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Midweek Review

War crimes:

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UN going the whole hog

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The newly formed Civil Society Platform (CSP) on Monday (13) dealt with entire range of accountability issues and the re-imposition of a state of emergency on the pretext of addressing food distribution. The media received the comprehensive statement endorsed by 30 organisations, and 36 individuals, soon after the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) declared its intention to go ahead with fresh investigation, as mandated at the 46th session.

The hard-hitting CSP statement should be examined against the backdrop of a dialogue between a new collective of civil society activists, grouped as Sri Lankan Collective for Consensus (SLCC). The civil society appears to be divided over their strategy in respect of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government. However, UN Rights Chief, Michelle Bachelet, one-time Chilean President, in her hard-hitting statement, at the onset of the 48th session, made reference to the meeting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had with SLCC on August 3. That is a quite a development. But, nothing has changed in Geneva and the war-winning country is on the UN agenda.

A recent statement, issued by the Executive Director of the National Peace Council (NPC), Dr. Jehan Perera, on behalf of SLCC, dealt with several contentious issues.

The statement issued, subsequent to a meeting the group had with newly appointed Foreign Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris, raised the following issues: the declaration of State of Emergency, Cabinet of Ministers giving the go ahead for the Legal Draftsman to prepare ‘NGO legislation,’ continuing harassment of NGOs, abolition/amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (reference was made to those who had served the LTTE and the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage suspects), implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and holding of long-delayed Provincial Council polls, land issues in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, language issue, hate speech and misuse of the ICCPR Act, step-motherly treatment of Tamil-speaking people, by denying them participation at national events, and targeting of the Muslim community.

The above litany, however, sounds only too familiar and the chorus is the same. They have packaged themselves under the new name SLCC, but being backed by the West, have been pushing the same agenda for decades. The CSP is no different. No one ever bothered to ask for an explanation from the TNA for recognising the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil-speaking people, in 2001, thereby paving the way for the Eelam War IV a couple of years later. Similarly, no one ever inquired into the clandestine relationship between UN Colombo and the LTTE. Geneva is also silent about the origins of Sri Lanka terrorism (Indian intervention).

As happened in Afghanistan, with the now infamous independent media of the West, which unquestioningly only pushed the narrative of the military industrial complex of mainly the US and the UK, for decades, have now suddenly metamorphosed into finally questioning what went wrong, only after all their lies about Afghanistan and elsewhere began to crumble overnight. Interestingly, they are pointing fingers at everyone else, except at themselves, for not having done the job as an objective media. Theirs has been, for quite some time, an embedded media that cheered on the military industrial complex and the Wall Street. May be there, too, it was all due to filthy lucre.

Prof. Peiris, who had served as the Foreign Minister during the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term (2010-2015), received the same ministry on Aug 16. The academic, who once headed the government delegation for Oslo-arranged talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has assured the SLCC of the government’s readiness to work with the civil society.

The SLCC statement, headlined ‘Promise of a fresh approach for resolving national issues’, at the onset, insisted that the discussions the group so far had with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the then Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Justice Minister Ali Sabry, Youth and Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa, Regional Cooperation State Minister Tharaka Balasuriya and Foreign Secretary Admiral Jayanath Colombage failed to yield the desired results. So they still want the pound of flesh paid for by the West and nothing less?

Prof. Peiris seems confident that the government’s interaction with the civil society can be utilised in their dialogue with the international community, whereas the SLCC assured the new administration of its support to address concerns among the international community. However, their support would depend on the government’s readiness to address the issues raised by them.

In addition to Dr. Perera, who had represented Sri Lanka at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in March 2018, on the invitation of the late Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, several other prominent civil society activists joined the discussion with the government. It would be pertinent to mention that the SLCC has quite justly accepted that it did not represent, what it called, the larger civil society and recognised themselves as a group of individuals, drawn from multiple sectors of society, religion, academia and non-governmental organisations, dedicated to a country established on the high sounding ‘ideals of pluralistic coexistence, human rights and justice’, but found nowhere in the world, especially not among the self-appointed good guys of the West. Just look at how they still treat their Blacks, especially by their famed law enforcers.

The SLCC comprises (1)Ven. Kalupahana Piyaratana Thera – Inter religious Alliance National Unity, Chairman, Human Development Edification Centre working for peace Reconciliation and Ecology for more than 25 years. Peace activist for more than two decades (2) Bishop Asiri Perera – Retired Bishop/President of Methodist Church (3) Rev. Fr. C.G. Jeyakumar – Parish Priest Ilavalai and Lecturer at the Jaffna Major Seminary, Human Rights Activist (4) Dr. Joe William – Founder member and Chairman of National Peace Council, Director, Centre for Communication Training and Convenor, Alliance for Justice (5) Prof. T. Jayasingam – Director NPC, former Vice Chancellor of Eastern University and former member, Public Service Commission of the Eastern Provincial Council (6) Prof. Kalinga Tudor Silva – Professor Emeritus Dept of Sociology, University of Peradeniya (7) Dr. Dayani Panagoda – Social Activist, former director of Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process and Lecturer, former member of the Official Languages Commission (8) Ms. Visaka Dharmadasa – Peace Activist, Chair of Association of War Affected Women (9) Dr. Jehan Perera – Executive Director of NPC (10) Dr. P. Saravanamuttu – Founder and Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives (11) Hilmy Ahamed – Vice President, Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, Civil activist with 35 years of communicating on issues of Peace and Justice, Chairman of Young Asia Television (12) Sanjeewa Wimalagunarathna – Former Director of Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms (13) Rohana Hettiarachchi – Executive Director PAFFREL (14) Javid Yusuf – Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former Principal, Zahira College and Founder member and Governing Council member, National Peace Council NPC (15) Varnakulasingham Kamaladas – President, STA Solidarity Foundation, Vice President Batticaloa-Ampara Hindu Temples Federation, former President of Inland Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (INAYAM) Batticaloa, and (16) Ms. Sarah Arumugam – Human Rights Lawyer.

SLCC responds

Dr. Perera emphasized that they were prepared to work with any party to achieve genuine post-war national reconciliation.

The livewire behind the NPC Dr. Perera responded swiftly to several questions posed to him regarding the latest civil society initiative.

(1) The Island: Did the SLCC reach consensus with what it called ‘wider Sri Lanka civil society’ regarding the dialogue you are having with the SLPP administration?

SLCC:

No, we did not. SLCC is a loose collection of individuals drawn from civil society organisations that have reconciliation and peace building aims in their work. We have no one leader or office-bearers. Each of us is part of other networks where we have discussed the stands we take. But we do not speak as their representatives. Our common position is commitment to a united Sri Lanka that is founded on ideals of pluralistic coexistence, human rights and justice.

(2) The Island: When did you set up the SLCC?

SLCC:

We could say it was on June 23, 2021. That was the day we decided on our name. This followed two earlier consultations, organised by the Association of War Affected Women (AWAW), which were held in Kandy, to have an in depth discussion on the lessons learnt through our reconciliation process. We felt there was a need for a group, such as ours.

(3) The Island: Did you have discussions with the TNA (Tamil National Alliance) or other Tamil parties, represented in Parliament, regarding the current initiative?

SLCC:

We have not met with the TNA as yet, though we plan to meet them, and other parties, too. Earlier on we met with Charitha Herath of the SLPP, leader of the DPF Mano Ganesan, General Secretary of the SJB, Ranjith Madduma Bandara. More recently we met with Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa. We had arranged for a meeting with the Chairman of the National Movement for Social Justice, Karu Jayasuriya, but this was postponed and we hope to have it soon.

(4) The Island: Who decides the agenda?

SLCC:

Agendas of the meetings are decided by consensus, prior to the meeting, based on the need and the responsibilities of those whom we meet. Usually, following a self-introduction, we present the issues highlighted in the memorandums we have submitted.

(5) The Island: You represent the NPC, Dr. Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu represents the CPA and all others in the SLCC are members of various civil society groups. Do the SLCC members represent those organisations in the ongoing dialogue?

SLCC:

Those in the SLCC are mostly heads of organisations, who will naturally be in line with the positions of their organisations in any discussions on principle or decisions arrived at. But they are here as members in their personal capacities.

(6) The Island: Did the SLCC ever discuss these issues with the late Mangala Samaraweera?

SLCC:

No, we did not.

(7) The Island:

On the basis of BHC cables (Jan-May 2009), Lord Naseby, in Oct 2017, challenged the massacre claim of 40,000 on the Vanni east front as mentioned in the Darusman report. In June 2011, US Embassy staffer, Lt Col Smith, at the 2011 Defence Seminar, in Colombo, denied war crimes accusations (weeks after the release of Darusman report).

(8) The Island: Did government representatives or the SLCC referred to/discussed/raised the need to examine the BHC cables during discussions?

SLCC:

We limited our discussion to issues that we presented in our memorandums to them with a view to be forward looking. This included the Office of Missing Persons and its work. We did not discuss the death toll, at the end of the war, or issues of war crimes.

Contentious issues

Some of them had been involved in previous peace initiatives, including the Oslo project, finalised in Feb 2002. The SLCC has essentially pursued issues that had been taken up by a section of the international community (those who voted for Geneva resolutions or conveniently abstained) both during the conflict and after. Let me reproduce the SLCC’s stand on three key issues verbatim as mentioned in a memorandum handed over to Prof. Peiris.

Prevention of Terrorism Act:

Until the promised amendment of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, to cease using this law to detain people and to expedite the release of those taken into custody, under its draconian provisions, either on bail or totally where there is no legally valid evidence to justify their continued detention, especially when they have not even been charged. This applies to both long term LTTE prisoners and more recent Muslim prisoners with only a peripheral relation to the Easter Sunday bombings.

Provincial Councils:

Improve the implementation of the 13th Amendment and expedite the holding of provincial council elections so that the ethnic minorities may enjoy a measure of self-governance in the areas where they predominate.

Targeting of Minorities:

The issue of Muslims being targeted continues to fester in proposed legislation regarding personal law, the continuing refusal to permit burial of Covid victims, except in a single designated location and the imprisonment, without trial, of a large number of Muslim persons, following the Easter bombings. All communities need to feel that they have been fairly consulted and treated without discrimination for national reconciliation to become a reality.

The 13th Amendment is quite a contentious issue, especially against the backdrop of India stepping up pressure over its implementation. The government is in a quandary as regards the much delayed Provincial Council polls. Today, the government, the Opposition, the civil society and the international community had conveniently forgotten the origins of the Sri Lankan imbroglio. Clandestine Indian intervention long before the July 1983 riots, most probably precipitated by the then 20th Century Fox JRJ openly flirting with the idea of giving the Trincomalee deep harbour to the US. The subsequent building up of terrorist power, leading to the forcible deployment of the Indian Army in Northern and Eastern regions, in July 87, paved the way for the 13th Amendment. Sri Lanka almost disintegrated.

Unfortunately, successive governments quite clearly failed to examine the current situation in a proper perspective. There had never been a genuine attempt to set the record straight. The incumbent government, too, pathetically failed to address accountability issues properly. Dr. Perera’s response to The Island query, based on Lord Naseby’s challenge and Lt. Colonel Smith’s denial of war crimes accusations six years before, revealed the failure on the government’s part to recognise the threat facing the country’s unitary status. Prof. Peiris and the SLCC owed the public an explanation how they discussed matters, including Office of Missing Persons, or OMP, leaving the primary accusation that the military killed 40,000 Tamil civilians on the Vanni east front. That is the charge Sri Lanka continues to face in Geneva, though Prof. Peiris’s predecessor, Dinesh Gunawardena, declared, in the Feb-March 2020, sessions, the government’s decision to quit the 2015 resolution. In fact, Sri Lanka is now facing a new investigation and actions so far taken by the incumbent government seems insufficient. As long as HRC turns a Nelsonia eye to all the grave crimes the West has committed and continuing to commit, from Palestine to Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc., how can we expect any fairplay from it. Maybe Minister Gunawardena played the only card there, we could have played, considering the ground realities.

The rationale in seeking the support of the civil society should be studied, taking into consideration the government’s failure to revisit accountability issues. Instead, having repeatedly promised the electorate in the run-up to the 2019 presidential and 2020 parliamentary polls, a robust defence at Geneva, the government appeared to have accepted the agenda, pursued by Ranil Wickremesinghe and the late Mangala Samaraweera.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government established the OMP, in August 2016, less than a year after the signing of the Geneva resolution. The OMP came into being under controversial circumstances with the then Joint Opposition (now SLPP) accusing the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government of jeopardising national security. Today, the incumbent government has accepted responsibility for taking forward the much maligned and controversial Geneva process, much to the disappointment of those who genuinely believed an attempt would be made to reverse the project.

Key architects of the yahapalana project are in the current Parliament. Ranil Wickremesinghe is the solitary UNP MP. The former PM entered Parliament on the National List whereas Maithripala Sirisena returned from his home base Polonnaruwa after having contested the last general election on the SLPP ticket. Sirisena’s SLFP is the second largest constituent with 14 lawmakers, including one National List MP. As regards the accountability issue, the government seems to be moving in a direction contrary to the much publicised promises made.

In the absence of cohesive Sri Lanka response to Geneva threat, interested parties, such as the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, have been freely bashing Sri Lanka. Massive foreign funding to the civil society lobby here and various other outfits are meant to ensure they follow the dictates of their sponsors. Often repeated claims that they refrained from taking government funding should be examined taking into consideration how these groups pursued Western interests and those of various other parties.

Pawns of Peace: Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka (1997-2009)

, released in 2011, two years after the eradication of the LTTE, provided an insight into foreign funding for a particular purpose. The Norwegian study dealt with funding provided to various peace merchants assigned the task of propagating the inevitability of a negotiated settlement in the absence of military muscle to bring the war to a successful conclusion. For Norwegians funding for such initiatives had never been a problem. Sri Lanka is a case in point. They lavishly spent on the dicey Sri Lanka project on the basis that the LTTE cannot be defeated militarily, the then government has no option but to accept a deal even at the expense of the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The Norwegian report revealed the funding of Sri Lankan outfits to the tune of USD 28 (NOK 210 mn) mn during the conflict. The recipients included Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe’s Foundation for Coexistence (largest single beneficiary with USD 6 mn during 2004-2008 period), the then Minister Milinda Moragoda’s MMIPE for humanitarian demining, Sarvodaya, Sewalanka (its former head Harsha Kumara Navaratne, an original extremely talented breakaway from Sarvodaya and now a member of the Human Rights Commission will soon relinquish office to take over Lanka mission in Canada as HC), Sareeram Sri Lanka National Foundation, Hambantota District Chamber of Commerce, One-Text Initiative, the National Anti-War Front also led by Dr. Kumar Rupasinghe, the National Peace Council, the Center for Policy Alternatives, the Forum of Federations and the People’s Peace Front.

The Norwegians also provided funding to the TRO (Tamil Rehabilitation Organization) an LTTE front organisation. The Norwegians went to the extent of providing funding to the then LTTE Peace Secretariat though it knew the group was rapidly preparing to resume hostilities. When Norwegian funding of LTTE front organisations drew strong condemnation, they funded the setting up of a Buddhist academy in Kandy in addition to reconstruction of Buddhist temples on the southern coast destroyed by Dec 2004 tsunami.

However, Prof. Peiris in a note recently submitted to diplomatic missions, based in Colombo, ahead of the 48 Geneva sessions, emphasised that the March 2021 resolution adopted by a divided vote hadn’t been accepted by Sri Lanka, rejected establishment of an external evidence gathering mechanism targeting Sri Lanka and questioned the rationale in spending meager financial resources on such a politically motivated Geneva initiative. The FM’s note dealt with progress made as regards port-war reconciliation with the focus on OMP operations, Office of Reparations, Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, Sustainable Development Goals, National Human Rights Commission, Presidential Commission of Inquiry, Accountability, PTA, Pardon to ex-LTTE cadres, Resettlement of IDPs, Releasing of Lands, engagement with the civil society (Prof. Peiris referred to the discussion President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had with SLCC on Aug 3, 2021) and International Human Rights and other Treaty Obligations and Engagement with the UN Special Procedures Mandate Holders.



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Midweek Review

A look back at now mostly forgotten Eelam war in the aftermath of Kashmir massacre

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LTTE directed two claymore mines at an overcrowded SLTB bus, at Kebithigollewa, on June 15, 2006. The blasts claimed the lives of 68 civilians. Seventeen years after the war, some interested parties sought to muddy the waters by falsely claiming the Karuna faction triggered the Kebithigollewa blasts at the behest of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the
catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army
from NE, Sri Lanka

In a telephone call to Indian Premier Narendra Modi, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake condemned the massacre of 26 civilians – 25 Indians and one Nepali – at Pahalgam, in the Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 22.

President Dissanayake expressed his condolences and reaffirmed, what the President’s Media Division (PMD) called, Sri Lanka’s unwavering solidarity and brotherhood with the people of India.

Having described the massacre as a terrorist attack, New Delhi found fault with Pakistan for the incident. Pakistan was accused of backing a previously unknown group, identified as Kashmir Resistance.

The Indian media have quoted Indian security agencies as having said that Kashmir Resistance is a front for Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support.

Pakistan has denied its involvement in the Pahalgam attack. A section of the Indian media, and some experts, have compared the Pahalgam attack with the coordinated raids carried out by Hamas on southern Israel, in early October 2023.

President Dissanayake called Premier Modi on the afternoon of April 25, three days after the Pahalgam attack. The PMD quoted Dissanayake as having reiterated Sri Lanka’s firm stance against terrorism in all its forms, regardless of where it occurred in the world, in a 15-minute call.

Modi cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia as India took a series of measures against Pakistan. Indian actions included suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) governing water sharing of six rivers in the Indus basin between the two countries. The agreement that had been finalised way back in 1960 survived three major wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999.

One-time Pentagon official Michael Rubin, having likened the Pahalgam attack to a targeted strike on civilians, has urged India to adopt an Israel-style retaliation, targeting Pakistan, but not realising that both are nuclear armed.

Soon after the Hamas raid some interested parties compared Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the ongoing Israel war on Gaza.

The latest incident in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and Gaza genocide, cannot be compared under any circumstances. Therefore, suggestions that India adopt Israel-style retaliation against Pakistan do not hold water. Also, Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE that was brought to a successful conclusion in May 2009 cannot be compared with the conflict Israel is involved in.

Sri Lanka can easily relate to the victims of the Pahalgam attack as a victim of separatist terrorism that bled the country for nearly 30 years. India, however, never bothered to express regret over causing terrorism here.

Indian-sponsored terror projects brought Sri Lanka to its knees before President JRJ made an attempt to eradicate the LTTE in May-June 1987. JRJ resorted to ‘Operation Liberation’ after Indian mediated talks failed to end the conflict. Having forced Sri Lanka to call off the largest-ever ground offensive undertaken at that time with the hope of routing the LTTE in Vadamarachchi, the home turf of Velupillai Prabhakaran, followed by India deploying its Mi 17s on July 24, 1987, to rescue the Tiger Supremo, his wife, two children and several of his close associates – just five days before the signing of the so-called Indo-Lanka peace accord, virtually at Indian gun point.

First phase of Eelam war

During the onset of the conflict here, the LTTE routinely carried out raids on predominantly Sinhala villages where civilians were butchered. That had been part of its strategy approved by ‘controllers’ based across the Palk Straits. That had been a volatile period in the run-up to the July 29, 1987, accord. Although India established half a dozen terrorist groups here, the LTTE had been unquestionably the most violent and the dominant group. To New Delhi’s humiliation all such groups supported by it were wiped out by the marauding Tigers.

Those who compared the LTTE with Hamas, or any other group, conveniently forget that the Sri Lankan group caused significant losses to its creator. India lost over 1,300 officers and men, while nearly 3,000 others suffered injuries during the Indian deployment here (July 1987-March 1990).

The world turned a blind eye to what was going on in Sri Lanka in the ’80s. The war launched by India in the early ’80s against Sri Lanka lasted till the signing of the peace accord. That can be broadly identified as phase one of the conflict (1983 July – 1987 July). That first phase can be safely described as an Indian proxy war aimed at creating an environment conducive for the deployment of the Indian Army.

Having compelled President JRJ to accept deployment of the Indian Army in the northern and eastern regions in terms of the “peace accord”, New Delhi sought to consolidate its hold here by disarming all groups, except the one it had handpicked to run the North-East Provincial Council. The Indian Army oversaw the first Provincial Council election held on Nov. 19, 1988, to elect members to the NE council. The whole exercise was meant to ensure the installation of the Varatharaja Perumal led-EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Forint) administration therein.

The second phase (1987 July – 1990 March) saw a war between the Indian Army and the LTTE. During this period, the Indian Army supervised two national elections – presidential on Dec. 19, 1988, and parliamentary on Feb. 15, 1989, that were won by Ranasinghe Premadasa and the UNP.

During that period, the UNP battled the JVP terror campaign and the South bled. The JVP that resorted to unbridled violence against the Indo-Lanka accord, at that time, has ended-up signing several agreements, including one on defence cooperation, recently, and the country is yet to get details of these secret agreements.

Raid on the Maldives

The second phase of the Eelam conflict ended when India pulled out its Army from NE Sri Lanka in March 1990. The sea-borne raid that had been carried out by Indian-trained PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam) targeting Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in Nov. 1988, is perhaps a significant development during the second phase of the conflict, though it was never examined in the right context.

No one – not even the Maldives – found fault with India for exporting terrorism to the island nation. India received accolades for swift air borne intervention to neutralise the PLOTE group. The Indian Navy sank a vessel commandeered by a section of the PLOTE raiders in a bid to escape back to Sri Lanka. The truth is that PLOTE, that had been trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka, ended-up taking up a lucrative private assignment to overthrow President Gayoom’s administration.

India never regretted the Maldivian incident. It would be pertinent to mention that two boat loads of PLOTE cadres had quietly left Sri Lanka at a time the Indian Navy was responsible for monitoring in and out sea movements.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army from NE, Sri Lanka.

Resumption of hostilities by the LTTE in June 1990 can be considered as the beginning of the third phase of the conflict. Having battled the Indian Army and gained valuable battle experience, the LTTE, following a 14-month honeymoon with President Ranasinghe Premadasa, resumed hostilities. Within weeks the LTTE gained the upper hand in the northern theatre of operations.

In spite of India banning the LTTE, after the May 1991 assassination of Gandhi, the group continued to grow with the funds pouring in from the West over the years. Regardless of losing Jaffna in 1995, the LTTE consolidated its position, both in the Vanni and the East, to such an extent their victory seemed inevitable.

But resolute political leadership given by Mahinda Rajapaksa ensured that Sri Lanka turned the tables on the LTTE within weeks after the LTTE appeared to be making significant progress at the beginning. Within two years and 10 months (2006 August – 2009 May) the armed forces brought the LTTE to its knees, and the rest is history. As we have said in our earlier columns that victory was soon soured. Spearheaded by Sarath Fonseka, the type of General that a country gets in about once in a thousand years, ended in enmity within, for the simple reason this super hero wanted to collect all the trophies won by many braves.

Post-war developments

Sri Lanka’s war has been mentioned on many occasions in relation to various conflicts/situations. We have observed many distorted/inaccurate attempts to compare Sri Lanka’s war against LTTE with other conflicts/situations.

Unparalleled Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, triggered a spate of comments on Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. Respected expert on terrorism experienced in Sri Lanka, M.R. Narayan Swamy, discussed the similarities of Sri Lanka’s conflict and the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. New Delhi-based Swamy, who had served UNI and AFP during his decades’ long career, discussed the issues at hand while acknowledging no two situations were absolutely comparable. Swamy currently serves as the Executive Director of IANS (Indo-Asian News Service).

‘How’s Hamas’ attack similar to that of LTTE?’ and ‘Hamas’ offensive on Israel may bring it closer to LTTE’s fate,’ dealt with the issues involved. Let me reproduce Swamy’s comment: “Oct. 7 could be a turning point for Hamas similar to what happened to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka in 2006. Let me explain. Similar to Hamas, the LTTE grew significantly over time eventually gaining control of a significant portion of Sri Lanka’s land and coast. The LTTE was even more formidable than Hamas. It had a strong army, growing air force and a deadly naval presence. Unlike Hamas, the LTTE successfully assassinated high ranking political figures in Sri Lanka and India. Notably, the LTTE achieved this without direct support from any country while Hamas received military and financial backing from Iran and some other states. The LTTE became too sure of their victories overtime. They thought they could never be beaten and that starting a war would always make them stronger. But in 2006 when they began Eelam War 1V their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran couldn’t have foreseen that within three years he and his prominent group would be defeated. Prabhakaran believed gathering tens of thousands of Tamils during the last stages of war would protect them and Sri Lanka wouldn’t unleash missiles and rockets. Colombo proved him wrong. They were hit. By asking the people not to flee Gaza, despite Israeli warnings, Hamas is taking a similar line. Punishing all Palestinians for Hamas’ actions is unjust, just like punishing all Tamils for LTTE’s actions was wrong. The LTTE claimed to fight for Tamils without consulting them and Hamas claimed to represent Palestinians without seeking the approval for the Oct.7 strike. Well, two situations are not absolutely comparable. We can be clear that Hamas is facing a situation similar to what the LTTE faced, shortly before its end. Will Hamas meet a similar fate as the LTTE? Only time will answer that question.” The above was said soon after the Oct. 2023 Hamas attack.

Swamy quite conveniently refrained from mentioning India’s direct role in setting up one of the deadliest terror projects in the world here in the ’80s.

Former Editor of The Hindu, Malini Parthasarathy, who also had served as Chairperson of The Hindu Group, released a list of politicians assassinated by the LTTE, as she hit back hard at those who raged against the comparison of the Hamas to the LTTE. The list included two Jaffna District MPs, Arumugam Murugesu Alalasundaram and Visvanathan Dharmalingam, assassinated in early Sept. 1985. Slain Visvanathan Dharmalingam’s son, Dharmalingam Siddharthan, who represents the Vanni electoral district on the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), is on record as having said that the two MPs were abducted and killed by TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation.) gunmen. The list posted by Parthasarathy included PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, assassinated in Colombo in July 1989. The LTTE hadn’t been involved in that killing either. Maheswaran is believed to have been killed by his onetime associates, perhaps over the abortive PLOTE raid on the Maldives in Nov, 1988. India never bothered at least to acknowledge that the Maldives raid was carried out by men trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that Maheswasran’s killers, too, were known to the Indian intelligence at that time.

Before rushing into conclusions regarding Hamas and the LTTE, perhaps a proper examination of the circumstances they emerged is necessary. The two situations – fourth phase of the Eelam conflict and the latest Hamas strike on Israel and the devastating counter attack – cannot be compared under any circumstances. Efforts to compare the two issues is more like comparing apples and oranges, though mutually Tamils and Sinhalese have so many commonalities having intermingled throughout history like the Arabs and Jews.

It is no doubt Jews are a people that suffered persecution throughout known history under Assyrians, Babylonians to Romans and so forth. Such persecution includes expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain 1492. So what Hitler and the Germans did was to take the historic process to another extreme.

Yet to blame the Palestinians and treat them like animals and to simply butcher them for the latest uprising by Hamas for all the humiliations and suffering they have been going through non-stop since Naqba in1948, from the time of the creation of Israel is to allow the creators of the problem, including the UK, the USA and United Nations to wash all their sins on the true other victims of this conflict, the Palestinians.

It would be pertinent to mention that Israel, in spite of having one of the world’s best fighting armed forces with 100 percent backing from the West, cannot totally eradicate Hamas the way Sri Lanka dealt with the LTTE. Mind you we did not drop 2000 pound bombs supplied by the US on hapless Tamil civilians to commit genocide as is happening in Palestine in the hands of the Israelis.

The circumstances under which the LTTE launched a large-scale offensive in Aug. 2006 and its objectives had been very much different from that of Hamas. The LTTE really believed that it could have defeated the Sri Lankan military in the North by cutting off the sea supply route from Trincomalee to Kankesanthurai and simultaneously overrunning the Kilali-Muhamalai-Nagarkovil forward defence line (FDL). The total collapse of the FDL could have allowed the LTTE to eradicate isolated fighting formations trapped north of the FDL. But, in the case of the Gaza war, the Hamas strike was meant to provoke Israel to unleash a massive unbridled counter attack that caused maximum losses on the civilians. As Hamas expected the Israeli counter attack has triggered massive protests in the West against their leaders. They have been accused of encouraging violence against Palestine. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other US allies are under heavy pressure from Muslims and other horrified communities’ world over to take a stand against the US.

But in spite of growing protests, Israel has sustained the offensive action not only against Gaza but Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

Instead of being grateful to those who risked their lives to bring the LTTE terror to an end, various interested parties are still on an agenda to harm the armed forces reputation.

The treacherous Yahapalana government went to the extent of sponsoring an accountability resolution against its own armed forces at the Geneva-based UNHRC in Oct. 2015. That was the level of their treachery.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

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Midweek Review

The Broken Promise of the Lankan Cinema:

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Asoka & Swarna’s Thrilling-Melodrama – Part III

 “‘Dr. Ranee Sridharan,’ you say. ‘Nice to see you again.’

The woman in the white sari places a thumb in her ledger book, adjusts her spectacles and smiles up at you. ‘You may call me Ranee. Helping you is what I am assigned to do,’ she says. ‘You have seven moons. And you have already waisted one.’” 

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida 

by Shehan Karunatilaka (London: Sort of Books, 2022. p84) 

(Continued from yesterday)

Rukmani’s Stardom & Acting Opportunity

Rukmani Devi is still remembered for her incomparable singing voice and her studio photograph by Ralex Ranasinghe with its hint of Film Noir mystery and seduction, and for the role of Blanch Dubois she played in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. This is a role she shared on alternate nights with Irangani Serasinghe in the late 60s or early 70s. (See my Island Essays, 2024, p114) She was immensely happy to be able to act in a modern western classic directed by a visionary theatre director like Dhamma Jagoda and it was to his credit that he chose to give her that role when all acting roles had dried up for her. I observed those rehearsals held at Harrold Peiris’ open garage.

I, too, am happy that Swarna has had a chance to perform again in her 70s. The question is, how exactly has she used that very rare opportunity to act in a film that has doubled its production cost within two months, and now showing in private screenings in multiplexes in Australia with English subtitles, with ambitions to be shown on Netflix and Amazon Prime. These outlets also now fund films and make challenging mini-series. Rani has clearly been produced and marketed with this global distribution in mind. How does this important fact affect Swarna’s style of acting and the aesthetics of Asoka’s script, are the questions I wish to explore in the final section of this piece.

A Sensational-Thrilling Political & Family Melodrama

‘Melodrama’ is a popular genre with a history that goes back to 19th century theatre in the west and with the advent of film, Hollywood took it up as it offered a key set of thrilling devices known as ‘Attractions’, for structuring and developing a popular genre cinema. The word ‘Melodrama’ is a compound of the Greek word for music ‘melos’ and drama as an action, with the connotation of a highly orchestrated set of actions. The orchestration (not only with sound but also the speed and rhythm of editing, dramatic expressive lighting, ‘histrionic’ acting, etc.,) always reaches toward thrilling climaxes and at times exaggerated display of emotions. The plots are sensational, propelled by coincidences and written to reach climaxes and dramatic reversals of fortune, and sudden revelations. Hollywood was famous for its happy endings with resolution of the dramatised conflicts, while Hindi melodramas and Lankan copies often ended sadly.

In the history of cinema there are highly sophisticated melodramas within Hollywood, classical Hindi cinema and also in European art cinema. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the German directors who developed a modern ‘Brechtian-Melodrama’ of extraordinary political and aesthetic power in the 70s. And of course, there are very poorly conceived melodramas too like many of the Sinhala films which were copies of Indian prototypes. Melodramatic devices inflect the different genres of Hollywood, for example the Gangster Film, the Western and created durable genre types in character, e.g. the Gangster, the Lonesome Cowboy and Indians; all national stereotypes, one embodying the underbelly of American capitalism, an anti-hero and the other the American hero actualising The American Dream. ‘The Indian,’ merely the collateral damage of this phantasy!

When the stories were centred on women the genre classification was ‘Women’s Melodrama’ as it dealt with interpersonal relations, conflicts, and sadness centred on the home primarily. Feminist film theory has developed a vast archive of scholarship on the melodramatic genre, cross-culturally, with a special focus on Hollywood and Hindi cinema decades prior to the formation we now call Bollywood, made with transnational capital and global reach. It was assumed that the audience for the family melodramas was female and that as women, we enjoy crying at the cinema, hence the condescending name ‘The Weepies’. I cut my scholarly/critical teeth studying these much-maligned melodramatic films for my doctorate, which I had enjoyed while growing up in a long-ago Ceylon.

Asoka’s Melodramatic Turn

 

Asoka in Alborada, but more so in Rani has made melodramatic films with his own ‘self-expressive’ variations on the structure, with an ‘Art Cinema’ gloss. He has said that Rani is more like Alborada and unlike his previous films made during the civil war. This is quite obvious. Though the advertising tag line for Alborada claimed it as a ‘Poetic film that Neruda never made’ it was a straightforward narrative film. I have argued in a long essay (‘Psycho-Sexual Violence in the Sinhala Cinema: Parasathumal & Alborada’, in Lamentation of the Dawn, ed. S. Chandrajeewa, 2022, also tr. into Sinhala, 2023), that the staging of the rape of the nameless, silent, Dalit woman is conceived in a melodramatic manner playing it for both critique and exciting thrills. This is a case of both having his cake and eating it.

Swarna’s Melodramatic Turn

The film appears to be constructed, plotted melodramatically, to demonstrate Swarna’s ability to perform dramatic scenes of high excitement in areas of taboo, the opportunity for which is unavailable to a Sinhala actress, in a Sinhala film, playing the role of a Sinhala Buddhist mother, who has lost her son to an act of terror unleashed by the Sinhala-Buddhist State terror and Sinhala-Buddhist JVP.

In short, Swarna has been given the opportunity to demonstrate how well she can perform a range of Melodramatic emotions that go from say A to, say D. She has been given the chance to move smoothly from English to Sinhala as the middle classes do; use the two most common American expletives which are part of the American vernacular; drink for pleasure but also to the point of getting drunk; offer alcohol to her baffled domestic worker; coax her son and  friends to drink; dance with them in an inebriated state; pour alcohol, whisky, not arrack, like one would pour water from a bottle; chain smoke furiously; dash a full mug of tea on the floor in a rage; crumple on the floor sobbing uncontrollably; shout at her loyal aid Karu; speak with sarcasm to a police officer insisting that she is ‘Dr Manorani …’ not ‘Miss or Mrs’, like feminists did back in the day; chat intimately with a minister of the government; look angrily and scowl at President Premadasa when he comes to the funeral house to condole with her; stage Richard’s funeral in a Catholic church with a stain glass window of the Pieta; to quote a well-known Psalm of David from the Bible, ‘Oh Absalom my son, Oh my son!’; etc.

Rani is Swarna’s chance to show that she can perform in ways that no Sinhala script has allowed a Sinhala actor to do up to now, that is, behave like the Sinhala cinema’s fantasy of how the upper-class Anglophone Lankan women behave. In short not unlike, but much worse, than the ‘bad girls’ in the Sinhala melodramatic genre cinema who always ended up in a Night Club, the locus of licentiousness that tempt them. I am thinking of Pitisara Kella from the 50s and a host of other films. Sinhala cinema simply cannot convincingly present the upper-class English-speaking milieu, with any nuance and conviction, it just feels very stilted, poorly acted therefore. Saying this is not class snobbery on my part. Even Lester James Peries from this very upper class and a Roman Catholic, in Delowak Atara couldn’t do it with Irangani Serasinghe and others. The dialogue meant to be serious or just plain normal sounded stilted and even funny. But when Lester did the Walauwa as in Nidhahanaya, it was brilliant, one of our classics. Brecht it was who said (on the eve of WW2, creating a Modern Epic mode of theatre in exile, that it’s not easy to make drama about current events. It’s much easier to look back with nostalgia at a genteel aristocratic Sinhala past for sure.

In taking the opportunity to explore kinetic and emotional behaviour considered to be taboo for a Sinhala woman, a fantasy Tamil woman has been fabricated. The plot of Rani is constructed by Asoka to provide Swarna the opportunity to indulge in these very taboos. In short, the fictional Tamil Rani offers Swarna an acting opportunity to improve her career prospects in the future. In so doing she has weakened her ability, I fear, to evolve as an actress.

A Domestic Melodrama: The House Suspended in a Void

If Swarna so desired, if the script ‘allowed her’ to, she could have tried to develop a quieter, more restrained and therefore a more powerful Rani. A friend of the family, when asked, said that, “The most striking feature of Manorani was her quiet, confident dignity, before and after Richard.” To testify to such a person, Asoka and Swarna could have asked the obvious question, did she have any close friendships formed as undergraduates, who supported her during this tragedy, as there certainly were cherished friends who shared her grief.  After all, she was among the elite first generations of Ceylonese women to enter University in the 1940, to medical school at that!

Asoka and Swarna have entrapped their Rani in a vacuum of a house, friendless, with a little cross on Richard’s wall to signify religion. A lot of effort has gone into the set decoration and art direction of the house, as in Alborada, to stage a fantasy/phantasy melodramatic scenario. There is no real sensory, empathetic feel and understanding of the ethos (character), of this urbane Anglophone Ceylonese-Lankan mother and son, hence the fictionalised scenarios feel synthetic, cosmetic in the best traditions of the Sinhala genre cinema’s representation of the ‘excessive and even grotesque upper-class’. Except, here the Realism of the mise-en-scene (the old-world airy house and furniture and composition of the visual components) makes claims to a realist authenticity. A little modest research would have shown that Manorani and Richard moved from one rented apartment to another in the last few years of his life and when he was abducted, lived on the upper-floor of a house, in a housing estate in Rajagiriya. Asoka said in an interview that it wasn’t possible to find in Colombo the kind of old house they required for Rani. So, they went out of town to find the ideal house suited to stage their phantasy.

I suspect that it was Swarna who called shots this time, not Asoka who was recovering from a serious illness. He said that she brought the project to him and the producer and that he had no idea of making a film on Manorani, but added that he wrote the script within 3 months. I suspect that this Rani, (this out of control, angry, scowling, bad tempered, lamenting, hysterical Rani, reaching for the alcohol and cigarettes to assuage her grief, performing one sensational, thrilling melodramatic turn after another), was Swarna’s conception, her version of Manorani that she has nursed for 28 long years. Had she resisted this temptation to display her high-intensity acting-out skills yet again, she might just have been able to tap unsuspected resources within herself which she may still have as a serious actress. Its these latent affective depths that Rukmani Devi undoubtedly tapped when she was invited to play the drunken and lost Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire in Sinhala, as a desperate, drunken, aristocratic lady, in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu (1971?).

Jagoda / Irangani

It is reported that before going on stage, Rukmani Devi went on her hands and knees to pay her respects to Dhamma, not as feudal act of deference but to acknowledge his Shilpiya Nuwana, craft knowledge/intelligence’, as one very perceptive Sinhala critic put it. That gesture of Vandeema was foreign to the Tamil Christian Rukmani Devi, but nevertheless it shows her sense of immense gratitude to Dhamma for having taken her into a zone of expression (a dangerous territory emotionally for dedicated vulnerable actors), that she had never experienced before, so late in her life. But ‘late’ is relative to gender, then she was only in her 50s!

Challenge is what serious actors yearn for, strange beings who may suggest to us intensities that sustain and amplify life, all life. Swarna might usefully think about Rukmani Devi, her life and her star persona as a Tamil star in countless sarala Sinhala films, in whose shadow and echo every single Sinhala actress has entered the limelight, Swarna more so now than any other!

As for Asoka, he needs to rest and take care of himself before he commits himself to this recent track of films which are yielding less and less with each of the two films done back to back. His body of work is too important to trash it with this kind of half thought out ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, which is a precise definition of Melodrama at its best. This film, alas, is not one of those.

That young Tamil women, often silent and traumatised, appeared following Sinhala soldiers in Lankan ‘civil-war cinema’ of the modernists, all male, is a troubling phenomenon. A ‘Sinhala Orientalism’, an exoticising of Tamil and Dalith young women as Other, is at work in some of the civil war films, as in Alborada and Rani. And then this very elevation always leads to unleashing psycho/sexual and/or other forms of violence, because the elevation (Mother Goddess in Alborada) only feeds violent male psychosexual phantasies, which in the Sinhala cinema often leads to the violence of rape and other forms of violence towards women, both Tamil and Sinhala. (To be continued)

by Laleen Jayamanne 

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Midweek Review

Thirty Thousand and Counting….

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Many thousands in the annual grades race,

Are brimming with the magical feel of success,

And they very rightly earn warm congrats,

But note, you who are on the pedestals of power,

That 30,000 or more are being left far behind,

In these no-holds-barred contests to be first,

Since they have earned the label ‘All Fs’,

And could fall for the drug-pusher’s lure,

Since they may be on the threshold of despair…

Take note, and fill their lives with meaning,

Since they suffer for no fault of theirs.

By Lynn Ockersz

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