will hold, not even whether my
wife and I will live through it. But we must not give in to despair and self-pity. There
must be people of goodwill and understanding on both sides – masses of them. This is
not the end of the road. I am reminded of Germany and Japan after the war. Out of our
ashes, we too must rise again.
By ‘Devadasan’
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