By
N. Sathiya Moorthy
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at an Iftaar Party-Pic: PTI
Independent of the voting pattern, the much-hyped UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka has left it almost where it had begun. There is thus the underlying admission that for ethnic peace in the island-nation to prevail, the whole-hearted support and involvement of the Government in Colombo is still the prime requisite.
In a way, the Diaspora Tamils and their advocates have won the battle for now. Yet, to the international community, it should have also brought out for once, their ‘hidden agenda’ of a ‘separate state’.
This has been behind the post-war nervousness of the Sri Lankan State more than perceptions – at times not unreal – about the hard-line ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ constituency denying the Tamils in the country a life of ‘dignity with equal rights and equal protection of the laws’ within a united Sri Lanka.
The Government cannot escape the blame for bunching all Tamils together and treating with suspicion that many of them did not deserve. This includes the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the one-time political front of the LTTE. They had stuck to their separate identity/identities even when the LTTE was around. Moderation has been their operative politics. If there was no need for the Government of the day to suspect the JVP after two insurgencies in as many decades once they announced their mainstreaming after being militarily neutralised, there had been no occasion for the State to suspect the TNA on any count at the conclusion of ‘Eelam War IV’.
The LTTE having been eliminated, the world came to believe in the war-time Sri Lankan promise of a Sri Lanka without terrorism would offer the promised political solution to end the ethnic strife. The dividing-line is thin, but clear. To the international community, elimination of the LTTE was only a means to an end. To Colombo, as it turned out, it was an end in itself – and nothing more. Or, that is the perception Sri Lanka ended up conveying to the world at large. The LTTE rump’s much-respected and equally feared propaganda machinery took care of the rest.
It is here the last-minute Indian intervention at the UNHRC on the US resolution, 25-13 with eight abstentions, too makes a difference. New Delhi has not isolated issues of war crimes to the Sri Lankan State and armed forces. ” We reiterate our call for an independent and credible investigation into allegations of human rights violations and loss of civilian lives,” is all that the Indian statement said. “We urge Sri Lanka to take forward measures to ensure accountability. We expect these measures to be to the satisfaction of the international community,” the Indian statement clarified, distinguishing it with demands for an ‘international’ inquiry into it.
In this context, India also noted the “invitation extended by Sri Lanka to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and urge her to undertake the visit at an early date”. It was possibly an indication of New Delhi’s dissatisfaction with Navi Pillay not honouring the invitation from a sovereign member-nation of the UN, when made – and with a purpose to which her office claimed to have committed, both on generalities and on specifics as in Sri Lanka. In saying as much, the Indian statement expressed the “hope that the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and UN Special Procedures continue their engagement in accordance with their mandate” – and not outside of it, as Colombo has been complaining almost from day one.
The crux remains the same as it did in March 2012. Despite what the US resolution has to say – the final draft also left a lot unsaid compared to the earlier ones – the effect of it all boils down to what the Sri Lankan Government had promised in the past, both in the UNHRC and even earlier. The Indian statement makes a pointed reference to the 2009 Sri Lankan promise at the UNHRC. It was a favourable resolution India worked to pass, along with unlikely allies like China and Pakistan.
This time too, the Indian statement refers only to what the Sri Lankan Government had promised – based on the LLRC and 13-A, apart from Northern Provincial Council polls. Like the other two, the Sri Lankan Government and President Mahinda Rajapaksa had added September 2013 polls to the Northern Provincial Council to the existing ethnic promises, in the months after the March 2012 UNHRC resolution. India did not move away from the Sri Lankan promises, but was only reminding Colombo of the unfulfilled commitments.
“India has always been of the view that the end of the conflict in Sri Lanka provided a unique opportunity to pursue a lasting political settlement, acceptable to all communities in Sri Lanka, including the Tamils,” India said, thus making no distinction between the Tamils and the rest of Sri Lanka’s population. In his much-misunderstood and/or mischievously misinterpreted Independence Day speech this year, President Rajapaksa said that the Tamils would not get more powers than the rest.
It is what equality is all about. It is what India reiterated at UNHRC-2013. As the Indian statement indicated, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution is unit-specific, and not ethnicity-specific. The Sri Lankan Government not having repudiated it through a sweeping constitutional amendment, President Rajapaksa could not have meant otherwise. Any other contestable comments from others in the Government should be deemed part of a ‘national discourse’ that refuses to take off.
It is here that President Rajapaksa’s call for a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on power-devolution assumes relevance. Rather than going in there with a sweeping mandate, it would make sense, including that of the ethnic variety if the agenda addresses the legitimate concerns of the TNA on what it would be all about. Maybe, the Government and the TNA need not go in to the PSC with pre-agreed specifics for the rest of the nation’s polity to attest it without much contribution or contest. Instead, the Government could say what the PSC would and would not discuss.
India may not have voted for Sri Lanka as 13 others did at the UNHRC, including Pakistan and many other South Asian and African nations. But they did not have to risk losing elected power nearer home as India’s Manmohan Singh Government in Sri Lanka’s cause was faced with. Prime Minister Singh and his Congress-led ruling UPA coalition put their heads on the block on Sri Lanka’s behalf. Neither Pakistan now, nor China when it was a voting-member at the UNHRC in March 2012 had to do as much.
There is a lesson in it for the Sri Lankan leadership, maybe. Trouble for the Manmohan Singh Government cropped up through the last-minute withdrawal of support by Tamil Nadu’s DMK partner in the ruling coalition at the Centre, flowed from Colombo’s un-kept promises, and nothing else. The Indian leadership faced it with pride and bravely so. Perceived as a ‘weak Prime Minister’ by allies and adversaries alike, Manmohan Singh has shown India’s neighbours what true ‘strength’ is all about in terms of values and commitments, both as a nation and as a person.
Against this, Sri Lankan politicos, particularly of the ruling SLFP-UPFA have often been arguing about ‘domestic electoral compulsions’ of the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ variety as the among the main reasons for the Colombo Government’s halting and vacillating position on enforcing even an existing solution to the ‘national problem’. What thus contributed to the stability of the Sri Lankan Government, over an issue pertaining to Sri Lanka was also the one that rocked the Indian boat.
Despite the Indian vote against Sri Lanka at Geneva twice in 12 months, there is possibly an inherent Indian commitment still of an unmentioned kind to stand by Sri Lanka on other issues flagged by the US resolution if the original commitments on full-fledged rehabilitation, wholesale reconstruction and political reconciliation are all kept. It is thus Sri Lanka’s turn to do what it owes to the nation’s Tamil population, and what it owes India and the rest of the international community in terms of commitments that still need to be kept.
That’s not asking for too much, considering in fact the majority commitment from India’s political majors outside of Tamil Nadu, not to encourage a parliamentary resolution on the lines the DMK wanted and in line with what it considered the ‘missing portions’ in the UNHRC resolution. If anything, it’s an insurance for future Indian commitments for a long time to come – starting with the post-poll scenario in India, due by May 2014. Sri Lanka has everything to gain by keeping to its commitment. India has everything to lose, if Sri Lanka were not to stand by those commitments, still.
(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation)