Two Articles Frontline

TWO ARTICLES FRONTLINE
1
SRI LANKA
Demonising India
B. MURALIDHAR REDDY in Colombo
The anti-India rhetoric from the LTTE and the JVP reflects the internal dynamics of the two organisations, more than anything else.
SRIYANTHA WALPOLA JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe.
SRI LANKA-watchers cannot be faulted if they wonder occasionally, going by the high-pitched and concerted anti-India rhetoric of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), whether the island nation has travelled back in time to 1988-89. That was the period when the Indian
Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), deployed in the northern and eastern parts of the country at the invitation of the J.R. Jayewardene government, got enmeshed in the
ethnic conflict. India was painted as the villain of the piece “merrily” playing with the lives of the people in quest of its “geo-political interests in the region”. And that
was the only occasion in the past when the LTTE and the JVP found themselves on the same side of the fence. Their common goal was to ensure the “ouster of
India”.
Today, two decades later, it is back to the “IPKF era” for both the LTTE and the JVP – albeit with a difference. The anti-India tirade comes from diametrically
opposite points of view. The JVP and the LTTE are actually pitted against each other as opposed to the comrades-in-arms spirit of 1988-89.
Both organisations have been counselling India to avoid a repeat of the “historic blunders”. However, their perceptions of the mistakes are poles apart. The LTTE is
peeved with New Delhi for what it terms as “collaboration with the Sinhala chauvinistic regime in crushing the genuine struggle of the Tamils in pursuit of their
legitimate aspirations”. In contrast, the JVP is fuming at India for not doing enough to aid the military apparatus engaged in a “fight-to-the-finish battle” with the LTTE
and for “meddling in the internal affairs” of the island nation.
Both have been indulging in their favourite pastime of India-bashing for over some four months now. In the beginning, it was covert references. However, with each
passing week it became overt and unabashed. There is no limit to their imagination on the perceived conspiratorial games played by India in Sri Lanka’s “backyard”.
If the two are to be believed, India has a hand in everything happening in the island, barring perhaps the weather.
In his 2006 speech at the LTTE’s annual Heroes’ Day function, LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran appealed to the people and leaders of Tamil Nadu to support
the cause of their “brethren” who were in danger of being exterminated by chauvinistic forces in Sri Lanka; but he refrained from making an attack on India.
The first signs of the LTTE’s anti-India campaign came to the fore in Prabakaran’s Heroes’ Day speech of November 27, 2007. The LTTE chief, though
circumspect, bracketed India with the rest of the world which, he reasoned, was unhelpful in resolving the “Tamil national question”. He said their failure to condemn
“unambiguously the military path of the current regime” had created the present situation in the island. Further, he asserted that the international community was
propping up the genocidal Sinhala state through economic and military aid and subtle diplomatic efforts. He warned that this would be counterproductive.
As a way of reassurance to the “Tamil world community”, the Tiger leader recalled that it was not exactly a new situation for the “Tamil liberation struggle” and dwelt
at some length on the 1987 Indian involvement. “These one-sided involvements of foreign powers are not new in our prolonged struggle. India intervened in our
national question then as part of its regional expansion. India signed an accord with the Sinhala state without the consent of the Tamils. The Indo-Lanka Accord was
not signed to meet the aspirations of the people of Tamil Eelam. In fact, India then attempted to force an ineffectual solution on our people – a solution which did not
even devolve powers to the extent of the Banda-Chelva Pact signed in the 1950s. India tried to enforce that accord with the strength of more than 100,000 Indian
forces, with the power of the agreement between two countries and with the assistance of treacherous Tamil paramilitary groups,” he argued.
The LTTE went into top gear in its anti-India rhetoric in the second week of March. In a statement on March 10 titled “Is the Indian state attempting yet another
historic blunder?”, it bemoaned that the “state welcome” given by India to Sri Lanka military chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who headed the Sri Lankan state’s “war
of ethnic genocide” on the Eelam Tamils, had deeply hurt them.
The statement noted:
LTTE/HANDOUT /REUTERS LTTE chief Velupillai Prabakaran at the organisation’s annual Heroes’ Day function in Kilinochchi on November 27, 2007.
“Many of the European countries, understanding this hidden motive of the Sinhala state, have halted all assistance that could support the ethnic genocide of the Tamils.
“The Indian state also knows this truth. Yet, while pronouncing that a solution to the Tamil problem must be found through peaceful means, it is giving encouragement
to the military approach of the Sinhala state. This can only lead to the intensification of the genocide of the Tamils.
“LTTE wishes to point out to the Indian state that this historic blunder by it will continue to subject the Eelam Tamils to misery and put them in the dangerous situation
of having to face ethnic genocide on a massive scale. On behalf of the Eelam Tamils, LTTE kindly requests the Tamils of Tamil Nadu to understand this anti-Tamil
move of the Indian state and express their condemnation.”
Taking its cue from the LTTE, the pro-Tiger Internet portal TamilNet posted, on March 12, an item from an unidentified reader from Tamil Nadu in response to the
LTTE’s statement. “Those who watch the current developments sense a race against time on the part of India in achieving something militarily in Sri Lanka. At times it
looks as though it is India’s war. The Refuse-to-Retire advisors cum analysts of India, whose writings often reek of revenge, sometime back came out with enticing
hints that the target is only the leadership of the LTTE, and thereafter India will protect the Tamils. Have these advisors ever seen in their lifetime India proving its
credibility in safeguarding Tamil rights in Sri Lanka or for that matter, at least India winning a diplomatic war with Sri Lanka?”
TamilNet further noted: “Unless there is a drastic change in India’s outlook towards Sri Lankan crisis, whatever it is doing is very likely to harm its security in the near
future.
“Boasting of Colombo government’s ‘new Asian friends’, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona was recently quoted saying, ‘The new donors are
neighbours, they are rich and they conduct themselves differently. Asians don’t go around teaching each other, how to behave. There are ways we deal with each
other perhaps a quiet chat, but not wagging the finger’.”
Taking it further on March 20, TamilNet posted an item quoting opinion columnist Chivandi: “Anyone who wishes to see a peacefully united Sri Lanka has to begin
from separation. Separation for unity is the appropriate paradigm today. The Sri Lankan situation has transcended the 1987 formula. It is time the Tamils in India have
to take care of a policy shift in the Indian establishment. The suggestion is that the political parties of Tamil Nadu who aspire for power in the forthcoming elections
have to boldly adapt a policy upholding a Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka in their election manifesto and get the mandate from the people. Only such a mandate can silence
the antagonists and direct the foreign policy of India to serve the interests of Tamils, India as well as a peaceful Sri Lanka.”
TamilNet went on to say that sometime back Vaiko, the leader of Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), a regional party from Tamil Nadu with four
members in the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, wrote three letters to the Prime Minister of India on the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka and on the miseries of the
fishermen of Tamil Nadu.
“The Prime Minister’s reply, dated 5th March was elusive, bureaucratic and misleading. The Indian Prime Minister ignores the precarious plight of the Tamils of Sri
Lanka, facing genocide. He rather chooses to look at the situation through the prism of India’s relationship with Sri Lanka, the territorial integrity of which is of utmost
importance to him. In other words Tamils are not important, but Sri Lanka is a sacred cow,” it wrote.
JVP programme
Simultaneously, at another level, the JVP, an electoral ally of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, began upping its anti-India rhetoric after the President, under pressure
from within and abroad to expedite a political solution to the ethnic problem, instructed the All Party Committee to “give him something immediately”. The committee,
in its interim report submitted in the fourth week of January, sought “full and faithful implementation” of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on devolution of
powers to provinces. It came handy for the JVP to launch a no-holds-barred attack on India.
In a series of interviews to the local and international media, JVP chief Somawansa Amarasinghe accused India of pressuring Rajapaksa to implement the 13th
Amendment. In one interview, he said: “First we must understand how the 13th Amendment came about.… the 13th Amendment was thrust upon him by the Indians
with Indian gunboats outside Colombo harbour. Indians had started the ethnic war by training and arming all the separatist groups in a classic case of cross-border
terrorism. And when the Army was about to capture Vadamarachchi, India threatened us and is said to have whisked away Prabakaran in a helicopter. The 13th
Amendment was a projection of the will of India, not of the will of the people of Sri Lanka…. We should not do any changes at the behest of any foreign power
including India.”
The JVP stretched matters to such lengths that when Rajapaksa met Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Leader of the Opposition and of the United National Party (UNP),
sometime in February to discuss matters relating to the implementation of the 13th Amendment, a senior member of the JVP told the local media that the meeting was
“forced upon” by New Delhi. The JVP chief in his discourses went beyond the 13th Amendment and argued that his party did not believe that the present
Constitution would strengthen democracy.
At one stage Amarasinghe even talked of a call to boycott Indian goods if New Delhi persisted with its “policy of micro-managing the affairs” of the island nation. But
subsequently he clarified that he did not mean it literally. When asked if the JVP was opposed to Indian investments and trade in services, he said: “We are not
opposed to foreign investments but we insist that they should be of mutual benefit. We opposed the grant of petrol stations to the Indian Oil Corporation because we
believed that the distribution of a strategic resource like fuel should be in the hands of Sri Lankans.”
At an interactive session with the Sri Lanka Foreign Correspondents Association in February, the JVP chief alleged that India was at the forefront of a big-power
campaign to intervene in small and weaker states in South Asia under the guise of protecting human rights and persecuted groups: “India is leading the R2P (Right to
Protect) pack in South Asia in relation to Sri Lanka.” R2P is a concept propagated by an influential Brussels-based international non-governmental organisation. It is
centred around the need of the international community to intervene and prevent gross human rights abuses.
Amarasinghe said that India was already intervening in Sri Lanka by forcing the Rajapaksa government to implement fully the system of devolution of powers
envisaged by the 13th Amendment. He told the English newspaper Daily Mirror that he loved Indian culture and that Mahboob Khan’s Mother India was among his
all-time favourite movies but he hated Indian officials, who made India look like a “monster”.
“We must not condemn Hindi cinema or Hindi songs or Indian people. A section of Indian bureaucrats is responsible for creating problems in Sri Lanka and in other
countries in the South Asian region,” he said in reply to questions from readers of the daily. “The people of Sri Lanka remember the anti-Sri Lankan activities [of]
former Indian High Commissioner J.N. Dixit. This kind of arrogant, conservative bureaucrats misled the politicians in India. Dixit’s arrogance misled [Prime Minister]
Rajiv Gandhi. Ultimately, Rajiv gave his life, assassinated by his mother’s creation, the LTTE.”
“These arrogant bureaucrats seem to have misunderstood patriotism as subjugation of India’s neighbours,” Amarasinghe said. Indian officials continued to mislead
Indian politicians of the present day, alleged the JVP chief. “They are under the impression that India could assume the role of the Big Brother in the region. It is our
responsibility to convince Indian bureaucrats by using every possible means that the South Asian region is not going to tolerate any further their arrogance and that
they will not be successful in their attempts to make India the Big Brother in the region,” he added.
It could not have been more ironical. The attacks on India have been stepped up at a juncture when New Delhi is faced with criticism from several quarters for
practising a “hands-off policy” towards Sri Lanka since the Rajiv Gandhi assassination in 1991 and is being cajoled to play a “more active role”. Obviously, the LTTE
and the JVP arrows aimed at India have little to do with Indian actions and reactions to events in the island nation. There simply is no atmosphere a la 1988-89 to
sustain an anti-India rant. Most observers believe that the present fulminations of the LTTE and the JVP are more a reflection of the internal dynamics within the two
organisations.

Open letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa
Air raids in the night in VanniI am much perturbed over the midnight strike on Oddusuddan by the Sri Lankan Air Force and also the decision to intensify operations,
causes me grave anxiety and concern. The aerial attack during daytime is bad enough, although civilians have the advantage of being able to run away and save their
lives. Inspite of this advantage, had been many instances of civilians being killed and suffering serious injury.
Aerial attacks in the night is sure to cause innumerable casualties among civilians who will not have any possibility of running away in the dark, to save themselves.
Families with children will be the worst affected. I very strongly appeal to you to inform all concerned parties to avoid operations in the night and also to give sufficient
timely warning of operations during the day time. The Government has a sacred duty to safeguard the lives of all its citizens. Why should these innocent civilians be
denied the Government’s protection. The noise made by the Air Force fighter jets is deafening and when they fly over inhabited areas, women and children scream
and run for their lives. I myself had such a frightening experience when I was in Jaffna.
People in the Vanni should be liberated from the LTTE. I myself have made several requests to have the people in the LTTE controlled areas, liberated. The people
there cannot bear the atrocities of the LTTE any more. They can’t afford to lose their children in their hundreds at the battle front any more. They are prepared to
welcome a friendly army that will liberate them without causing loss of life and destruction to property. In fact I had made a similar request once to the Secretary
General of the United Nations His Excellency Ban Ki-moon.
I do not want a single civilian life lost due to army action. Please ensure that this policy is maintained throughout. We can’t forget how we in Colombo felt when the
LTTE attacked the Katunayake Airport. The people in Vanni live in permanent fear and tension. Aerial attacks in the night will cause them more agony. Therefore
please take immediate action to prevent aerial attacks during the night.
V. Anandasangaree,President – TULF.