Sri Lanka: Why military matters in the North?
27-May-2012

By Col. R. Hariharan

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Victory Day speech this year on May 19 was largely a defensive discourse justifying the continued presence large army formations in the North. The sense of triumphalism that had become hallmark of Victory Day speeches was missing this year.

This is understandable as the President’s speeches from last year onwards have become increasingly reactive as international focus on Sri Lanka in recent times had been presenting it in bad light. Many of Sri Lanka’s problems are based on age-old prejudices and three decades of bad blood between the ethnic communities. The President, working on a short term agenda of his own, had given a short shrift to international concerns. And after three years these concerns are becoming matters of national concern. So it is not surprising the President’s speech addressed these concerns. The hiatus between the President's line of reasoning and the U.S. comes out in bold relief, if his speech is luxtaposed against the scathing observations on security forces contained in the U.S. Country Report on Human Rights in Sri Lanka 2011 released on May 24.

The U.S. report said: “There were instances in which elements of the security forces acted independently of civilian control. The major human rights problems were unlawful killings by security forces and government-allied paramilitary groups, often in predominantly Tamil areas, which led many to regard them as politically motivated, and attacks on and harassment of civil society activists, persons viewed as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sympathizers, and journalists by persons allegedly tied to the government, which created an environment of fear and self-censorship. Full Story>>>