China's Sri Lanka port raises concern

China's construction of a port in Sri Lanka and a Chinese admiral's suggestion Beijing build a naval base in the Gulf of Aden has raised fears in the Middle East that a confrontation between China and India is looming along vital energy export routes.

Both the Asian titans, whose economies continue to expand despite the global financial meltdown, are heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil and will become more so as supplies dwindle.

The Indians are building their naval forces across these vital shipping lanes through which some 85 percent of China's oil supplies pass along with raw materials from Africa.

Inevitably, these will increasingly encroach on Middle Eastern and African waters as Beijing seeks to protect the economic arteries on which it is becoming increasingly dependent all the way from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea.

This is causing grave concern in India, which is vying for the same energy and mineral resources as China.

This raises the prospect, distant though it may be, of a confrontation between the two. The region is vital too for the Gulf states as an energy export and trading route as they increasingly look eastward.

There is also the possibility that one day China and the United States, which has long been the dominant naval force in the Indian Ocean, may also clash.

New Delhi views China's efforts to expand its regional clout through its "string of pearls" strategy -- ringing India with naval bases and electronic listening posts -- as an attempt to muscle into waters India has long considered its own.

Indeed, the Chinese are seeking to protect their maritime trade further east as well in the Strait of Malacca, a major shipping choke point between Malaysia and Indonesia that links the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Beijing wants to ensure unhindered access to the narrow waterway for its energy shipments.

The construction of the $1 billion container port at Hambantota, until recently a fishing hamlet on Sri Lanka's southeastern coast, illustrates how the Chinese thrust into the Indian Ocean is becoming more pronounced.

The deep-water port will include a development zone and an oil refinery.

Over the last few years, the Chinese have built a similar port at Gwadar on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, which will eventually be the terminal for pipelines carrying Gulf crude and natural gas to western China.

Another is planned at Chittagong in Bangladesh, an oil refinery terminal in the northern Bay of Bengal east of India.

These could become bases for China's growing submarine fleet, a potential threat to the arterial shipping lanes running east from the Persian Gulf.

The Chinese are reported to have established a naval base in Myanmar and intelligence surveillance bases on islands across the Bay of Bengal.

Another is reportedly being built on Marao Island in the Maldives chain that runs south toward the British base of Diego Garcia, currently manned by U.S. forces.

Beijing says it has no interest in establishing major foreign bases so far from home. But as its economy mushrooms and its naval forces swell, it will inevitably require bases to project its growing power.

China is reported to be interested in establishing facilities in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Thailand.

In December, Rear Adm. Yin Zhou, a senior officer at the Chinese navy's Equipment Research Center, proposed a naval base be established in the Gulf of Aden, which would take Chinese expansion even further west than it is now.

Ostensibly, Yin's idea was to support China's naval flotilla attached to the international anti-piracy task force deployed off Somalia.

There is no question that piracy is a growing problem, not only in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, but in the Strait of Malacca and elsewhere.

The International Maritime Bureau, which monitors global piracy, said there were 42 attacks on oil tankers around the world in 2009, a 40 percent increase over 2008. And most took place off Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula.

But given China's naval expansion, it would make sense for Beijing to seek a military foothold in the Gulf of Aden, adding another strategic dimension and threat of conflict to a region already riddled with risk.

© United Press International

Related articles

• India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia (The New York Times)
• China rejects concerns on H'bantota (Daily Mirror)
• Chinese help for Hambantota port for 'commercial purposes' (Zee News)
• U.S. Report on Sri Lanka Urges New Approach (The New York Times

Read More

Summary only

“Deeply Divided”: Sri Lanka through the eyes of Adele Barker

by Mandy Van Deven - During the year she taught Russian literature at the University of Peradeniya in Kandy, Sri Lanka, Arizona University professor Adele Barker found herself more comfortable in the role of perpetual learner than educator. Barker’s apt and thoughtful descriptions of being a fish out of water provide an excellent place of departure for the detailed exploration of the current social, cultural, and political struggles of her temporary home.

In Not Quite Paradise: An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka she offers a profound historical reflection written with accessible prose and a desire to present an evenhanded look at the country’s precarious past—a past we continue to see play out in the immediate aftermath of a 26-year civil war and last week’s dissolution of the country’s Parliament.

Barker is aware of her own complicated position as a colonial outsider in the bittersweet story she shares, and smartly uses her power to leverage an increasing awareness of the challenges faced by this small South Asian country that has been persistently ravaged by conflict and a recent natural disaster that stunned the world.

Given that your professional background is completely unrelated to Sri Lanka, what inspired you to live there for two years?

The simple answer is that I landed there serendipitously. I had applied for a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant in 2000 and originally thought I would be sent to either Jordan or India. Then I got a call from the Fulbright Office telling me I would have a better chance of getting the award if I reformulated my application to teach in Sri Lanka—and that’s what I did.

On a deeper level, I needed a change. I had spent most of my adult life as a Soviet Studies specialist, and to be frank, when the Soviet Union collapsed the country lost its cache for a lot of us because the very things that had attracted us to studying it disappeared overnight. This was part of the malaise I felt, but I also wanted to explore other genres of writing. Although I knew I wanted a book to come out of the experience of living in Sri Lanka, I had no idea what form it would take, nor did I know I would keep going back to the island after my teaching duties were over.

How did the book begin to take shape?

The events on the island took over my life and the narrative of the book I was writing. After I came back to the U.S. in 2002, I worked on the book for a year and a half, but it just didn’t feel right. Sri Lanka was in the midst of a 26-year civil war, and I was writing about how the war had been eating away at the country from only one side. I had lived too much in Sinhalese society and not enough in the Tamil north, so I needed a more balanced perspective. Of course, what ultimately drove me back to Sri Lanka was the tsunami in December 2004. I returned several months after that happened and spent another eight months there. During that trip, I finally got up to Tamil territory, and needless to say, most of the book had to be totally rewritten.

"Not Quite Paradise" ends up as an interesting mash up of memoir and historical non-fiction. How did these two genres come together?

There are travel writers I really admire, like Rory Stewart, who wrote this amazing book called The Places in Between about walking across Afghanistan. He leaves himself out of the book until the end and then breaks your heart with what he says about himself and his dog! I thought that might have been the easiest way to go, but I just couldn’t do it. Too much of what I was writing was filtered through my experiences. I knew this would be a highly subjective book, so I reached for a way to blend the genres of travel writing and memoir. I held back details of my life because I didn’t want my story to overshadow the story of the country, which had its own persuasive and emotional narrative. It was really hard to strike the right balance, and I still wonder if I got it right.

Your desire for balance comes across in the writing, which tends more toward observation than analysis. Much of the book is simply storytelling, with a reliance on the reader to draw one’s own conclusions. How did you record these memories in the making?

I spent a lot of time recording things in my journal and writing long emails to the folks on my listserv; in fact, I was obsessive about it.

When you land in a place that is a 180 degree turn from where you are from, everything seems either exotic or completely incomprehensible. I recorded a lot about things I didn’t understand. I kept wondering why people would pass their screaming children under the belly of an elephant or why it mattered what day of the week it was when a gecko fell onto my head or why my housekeeper came on a day when she was not supposed to work to kill the thousands of ants that had taken up residence in our kitchen and then disappeared back up the hills again.

The tenor of my journals changed over time as I became more aware of the history of conflict in the country. I came to understand how it was impacting my everyday world—and that, of course, affected what I wrote.

About mid-way through the book, your focus shifts to the 2004 tsunami, where it remains until the end. The tone becomes more activist than observer. What effect did the tsunami have on your writing?

The tsunami turned people’s lives upside down, and it did something to my own as well. The central eastern shore took a direct hit on the morning of December 26, 2004, and I did a lot of walking along the southern and eastern shores when I went back afterward. I met people who talked freely about what had happened and people who couldn’t access their emotions at all. The tsunami is just one part of the historical trauma of the island. Just as catastrophic as “the day the sea came to the land,” which is how Sri Lankans refer to the tsunami, is the 26-year civil war that, at least militarily, came to an end in May with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers—but it’s far from over.

Statistics differ, but it is probably fair to say that roughly 48,000 Sri Lankans were killed in the tsunami. Twice that number have been killed in the war. The casualty figures in the final weeks of the civil war in April and May of 2009 were horrendous. Innocent civilians got caught in the crossfire and used as human shields by both sides. Those who survived were put in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The current president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who just won re-election, promised to have all of them out of the IDP camps by the end of December, but that still hasn’t happened. There are huge resettlement problems on the island. People don’t have homes or families to go back to. In some cases, they are separated from their families because one person is in one camp and their family members are in another.

I think constantly about how I can help and I go back and forth about whether writing is enough. Increasingly, it feels like it isn’t. Given the actions of the current government in Sri Lanka, one of the few things I feel I can do is write about the situation and bring attention to issues that are under-reported, or not reported at all. It strikes me as odd for instance that the American media does not report the situation in Sri Lanka more than it does given the fact that the country is one of the most dangerous in the world for journalists.

You address the country's unrest as being the result of "ethnic" conflict; however, there are some who claim the conflict is not ethnic, but political.

I’m not sure you can draw a distinction between ethnic and political concerns in the Sri Lankan civil war because the two have become almost indistinguishable. Many people point to Sinhala being made the sole official language in 1956, which enraged many Tamils, as the chief catalyst for the war. In Sri Lanka, ethnic affiliation is closely tied to one’s language, and the Sinhalese and Tamils speak languages that are in no way linguistically related. The language issue never got settled to the satisfaction of many Tamils, and when the Tamil Tigers came into being in the early 1970s, the issue wasn’t just about language anymore; it was about the right to an independent homeland for the Tamils.

One of the horrible problems in this war is that each side felt as if its very existence was threatened by the other. The civil war had all the hallmarks of an ethnic conflict that was improperly handled politically. That situation continues today.

What are your thoughts on Rajapaksa's recent dissolution of Parliament?

I think it’s another nail in the coffin for true democracy in Sri Lanka. Since Rajapaksa came to office in 2005, charges of corruption and nepotism have dogged his administration. He ran on a promise to defeat the Tamil Tigers, and in May of last year, he did just that. Rajapaksa rode the crest of the military victory to an electoral victory. His electoral opponent, General Sarath Fonseka, was the Commander of the Army at the time the war ended, and when I left Sri Lanka several weeks ago, I had a sense that Fonseka was going to win the election. Frankly, I was shocked at the results. Today General Fonseka is being held under arrest, charged with planning a military coup against the government.

Sri Lanka has witnessed an increase of censorship during Rajapaksa’s first presidential term (18 journalists who spoke out against the government have been murdered). The government remains reluctant to address the lack of equal rights and Parliamentary representation for Tamils, which is what led to the war to begin with, or the hindrances to resettlement and government aid for the Tamil North. Rajapaksa also has worldwide humanitarian organizations to deal with, and his government is under investigation for genocide committed in the final weeks of the war. Military victory was just the beginning of what needs to be done on the island. Otherwise, you don’t have peace, only the absence of war.

In a sense, Not Quite Paradise functions as a platform through which the voices of ordinary Sri Lankans can be heard. What do you want people to hear them saying?

I heard many stories in the years I was in Sri Lanka: personal stories, stories about the day the sea came to the land, stories about the war. What made a huge impression on me was how deeply divided the country is over the ethnic conflict. The decades-long lack of communication and severely limited contact between both sides has resulted in widespread myths and misinformation. In addition the violence that each side has inflicted on the other, each has come to see itself as uniquely victimized, and I think most people have gotten to the point where they just want the war over, perhaps at whatever cost.

People in Colombo have lived for 26 years not knowing if a bomb was going to go off in the bus they were riding that morning. When I warned a friend not to take the bus after a flare up of violence in 2006, she looked at me incredulously and said, “This is our life. This is how we live. We don’t know how to live otherwise.” I think learning how to live otherwise and finding a way to heal is going to take a long time, and I am not completely convinced that the current government is going to do what is necessary to help heal the ethnic rifts in this country. It is a sad time.

Mandy Van Deven is a freelance writer and the founder of the Feminist Review blog. Focusing on gender, politics, and popular culture, her work has appeared in various online and print media, including AlterNet, Bitch, In These Times, and make/shift. Mandy worked for over ten years as a grassroots organizer in New York and Atlanta. She is an avid and enthusiastic world traveler who has collected friends in countries all over the globe. Mandy currently lives in Kolkata, India.

© The Women’s International Perspective

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka wins a war and diminishes democracy

By Barbara Crossette - In its 62 years of independence, Sri Lanka has never had a better chance than it has now to stamp out the last fires of ethnic hatred, violence and mindless chauvinisms that have left over 80,000 people dead in civil wars across one of the most physically beautiful countries in Asia.

Tragically for all Sri Lankans, it looks as if its increasingly autocratic president, reelected in January on a surge of Sinhala triumphalism following the defeat of a Tamil rebel army, is determined to let this hopeful moment pass. Not only a lasting peace between the Tamils and Sinhalese is at stake but also the multiparty democracy that set the country apart from many of its neighbors.

Why should a descent into misgovernment in a nation of 21.3 million people on a relatively small island off the coast of India matter to people anywhere else? This isn't Zimbabwe or Bosnia or Haiti. Not yet. But it is one of the newest examples -- streamed live on the Web if not much present in the American media -- of a post colonial collapse. Kenya is another. It is a phenomenon worth study.

Sri Lanka was once the most advanced nation in South Asia by measures of human development. Literacy, education levels and social services are all still higher than in neighboring Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The country has no external enemies. Women have held high office for decades. There was a lively press and a functioning two-party system, albeit dominated by mostly people drawn from elite families.

Now journalists live in fear, are killed, disappear or flee. (The president has just named himself information minister, to make matters more menacing.) The leader of the opposition party who dared to challenge the incumbent in the January presidential election has been detained, so far without formal charges. The Tamils, who voted overwhelmingly for him, wait fearfully for the payback.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa wanted all the credit for the defeat last year of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the death of its ruthless leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Rajapaksa decisively defeated his opponent, the war hero Sarath Fonseka, in part because he was rewarded by Sinhala voters - who comprise more than two-thirds of the population -- for being the leader who made the country safe again.

The Tamil Tigers were a totalitarian movement that instilled terror with mass indiscriminate killing of civilians, and introduced suicide bombing to assassinate a generation of leaders, both Tamil and Sinhala.

Poor people were often the victims. They had to ride the vulnerable buses and stand in lines at government buildings or on train platforms that were always at risk of being blown up. Innocent Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus died. The Tigers assassinated numerous ministers and one president, and tried but failed to kill another. They murdered Tamils who questioned their tactics, among them the country's leading human rights lawyer, Neelan Tiruchelvam, and a respected former foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar.

They also killed Rajiv Gandhi as he campaigned to regain the prime ministership in India in 1991. In 1987 he had reversed the Indian policy of using intelligence operatives to arm and train Tamils to keep the pro-Western Sri Lankan government off balance. Gandhi sent Indian peacekeeping troops to the island to disarm the Tigers, and made himself a marked man.

The Tigers were a heavily armed movement that never deserved the ill-informed sympathy it got outside Sri Lanka. Many Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims, a separate ethnic group descended from seafarers who crossed the Indian Ocean centuries ago, were trapped in the Tigers' grip and welcomed the end of fighting and oppression. Overseas, Tamils said they were coerced into giving money to support the war, and may still be as the rebels try to regroup. A very sophisticated public relations campaign told a compelling story that was never more than only partially true.

Tamils in Sri Lanka - both those in the north and another very different Tamil population in the central tea plantation country who never joined the militants - certainly had and still have serious grievances. Favored by British colonial administrators for their high education levels and linguistic skills, they aroused resentment among the Sinhalese. In 1956, Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, adopted a chauvinist policy that made Sinhala the sole national language and gave prominence to Buddhism, practiced by the majority of the Sinhalese. (He was assassinated three years later by an enraged monk who thought the prime minister hadn't gone far enough.)

In the ensuing years, Tamil communities were attacked and hundreds of people were killed or had their property destroyed. There was a widespread feeling of marginalization, which persists, whatever the fate of the Tigers.

In this environment, a victorious Sinhala-led government in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, would be expected to take the opportunity to extend a magnanimous hand to the Tamils, especially in the north, if only to insure lasting peace. The Tamil cultural and historical capital, Jaffna, has been wantonly damaged by the Sri Lankan military and needs rebuilding both materially as well as in spirit. Tamil families struggling back to normal life after months in squalid detention camps set up after the war last spring lack many basic necessities.

The World Bank and United Nations offer help, but it is only occasionally and, some international aid workers say, grudgingly accepted. The Sinhalese have apparently persuaded themselves against all evidence that the outside world is against them. A Sri Lanka writer described this to me as a "majority with a minority complex."

Sri Lankans who deplore what is becoming of their country manage to keep hope alive. Fonseka, the defeated presidential candidate, has appealed to the courts for his release. A parliamentary election is coming. The institutions are still in place, at least for now.

© The Nation

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lankan Police and Sri Lanka’s President’s Guards trained in India

Sathyalaya Ramakrishnan - The Sri Lankan uniformed personals including senior police officials ranging from the rank of superintendent of police to Sub-Inspector of Police, who are engaged in the security of the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa have completed their two-month long special training at Haryana Police Academy, Madhuban.

It is learnt that further 100 more such police officials would be trained in the Academy.

As many as 99 police officials of Sri Lanka have already undergone training at this Academy in 2008, an official spokesman of the Academy said on Thursday.

The Bureau of Police Research and Development has, on the directions of External Affairs Ministry, chosen Haryana Police Academy to impart training to police contingents of other countries.

The Haryana Police Academy, Madhuban has already received ISO 9001:2001 certification which is given at an international level.

Speaking on a farewell function organized at the Academy for the officials of Sri Lanka, Haryana Director General of Police (DGP) Mr Ranjiv Dalal said it was a matter of immense pride for the Haryana Police Academy to train these Sri Lankan police officials.

Further he said one could easily realize that the security of the President was quite sensitive in view of terrorist activities in Sri Lanka.

Under Haryana Police Act, 2007, community policing has been made an integral part of police training. ''The Haryana Police has not only adopted modern techniques, but also motivated the police personnel to discharge their duties impartially,'' he added..

"Training to police contingents is already given to other states including Nagaland, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Chandigarh and also to Andaman and Nicobar. Among units of paramilitary forces which were trained at the Academy were Central Industrial Security Force and Central Research Bureau units", Said the Police Academy Director V N Ra.

© Asian Tribune

Related articles

• Sri Lanka Defence Secretary visits India (Pakistan Defence Forum)
• Sri Lanka IOC unit back in profit (Lanka Business Online)

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lankan parties part ways

B. Muralidhar Reddy - Sri Lanka's mainstream opposition parties, which demonstrated a rare unity by backing the presidential candidature of the former Army Chief, Sarath Fonseka, have decided to part ways and form their own alliances for the April 8 parliamentary election.

The (UNP) has decided to fight under its own election symbol and is wooing several smaller opposition parties that had thrown their weight behind General (retired) Fonseka.

So far, Mangala Samaraweera, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) led by Rauff Hakeem and the Democratic People's Front (DPF) led by Mano Ganeshan have agreed to contest under the UNP symbol.

Ironically, the man who brought the opposition parties together, General (retired) Fonseka, is expected to lead an alliance floated by the JVP. The JVP is expected to fight the election as the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) under the leadership of the retired General.

It would be an uphill task for the two opposition alliances in facing up to the buoyant ruling combine, the United Party Freedom Alliance led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The signs of disunity in the opposition were evident soon after the presidential election result was announced.

While Ranil Wickremsinghe, leader of the main opposition party chose to describe the election as fair, the JVP dubbed the Mr. Rajpaksa's victory the biggest computer fraud in the nation's electoral history.

Release ordered

Meanwhile, a court ordered the release of 14 supporters of General (retired) Sarath Fonseka. They were held on February 8 in a raid on the election office of General (retired) Fonseka on the charges that they were part of a coup to overthrow the Mahinda Rajapaksa government.

Local media reports said Colombo Magistrate Champa Rajaratne released the accused, including 10 retired Army officers, as the police had failed to establish their involvement in the alleged plot by the ex-General.

The General is under military custody and being tried under military rules as he had quit the service less than six months ago.

© The Hindu

Read More

Summary only

STILL MISSING AFTER 25 DAYS: WHERE IS PRAGEETH?

ACT NOW! SEND AN APPEAL - Click Here!

By Olindhi Jayasundere - Missing journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda’s wife Sandhya said yesterday the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka was examining the information collected so far by the Mirihana Police.

Ms. Eknaligoda said the HRC had asked her family members and the Mirihana Police officials involved in the investigations to come to the HRC office to find out how the investigations were progressing.

“It is nearly a month since my husband went missing and I still don’t know where he is. I have sought information from the police many times but there isstill no news of him,” she lamented.

Ms. Eknaligoda said their children were disturbed by their father’s disappearance and that she herself was feeling helpless.

“My younger son believes he may be dead. He does not want to go to school because he does not want to face the other children,” she said.

Ms. Eknaligoda said when she first went to the police she was told the investigation would be completed in two or three days.

“When I spoke to the police, I was told they are yet to begin the investigations but will do so soon. I can not understand why the investigations are being delayed,” she said.

Ms. Eknaligoda said that according to Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena the Police have the information in a week and she was hopeful of receiving some news soon.

“I cannot sleep anymore and I don’t think I will until I know where my husband is. Please help me find him,” she pleaded.

© Daily Mirror

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka monks put off meet fearing unrest

Sri Lanka's top Buddhist monks postponed Wednesday a gathering to press for the release from military custody of defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka, citing safety concerns.

The conference, bringing together the heads of all the island's major Buddhist sects, had been scheduled for Thursday.

"Given the current political climate in the country and considering the safety of the monks and laymen, the chief priests decided to put off their gathering," the monks said in a joint statement.

The postponement followed strong criticism of the monks in the state-run media for dabbling in politics, after they sent a letter to President Mahinda Rajapakse condemning former army chief Fonseka's arrest and urging his immediate release.

As the battlefield architect of the victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels last May, Fonseka was feted as a national hero for finally crushing their 37-year campaign for an independent Tamil homeland.

After falling out with Rajapakse, he quit the army in November and ran against the president in elections on January 26. Rajapakse won comfortably, and two weeks later Fonseka was taken into military custody.

He is currently awaiting court martial on unspecified charges of conspiring against the government while he was head of the army.

Sri Lanka's Supreme Court has agreed to hear a petition submitted by Fonseka's wife calling for his arrest to be ruled illegal.

Fonseka's detention has triggered violent protests in Colombo and other parts of Sri Lanka and drawn expressions of concern from the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and several other countries.

© AFP

Read More

Summary only

Freedom under threat in Sri Lanka

By Joe Leahy - As one drives towards Sri Lanka’s war-torn northern Jaffna Peninsula on the A9 Highway, the island’s main north-south arterial road, the landscape takes on echoes of the Somme, the French battlefield of the first world war. At the old front line between government-controlled Jaffna and the former Tamil Tiger rebel-held territory to the south, blackened coconut trees rise like telephone poles from the landscape, their palm leaf tops blown off by artillery fire.

Today, the guns have fallen silent, but this landscape and the war-damaged buildings of Jaffna, the former cultural and economic capital of Sri Lankan Tamil society, are testament to the island’s great capacity for violence.

The new government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who won re-election for a second term with an 18 percentage point lead last month, has a rare chance to reverse history and set Sri Lanka on a path towards ethnic rapprochement and prosperity.

But earlier this month, Mr Rajapaksa shocked domestic and international observers by arresting his main political opponent, General (retired) Sarath Fonseka. If such events are any guide, turmoil and violence may remain part of the Sri Lankan political landscape. A much-vaunted peace dividend is in danger of being squandered.

Sri Lanka’s victory last May over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist group was hard fought. The LTTE had battled for 25 years for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north and east. But its tyrannical leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, failed to read the global mood after the September 11 attacks on New York and continued to use indiscriminate terrorist tactics, including suicide bombings, leading to the group’s designation as a terrorist organisation in the west.

In 2006, Sri Lanka’s military began driving the LTTE out of long-held territories in the north and east. To minimise civilian deaths, it shelled near villages first to warn civilians to leave before intensifying assaults on LTTE positions. But then, at the end of the war, Sri Lanka courted world condemnation when the LTTE herded civilians into a small pocket on the east coast. Thousands of civilians were killed by air strikes and artillery, human rights groups say. Sri Lanka denied that it had used heavy ordnance and accused the west of being “pro-LTTE”.

In the meantime, civil rights in the capital Colombo and other areas in the south, far from the war, were compromised. Thugs attacked and murdered journalists and intimidated civil rights activists.

Presidential elections last month were a chance to set things back on a normal course. The poll turned into a contest between Mr Rajapaksa and his former army commander, Gen Fonseka, backed by a loose coalition of opposition parties. The emergence of a credible challenger to Mr Rajapaksa briefly led to a resurgence of debate and free speech. But the contest turned into a bitter personal rivalry, with Mr Rajapaksa feeling betrayed by his former ally. The opposition accused Mr Rajapaksa of violating electoral rules by using state media for his campaign, while the president accused the general of plotting a coup.

Not content with winning the poll, Mr Rajapaksa had the general arrested. Troops dragged him from an opposition party meeting. He remains in custody, awaiting a possible court martial or worse. With parliamentary elections due in April, civil rights and freedom of speech are once again under threat in Sri Lanka.

The loser from all of this could be the Tamil minority. While about two-thirds of the nearly 300,000 Tamil civilian refugees kept in detention camps after the war have been freed, their plight remains difficult. Their homes and livelihoods have been destroyed and the government seems disinclined towards a comprehensive political solution that would devolve some power to the Tamil regions.

Sri Lanka has been able to fend off a potential United Nations war crimes investigation with the help of allies such as China. But this week, the European Union suspended trading privileges for the island under its GSP Plus scheme.

Sri Lanka has everything to gain from settling the ghosts of its political past. Tourism is reviving and the country has started an advertising campaign, Visit Sri Lanka 2011.

But before it can truly welcome outsiders, the island needs to get its political house in order. Otherwise the Jaffna Peninsula may one day again hear the sound of gunfire.

The writer is the FT’s Mumbai bureau chief

© Financial Times

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka After the Presidential Election

Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda - Sri Lanka’s sixth presidential election was held on 26 January 2010. Although this election was constitutionally due at the end of 2011, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent president, advanced the election by two years. Rajapaksa obviously wanted to capitalise his huge popularity gained by crushing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militarily in May 2009. His main rival at the presidential election was his own former army commander, Sarath Fonseka, who strategised and executed a pretty ruthless and therefore successful war against the LTTE.

The dispute between Rajapaksa and Fonseka erupted ostensibly on the question of sharing the credit for the military victory. A deeper issue was also involved in this dispute. Rajapaksa and his brothers, who are very influential civilian officials of the administration, may have tried to curtail the influence of the military on the post-war policy process. Civilian politicians perhaps became aware of the need to restore the pre-war balance of power between them and the army. Obviously, this angered General Fonseka. The opposition which has been searching for a viable presidential candidate to pit against the popular President Rajapaksa wasted no time to entice General Fonseka to be its candidate.

Fonseka was also the centre of gravity of a new coalition which brought together the right wing United National Party (UNP), the left-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and a significant section of Tamil and Muslim political
parties. Notable among the latter was the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main parliamentary coalition of mainstream Tamil parties which had maintained political sympathies with the LTTE. Some influential dissident sections of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) of the Plantation Tamils also backed the opposition candidate.

At one level, the Rajapaksa Fonseka dispute showed that the war coalition which President Rajapaksa put together had cracked up from within. General Fonseka’s challenge to the incumbent president focused primarily on the issue of corruption and nepotism. These are, of course, governance issues. However, the debate during the election campaign was centred less on democratic reforms than on regime change. Broad policy issues were not in the campaign agenda of either of the two main candidates.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has now been re-elected with a comfortable majority of 58% of total votes cast. Amidst allegations of misuse of state resources and manipulation of results by the Rajapaksa camp, Sarath Fonseka has refused to concede defeat. He might challenge the election results before the Supreme Court, although it is surely a long-drawn out process with no immediate impact on the outcome of the election. Three key trends in the outcome of the election stand prominent. First, the electoral districts with concentration of ethnic minorities have overwhelmingly voted for the opposition candidate. Second, President Rajapaksa has got only very little support in the urban electorates, where ethnic minorities as well as the social elites represent a sizeable share of the voters. Third, and emanating from the first and the second, is the fact that President Rajapaksa’s main and strongest support base is in the rural districts and among the voters of the majority Sinhalese community.

These three factors might weigh heavily on the policy agenda of the Rajapaksa regime in its second term. One way to interpret these trends is to say that the minorities are clearly estranged from the Rajapaksa regime. In this post-election context, reaching out to ethnic minorities, particularly the Tamils, will be essential to address this deep sense of minority alienation and for Sri Lanka’s political stability. In a press interview to the NDTV Television Channel of India soon after the election result was announced, President Rajapaksa asserted that he had a “plan” to address minority grievances. No one in Sri Lanka seems to know the details of this plan. Even if he had a plan as such, President Rajapaksa will have to wait until after the parliamentary election which is due before April this year to disclose its contents. Even then, regional autonomy may not re-figure in any of these unilateral solutions from above.

The presidential election campaign as well as the post-election developments indicate quite clearly that Sri Lanka’s dominant political class is deeply and antagonistically divided. Reconciliation among them does not seem to be possible at present. The forthcoming parliamentary election will further sharpen these divisions and antagonisms. The tragedy of electoral democracy in Sri Lanka is that elections do not seem to help the political class to negotiate and settle their contradictions and resolve problems in the polity. Rather, elections compel the factions of the political class to resort to false agendas and, in turn, to invent and pursue enmities. Nevertheless, parliamentary elections will be crucial for Sri Lanka to allow a new political balance of forces to emerge in the country. Parliamentary elections as well as the post-election regime formation will show how political power will be reconfigured through coalitions.

Political Disequilibrium

The end of the violent civil war and the dramatic demise of the LTTE have created a significant political disequilibrium in Sri Lanka. Crucially, the LTTE was not there in January 2010 to shape the outcome of the presidential election, as was the case in 1994, 1999 and 2005. Meanwhile, although the war-coalition has disintegrated from within, a new post-civil war political equilibrium is yet to take shape. The parliamentary election will provide opportunities for the political actors to forge new alliances and redefine the constitution of the dominant power bloc in order to manage the post-civil war Sri Lankan state. Thus, although the civil war is over, the trajectory of the island’s post-civil war politics is still in the process of being formed. One has to suspend one’s assessment of the possible paths of Sri Lanka’s future politics until the shape of the new configuration of political forces becomes clearer during the first half of the year 2010.

Meanwhile, the agenda of democratic reforms and political rights of the minorities may not be at the centre of the political agenda of either the ruling party or the opposition. In the post-LTTE politics of Sri Lanka, the minority parties too may not pursue the state reform agenda with the same degree of ardour and commitment as in the past. They have become sensitive to the fact that the military victory over the LTTE has reaffirmed the hegemonic hold of majoritarianism over the Sri Lankan state. They also know that at present, unlike in the past, minority rights struggles have no dependable friends, globally or regionally. Entering into pragmatic coalitions with Sinhalese political parties and regimes for political survival is likely to occupy their attention in the near future.

Jayadeva Uyangoda (uyangoda@gmail.com) teaches political science at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

© Economic and Political Weekly

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: Towards a Rajapakse future

Tisaranee Gunasekara - The outcome of Sri Lanka’s presidential election removed the only real impediment to the dynastic project of the ruling Rajapakse family. Unsurprisingly Mahinda Rajapakse won the election. He obtained 57.9 percent of the valid vote, in sharp contrast to the 40.2 percent polled by his main rival, Sarath Fonseka, the former head of the Sri Lankan Army. As a consequence, President Rajapakse is within striking distance of establishing his family’s dominance over Sri Lanka for the foreseeable future.

His spectacular performance at the polls has made it possible for his ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) to hope for a two-thirds victory at the upcoming parliamentary election.

This would enable the president to effect the necessary constitutional changes to avoid mandatory retirement at the end of his second presidential term, either by removing presidential term limits or by replacing the executive presidency with an executive premiership sans term limits. The continuous airing of songs hailing Mahinda Rajapakse as the ‘King of Sri Lanka’ – by both state-owned and private television stations – is indicative of the Rajapakse future that is awaiting the divided island.

Though polling itself was peaceful, barring some marginal incidents, the election campaign was far from free and fair. As an obviously dispirited Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake admitted after the election, the state media and some state institutions acted in a markedly partisan manner throughout the campaign. Still, President Rajapakse’s large majority cannot be attributed (except incidentally) to the widespread abuse of state resources. Rather, he won because a majority of the Sinhalese constituency backed him, as a mark of appreciation for defeating the LTTE without making political concessions to the Tamils. For his part, Fonseka lost because his campaign failed to persuade disillusioned Tamils and demoralised members of the opposition United National Party (UNP) to overcome their apathy and vote for him in sufficient numbers.

No message

Notwithstanding the decisive victory over the LTTE and the consequent restoration of territorial unity and integrity after a hiatus of almost three decades, Sri Lanka remains a divided land, politically and psychologically. As the results of the presidential election demonstrate, the fault lines are ethnicity and religion, though an urban-rural divide is also discernible. Rajapakse won overwhelmingly in Sinhalese-majority districts, while Fonseka won in those districts in which Tamils and/or Muslims predominate. Rajapakse was clearly the choice of the Sinhalese; equally clearly, however, he was not the choice of either the Tamils or the Muslims. For his part, Fonseka failed to make any inroads into Rajapakse’s Sinhalese base. Rajapakse was able to get just 33.9 percent of the votes in the north and the east, while Fonseka’s average in the provinces outside of these two areas was just 35.1 percent.

These facts cannot but have an impact on the future trajectory of the Rajapakse administration, making it more ‘Sinhalese’ then ‘Sri Lankan’ in its attitude towards the minorities. Rajapakse contested and won the presidential election of 2005 on a revanchist platform, aiming to regain ‘lost’ territory; consequently, during his first term, he made a conscious effort to shift Sri Lanka towards a Sinhala-supremacist paradigm. After 2005, policies and practices, rhetoric and tactics that were considered Sinhala chauvinist, and thus unacceptable in the post-1987 conjuncture, came into vogue again.

This politico-ideological framework was evident during the presidential election campaign of 2010, with Rajapakse himself using coded racism to muster Sinhalese support. The Rajapakse campaign focused on ‘the need’ to save the ‘nation’ from a ‘resurgent separatist threat’, a euphemism for Fonseka’s electoral alliances with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). Rajapakse himself accused SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem of “trying to revive the separatist movement once spearheaded by the LTTE”. Rajapakse’s attitude towards Tamil concerns and demands was dismissive at best; at a meeting with media heads, he declared that the 13th Amendment, which focuses on devolution, had become “reduced to a mere political slogan”, and stated that he had no special message for the Tamil people.

Rajapakse was Sri Lanka’s first ‘Sinhalese only’ president, since he won his first term almost exclusively with Sinhalese votes. That fact had a major impact on his policies and practices during his first term – his unwillingness to come up with a political solution to the ‘ethnic problem’ and his callous conduct towards civilian Tamils during the ‘Fourth Eelam War’ being central cases in point. The results of the 2010 election are likely to reinforce the president’s Sinhalese bias. At the official post-victory press conference, Minister Champika Ranawaka, leader of the hardline Sinhala Buddhist party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a constituent of the ruling alliance, announced that the regime would work towards a “constitutional change suitable for the country”.

A Rajapakse constitution is likely to reflect the president’s Sinhalese bias, a function less of ideological predisposition than of politico-electoral necessity. Consequently, a Rajapakse constitution is likely to reverse the trend towards pluralist democracy inaugurated by the 13th Amendment, and recast Sri Lanka formally and legally in the old Sinhalese-supremacist mould. Tamil (and Muslim) opposition to such a move, and the government’s reaction to that dissent, could now recreate the old ethnic conflict in new (though hopefully peaceful) guises. It may also give rise to deep-rooted frustration that will keep the conflict alive in the minds of the disgruntled minorities.

Ominous beginning

In Sri Lanka, the post-election tradition is for the victor to crow and the vanquished to cry foul. This time around, the inconceivable overtook both reactions. In a surreal move, President Rajapakse got the army and police to surround the hotel in which Fonseka and other opposition leaders were staying. For almost 24 hours, downtown Colombo resembled the capital city of a Latin American autocracy. The fact that the ‘siege’ ended peacefully does not in any way mitigate the outrageous nature of the deed, nor reduce its portent, especially because this was no isolated event. The election campaign contained many such incidents, indicative of the regime’s willingness to use excessive force against the unarmed, democratic opposition – such as the failed attempt to search the office of the leader of the opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe, for illegal weapons.

The 2010 election campaign was also characterised by the persistent breaching of the necessary divide between the ruling party/family and the state. Not only did the ruling party abuse state resources; members of the ruling family also became involved in the campaign to an extent unprecedented since 1977. The best case in point was the key role played in the campaign by Tarunyata Hetak (A Tomorrow for the Youth) and Nil Balakaya (The Blue Battalion), two organisations founded and headed by the eldest presidential offspring, Namal Rajapakse.

The development symbolised a tendency towards substituting traditional party entities with newly created organisations owned by the ruling family. It marked not just the full takeover of the ruling party by the Rajapakses – including, in addition to the president, brother Chamal, the minister of irrigation, water management, ports and aviation; brother Gotabhaya, the secretary of defence; and brother Basil, an appointed member of parliament, senior presidential advisor and unofficial ‘development czar’. It also indicates a gradual merging of the ruling family and the state. The election campaign contained other unsavoury developments as well, such as senior army officers, in uniform, acting as the propaganda mouthpieces of the incumbent president and his government. The cumulative result of these abnormalities was the superimposition of the Rajapakse seal – not just on the ruling party and the government, but also on the Lankan state.

Buoyed by his overwhelming victory, President Rajapakse is likely to go for parliamentary polls as soon as it is feasible. Given his need to win a two-thirds majority to get the constitutional amendment he desires, it would make sense to strike while the iron is hot – before the glory of the victory is dimmed, before the reeling opposition revives, and before reality (in the form of increased economic hardship) intervenes. President Rajapakse is thus likely to act in an increasingly repressive manner towards the defeated and weakened opposition. The regime looks particularly likely to crack down on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, one of the few remaining potential sources of effective opposition.

Throughout his first term, President Rajapakse worked to gain the support of the Sinhalese majority for his dynastic project by depicting himself (and his brothers) as saviours of the (Sinhalese) nation. The outcome of the 2010 presidential election has demonstrated the success of this strategy. During the campaign, Rajapakse equated a vote for Fonseka with a vote for separatism; now, the parliamentary election too is likely to be fought as a political war between the ‘patriots’ and ‘traitors’, with the entire opposition cast in the latter role. This would enable the regime not only to retain the support of the Sinhalese majority, but also to justify repressive measures against the democratic opposition and continued marginalisation of the minorities. These seem to be the ingredients of the Rajapakse future.

Tisaranee Gunasekara is a writer based in Colombo.

© Himal - South Asian

Read More

Summary only