By

N Sathiya Moorthy

Twenty-five long years after its bloody conclusion, the JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake has now reportedly apologised for the 1987-89 insurgency. Another senior party leader K.D. Lal Kantha has however ‘clarified’ that the ‘apology’ was not for the ‘armed struggle’ per se but only for the ‘innocents killed during that period’.

There is a lesson in this for the TNA. The party and even the Northern Provincial Council (NPC), which is not tired of passing one resolution after another against the Centre, can take a leaf out of the JVP’s ‘apology’, however constricted the definition is. Most that died during the JVP insurgency were fellow-Sinhalese. There were Tamils and Muslims, too. The JVP should ask itself if it should address individual communities, too, given the conflicting issues and approaches that caused those deaths.
Though reduced to a miniscule minority in electoral politics after post-insurgency mainstreaming and democratisation, the party could also consider ‘apologising’ to the Sri Lankan State and the families of the security forces’ personnel who lost their lives in the ‘armed struggle’.

There were large-scale allegations of brutality against captured JVP cadres. Yet, most personnel of the security agencies were answering the ‘call of national duty’. Lal Kantha’s clarification would make it hard for the party to do so now. But the JVP cannot say one thing for the self and another for the LTTE – which again claimed to have been ‘fighting for a cause’, the ‘Tamil cause’ in its case.

Like the ‘first JVP insurgency’ of 1971, the second one too targetted the Sri Lankan State. Unlike the first, which was based on socio-economic equity/equality in true Marxian sense, the second one derived its sustenance from ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism’, a warped idea for a militant group claiming to be a part of the ‘global left’. The second insurgency was against the ‘Tamil cause’ but fewer Tamils were targetted. Most JVP victims of the time were Sinhala-Buddhists – Ministers and other politicians, officials and armed forces’ personnel – not to leave out innocent Sinhalese. Many of those ‘innocent Sinhalese’ had signed in for the JVP – and lost their lives at the hands of the armed forces – brutally at times, according to studies and reports of the times.
Targetting Each Other, No!

The JVP and the LTTE never really targetted each other. Separately and at the same time, they targetted the Sri Lankan State – and for exactly opposite ‘causes’ and ‘reasons’. But the LTTE also wantonly killed innocent Tamils and Sinhalese – Tamils, because they could ‘think’, and Sinhalese just because they were Sinhalese. Not long after, and for a short time, the LTTE added innocent Muslims to their blood-soaked hit-list. The fact that the Muslim victims of the LTTE were Tamil-speaking did not matter. It made matters worse for the Muslims in the LTTE-controlled North and East.

Post-LTTE, the Tamils are talking about three R’s – ‘retribution’, reconciliation, rehabilitation. ‘Retribution’ in this case relates to ‘accountability issues’ for which the Tamils have none yet to offer the Muslims. Nor do they have anything to say of the Upcountry Tamils or ‘Indian-origin Tamils’ (IOT). The latter became victims of the Sri Lankan State and the Constitution almost since the advent of Independence. At different times, they also fell victim of ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ marauders.

No figures seem to be available for the number of Upcountry Tamils who lost their lives in the crossfire of the push for Mullivaikal and the end-game of ‘Eelam War IV’. Upcountry Tamils had ‘resettled’ in the forested Vanni region when driven out by ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’ from their homes (or, whatever shanty tin-sheds that had passed off for houses) in previous decades. Their presence helped maintain the North-East corridor-linkage for the ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ almost since Independence. But to the Sri Lankan Tamils, they are still an ‘outcast’.

The Sri Lankan Tamils do not want to talk about any of it. Their political and social leaderships do not want to apologise to these communities and to the families of identifiable individuals – Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims, of whom there were many. Against this, they want not only an apology from the Government for the Tamil lives lost in the last months of ‘Eelam War IV’, but criminal action against the soldiers who answered the call of duty. The TNA needs to rethink its strategy on ‘accountability’ issues, when looking at larger political and/or social reconciliation.

The world does not talk about the Muslims and the Upcountry Tamils. Many of the nations that have voted in the UNHRC for an ‘international probe’ into ‘accountability issues’ in Sri Lanka for three years in a row now may not even know of them. ‘Accountability issues’ can cut both ways. Yet, questions remain.
If the ordinary soldier is not the target of the UNHRC probe (if it came to that) unless ‘illegality’ under the national laws and/or international conventions can be proved in individual cases, who else can be the target? The army commanders can be one target and the political leadership, the other.

Independent of the charges and evidence, if any, the TNA and the Tamils overwhelmingly endorsed Sarath Fonseka in the post-war presidential polls of 2010.

There were reports that many western nations had endorsed the same. Did they together exonerate the armed forces too on the ‘accountability’ front in one go at the time? After all the EU resolution on ‘accountability issues’ was pending before the UNHRC, when the war had reached the final stage. Within a fortnight after the war, the draft was voted out, however.

At UN fora, resolutions are won and lost, not because of facts and values. They are won and lost according to the cycle-change in the pattern of voting-members, their political positions, inter-dependence and IOUs. Year-2009 was as good or as bad as 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The LTTE too has to be held ‘accountable’ for all those killing of innocents and large-scale child recruitment. Under Sri Lankan law, it could include ‘waging a war on the Sri Lankan State’. The Government did not initiate any action then; nor has it not spoken about any action since. ‘Retribution’ cannot become the corner-stone of reconciliation.

If the soldiers and the commanders cannot be blamed on ‘accountability’ charges, where does the political leadership stand? If Government leaders, now or those before them, from the ‘language riots’ to ‘Pogrom-1983’, had to be held accountable, the Tamil political leadership in the militant era and under LTTE control cannot escape responsibility and liability.

The best way for them all is to kiss and make-up. No time is a bad time for it. Together, they can – and should – apologise to the nation and its people, and begin afresh. They should prepare their own people and the rest, to establish a new beginning.

Five years have been expended on extrapolation. Five years after the war, the Tamils need real reconciliation – not out-sourced retribution, call it ‘accountability’ or whatever. Even if it was to be effective from the UNHRC’s perspective, it is not going to help address the Tamils’ long-standing concerns and unmet aspirations.

Through decades of ethnic issues, politics and protests, war and violence, the Tamils always addressed the competitive Sinhala polity, which were daggers drawn at one another more than with the Tamils and their political leadership. They never ever tried to approach the Sinhala people over the head of the Sinhala polity.

Until the LTTE started neutralising the nation’s mainline (Sinhala) political leaders (and those of the Tamils), the UNP and the SLFP had their leaders, cadres and voters in the Tamil region. No one stopped the ITAK, the TULF and now the TNA from entering the Sinhala social and geographical arena for political interactions of whatever kind.

The TNA will have to learn from the SLMC, which continues to contest elections in Sinhala areas only to lose, but contest they do. Compared to the SLMC, for instance, the TNA has a larger national presence and acknowledgement – if not acceptance – beyond the Tamils and Tamil areas. They have a larger cause, which is acknowledged, too, as against LTTE terrorism and the threat to national security, unity and integrity.

The Tamils will have to begin somewhere. It is one thing for the TNA’s Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran to contest the presidency, as speculated, floated, or ‘planted’. He has promptly denied/declined it. It may be another for someone in his place to win such an election.

If an all-Opposition Tamil nominee for the presidential polls was to lose, now or ever, ‘ethnicity’ would not be the only reason, cause and justification. Yet, such a defeat would acknowledge greater acceptance. The Tamils should have reached that crossroad long ago. The fact that Justice Wigneswaran’s name got even remotely mentioned is a beginning, whatever the tactic employed.

The Tamils need to look at it positively. In the neighbourhood of a larger democracy, where a Zahir Hussain or Abdul Kalam, Zail Singh or Manmohan Singh could become President or Prime Minister, the unthinkable can happen.

For that to happen, the Tamils need to think – think positively, not prohibitively. They should shun negativism lest they should end up arguing that in India, neither the President, nor the Prime Minister, is elected through a direct, popular vote.

It is not as if the ‘majority community’ alone suffers from a ‘minority complex’. The ‘minority community’ also suffers from a ‘majority complex’. Worse still, the ‘minority community’ suffers from a ‘minority complex’, as well – just as the ‘majority community’ too suffers from a ‘majority complex’.
Confusing and confounding? That’s what Sri Lanka politics was, is and will be – but should not have been and should not be.

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