Midweek Review
We, the people, must pay more taxes

by Usvatte-aratchi
Everyone, including voluble politicians, give tongue that ‘the last government’, no matter which, was responsible for the crippling debt burden that we have suffered from for well over 30 years. No matter which party ran the government, the present debt burden is the accumulation of overspending by the PEOPLE under the baleful leadership of shortsighted governments. None, university professors and pundits included, have blamed us the people who have lived beyond our means. Joan Robinson, who came here in 1958 (?) politely upbraided us somewhat. The government is but us organized for the purpose of governing ourselves democratically. If government overspends and borrows domestically or abroad, it is we who borrow to spend beyond our means. We, the people, will pay back the loans.
Our government leaders kiss babies and shout out loud their deep concern for the next generation. Yet at the same time they set huge loads of debt on the slender backs of presently five-year-olds to pay back when older, huge amounts of taxes to pay interest on accumulated debt and the debt itself. Think about it: government who act as agents of the people have the alternatives of either collecting revenue out of taxes or loan proceeds. In the absence of government income as profits or rent, there are no other sources of revenue. Our governments receive 98 percent of its revenue from taxes and loans. Loans are repaid by people as much as taxes are. They are two different ways of taxing the same public: tax the living or tax the unborn. (You ‘tax the dead’ if there are death duties.) To shout out that they care for future generations and at the same time to leave them burdens paying back what we now consume is either utter folly or contemptible hypocrisy. The people who cheer them and hold them as parodies of statesmanship are similarly not using their minds. The people must realise that either as taxes or as loans they part with their income to the government. When the people permit a government to borrow, they simply agree to pay another part of their income to the rich whether here or abroad who lend to government. Payments to government whether as taxes or loans are certain as death, with some payments to government, unlike death, shiftable in time. I remarked that government is but an agent of the people. On the principle that the principal is responsible for actions of the agent, we the people are responsible for all actions of government. Our constitution goes on to lay down: sovereignty lies with the people and it is inalienable. All authority, legislative, executive and judicial is derived from the people. When Parliament decides to tax you or borrow on your behalf, it is you with government behaving as your agent, as the law permits. You have no exit from your responsibility that it is you who decide to borrow and pass on the costs of your profligacy to the younger generations whose wellbeing that you so volubly attempt to promote. Stop lying and being hypocritical; tax yourself; pay for the garbage trucks that help keep your corner of the street clean.
Last week, I paid my municipal rates. I had noticed that the trucks that collect garbage on my street were gifts from the people of Japan and the people of Sweden. We are a city that cannot pay for the collection of its garbage. And yet city taxes here are pitifully low. I understand that taxes are hard to pay but it is harder to live in garbage dumps, unless you are Oscar the monster who devours garbage and lives in a garbage can in Sesame Street. It might surprise Oscar that there live and mightily prosper in this land whole clans of garbage (jarawa) monsters, although of different feathers. To connect up with the earlier paragraph, it is borrowing that generates far more garbage than tax revenue. Loans are often tied to large infrastructure projects, the execution of which is undertaken by an organization in the lending country itself that generates so much garbage (jarawa). Oscars that live here on Main Street in the city and in magnificent mansions in back-of beyond, grow in mass with surprising velocity. (Simply keep an eye on members of Parliament, who become ministers. It is a fundamental law of physics that faster an object moves, the heavier it grows.) When the lending country itself is mired in garbage, this arrangement blesses both the lender and the receiver. That often explains why large and expensive infra structure projects are so popular with our politicians, the loot they collect is a percentage of the cost of the project, larger the loan the larger the garbage (jararawa) collected. The people must understand that they or their progeny pay the taxes with which to service these loans and eventually pay back the loans. If the collector of the garbage lives on a street other than Sesame, well then, he grows rich on the loot and flies back to the temperate climes far north, ‘where …. and the buffalo roam… and where the sky is not cloudy all day.’ Here it is cloudy always, at least in the afternoon. The darkness helps theft.
There is a highly influential large group of economists who would say that I am out of my mind. Their ideal society is one in which the state is minimal. Leave it to the market, cut down government interference to the minimum and innovation and enterprise in competitive markets will maximize public welfare. The models they run are perfect and even beautiful in their elegance and simplicity. However, new research has solidified widely prevalent suspicions that those models produced societies where inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth are beyond tolerable levels. The situation in the US is the best researched and known: ‘… black American households earned around 60% of what White households did, and the typical Black family had less than 10% of the assets of a typical White family’. But more stunning in the face is China, which once was poor and almost everyone was poor and rapidly became rich mostly in southern China and that along the coast, with Xingjian, Qinghai, Heilong Jian in the east and the north and Yunnan in the south-west, all of them yet mostly poor. In China in 1981, GDP per capita was about $2,000 and the Gini coefficient was 0.31 and in 2016, $ 6500 and 0.46, respectively. Gini coefficient is and index of the degree of inequality in a set of data: the closer it is to 0, the less inequality and higher the number is and closer to 1, the closer to complete inequality. While China grew richer it also nursed a more unequal society. Jack Ma and others rival Ambani and others in India. Society in that land mass now identified as India has been for millennia one of inequality and a land of epic inequality, whether in wealth holding or in income and in social distancing. (It is but the other day, thanks to Covid-19, that social distancing stopped being a dirty word that was ostracized in civilized company.)
I am not raising a question about capitalist or socialist economies. Those are decisions that the people must take. I am talking about priorities in spending. Huge amounts of money spent by the government of the United States is actually used by private corporations like Boeing or Ford and General Motors. Large research funds generated by government are spent in labs in non-government research institutes, including those in universities. Government revenue may foster private enterprises.
Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez brightly highlighted the rising inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in countries which by and large emulated the ‘free market’ model. Emmanuel Saez’s Distinguished Lecture before the American Economic Association last month demonstrated the importance of factors other than free markets in the efficient functioning of economies.
We must grant that ideology the credit that the enterprise and innovation in regimes where freedom was high permitted the rapid growth of income and standards of living in the long run. Yet we cannot deny that the ‘causes of the great divergence’, from roughly 1700 to 1950 between say Great Britain and China was ‘the role and function of the state’ (Peer Vries, 2017). Daniel Kahneman in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for demonstrating that motivations of people as economic agents were quite different from those were different from those commonly assumed by free market economists. In my mind there is no contesting that the way governments function is determining in the growth and development of economies. Where governments are periodically elected by the people, the PEOPLE are responsible for what happened in their economies. Stop blaming political leaders; look into your mirrors and see the culprit: you. It is not by accident that Singapore elected Cambridge educated lawyer Lee Kuan Yu as their Prime Minister nor Malaysia elected University of Malaya and UK trained physician Mohammed Mahathir as their Prime Minister.
These were both multi-ethnic poor societies which under the leadership of these two great men achieved spectacular prosperity admirable peace among communities. We who had better educational facilities when Singapore and Malaysia were poor continue to elect persons well below those in the greater society. Move a bit further west on the Indian Ocean and you come to Mauritius. It has a population which is as mixed as we are: 68 % Indian, 27% African, 3% Chinese and 2% French. (Google.) James Mead of Cambridge in 1952 headed a Committee that looked into the society and the economy of Mauritius, then a British colony. It was a very poor country with malaria raging all over. It was riven by interethnic rivalries. Its GDP per capita in 1985 was $ 1100 and in 2019 $11,100. The average expectation of life at birth in Mauritius is 75 years. These three societies managed inter-ethnic relations far better than we did, even after a disastrous civil that ate up massive resources and we missed three decades of spectacular growth in the rest of this part of Asia. The leaders that they elected to office there were learned and wise. Learning that matured wisdom helped them overcome what seemed impossible odds to forge poor and splintered societies into united and prosperous ones. We as a people distinctly were not very bright in selecting our leaders. And continue to be so. Our predecessors were right to provide state sponsored education, especially of women.
They were splendid to provide state paid for health services. Fortuitously, food came to be distributed equitably and at a controlled low price. Malaria was effectively controlled with chemicals applied by trained and committed public health personnel. Infant mortality fell rapidly from 141 per 1,000 in 1939-40 to 71 in 1955; it is now about 6 per 1000 live born. Infant mortality fell precipitously from 1939 t0 1949. (N.K.Sarkar has a lovely graphic bringing this out.) There is no way that government expenditure in this land can be cut down except by the action of the public who refuse to pay for it. If we don’t pay taxes, why ask our children to pay for our needs. Borrowing, no matter from where, is only another and dishonest way to rob future generations from their entitlement to their earnings. If you do not pay more in taxes, you will have to cut down public services. Corruption on the part of those whom you elect to office takes a large chunk of the taxes you pay. If you eliminate garbage Oscars you will pay so much less in taxes; or better you have so much more money to do other desirable things. The remedy is to run them out of town rather than make heroes of them on various irrelevant grounds. That they have not been found guilty in courts is a more a tale of wholly inadequate judicial administration. The evidence stands glaring you in the face. On balance, a decision to drop someone out of suspicions of corruption is a less costly choice than weakening incentives to pay taxes for public services.
If the public do not pay taxes, there is no choice but to cut down public services. Don’t be fooled with the paniya that self-appointed kapuva, driven by evil kali yakkhini, offer us. If you want more universities, pay for them. If you want to get to Mahanuvara faster, pay for the highway. Drive away garbage monsters. Their progeny, as you can see already, will have grown manifold by the time your five-year-olds can vote. You cannot expect your children to pay for these. If anyone is honestly interested in the benefit of the next generation, build a better education for them, construct roads and harbours and establish research labs and pay for them. Let them complete and add to them. Don’t talk of benefitting them, whilst at the same time, with cunning subtlety, you rob them of a part of their future income. We, the people in this generation, must pay more taxes.
Midweek Review
Canada plays politics with Sri Lanka again ahead of its national election

UK Premier Keir Starmer reiterated his Government’s commitment to addressing justice, accountability of reconciliation in Sri Lanka and issues faced by Tamils, including advocating for human rights and justice for Tamil victims.
The often repeated declaration was made at the Thai Pongal celebration at 10 Downing Street on 20th January. The Indian High Commissioner in the UK Vikram Doraiswami was among those present. Perhaps Starmer hadn’t considered India’s culpability as the regional sponsor of a terror project in Sri Lanka that claimed the lives of as many as 70,000 combatants and civilians. Among the dead were former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and over 1,300 Indian soldiers.
Doraiswami joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1992, the year after the LTTE assassinated Gandhi at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. Would Starmer dare to raise India’s accountability and also look into the UK role in bolstering Tamil terrorism? The UK allowed a free hand to the LTTE with the group’s International Secretariat functioning from London without any restrictions. The LTTE wouldn’t have achieved status as a major terrorist organization if UK didn’t facilitate its operations. The writer’s assessment is that the British backing for Tamil terrorism was much more than that of Canada.
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Over 17 years after the decimation of the terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), with a conventional fighting might militarily by our security forces, Canada and the UK are still seeking to punish Sri Lanka for pulling off that most unlikely victory against their deadly pet that they nurtured covertly.
Both the British and Canadian governments alike play politics at Sri Lanka’s expense. Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre recently stated that he would lead the world in seeking prosecutions in international courts of the Rajapaksas and other “criminals” who have persecuted the Tamil people. Influential groups of Sri Lankans of Tamil origin are represented in both the UK and Canadian parliaments.
Poilievre, whose party is widely expected to win the election, was speaking at the ‘Harvest of Hope’ event in Toronto on 18 January, marking Thai Pongal and Tamil Heritage Month. Obviously, the Conservative Party leader seems to be confident that he could win over Canadians of predominantly Sri Lankan Tamil origin at the October parliamentary elections.
Poilievre sought to appease the Tamil Canadians close on the heels of Premier Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he would resign after a successor is chosen. Rightwing Poilievre, early last year, declared he would seek to prosecute Sri Lanka at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and appoint lawyers to pursue charges against Lankan “war criminals” in international criminal courts.
However, the Conservative Party wouldn’t find it easy to entice Tamil Canadians as during Trudeau’s 10-year premiership, when Canada went out of its way to attack Sri Lanka. The Liberal Party, under Trudeau’s leadership, humiliated war-winning Sri Lanka at any given opportunity.
Recently, the Canadian media quoted Trudeau as having said: “I intend to resign as party leader, as Prime Minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust nationwide competitive process.” Whoever replaces Trudeau will continue hostile policy towards Sri Lanka. One-time central banker Mark Carney and former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland are in the fray. The Liberal Party is scheduled to announce the winner on 09 March.
All political parties represented in the Canadian Parliament, in May 2022, unanimously and arrogantly agreed that Sri Lanka perpetrated genocide during the war against the LTTE. On the basis of that unsubstantiated decision that had been endorsed by both Liberal and Conservative Parties, the Canadian Parliament recognized 18 May as the Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day. These overwhelmingly white accusers, however, forget the fact that like all of Americas, Canada, too, was established by committing numerous acts of genocide against its first citizens. And, to this day, they continue to perpetrate such acts with impunity. Such pale faces, with so much innocent blood on their hands, have the audacity to accuse small countries, like Sri Lanka, that refused to yield to terrorists, who were subtly supported by them, the same way they back even Islamic terrorists when it suits them as we clearly saw in Syria for example.
Sri Lanka brought the war to a successful conclusion on May 18, 2009 though LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was only killed on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon at the dawn of the following day as his surviving band tried to breakthrough security forces lines.
What the Conservative Party Leader Poilievre could do to outdo Trudeau who had glorified Prabhakaran’s macabre project by targeting some Sri Lankan leaders responsible for eradicating the LTTE terrorism?
Over the years, those who had received Canadian citizenship, as well as others awaiting same, funded the LTTE as it killed and maimed thousands of Sri Lankans. Obviously, both Liberals and Conservatives, as well as other political parties, represented in Canadian Parliament, have conveniently forgotten thousands of Tamils killed by the LTTE. Canadian political parties are also silent on the origins of terrorism in Sri Lanka that may have claimed the lives of as many as 70,000 people. The dead included 1,300 Indian soldiers, members of rival Tamil terrorist groups, several dozens of politicians, like President Ranasinghe Premadasa as well as one-time Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi, among many others.
Canadian political parties have bent backwards to appease Tamil Canadian voters. With their eyes on the still growing significant number of Tamil Canadian votes, they haven’t at least bothered to examine why Sri Lanka took on the separatist conventional military challenge. Canada never realized the need for a negotiated political settlement in Sri Lanka as long as the LTTE wielded conventional military power. Had the LTTE overwhelmed Sri Lankan military, Canada would have been one of the first countries to congratulate the triumph of terrorism here. That is the reality.
Fortunately, by the time Trudeau received the Liberal Party leadership in 2013, and became the Premier in late 2015, more than four years after Sri Lanka brought the LTTE to its knees, called “the deadliest terrorist group” even by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was not in a position to resurrect its military. In other words, once considered invincible by so-called experts, had been truly defeated. Canada, like many other like-minded countries, responded with shock and dismay at the way the LTTE collapsed after having vowed to defeat the military.
Sri Lanka created history by eradicating the LTTE militarily. Sri Lanka’s triumph dispelled the myth spread by interested parties that our armed forces were incapable of defeating a major terrorist group with conventional fighting means, like the Tigers.
Tamil electorate on a new path
Eradication of the LTTE is no longer a major issue at national or lower level elections in Sri Lanka. Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s superlative performance in the Northern and Eastern regions, at the last presidential and parliamentary elections in Sept. and Nov., last year, respectively, proved that predominantly Tamil electorates couldn’t be significantly influenced by post-war issues.
Regardless of much touted accountability issues and assurances to pursue the Geneva agenda, Tamil parties failed to garner the required support of the Tamil electorate. They overwhelmingly voted for Tamil candidates fielded by the National People’s Front (NPP) at the general election and thereby inflicted unprecedented defeat on the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK).
Finally, the JVP-led NPP won all the Northern and Eastern electoral districts. The Tamil-speaking people declared beyond doubt that they wanted to move ahead and not be entrapped in the past. They obviously realized that a politically motivated high profile Western campaign against Sri Lanka is not meant to help restore their shattered lives but play politics with an issue. Those who cannot stomach Sri Lanka’s triumph over terrorism still want to haul up the war-winning country before international criminal courts. However, ITAK, and smaller Tamil political parties, have now realized that accountability issues do not attract voters. Over 17 years after the end of the war, young voters, in no uncertain terms, had indicated that they aren’t interested in pursuing a political agenda, based on accountability issues.
Earlier, the ITAK-led Tamil National Alliance (TNA) wholeheartedly represented the LTTE interests.
Perhaps, the NPP, too, has realized that its often repeated promise to release political prisoners is irrelevant. Even if the NPP wanted to release some to deceive the people, no such prisoners are held by the government. There are only a handful of Tamil convicts and few others held in terms of the PTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act). The convicts are responsible for major attacks and high profile assassinations. Actually political prisoners are nothing but a non-issue and those demanding their release from detention are only fooling themselves.
It is high time Tamil political parties give up their primary strategy revolving around accountability issues. Having received the LTTE’s backing both in and out of Parliament at the outset of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s second term, the ITAK is now struggling to come to terms with unfavourable situations in the North.
Failure on the part of M.A. Sumanthiran, PC, to retain his Jaffna district seat, meant that the ground situation had changed drastically. That was nothing but a severe warning issued not only to Sumanthiran but to all Tamil politicians who have been essentially advancing an accountability agenda like a beggar’s wound. However, Canada appeared to have failed to recognize the changing situation on the ground. Perhaps, the Canadian High Commission (CHC) should re-examine post-national election developments closely. The CHC should wait till the conclusion of the Local Government polls early this year to carry out reassessment as at least a section of the Tamil electorate may switch their allegiance back to the ITAK.
But, the writer is of the view that dynamics have changed and those genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of the Tamil people shouldn’t depend on accountability issues to promote political agenda. In fact, having played ball with the LTTE throughout the war and backed Prabhakaran’s decision to indiscriminately use hapless Tamil civilian human shields on the Vanni east front, the ITAK should be investigated for its culpability for war crimes. The ITAK had no shame at all as it fully cooperated with the LTTE’s despicable strategies. Today, the ITAK wouldn’t dare to mention that it recognized the LTTE in 2001 as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people. Of course that was done at gunpoint. The late R. Sampanthan had no choice but to cooperate with Prabhakaran’s strategy meant to build a political front subservient to them.
Canada had no qualms in mollycoddling the ITAK in spite of that political party endorsing recruitment of child soldiers. The highpoint of the LTTE-ITAK/TNA relationship was the engineering of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s defeat at the 2005 Nov. presidential election that paved the way for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory, resumption of war in August 2006 by the LTTE and its decimation militarily by the armed forces.
Canada seeks Tamil Canadians support
Against the backdrop of the 2015, 01 Oct. Geneva Resolution that had been treacherously backed by the then Sri Lankan government, headed by Maithripala Sirisena, and Ranil Wickremesinghe as the President and Prime Minister, Canada took a series of measures to step up pressure on the war-winning country. In May 2022 Canada publicly announced that Sri Lanka perpetrated genocide. Trudeau dismissed Sri Lanka’s protests though Ottawa didn’t have absolutely anything to back its extremely politically motivated claims. Shame on Canada and its Premier.
It would be pertinent to mention that Premier Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, too, couldn’t stomach Sri Lanka’s triumph over terrorism. In fact, both Conservatives and Liberals competed with each other to censure Sri Lanka. They felt Canadians of Sri Lankan origin could be easily won over by censuring Sri Lanka.
In May 2014, the Canadian High Commission in Colombo asked the writer whether The Island could publish a hard-hitting statement issued by the then High Commissioner Shelley Whiting prominently ahead of Sri Lanka’s Victory Day parade. The writer, in his capacity as the News Editor of The Island, gave the HC an assurance that regardless of what Whiting had to say it would receive front-page coverage. The HC wanted to know whether any sections would be deleted. Assurance was given that it would be carried, sans any alterations. As promised The Island carried the Whiting’s statement that challenged President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s decision to celebrate the country’s triumph over terrorism.
Whiting, who had served at their Kabul mission prior to being posted to Colombo, declared that Canada wouldn’t be represented at the Victory Day parade that was to be held in Matara on May 18, 2014. In spite of proscribing the LTTE and the World Tamil Movement in 2006 and 2008, respectively, funds flowed to the LTTE. The LTTE couldn’t have sustained conventional fighting for over two decades without uninterrupted funding from the West. Canada remained a major source of funding until the very end when the Sri Lankan military decimated the LTTE militarily in a series of operations on the Vanni east front.
Having won the 2015 presidential election, Maithripala Sirisena, in consultation with Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, cancelled the Victory Day parade. Canada must have been thrilled. Whiting’s condemnation of the military celebration was the only instance a foreign government called for the ending of the annual event held to mark a worthy victory clinched against so many odds.
In Oct. 2015, treacherous Yahapalana leadership (UNP-SLFP combine) co-sponsored a US-led accountability resolution against the Sri Lankan military. There hadn’t been a previous instance of any country moving/backing a resolution targeting its own armed forces and political leadership at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
In May 2022 Canada declared Sri Lanka perpetrated genocide. In early January 2023, Ottawa sanctioned former presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Staff Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake and Lieutenant Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi. Both Ratnayake and Hettiarachchi had been earlier sanctioned by the US, one of the worst human rights offenders, for committing what it called serious crimes.
Interestingly, no Western government has so far sanctioned war-winning Army Chief Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka though a number of senior officers, including General Shavendra Silva (US) and Maj. Gen. Chagie Gallage (Australia). The US threw its weight behind Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. Having accused Fonseka’s Army of murdering thousands of Tamils, the LTTE proxy Tamil National Alliance (TNA) formed an alliance with the UNP and the JVP to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. Their project failed pathetically as the electorate inflicted a massive defeat on the celebrated Sinha Regiment hero. The drubbing was such Mahinda Rajapaksa polled over 1.8 mn votes more than Fonseka.
In the absence of cohesive policy on the part of Sri Lanka in countering unsubstantiated war crimes accusations, Western powers pursued an agenda inimical to Sri Lanka. The idea was to push Sri Lanka to offer a political package that addressed Tamils’ aspirations. In other words, Western powers wanted Sri Lanka to grant what the LTTE couldn’t secure through terrorism driven war.
Midweek Review
It reeks in the Palk Bay!

A shooting involving Indian fishermen and Sri Lanka Navy personnel within the island’s territorial waters, and injuries sustained in apprehending the poachers is in the news, yet again. And as is often the case in these countless and never-ending confrontations and competing claims and counter claims in state rituals, we have two versions of the event. But one thing is indisputable: Indian fishermen had entered Sri Lankan waters illegally and thereby came within the jurisdiction of the island nation’s laws and legal apparatuses including interventions by its navy.
Naval action followed by competing statements by India and Sri Lanka are mere state rituals that have not been able to address long-standing practices that pre-existed the formation of nation-states. For the longest time, when national identities, citizenship, and maritime borders did not exist in the legal sense we understand them today, what we now call Sri Lankan and Indian fishermen waded undeterred into each other’s waters and engaged in fishing to their hearts’ content. They even lingered for extended periods of time in each other’s lands during specific fishing periods. I recall engaging in a conversation at the turn of the century with one such fisherman from South India who had decided to settle in Chilaw long ago. In his case and that of many of his comrades at the time, it was a matter of marrying into the Sinhala speaking fisher families. Over time, these people blended into local communities. At the height of these activities and even after both India and Sri Lanka gained independence, the long arm of the nation-states’ laws and national interests did not intervene in such activities beyond a point. But this changed as nation-states evolved into what Ashish Nandi has called ’garrison states’, militarised borders were drawn and bodies of laws developed governing cross-border travel.
Notwithstanding national borders and the associated practices of statecraft and competing nationalisms, fishermen in the two neighbouring countries have continued to wade into each other’s waters consciously disregarding what is known as the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) due to its invisibility. Such border violations are often deliberate and a matter of routine because fishermen often get away with this infringement. However, the kind of intrusion followed by violence now in the news is not the norm, but the exception.
In a statement issued on 28 January 2025, India’s Ministry of External Affairs noted that “an incident of firing by the Sri Lankan Navy during the apprehension of 13 Indian fishermen in the proximity of Delft Island was reported in the early hours of this morning.” It further noted, that “out of the 13 fishermen who were on board the fishing vessel, two have sustained serious injuries and are currently receiving treatment at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital.” But the statement from the Sri Lanka Navy differs in important details. It notes that Sri Lanka’s “Northern Naval Command observed a cluster of Indian fishing boats poaching in the Sri Lankan waters off Valvettithurai, Jaffna in the dark hours of 27 Jan 25.” This location is much closer to the Sri Lankan coast than what the Indian statement claims, yet it is evident from both statements that the incident took place well within Sri Lanka’s territorial waters. This discrepancy in the statements is intriguing as the two locations are approximately 62.4 km apart. Interestingly, the contested island of Kachchatheevu is 22.4 km from Delft, the location given in the Indian statement, and 84.7 km from Valvettithurai. Therefore, a careful reader may not be faulted in wondering if locating the scene closer to Kachchatheevu is deliberate, given that the island is a bone of contention between the two countries.
The Navy statement further states, “subsequently, the Northern Naval Command mounted a special operation to send away those fishing boats from the island waters, deploying naval craft. During this operation, the Navy seized an Indian fishing boat [that] continued to remain in Sri Lankan waters, while marshalling illegal fishing activities and collecting the fishing harvest. The operation also led to the apprehension of 13 Indian fishermen aboard the fishing boat.”
For Sri Lanka, this is not merely an accident that can be wished away as the somewhat clinical Indian statement does. It goes beyond protecting the maritime borders of the country, to preserving a crucial source of livelihood of many people in northern Sri Lanka and other parts of the island. It is both a bread-and-butter issue as it is a matter of national interest. Therefore, the Sri Lanka Navy has acted precisely in the manner that it should, as is expected and is within its mandate. Is it also not ironic that the bleeding hearts of southern Indian politicians who are up in arms about the so-called discrimination and abuse of their Tamil brethren in Sri Lanka by its government, seem to turn bone dry when their constituent fishermen callously plunder the resource-rich fertile waters of Sri Lanka, thereby remorselessly depriving their Tamil brothers and sisters of their livelihood.
The Sri Lankan statement further notes, “the Sri Lanka Navy boarding team was compelled to conduct noncompliance boarding as the Indian fishing boat continued to maneuver aggressively, without complying with the Navy’s lawful orders and its duty, during the process of taking the boat into custody. On this occasion, the Indian fishermen have acted aggressively, maneuvering their fishing boat in a hostile manner and behaving confrontationally with the Navy. However, while boarding the fishing boat in accordance with the authority vested in the Navy, the Indian fishermen, as an organized group, have attempted to assault naval personnel and made an attempt to snatch a firearm from a naval officer, endangering the lives of the naval personnel. In the process, an accidental fire has taken place, causing slight injuries to two Indian fishermen.” So unlike in the Indian statement which refers to ‘serious injuries’ the Sri Lankan statement refers to ‘slight injuries.’
What is seen here is not a deliberate act of shooting as the Indian statement and much of the Indian reporting on the incident insinuates, but an accident that has occurred due to the aggression and unlawful behaviour of Indian fishermen in a location in the sovereign territory of another country, they had no business of being in, in the first place. Intriguingly, none of these details are present in the Indian statement. It merely says that in addition to lodging a ‘strong’ complaint against the incident with the Acting High Commissioner in Delhi and the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “government of India has always emphasized the need to treat issues pertaining to fishermen in a humane and humanitarian manner, keeping in mind livelihood concerns. The use of force is not acceptable under any circumstances whatsoever. Existing understandings between the two Governments in this regard must be strictly observed.”
India’s Ministry of Externa Affairs lodging a complaint with our Acting Hish Commissioner in Delhi and a similar complaint being made by its High Commission to our Foreign Ministry is the height of absurdity. While our Foreign Ministry and missions may be numb to such action, we should be mindful that the main infraction — Indian poaching — happened in our waters and therefore comes under the jurisdiction of Sri Lankan laws, in the dispensation of which accidents can also happen.
In any case, this statement itself may seem well articulated in the lofty corridors of performative and orchestrated diplomacy and the Indian Ocean conference circuit. But it makes little sense beyond as an example of excessive verbosity in the real world of cross-border poaching and naval action in the darkness of the night involving aggressive culprits and the threatened livelihoods of citizens of a sovereign country. Besides, it was just over six months ago that a young Sri Lankan sailor brutally met his end because of the aggressive manoeuvering of an Indian trawler in Sri Lankan waters. Therefore, these statements are naught but mere rhetoric, of no use to the Sri Lankan fishermen who — through no fault of their own — have to bear the brunt of Indian infractions and incursions into their bread-basket.
What is obvious in these rituals of statecraft is the woeful absence of proactive action on the part of Sri Lanka. If India can summon our Acting High Commissioner to their Ministry of External Affairs and lodge a ‘strong’ complaint over an accident stemming from an illegal Indian activity that took place in our waters, did our Foreign Ministry summon the Indian High Commissioner to protest against his compatriots illegally and perpetually entering our waters, behaving aggressively towards our navy and depriving a section of our citizens of their only livelihood? Did our Foreign Ministry ask him why they have opted to report basic facts wrong in their statement? Silence in such situations is not only extremely dangerous but also smacks of pusillanimity. This kind of institutionalized timidity on the part of Sri Lanka does not augur well for the country at the time we are celebrating our supposed ‘Independence,’ and is also counterintuitive to the notion of national interest.
This general lack of intent towards meaningful action is also evident in the Joint Statement of 16 December 2024, issued during President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s visit to India which states that “acknowledging the issues faced by fishermen on both sides and factoring in the livelihood concerns, the leaders agreed on the need to continue to address these in a humanitarian manner. In this regard, they also underscored the need to take measures to avoid any aggressive behaviour or violence. They welcomed the recent conclusion of the 6th Joint Working Group Meeting on Fisheries in Colombo. The leaders expressed confidence that through dialogue and constructive engagements a long-lasting and mutually acceptable solution could be achieved. Given the special relationship between India and Sri Lanka, they instructed officials to continue their engagement to address these issues.” Here, the omission of any reference to the destructive bottom-trawling fishing method is conspicuous by its stark absence. It is indeed unfathomable that the Sri Lankan team did not insist on the inclusion of this critical reference in the statement.
Rampantly used by Indian fishermen, bottom-trawling disrupts the seabed, marine ecosystem and biodiversity of the Palk Bay, while boosting India’s seafood exports and yielding high profits while destroying the Sri Lankan fishermen’s livelihoods. For this reason, Sri Lanka banned bottom-trawling in 2017. However, none of these are in the Joint Statement of 16 December 2024 or the Sri Lanka Navy statement of 28 January 2025, and have also not been taken up with the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo. This is not only a failure of Sri Lankan foreign policy in action but also a complete compromise of our country’s national interest.
In this context, the real culprits in the failure to resolve the problem definitively are the leaders of the Indian and Sri Lankan states — politicians and bureaucrats alike. Why has technology not been resorted to more thoughtfully in this situation where the required technology actually exists? For the longest time, both sides have been waxing eloquent about attaching non-tamperable and permanently switched-on transponders to fishing boats which will inform the Navies or Coast Guards of the two countries when maritime border violations take place. As a technologically advanced country, India has the higher capacity to produce the required innovative mechanisms and tools for this purpose that can be used in both countries for mutual benefit. Bilateral collaboration of this nature can actually bear fruit rather than the hollow discourses of rhetorical diplomacy and statecraft.
For India, these issues are important only insofar as they resonate with Tamil Nadu politics and therefore possible vote banks. In reality, it is never about the lives or livelihoods of poor South Indian fishermen or their confiscated properties. For Sri Lanka, it is a matter of ill-defined sovereignty and the livelihood of a significant section of the people in the north. At the same time, this unfolds in a situation where the Sri Lankan Navy is unable to patrol the country’s maritime borders effectively, a known fact which Indian fishermen exploit as a matter of routine.
If both countries are adequately serious beyond issuing mere statements after the fact, these incursions are easily stoppable. However, once the technology is put in place as a matter of law, both countries must enforce them to the letter, and patrol the borders more effectively. But, pending the fruition of such law, Indian fishermen, cannot be allowed to plunder Sri Lankan resources. It is also high time, the Sri Lankan government, with the kind of overwhelming mandate it has received from the people, make it very clear to the Indian state that endless incursions into our territorial waters and ravishing of the country’s natural resources can no longer be tolerated. And if legitimate deterrence is to be used in protecting our borders and resources as do all sovereign states including India, so be it. This is the minimum we expect from our government in its pursuit of our national interest.
Midweek Review
The Teen Mum Question

By Lynn Ockersz
Into the shadows of shame,
Is the Teen Mum slinking,
Now that the seed in her womb,
Which she didn’t aim at planting,
Is almost close to ripening,
Rendering her heavy with child,
But judge her not in haste,
And go for the First Stone,
For, she’s a hapless victim,
Of an education needing updating,
With a knowledge of do’s and don’ts,
On the question of human mating,
And going into ‘proud independence’,
May this issue be taken up for discussing.
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