By

N. Sathiya Moorthy

Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has reiterated the government’s post-war apprehension that the mood of the international community, particularly the sentiments in the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu, could ‘discourage those pushing for devolution of power under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.’ Much as Colombo would have to share a lot of blame in this regard, after a point unbridled anti-Sri Lanka diatribe, including personal attacks on its leadership, could make the armed forces’ high concentration in the North a precondition for a political solution – which the local population and the international community despise.

It does not end there. The ‘Diaspora diplomats’ of the ‘LTTE cause’ have now targeted the US, the hand that they said was going to feed the Tamils in Sri Lanka. To them, the 2013 US resolution at the UNHRC had been ‘diluted.’ Yet, they declare from available platforms across the world that it has still taken them closer to their goal of a ‘separate State.’ They can now be expected to tell their people back home that the international community has cheated them, just as India and Norway had done, and they alone could fight for the cause dear to them, and for which they had suffered every loss known to mankind for long.

Between them, the government and the pro-LTTE ‘Diaspora diplomats’ (?) have the international community where they respectively want them. Independent of the government(s) in Colombo, the international community has to provide acceptable guarantees to the Sri Lankan State that they are not on any ‘separate State’ project. The ‘Diaspora diplomats’, with their Tamil vote-bank in host-nations, will want promises of an exact opposite kind, if it could be that blatant.

New Delhi may have been influenced by the ‘Tamil Nadu factor’ on matters of political reconciliation. It has not been influenced by the Tamil Nadu sentiments on ‘accountability issues’ per se. On both issues, the Indian position flows from Sri Lanka’s express commitments, nearer home and afar. On controversial issues such as the Channel IV ‘Balachandran campaign’, New Delhi has refused to bite the bullet.

Yet, New Delhi should have also understood what it means to have large military presence in a ‘hostile State’ like Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian debate on the withdrawal or the dilution of the Armed Forces Special Act (AFSA) is a pointer to any predicament that the Sri Lankan State would face after the promised September polls for the Northern Provincial Council.

The West may not have their own enclaves of the kind, but they have created Iraq and Afghanistan, for them to understand the problem. Their diplomats may have to talk to their own armed forces – and seriously so – to understand the differing perceptions and priorities. That should also apply to some of the serious concerns of human rights violations in the last stage of ‘Eelam War IV.’

‘Accountability issues’ in Sri Lanka allegedly involve large-scale loss of Tamil civilian lives in military attacks. The questions remain if they were unavoidable as in any other military operation (as in, say, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan), or were crude target-practice for the soldiers. No army wants skeletons tumbling out of their cupboard. Yet, for the Sri Lankan armed forces, any ‘credible and independent’ inquiry, as mentioned in the UNHRC resolution, could prove the numbers wrong – and possibly prove the ‘innocence’ or otherwise of those caught in the cross-fire.

Regretfully, the international community has to prove to the Sri Lankan State’s satisfaction that any inquiry of the kind will be independent and credible. The constitution of the Darusman Committee by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proved that they expected a higher figure than the 7,000-plus Tamil civilian deaths, put together by an earlier, equally ‘independent and credible’ study by the UN.

The Darusman Report did not provide any ‘credible’ evidence to its jacked up figure of 40,000 Tamil civilian deaths. Neither did it have any numbers for the number of LTTE cadres who might have been killed in the last phase of ‘Eelam War IV.’ The UN has still not answered the Sri Lankan queries on how the Report, meant exclusively for the personal consumption of the Secretary-General, was leaked to the media – and so was every follow-up step flowing from the Report.

The Sri Lankan State has put past suspicions ahead of a future political solution and consequent collective peace and prosperity for the nation as a whole. The TNA, as the ‘credible voice’ of the Tamil community left behind in the country, has abdicated its right and responsibility to the ‘Diaspora diplomats’ – and does not seem to know how and when to take it back, if at all they are capable of doing it. Together, they have the international community ending up doing what the ‘Diaspora diplomats’ want them to do – nothing more, nothing less.

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation)