How Sri Lanka should respond to India’s legitimate concerns
 

By Sumanasiri Liyanage

India-bashing is an occasionally popular exercise among Sri Lankan politicians. Minister Anura Bandaranaike’s recent comment on India is in this sense not surprising despite the fact that the Bandaranaike family is known to be closer to the Nehru family in India. Anura Bandaranaike has charged that the Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka is “meddling with the internal affairs of Sri Lanka”. Of course, the Government of Sri Lanka has opted not to share one of its cabinet ministers’ personal viewpoints, although some of its political partners have expressed a similar opinion.

I have decided to write a brief note as one could expect more “India bashing” in the wake of the recent statements made by the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh on his way to Brazil and Cuba and the Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaran in Colombo. Manmohan Singh said: “our effort is to ensure that the ceasefire holds and that both parties (the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers) are scrupulously committed to preserving the ceasefire”. He viewed an adherence to ceasefire as “an essential pre-requisite” before moving towards “to a durable solution” (Hindustan Times). As Hindu reported, the Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday urged Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa to seize the `opportunity’ for talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the wake of the Co-Chairs of Sri Lanka statement.

Any observer can recognize that in India there has been a renewed interest in Sri Lankan conflict and its implications since its possible spill-over effects on India would be quite significant. Failing to resolve quickly and amicably, any internal conflict, in these days, has a tendency to get more and more regionalised, if not internationalised. In this context, Indian national interests and Sri Lankan national interests may in many ways be overlapped.

Indian Concerns

India has legitimate reasons to be seriously concerned about the on-going military engagements between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). First, the military conflict has caused refugee inflow to Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka. In the last 8 months alone, the number of refugees to India is around 10,000. Reports indicate that more people from Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka are planning to go to India in the face of increased military activities that have affected them badly. This increased inflow would add a substantial fiscal burden on the Government of India (GoI), both the union and state.

Secondly, as a result of the irredentist factor, there would be a pressure from some segments of Tamil Nadu population that GoI should intervene to stop humanitarian problems caused by the military conflict, especially, aerial bombing. In addition to these humanitarian problems, a gross violation of human rights in the forms of extra-judicial killing, abduction, illegal arrest and so on. The killing of 5 students in Trincomalee, killings in Pesalai and Kayts and assassination of 17aid workers in Muttur are still to be investigated. Unfortunately, the GoSL has so far not taken any positive actions on this front in spite of many promises. University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), the most consistent human rights organisation in Sri Lanka, in its latest report has highlighted these human rights violations.

 “The killings of the 5 students in Trincomalee on 2nd January and the Bojan sisters two weeks later were early signs of grave things to come. Both murders were covered up; now we have an epidemic of murders. There are very few sections in Colombo that perceive this as a problem at all. When international human rights actors have raised the case of the 5 students in Trincomalee or the killing of ACF workers in Mutur, the response has been articles in the Sri Lankan press blaming these agencies for not mentioning the Kebbitigollawe claymore bombing of Sinhalese civilians. It is as though we must judge the Government by the standards of the Tigers. One is an internationally accredited state and the other is a group that has been banned by nearly all the leading governments. The important question is whether the Government has shown good faith in response to the restraints placed on the LTTE by the international community, which made its military successes possible.

Today’s reality is that there is no section of the State and its apparatus showing good faith in relation to the Tamils and Muslims. If Tamils have been rendered vagrants, the Muslims come in handy as good human shields. The manner in which displaced Mutur Muslims were forced to return by what is in effect a military administration, which shelled them once and may shell them again, was unworthy of a responsible government. Attention has been repeatedly drawn by international actors to the activities of state-related killer groups. But they continue to act with even greater brazenness”.

Thirdly, reports indicate there has been in the last 12 months a greater involvement of Pakistan in Sri Lanka in supplying military hardware, training and advising the Sri Lankan security forces. It was said that Pakistani military personal are present in Sri Lanka in supporting military activities. At least, some analysts in India feel that this would be a matter of serious security concern for India.

How to Respond?

Sri Lanka should recognize and understand these legitimate concerns of India when its policies are designed and implemented. Sovereignty does not imply that a country can do anything it wants to do irrespective of the needs, interests and concerns of its neighbours. This is of crucial importance since India has already set the broad parameters of its Sri Lankan policy. India has many a time reiterated that it stands firmly for Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and would not support separate Tamil Eelam. Since the late 1980s, India has demonstrated that its policies towards Sri Lanka are within these parameters. However, it has also highlighted that Sri Lanka has a national problem that has deteriorated to a ‘dirty’ armed conflict.

It was a duty of Sri Lankans to accept India’s regional sensitivities, its security concerns and spill-over effects of the war in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. In this integrated regional polity, I propose Sri Lanka to be sensitive to Indian legitimate concerns and avoid “India-bashing” exercised by the governments of 1977- 1990. The Sri Lankan policy should encompass following ingredients.

Sri Lanka should begin negotiation with India with objective of concretization of long-pending Indo-Sri Lanka Defense Co-operation Agreement. Sri Lanka may think not in terms of absolute external self-determination but in terms of external self-determination shared with India.

In planning any limited military activities, if extremely, should take into account humanitarian contingencies and steps should be taken a priori to minimise them. Request India to play a pro-active role in negotiation for a peaceful settlement to the national question. This element is in fact included in Mahinda Chinthanaya (P. 30).

Preparation of a constitutional draft on the basis of power-sharing not only at regional level but also at centre level in consultation with Tamil political parties and Diaspora. (Mahinda Chinthanaya promised to complete this task in three months).

Complete stop of unlawful arrests, abduction, disappearances and harassment of the Tamil population. (Presidential Directive says that a receipt should be given when a person is arrested. But this does not happen in Colombo police stations, and I can cite many cases.). As Hindu in its editorial has suggested, at this juncture North-Eastern de-merger will be disastrous for the peace process as all Tamil parties have come against such a de-merger.

The writer teaches political economy at the University of Peradeniya.

Courtesy: Tamil Week