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| Sunday, 10 March 2002 |
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The Satyodaya team which recently visited Batticaloa and its environs returned to Kandy with two dominant impressions. Pongu Tamil First, all sections of the people are unanimous in the desire for an end to war and violence and for the restoration of peace. The first person we met in Batticoloa town told us, "The dogs went scampering under beds and tables when they heard the guns fire, so now even they want peace". Second, after serious peace negotiations began following the ceasefire of 24 December there is tremendous hope, bordering on certainty, that this time the negotiations will be successful. There will be peace with honour for all. At the "Pongu Tamil" or "Tamils Awake" celebrations which were held in Batticaloa the day after our arrival our impressions were confirmed. We were able to see for ourselves the massive support given to the peace process by the several thousands who flocked to the spacious grounds for the celebrations. Some Tiger groups used the opportunity to cry themselves hoarse with the demand for deproscription, but the loudest and most pervasive cry of the People was for a just peace. Abduction, conscription and extortion It was against the background of these dominant impressions of the desire and the hope of all the People of a peaceful settlement that the team viewed with alarm the reports of the abduction of children, the forced conscription of youth and the extortion of money taking place in the Eastern Province. These reports had already appeared in the daily newspapers in the three languages and even in foreign broadcasts during the days immediately preceding the visit and, issuing as they were from different levels of political and ecclesiastical society, were indeed one of the reasons for the Satyodaya team to undertake the visit. Were the reports factual or were they allegations maliciously concocted in order to denigrate the Tigers and derail the peace process? That there was the drafting of male and female youth in their teens into the ranks of those who were militants is true. Some spoke of as many as three thousand new conscripts during the two months of the ceasefire. But was this drafting always forced or was it sometimes voluntary? To many persons watching from the periphery, it seemed that there was forced conscription, because they refused to believe that the youth would join of their own volition. These persons had apparently forgotten the early 1970s when boys and girls advanced enthusiastically into the camp of the youthful militants in the South and West of the country. Youth is as capable of idealism as their adult mentors of smothering it. At least three cases of forcible abduction of youth aged 12, 15 and 16 presented by a foreign Amnesty International group were stated by a religious leader on the spot to be cases of voluntary enlisting by youth who thought, rightly or wrongly, that there was no other way to work for human rights and racial justice: the parents were not happy but yet had a certain admiration for their children. It was so in 1971 in the South and West. It is so today in the East. As for extortion, the team learnt that this was not merely a post-ceasefire phenomenon, but in the form of "Taxes to the Finance Unit" had been already taking place for months before the ceasefire. Before and after the ceasefire this form of "tax" payment often seemed to pass far beyond the bounds of what might be considered to be legitimate taxation and to be pure and simple unjustifiable extortion. There have undoubtedly been cases both of forced abduction and of extortion. The international ceasefire monitors will almost certainly investigate them. Who is guilty of these violations of human rights is yet to be known. While some residents told us that these acts are of the essence of Tiger operations in their area, the Tigers on their part have on more than one occasion denied responsibility. The Government through its Police and its Armed Forces has the right and the duty to oppose all illegal activities of forced conscription, abduction and extortion. But we were told in Batticaloa that they were under strict orders to do nothing that might jeopardize the peace process. If the Tigers suspect that these activities are carried out by certain elements in order to discredit them in the eyes of the people, should they not openly demand that the governmental law-enforcement agencies should put an end to all such nefarious activities? Should they not go public in defence of all human rights and of democratic freedoms? Democracy Indeed, democracy - freedom for all of expression and association - has always to be on the anvil of all militants in modern liberation struggles. The model is not Josef Stalin but Nelson Mandela. The most numerous in membership and the most powerful of the militant groups always runs the risk of substituting its own party dictatorship for democratic governance, its own power for the power of the People. Until the struggle is finally won and the peace process has its final successful outcome, it may be necessary for one group - in our case, the Tigers - to speak for many. Even the experienced veterans of the TULF seem to accept the leadership of the Tigers. Yet, the group must always be ready for eventual power-sharing. Pluralist power sharing after all is of the essence of democracy in any plural society. Pluralism Because there was no such sharing of power the People of the East suffered for more than twenty years at the hands of the Government Armed Forces and for three years at the hands of the IPKF. "Surely the Tigers should not allow us to suffer at their hands too when they come into power", the people told us. If the struggle of the Tamils over the past twenty and more years has been to convince everybody that an honest and effective pluralism - ethnic, linguistic and economic chiefly - is the name of the game, the rules of the game should not be allowed to change once the Tamils succeed in setting up their own autonomous administration in the East. Among the Tamils themselves the Tigers are not the only group, and outside all Tamil groups there are also the Muslims and the Sinhalese who have also to be honoured members of the plural Eastern polity. It may be that the Tigers do not yet have the mechanism to set up a democratic multi-party form of government and will need time to acquire it. But democracy has to be the ultimate goal. Even the old textbooks tell us that while democracy has willy-nilly to be the rule of the majority, the majority should never - except as its own ultimate peril - ride roughshod over the rights of political, ethnic and other minorities. Or, democracy is the rule of the majority with the consent of the minorities. Both the Government and the Tigers are engaged in mutual confidence-building measures. Such confidence-building is the meaning and the purpose of the ceasefire. Both Government and the Tigers should also keep in mind the need to build confidence among the People that an effective plural society in Sri Lanka is not only possible, but is the only guarantee of survival. It is also the safest way to success in the struggle against unemployment and poverty and for the social development of the entire country. As the principal of a large Muslim school in the East told us, the post-ceasefire climate gives us the opportunity to solve our ethnic and economic problems. If we fail, he said, all, including the Sinhalese, will suffer. The building of safe road and rail links between Devinuwara and Jaffna, Colombo and Batticaloa will not only be the symbol of unity in a plural society but, as the roads and the railways are built, the seeds of national economic growth will be sown and will sprout at every milestone. Then, with our heads held high, we shall be able to take our country into the New Century and Millennium. Such at least is, we submit, the desire and the hope of the people of the East. - Paul Caspersz, S. Rajalingam, Rohan Benjamin, K. Babuji |
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