Peace for the World World ! Your War Our Lives
The Dalai Lama
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Back to 500BC.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Roads not taken and their destinations
Featured image by NewsFirst
“Not only our actions, but also our inactions, become our destiny.”
Heinrich Zimmer (The King and the Corpse)
The authorities claimed that the young men were LTTE operatives, and
died when the bomb they were carrying exploded. The truth came out to
thanks to the courage of the District Medical Officer, Dr. Gamini
Gunatunga. Dr. Gunatunga, a Sinhalese, did the post-mortem and testified
that the victims had been shot to death.
At that point, the Rajapaksa administration had a choice – ensure an
impartial investigation, protect the witnesses, allow the courts to do
their job. It wasn’t as if the political authorities were unaware of the
truth. According to a Wikileaks cable, in a conversation with the then
American Ambassador, Basil Rajapaksa said, “We know the STF did it, but
the bullet and gun evidence show that they did not. They must have
separate guns when they want to kill someone.”[i]
The government had nothing to do with the murder. But it had everything
to do with the subversion of justice. The political authorities took a
political decision to banish law and install impunity in its stead. As a
result, the suspected killers, after a brief stint in remand, roamed
free while the families of the victims faced harassment and threats.
The Trinco-5 case was an early warning of what was to come, the myth of a
humanitarian operation with zero-civilian casualties. That myth was
enabled by a consistent policy of banding every dead or injured Tamil a
Tiger-victim or a Tiger. That policy began in earnest with Trinco-5.
From then on, impunity would be not partial (as it was previously) but
absolute. The result was a permissive environment in which even
preventable crimes and avoidable mistakes became inevitable. When the
aid workers massacre in Muttur happened a few months later, the UTHR
pointed out the connection. “One thing is certain about the ACF
killings. They would not have happened if minimally, timely disciplinary
action had been taken against SP Kapila Jayasekere once his role in the
Five Students outrage became widely known. Instead he was promoted to
SSP in July 2006.”[ii]
Ending impunity and bringing about justice was a key promise of the
Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration. But the steps taken in this
regard were small and hesitant. Instead of prosecuting at least some of
the crimes vigorously, the government dragged its feet, sent mixed
signals, and allowed a section of the defence establishment to blatantly
ignore court orders. As a result, justice remains undone, killers roam
free, and the foundation of future crimes are laid.
One of the most pernicious myths peddled by populist leaders is that
justice can be compartmentalised, that injustice can be rendered
non-contiguous. The Sinhala majority believed that the carte blanche given
to ‘war heroes’ would pose no threat to their own safety. Under
Rajapaksa rule, indifference to injustice in the North and the East was
turned into a patriotic duty. But impunity cannot be dammed or guided,
as the abduction-murder of two businessmen in Rathgama demonstrates yet
again. Had the victims been Tamil, they could have been called Tigers;
had they been Muslim, they could have been called Islamic
fundamentalists. Since they were Sinhala, there are attempts to claim
that they were members of the underworld, a euphemism used during the
Rajapaksa years to justify extra-judicial killing of Sinhalese.
Had the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration acted decisively to bring
justice to at least some victims of uniformed killers – such as the 12
young men suspected to have been abducted and murdered by a for-profit
Navy gang – the Rathgama crime might not have happened. The lesson is
clear; so long as members of the armed forces and the police are placed
above the law, and attempts to prosecute them for crimes committed is
depicted as acts of anti-patriotism, impunity will survive, and claim
its victims from anywhere in Sri Lanka, from any ethnic or religious
group, any walk of life, any profession, including the military and the
police.
The indivisibility of Injustice
During the Fourth Eelam War, General Parakrama Pannipitiya headed the
victorious Eastern offensive against the LTTE. In early 2009, he was
arrested by the police on a charge of treasure-hunting. The real reason
for the arrest was his ongoing conflict with Gen. Sarath Fonseka. In
2008, Gen. Pannipitiya’s security was withdrawn suddenly, and he was
forced to seek judicial intervention. The Supreme Court, overruling the
objections of the Attorney General, issued an interim order allowing
General Pannipitiya to use his staff quarters and retain vehicles and
escorts he was entitled to as Commander of the Security Forces (East).
In delivering the order, Justice Nimal Gamini Amaratunga said, “Over the
media, Api Wenuwen Api is aired every half an hour but people like the
petitioner don’t even have themselves.”[iii]
That was 2008, when the Mahinda-Gotabhaya-Fonseka triumvirate ruled the
roost. Post-war, the triumvirate fell apart, reportedly for the same
reasons Gen. Fonseka developed an enmity towards Gen. Pannipitya, the
division of spoils. Gen. Fonseka wanted his share of the glory, and the
Rajapaksas were not in a sharing mood. With himself out of favour, Gen.
Fonseka was unable to keep Gen. Pannipitiya incarcerated. After all, it
was not he but the Rajapaksa brothers who controlled the police and the
AG’s Department. In mid-2008, charges against Gen. Pannipitiya were
dropped, and he was freed. In a few months, Gen. Fonseka himself was
jailed on spurious charges.
In February 2010, Gen. Pannipitiya’s wife, in an interview with the state owned Daily News, revealed how her husband was persecuted by Gen. Fonseka, and called Gen. Fonseka’s own incarceration a “retribution of Kamma.”[iv] The
real reason for both miscarriages of justice was impunity. If the rule
of law prevailed, neither general would have been arrested for a crime
he didn’t commit. Sarath Fonseka could persecute Parakrama Pannipitya
because the rule of law had been replaced by the law of the rulers; the
Rajapaksa brothers could persecute Sarath Fonseka for the same reason.
Lord Acton in his famous letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton argued
against bestowing immunity on men in power: “You say that people in
authority are not to be snubbed or sneezed at…. I cannot accept your
canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a
favourable presumption that they did no wrong.”[v] The argument remains more valid than ever today, especially in places in Sri Lanka beset by all too many sacred cows.
Impunity corrodes morality and encourages crime. Eventually, impunity
saves none and can endanger all, including those who once enjoyed its
protection. In 2012, Minister Mervyn Silva’s son, Malaka Silva and his
friend Rehan Wijeratne assaulted Major Chandana Pradeep of the Military
Intelligence. Eventually the major was forced to take the blame on
himself, because the Rajapaksa brothers, those crusaders for the safety
and honour of war-heroes, opted not to back this particular war-hero.
Malaka Silva’s father was a favoured stooge; and Rehan Wijeratne’s
mother was the chairperson of the Ranjan Wijeratne Foundation which
funded the book, Gota’s War.[vi]
A similar outcome might be in the making today, concerning the killing
of a police inspector in Borella. The suspects are all
politically-connected brats, driving at breakneck speed. When the case
was taken up, journalists were not allowed to enter the court, an
indication of political interference. The President, who has appointed
himself as the guardian of the military and the police, is yet to
condemn this incident, or to visit the bereaved family. A similar
silence prevails in the UNP and the SLPP. In the end, the family members
of the inspector might find themselves in the same company as the
family members of Trinco-5 and innumerable other victims of impunity and
injustice.
Economic injustice lives on
Almost a decade after the war, defence continues to claim the largest
chunk of government expenditure. For the year of 2019, defence has been
allocated Rs. 393 billion, while health gets Rs. 187.4 billion and
primary and secondary education Rs. 105 billion.
To prevent a new Southern insurgency, Sri Lanka needs lower living costs
and higher living standards, better paying jobs and greater hope, not
more warships. To prevent a new outburst of separatism, Sri Lanka needs
reconciliation and reconstruction and a workable political solution, not
more military helicopters. Spending more on defence when the priorities
are clearly otherwise, will not make us safer; it will make us more
unsafe.
The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government could have explained the reality
to the people – more money for guns means less money for everything else
– education, health, a decent system of public transportation, better
roads and other basic infrastructure, more research and development. In a
war situation, such a trade-off makes sense; it is necessary. In a time
of peace it is criminally stupid.
In Sri Lanka, there’s no military-industrial complex. What is there is a
military-commercial complex. That military-commercial complex is as
much of a bar to reducing military expenditure as the military
industrial complex is in a country like the US. When expensive military
hardware is imported, local agents and their political backers benefit,
and benefit enormously. No wonder that we are buying helicopters instead
of building houses in the North, buying warships instead of upgrading
education in the Deep South.
Economic justice was a top promise of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe
administraiton. The leaders spoke about the iniquitous system of
taxation prevalent in Sri Lanka, blamed the Rajapaksas for imposing a
proportionately greater tax burden on the poor and the middle classes
than on the rich, and promised to correct the imbalance. Under Rajapaksa
rule, the ratio between indirect to direct taxes was a morally
unacceptable and economically damaging 80:20. By reducing the purchasing
power of a majority/plurality of people, such extreme levels of
taxation undermines the prospects of small and medium scale enterprises,
and thereby economic growth, and income and employment generation.
Budget 2019 provided the government with a last chance to deliver a
measure of fairness, of justice in the all important realm of economics.
It failed. And so long as that fundamental inequity remains unchanged,
the government will have no option but to impose more and more indirect
taxes on people who are less and less able to absorb the resultant
economic shocks. In the fortnight since the budget was presented, the
prices of fuel and bread has gone up, and the price of milk powder is
slated to follow suit. This is a path to greater inequality, a path
which will eventually veer away from democracy and carry Sri Lanka back
to the autocratic past, with the freely given consent of a majority of
her people.
Inequality is a choice, as Joseph Stiglitz pointed out.[vii] When
open democracies fail to address – or even acknowledge the gravity of –
inequality, an antithetical narrative gains ground, like now. According
to this narrative, the rampant and persistent inequality many countries
are afflicted by doesn’t stem from Hayek’s triumph over Keynes, the
codification of the Washington Consensus and the transformation of
trickle-down economics into an article of faith. Inequality, this
narrative claims, is a result of policies which favour the ‘Other,’ over
‘Us,’ The solution is the enthronement of a tough leader who can pack
off immigrants, keep minorities in place and return the country to its
‘real owners.’
In Sri Lanka, this trend is evident in the putative presidential
campaign of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. His political platform is built on a
carefully constructed narrative against liberal democracy. Rights are
dismissed as counterproductive, freedoms excoriated as dangerous and
democracy ridiculed as soft, flabby and ineffective. Complex problems
are simplified, depicted as solvable through the ruthless exercise of
Will by a powerful leader. In this narrative, warfare state is what a
country needs to stay safe and get ahead. If the war on terror is over,
there is always the war on crime, on drugs, on alien influences. And
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, reportedly chosen by Brother Mahinda as the SLPP
presidential candidate, is definitely the man to drive us to that future
of unending wars against eternal enemies.
[ii] Special Report No. 30: Unfinished Business of the Five Students and the ACF Cases – 1.4.2008
[iii] Daily Mirror – 1.3.2008
[vii] New York Times – 13.10.2013
