February 22, 2016: two versions

What happened in Sri Lanka fourteen years ago, do you remember, ladies and gentlemen? Do you remember the colour of the sky that morning of the 22nd day of February in the year 2002?  Do you remember how that day was heralded as the launching of peace and prosperity for all time and a day or two more to boot?  Do you remember when there were white doves set free, trees planted to mark the historic moment?  Do you know that on that occasion, a Prime Minister called all editors of newspapers and nicely told them not to criticize the Government or that process towards peace he had launched? 

Yes, yes, the same man who now talks about media freedom, democracy, good governance etc., openly and without shame signed a pact with a thug unlike any this country has known in the past one hundred years, giving that butcher legitimacy and virtually legitimating a monumental land-theft second only to that orchestrated by the Waste Lands Ordinance, did you know?   

Where were you on February 22, 2002, do you remember?  It is an important date in our history.  As important as June 29, 1987, when the Indo-Lanka Accord was thrust down our throats by Rajiv Gandhi, a man who responded to the then UNP Government’s abject servility to Uncle Sam by nurturing Tamil discontent into a kind of terrorism that he himself lost control over eventually. 

[That pernicious piece of legislation, presented to Parliament by Ranil Wickremesinghe in the most unethical manner, leaving out certain key paragraphs, has produced wastage and corruption, has served to turn myth into fact (regarding the notion of exclusive traditional homeland of Tamils) and been the biggest (emotional) obstacle to the deployment of rationality in resolving legitimate minority grievances.]   

February 22, 2002 was not like June 29, 1987, though, for two reasons. First it was not stuffed down our throats. We gladly stuffed it down our throats. Well, not the date, but what it signified.  ‘We’ refers to the Government of the day, which, like all governments, represented those who voted for it and those who voted against it.  Secondly, whereas the Indo-Lanka Accord continues to stymie us, the agreement signed on February 22, 2002 was voted out and politicked-out by the people. 

Today, fourteen years later, I want to paint a picture. It is a ‘what-if’ picture, the painting of a scenario where things played out differently.  I want to paint this for a simple reason; to give myself some perspective and a sense of proportion because while there are a thousand and one reasons to criticize the regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa there are things I should be very grateful about too.  Bear with me awhile; let me start painting now. 

February 22, 2016. What a day!  It is not three years since the ‘peace process’ brought us ‘peace’.  Velupillai Prabhakaran, flanked by S.P. Thamilselvan and Nadesan, is holding a media conference in a hamlet-turned-town called Manirasakulam, in a sprawling communications complex that houses a television and radio station as well as a newspaper outfit replete with a state-of-the-art printing press all built with handsome grants secured for the LTTE by Eric Solheim, Vidar Helgessen et al.  He has declared that the ‘Tamil Nationalist Struggle’ will now launch its next phase, that of ‘reclaiming’ for the Tamil peoples their ‘birthright’, political, military and cultural control over the entire island. To this end, he states, he has just declared, ‘the North and East of the island previously known as Sri Lanka, is now a separate and independent state called Eelam, with its own system of governance, own Army, Navy, Air Force, Police and civil administration, own currency and own foreign policy’. 

He adds:

‘We consider the entire island to be the traditional homeland of Tamil people but in the interest of peace and minimizing of sufferance to ordinary people of all ethnic groups, have chosen to open the door to a peaceful resolution and as such call upon the usurpers of our birthright, represented by Ranil Wickremesinghe, to peacefully concede control of the rest of the island within a period of one year.  We reserve the right to defend these, our temporary borders, fiercely and without compromise and to this end we will not rule out attacks on key facilities in Colombo and other places as deemed appropriate in terms of the aspirations of our people.’

Turn the camera to Colombo where Ranil Wickremesinghe is holding a media conference. 

‘Mr. Prabhakaran has a short while ago declared that the North and East of the country as a separate and independent state called Eelam. I believe this is an unnecessary and hasty move on his part but call upon our people to exercise utmost restraint and recognize the fact that the Tamil people do have a legitimate claim to these areas.  Moreover, I cannot over-emphasize the fact that what we require now more than anything else is political stability.  We cannot afford to execute a war with the LTTE.  We have to rebuild our economy.  While we are concerned about Mr. Prabhakaran’s intentions about annexing the entire island, we will not let our emotions get the better of us; we believe he is just being rhetorical. Thank you. I will not take questions at this point.;

That’s the North and East of February 22, 2016 that my imagination and extrapolations from different outcomes at the 2004 General and 2005 Presidential elections conjure up. Maybe I’ve used harsh colours. Maybe I should dilute. Let me try.

February 22, 2016. The North and East.  No presence whatsoever of the Sri Lankan security forces.  Trincomalee harbour is under LTTE control.  A rudimentary ‘visa’ system has been set up for those from other parts of the country to visit the North and East. The residents of the North and East no longer have ID cards issued by the Department of Registration of Persons in Colombo.  They have instead, IDs issued by the ‘Persons’ Registration Department, North-East Government’. 

February 22, 2016. Norway has entered into an agreement with the ‘North-East Government’ (legitimately, let me add, in terms of conflict-resolution agreements signed since February 22, 2002) to engage in oil exploration off the coastal areas. 

February 22, 2016.  The US Navy engages in joint naval exercises off Trincomalee with the LTTE’s Sea Tiger Force.  Meanwhile, a special team of officers and trainers of the US Air Force has arrived in Iranamadu to train a set of pilots in operating the newly acquired fleet of fighter and civilian aircraft courtesy a special grant from that country. 

Colombo. Same day.  Upon the recommendations of the IMF, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cabinet decides to sell the People’s Bank and the Bank of Ceylon. 

The camera moves to a house in Colombo 3.  There’s a big party going on.  The air is perfumed. There’s music. Dancing.   Laughter. Conversation. All in English.  A strange wind blows through the handsomely decorated room, gathers conversation strand essence, rolls it all up and out it comes thus: ‘It is as though the British never left, how lovely!’ 

The time is now 8.43 pm.  News Flash:  a group of unidentified gunmen numbering close to a 1000 have stormed into Medawachchiya, burnt all shops, taken over the town and ordered all Sinhalese people to move out within 24 hours.

The time is now 9.57 pm.  Flash:  Ranil Wickremesinghe appeals for calm.

This is the year 2016. February.  Real life, real time, real space.  I am thrilled to be living in this Sri Lanka.  How about you, ladies and gentlemen?   

A version of this article was published in the Daily News on the 8th anniversary of the CFA, i.e. on February 22, 2010.  Changed the dates.  I believe it still holds.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malindasenevi@gmail.com.

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Velupillai Prabhakaran and birthdays that are missed

This was first published 5 years ago and refers to remembering and forgetting LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's birthday. 

 Early last Friday morning I hopped a bus and came to Kandy. Peradeniya, actually. I came for ‘SLAM 2010’ a literary event organized by some enthusiastic, energetic and extremely creative set of young people.  I spent two days in and around Peradeniya. Right now as I write it is Saturday night, i.e. the night of the 27^th.  There a lots of things to write about. Vihanga Perera, one of the live wires behind the event quipped, ‘good for 30 articles, right?’ ‘That would be overkill,’ I texted back.  This is not about literature or the interesting proceedings I was privileged to be a part of, though. It is about a single comment made over a cup of tea after everything was over.

Ranjith Wijekoon, teacher, colleague and friend of almost 25 years, asked a question in his inimitable way, i.e. a quaint mix of wit, humour and political alertness: ‘did you know it was Prabhakaran’s birthday yesterday?’  I didn’t have to answer, he read the reply on my face and gave voice to it: ‘you didn’t’. 

Time was when the politicians and columnists viewed the 26^th day of November with foreboding, warning the general public to be extra alert, assuming that the LTTE could very well be planning to give Velupillai Prabhakaran a fitting birthday present by exploding a bomb in a crowded place or taking out a high profile target, either on that day or during the week that followed, dedicated by the terrorist outfit to honour and celebrate the so-called martyrs. 

This year, like last year, there is no Prabhakaran to gift blood and dismembered flesh as birthday gift. Last year, at least, there was mention about the man if only to make the point that the war was over, terrorism roundly defeated and things had never been this good in thirty years.  T.V. Sriram, writing for the PTI had an article titled ‘No more security alert on Prabhakaran’s birthday in Lanka’.  This year, nothing. 

I checked the internet.  I googled, ‘Prabhakaran+birthday+2010’.  That’s how I found Sriram’s note.  Most references were more than two years old.  There were two that caught my attention, one a blogpost by Indi Samajeewa titled ‘Prabhakaran’s Speech (Yawn)’ and another by P.K. Balachandran titled ‘Prabhakaran on a day-long fast on his birthday’.  The latter was written on the occasion of Prabhakaran’s fiftieth birthday. There was a third, a note sourced to the Daily Mirror which had an interesting final para and I will get to that later.

First Bala’s piece.  He paid reasonable tribute to Prabhakaran’s sense of self-sacrifice, at least compared to other Tamil leaders. He quotes Prof. Karthigesu Sivathamby, who praises Prabhakaran and the LTTE to the maximum and who overbalances in the process of hero-worshipping that he says ‘the Tamils need Prabhakaran more than Prabhakaran needs the LTTE’.  The last days of the way may have sobered this so-called internationally recognized Tamil scholar, one notes.  Eventually, Sivathamby said at that time, the LTTE will have to revert from military to the political and that Prabhakaran would have to be like Arafat.  Bala goes on to quote Dayan Jayatilleka to balance things off, even conferring him the title of spokesperson for the Sinhalese (strange, given the man’s ideological leanings).  That was 2004. 

Indi’s views were naturally more irreverent, sharper and to the point. Worth a long quote: ‘Uncle P has hung around way too long and totally f****** sucks at his job. I mean, maybe he was a supercool terrorist once, but that shit is passed and he A) now sucks at being a terrorist and B) hasn’t improved his peoples lives one bit. He’s like Arafat or something, some f****** irritating historical footnote that you have to live with in the present.’

That was in 2008. The man was still alive. He was strutting around promising death and destruction and still managing to convince his cheer-leading boys and girls in Colombo and elsewhere that he was indestructible to the point that those innocents and not-so-innocents would issue dire warnings to the Government of Sri Lanka about what and what would and would not happen if this and that were done and that and this were not. 

The third piece (‘Prabhakaran’s destiny after 54’) was somber.  The author opined, ‘if Prabhakaran was assassinated in Wanni, not only Tamil Nadu, even the entire Tamil population of the whole world will point an accusing finger at Delhi’.

Events proved that Bala picked the wrong people to pluck a quote from.  There were some whimpering noises that came from Tamil Nadu and some whines from the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora in the West but no one pointed fingers at Delhi and a 18 months after the fact not many seem to have remembered Prabhakaran’s birthday.  In the year 2010, ‘footnote’ seems to be what the man’s got. 

He was supposed to be indestructible. Divinity was conferred upon him by a chauvinistic and ignorant set of followers.  The sun set on that violent adventure that gifted death and destruction to the Tamil community. The Sun God, so-called, was ‘mortalized’.  And footnoted. 

Birth, decay and death.  Inevitable.  Bomb-exploder and newsmaker yesterday, footnote today and forgotten tomorrow.  God today, gone tomorrow.  There’s a lesson for many therein, I think.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

This was first published in the Daily News, November 30, 2010.  

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Mahinda’s post-presidential relevance

'Look at the Tamils and find yourself' or 'Look at yourself and discover Tamil brethren'?

Thousands and thousands visiting ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa is no longer news.  He is arguably the most loved post-Independence leader this country has known; this despite all his many flaws, it must be added.  What is ‘news’ and continues to make news is the fact that in an opposition-less context opposition to the current regime has to materialize outside parliament and as such ‘Mahinda’ is a natural rallying point. 

The Mahinda-Factor is growing larger each passing day.  The longer the ‘Opposition-Issue’ is left unresolved, the more value accrues to this factor.  How the Sri Lanka Freedom Party addresses all this is left to be seen.  If one buys into the adage that there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, then all is possible including a Maithripala-Mahinda ‘patch-up’ (not in the interest of the nation but for reasons of political expedience).  How such a patch-up materializes and in what form, again, are left to be seen.  Let’s leave time to decide all that and delve into a different aspect of this phenomenon of Mahinda Rajapaksa becoming a pilgrim’s destination, so to speak. 

Many of his detractors have dismissed the phenomenon thus: someone died, others are not allowing the body to be buried.   Mahinda is not politically dead, though.  That’s why he is ‘rallying point’ for those who feel that the new regime has effectively disenfranchised them. They have a point because the majority voted for Maithripala Sirisena but the country is being run by a man and a party that have not won elections in years.  The SLFPers who voted for Maithripala and those who voted for Mahinda both have reason to be disgruntled. 

Whether or not one voted for Mahinda Rajapaksa, few would disagree that he is widely credited for defeating the LTTE, ridding the country of the terrorist threat, removing associated fear from the minds of people as they go about their lives etc.  Even Ranil Wickremesinghe has acknowledged this.   This is why people go to Medamulana.  It is less about rising against the Ranil-Maithri Government than about being conscious of the fact that Mahinda helped restore dignity to a nation and a people. 

A year ago, I wrote about wars or rather continuing wars.  Here’s a quote: “When do wars end?  Do they end with surrender, with military annihilation of protagonist, the recovery of livelihoods, reconstruction of houses, hospitals and schools, the return of the displaced, the erasing of things with military signature, free and fair elections and a shaking of hands all around?  Do wars end that way, ever, though?  Isn’t it true that the wars that have truly ‘ended’ for all practical purposes are those which are beyond recall and whose identity-ties have been smudged by the movement of people and dwarfed by event after earth-shattering event? Thrishantha Nanayakkara makes a valid argument thus: ‘All wars have been fought twice; once in the battlefield and once down the alleys of memory’”

We are talking about the alleyways of memory.  For the Sinhalese (mostly), Mahinda Rajapaksa represents something positive about who they are.  Even after 500 years of colonial rule if you said you were a Sinhalese or worse a Sinhala-Buddhist you would be subjected to all kinds of name-calling.  They were vilified as racists, chauvinists, war-mongers etc., etc.  Their dignity took a hit.  Somehow, during Mahinda’s time they felt as confident as anyone belonging to any other community to assert their identity.  There’s gratitude, therefore.  That has nothing to do with party politics or returning Mahinda to power. 

What’s important in this is that it provides an opportunity for Sinhalese to understand their Tamil brethren, especially those who demand directly or indirectly an acknowledgment of who and what Velupillai Prabhakaran means to them.   

Few Tamils would come out and say Prabhakaran was a saint or was utterly blameless.  Few Sinhalese would say the same thing about Mahinda Rajapaksa.  For all his many flaws, Prabhakaran gave Tamils a sense of community and even pride (we see this even in the extremely racist strains color rhetoric of former Supreme Court judge C.V. Wigneswaran). 

There are many differences between the two men, but the key here is that Mahinda is still alive and Prabhakaran is dead.   Whereas those who attribute dignity-recovery to Mahinda can assert the fact in tangible ways that reach Mahinda, Tamils who see those positives in Prabhakaran simply cannot.  This is perhaps partly why Tamils have agitated to win the right to mourn their dead on ‘Victory Day’.    It is as much about remembering kith and kin as about expressing gratitude to an absent leader.  You might call it a cathartic need. 

The battle along the alleyways of memory will take some time to end, sure.  There’s no harm in doing the little things that help us deal with the demons of memory.  I can do little better than refer to an observation made by Dr Pradeep Jeganathan three years ago in an article titled ‘Forgive but do not forget’: I am asking that we stop taking sides, because it will destroy us all. We need to understand and remember that we all did terrible things to each other, and in so doing, try to not forget, but forgive each other, and forgive ourselves.

Icons help, but we can grieve and celebrate with or without them.  Indeed the fact that icons are necessary is a sad reflection on our ability to grieve sans grieving framework.  Mahinda may or may not be politically relevant in the coming years, but it can be argued that if his post-presidential contribution is nothing more than helping Sinhalese understand through their ‘loss’ the losses of their Tamil brethren, it’s achievement enough. 

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Balachandran’s killers (the long-list)

It is claimed that there is new footage about terrorist leader Prabhakaran’s younger son’s last days.  There’s nothing ‘new’ though.  A photograph of the 12 year old Balachandran ‘surfaced’ just before the UNHRC Sessions in Geneva in 2012 and now, just weeks before the 2013 Sessions, another picture has ‘surfaced’.  The ‘new’ photograph shows Balachandran alive in a bunker.  The jury is out on whether or not this was an Army bunker or an LTTE bunker.  There’s nothing to show that the man who pulled the trigger was a soldier or if the boy was captured and shot dead. 

We do know that the environs of the Nandikadaal Lagoon were certainly not a place where anyone would loiter around.  Only a fool would set up a holding-facility anywhere close to where bloodthirsty terrorists were holed up.  We do know that people died.  We know that there was a lot of gunfire.  We know that when the US targets a Taliban or Al Qaeda hideout, there is no consideration of whether there are non-combatants, children included, in the vicinity.  We know that the LTTE was holding hostage hundreds of thousands of civilians. We know that the LTTE fired at civilians who tried to flee.  We know that families get separated. We know how Balachandran died, but we don’t know where and under what exact circumstances except that this was the end-point of a 30 year struggle against a brutal, merciless terrorist outfit.

There is speculation though.  There is treatment of speculation as established fact. There is a politics of ‘revelation’, evidenced by the strange coincidence of surfacing and UNHRC sessions.  There is also the larger issue of the politics of proportionality and selectivity. The accusers (who would censure Sri Lanka in Geneva once again) are guilty of established (not speculated) crimes against humanity and in particular ‘targeted killing of children to the tune of 4000 plus!’ There is also the silence about context, especially the contribution of the LTTE to the circumstances, before ‘Nandikadaa’ and during ‘Nandikadaal’.

The following extract from a Facebook exchange would throw light on the relevant politics.  It is between Rasika Jayakody, well-known journalist, Kath Noble, a political commentator and Rifkha Roshanaara, a student of international politics.

Rasika: Clinically speaking, is there a way of substantiating that Balachandan, Prabhakaran's son, was in military custody when the leaked pictures were taken? The same picture could also have been taken at a tiger camp/bunker, prior to his death in a cross-fire during the final stage of the battle.

Rifkha: Simple logic, but some are blind, that they cannot see the 'other' side or they simply refuse to use their common sense. And my question is why do they come up with such pictures and videos only when UNHRC sessions are round the corner? Have they able to prove the credibility of the videos they have come up with on previous instances.

Kath: They say that on the basis of the claim that the two pictures were taken with the same camera.

Rasika: There are truths, half-truths and lies. In the same way, there are facts, factoids and fabrications. But any allegation should be proven beyond reasonable doubt before prosecution.

Rasika (to Kath): Claims who?  Is the person who took the pictures willing to give evidence?

Kath: Claim those journalists.

In the end, we are left without source (like the claims made by Channel 4, the International Crisis Group, the Darusman Committee and such, and regurgitated by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch regarding 40,000-80,000 having being killed in the last days of the battle). 

But a little boy did die.  A little boy was in fact shot dead.  Few would not be moved by the photograph of this chubby, cuddly, little boy with bullet holes in chest, dead.  Few fathers and mothers would not look at those eyes and that still body and not have their thoughts stray to their own children.    A little boy the photograph of whose dead body is bandied in international forums but the hundreds of little boys and girls his father kidnapped and turned into child-soldiers are un-remembered, just like the hundreds of little boys and girls slaughtered upon the same father’s directive.  Or the boy who was sent to an Army ‘Receiving Center’ loaded with explosives in order to dissuade the Army from ‘receiving’ and hostages from escaping.  That’s politics.  But that politics doesn’t make his death any less tragic.  He need not have died and need not have died in this manner.

Who killed Balachandran? 

First: The person who pulled the trigger, either directing gun at the boy or spraying a larger target (fleeing civilians or terrorist hideout).    AS YET UNIDENTIFIED, in terms of name and group.

Second: The person who have the order to shoot. AS YET UNIDENTIFIED, in terms of name and group.

Third: All those who by errors of omission and commission did not allow the terrorist menace to be eradicated by arguing that the LTTE was invincible, that ‘the economy cannot handle it’, that ‘the international community will not allow it’ and so on, and thereby sped things along to Nandikadaal by May 2009.  IDENTIFIED: India (from dropping Dhal and giving Prabharakan a lease of life in 1987 with the Indo-Lanka Accord), Norway (bending over backwards to give the LTTE parity of status vis-à-vis the Government of Sri Lanka, USA (doing their utmost to evacuate Prabhakaran even at the last minute), I/NGOs, ‘journalists’, ‘academics’, ‘priests’ and others who consistently gave the LTTE the benefit of the doubt and tried to undermine military efforts.

Fourth: All those who directly or indirectly helped the LTTE by way of providing funds, arms, training and legitimacy through comprehensive white-washing or downplaying of crimes against humanity.  IDENTIFIED:  India, first and foremost. IDENTIFIED: pro-LTTE sections of Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates, including current chest-beaters who pump ignorant/pernicious human rights outfits (AI and HRW) and unscrupulous media outfits (Channel 4) with tall stories. IDENTIFIED:  Successive Governments that believed the LTTE could be talked out of war, most significantly, the Ranil Wickremesinghe regime of 2001-2004.    

Fifth:  All those who failed to listen to Tamil leaders when they first articulated grievances and made claims regarding traditional homelands, those who could have said ‘prove what you can and we’ll redress’ but did not.  All those who did not have the heart, wisdom and guts to acknowledge that every citizen belongs to this land and vice versa.  All those who refused to treat query with respect that demands answer.  All those who responded to chauvinism with chauvinism and those who did not need chauvinism to be chauvinistic.  IDENTIFIED: That’s us, all of us, folks.  We couldn’t save Balachandran. We couldn’t save Mahinsa.  We failed.

Sixth.  This is long.

The man who deliberately dragged the boy along, when the wives and children of other terrorist leaders such as Thamilselvan and Soosai were allowed to flee into the safety of the Sri Lankan security forces.  The man who put every civilian, every man, woman and child not engaged in battle, at risk by holding them hostage as per the need for a ‘human shield’.  The man who on countless occasions refused to engage in dialogue for conflict-resolution, banking on military capability to deliver the impossible.  The man who killed so many Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims in cold blood that it would be a tall order for any soldier who has seen comrades die and children slaughtered to show any mercy if he was chanced upon (not to mention the fact the practical stupidity of taking the risk of believing him to be unarmed).  A man who made it impossible to see any Tamil child anywhere close to LTTE fighters in anyway other than a ‘child soldier’.  IDENTIFIED: VELUPILLAI PRABHAKARAN.

 

 

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