hardboiled

turmoil for the tamils

Corruption in the Sri Lankan government and opposition group

In a world that operates in hazy shades of gray, the government is not always the protector of the people and the opposition group is rarely ever the ideal replacement. Caught in the dilemma of siding with the rebels or the government, sometimes it is near impossible to distinguish the lesser evil. For the Tamils of Sri Lanka, this is exactly the kind of nightmare that pervades their reality.

As an ethnic group that originated in parts of India and that has existed for over two millennia, the Tamils are the largest minority in Sri Lanka. Making up roughly 15 percent of the population, the predominantly Hindu Tamils have historically been in conflict with the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Aside from cultural differences, the Tamil and Sinhalese people share a troubled past rooted in British imperialism. While the Sinhalese resented the disproportional amount of power granted by the British to the Tamil minority during the years of colonization, the Tamils now feel persecuted by the Sinhalese majority that came to power through a parliamentary system after Sri Lanka's independence.

After reports of ethnic cleansing and a series of discriminatory policies created in the 1970s and 1980s, polices which still exists today that disadvantage Tamils in employment and education opportunities, the demand for a separate Tamil nation grew. The result was the formation of a militant rebel group, the Tamil Tigers, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). For the past twenty-five years, the Sri Lankan government has been at war trying to quell the LTTE despite many attempts at ceasefire.

Declared a terrorist group by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the LTTE is far from being the savior of Sri Lankan Tamils that it claims to be. LTTE preaches extremism and recruits underprivileged young Tamil males who are intrigued by their fanatical practices such as ingesting poison under the threat of capture. The Tamil Tigers have targeted Sinhalese civilians in suicide bombings and headed assassinations of key political figures such as former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who had sent peacekeeping forces to stabilize Sri Lanka by disempowering the Tamil separatists. While this act of policing was controversial in India where there is also a large Tamil population, the assassination marked the extremism of the LTTE. The rebels have also been accused by Human Rights Watch of recruiting over two thousand child soldiers and fundraising through blackmail money. For obvious reasons, the LTTE has made aggressive attempts to restrict domestic coverage of their activities in Sri Lanka, by threatening and targeting journalists. In January, Lal Hemantha Mawalage, leading news producer of a state run corporation, and Suhaib M Kasim, the associate editor of a daily Tamil newspaper, were both brutally stabbed for unfavorable coverage of LTTE activities. Yet instead of combating this militancy in order to establish some semblance of stability, the government has recently acted in ways that mirror the level of extremism of the LTTE.

In 2004, a group of LTTE rebels split from the group to form the Karuna faction stating that the LTTE did not represent the needs of the Tamils of Sri Lanka. However, insiders of LTTE claim that members of the faction were forced to leave the Tamil Tigers for money laundering and extortion. Nonetheless, the faction possesses the same brutal practices of the LTTE but now works with the government to destroy the members of LTTE. In a twisted symbiotic relationship, both the government and the Karuna faction benefit. By supporting the Karuna faction, the government is able to adopt terrorist tactics without being directly linked to the activities while the Karuna faction is given liberty to extort the people of Sri Lanka without repercussions. Like the LTTE, the Karuna faction has also been charged with recruiting child soldiers. Yet the most recent outcry has been the government funded abductions of young Tamil men. In a testimony to the Human Rights Watch, a 25 year old relative of Thiyagarajah, one of many "disappeared" men, said:

"They started beating Thiyagarajah. They took his T-shirt off and stuffed it into his mouth. The neighbors came out to help, but they pushed them away. His wife was crying and shouting, and they hit her with a gun butt. She was nine months pregnant... They beat him so badly that he couldn't walk - they had to carry him away. They took him away on a motorcycle."

The government also has been cited by Human Rights Watch for abducting clergy members, educators, media workers, and humanitarian workers as a means to deter others from participating in activities that they feel are sympathetic to the Tamils or the LTTE. A member of Parliament and Convener of the Civil Monitoring Committee, Mano Ganeshan, feels that the abductions are part of a systematic government attempt to inspire fear in the Tamils. He reports that 125 abductions occurred in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, during 2007. But as of February of this year, there have been roughly nine abductions of Tamils in per week. He states, "They [the policemen] don't go in with uniforms and they don't use official vehicles. Instead, they go in white caravans. These police systematically are creating unnecessary fear in the Tamil communities."

President Mahinda Rajapakse followed the footsteps of the Bush administration, invoking rhetoric about a war on terror, "The United States and many other countries too, are facing the challenges of terrorism today. Those countries do not confuse terrorism with democracy." Although the government claims that the abduction reports have been exaggerated and that these Tamil men are actually being taken in to be investigated to get information about the LTTE, evidence shows that these abductions also serve as a lucrative source of income to the government and Karuna faction. Dan McDougall of The Independent states that the targets of Karuna abductions are Tamil men unaffiliated with LTTE who have relatives living abroad. Karuna members approach these family members demanding ransom money in exchange for the release of their loved ones. Even though many of the people who are forced to pay ransom money are working class citizens, the payments are often as large as $25,000 at a time. Ganeshan feels that the government is "cashing in on political unrest."

Ariyathas Pushpathas, a Tamil living in Britain who was approached by Karuna members seeking ransom money, verbalizes the fear of Tamils living abroad: "The trouble is the Karuna are now an extension of the Sri Lankan army. The question I want to know is: am I being extorted and threatened by government agents?" An administration that commits atrocities paralleling the brutality of the terrorist opposition defies the principle purpose of government—to defend the rights and dignity of the people.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this crisis is the fact that it bares a disturbingly close resemblance to the root causes behind the Rwandan genocide. Like Sri Lanka, the government of Rwanda at the time of the genocide was composed of a majority ethnic group embittered by an imperial past that had favored the nation's minority ethnic group. The deep resentment ultimately led to an eruption of violence in which the majority attempted to brutally eliminate the minority. In spite of the despair that permeates the situation, brushing the crisis aside and labeling it as a lost cause would truly make it so. Because there are few domestic aid outlets for the Sri Lankan people, it is crucial that the international community refuse to tolerate the injustices in Sri Lanka and pressure the government to reform. It is critical to act before the conflict reaches the magnitude of a crisis such as the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda. Spreading the word about the current conflict and participating in efforts by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to appeal to the United Nations can induce change. In a world that operates in shades of gray, we must be the ones to shed light on injustice and expose the true colors of both a corrupt government and debauched opposition.