Responding to Samarasinghe’s Hard Talk

Blogger and fellow Mutineer Acharaya has this response to the recent interview given to BBC’s Hard Talk by Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe. He writes,

[Samarasinghe]  is largely lying despite [Hard Talk anchor] Steven’s good job at asking pointed questions. I think Steven could have been better but for a foreign journo he has done quite a bit of research.

Let me point for example one ocassion where he lies. According to HRW the screening takes place mainly at Killinochchi where the ICRC or the UNHCR do not have access. They do have access at Omanthai by which most of the screening is over.

His rhetorical question: how do we  distiguish between the civilians and the terrorists and actually know that those who have died are civilians and not terrorists. So according to the minister all those who have died and HRW tells us that 2000 odd have died so far have to be terrorists.

I am not expecting the minister to confess to all that is happening. I actually think that he pulled off a good job for the Govt. Very smartly done. The constant reference to the interviewer by his first name etc is an indication as to how good he is at this type of thing. This is one area hat the Govt was earlier week but the Samarasinghe-Jayatilleke-Wijesinghe have done really well for their master. Of course the govt in its own interest might want to keep Gota away from the videos. He gives away the truth out quite indiscreetly.

Link to Comment.

The crisis of our time

At a recent media event by SCOPP, I asked Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe how the Government or SCOPP hopes to facilitate the entry of media personnel into the newly cleared areas by the State forces. His response was that this would be a systemaic process that would be handled by the MoD, and that media wasn’t allowed in the conflict areas “for their own safety”. An answer that should be looked at, and thought about.

Journalists, especially those who cover battle situations, can be a pain in the ass to someone who is trying to hide something. Wars and battles can be expensive things, and the Defence industry is a game of high stakes,but for those who play with extremely lucrative prospects. On one side, jounalists who are working away from the battlefront expose the waste and corruption that exists, in addition to the actual expense (which is oft sugar coated in a yummy tasting layer of patriotism) of running a war.

The expense, in a rare moment of honesty, was commented on by Minister Maithreepala Sirisena on 8th January 2007, when he said “We may be thrilled to see the spectacle of multi-barrel attacks, but what we don`t realize is the price we all have to pay for such attacks” while addressing an SLFP gathering in Polonnaruwa. He added that the country was losing almost one hundred jobs with each Multi-barrel rocket fired on the LTTE. This was in 2007, when the war was at a much minor scale.

On the other hand, journalists, especially those armed with camera, can tell stories of death and human suffering to the people. While some say that civilian casualties are unavoidable, and sometimes expected, in the back of every empathizing human’s mind the fact that innocent souls are lost, is simply unacceptabe. But when you restrict journos coming in, seeing the suffereing, and then living to tell the story, you can have a blank cheque to do whatever you want to “save” the “country”, and to take actions for “national security”.

Unless information that comes out from the ground are from a non-partisan source, it can’t be trusted. If it comes out from either party, then it’s propoganda. Whilst SCOPP (which is part of the GoSL propoganda arm) puts their vision as “To act as the cutting edge of the Government of Sri Lanka to consolidate and strengthen the peace process on behalf of all Sri Lankan citizens, whilst promoting a negotiated settlement to the current conflict”, the Media Centre for National Security is more out-there about it when they say “The MCNS, as the sole state authority to distribute national security and defence-related Media releases, data, statistics, visuals and other information to the public, produces special dossiers, audio-video clips and various documentaries”.

Currently, in addition to feeding the media through bodies like MCNS, GoSL adopts a guided tour strategy. where selected journalists are taken around, and given the chance to take pictures of carefully set up photo-ops. Carefully drafted releases are sent out, edited photo kits are given out, video clips from air recon missions where the targets that are accurately taken out distributed, and well written speeches are given.

Due to obvious reasons, mainstream media in the country remains unsurprisingly complacent. Listening, compiling, and reporting. A lesson can be learnt from Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner of 2006. (Full transcript can be read here)

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

[Emphasis added]

The original article was published on the former blog of Dinidu de Alwis. Reproduced here in part, with permission.

On Distrust, Suspicion and Personal Friendships: Understanding the Effects of a Socially Protracted Ethnic Conflict

This is a post that Aachcharya wrote for the Forgottendiaries.org project in June this year. Being reproduced given the current relevance.

Suspecting generally Tamils who belong to the younger age bracket as possible terrorists has a history of more than 30 years since the time Tamil youth took up arms to give effect to the Tamil Nationalist project of creating a separate state in Sri Lanka.

There are various ramifications of what this ‘feeling’ of suspicion can do to people. This post is a small note from my personal experiences. This is an issue, a theorem difficult to explain, but let me try. The central question that I pose in this post is whether one can separate his take on the ethnic politics of this country from affecting his friendship. My equation is this” politics has fuelled distrust and suspicion. Trust and confidence in each other are central ideals to any notion of friendship. Hence there has to be a connection.

Within an entrenched climate of distrust between the different ethnic communities in Sri Lanka it is my hunch that no amount of personal relationship and friendship can totally alleviate this feeling of suspicion. For a Sinhala speaking person I doubt whether it can be ever possible, how much ever long standing and close the friendship is, to be sure that his or her Tamil friend might not be a ‘LTTE type of Tamil’ ( I know its difficult to define this. I am not going to attempt to define it myself). Now this is not entirely problematic but what follows is: I will go a step further and say that it might not even possible for a Sinhala friend (when the suspicion is evoked externally) to easily dismiss the fact (in its entirety) that his Tamil friend might not be a member of the LTTE. Let me deal with two personal examples. One of my friends was once caught up in a mess where a member of an organisation that he used to head started spreading stories that he was either close or part of the LTTE. Now this sent ripples all round and some of his friends started to feel that they shouldn’t get ‘involved’ in ‘this’. They were ‘not sure’. Now I must quickly add that there were many friends of my friend’s – a whole host of them – whom he would flinch at the thought of even labelling them ‘Sinhala’ friends who stood by him. But my friend did feel that he was shocked by the response by quite a few (actually many) who were ‘not sure’.

The other situation was when this same friend of mine was arrested for all the wrong reasons or probably as some told him because he was stupid. Some of his friends worked very closely to get him out but they warned their other friends not to come to the police station to meet him. The reason: police would get suspicious, unnecessary questions would follow etc etc. Now this was very unfortunate. Being not to be with your friend during time of distress is as worse it can get.

These are difficult questions. Sometime back we organised a forum theatre looking at how the ethnic conflict has affected young peoples personal relationships with people in other communities. The plot revolved around two friends one Sinhalese and the other Tamil who were arrested for ‘loitering’ around (yes it is sort of a crime in this country). The parents of the Sinhala boy get him out without problem and the boy protests that he wont leave the police station unless his Tamil friend is also released. The parents drag the boy away from the police station. The police are shown in this theatre piece to advice the parents not to allow their son to have friendship with Tamils.

Last month I was in New York and I met up with my uncle who moved to the US after being forced to leave his country having been affected personally because of riots that took place in Colombo in 1983. Now both my aunt and uncle said that though a lot of their Sinhala friends had been helpful back in Colombo during those difficult times and continued to be good friends, it was impossible to shred away the thought which they believed was true that most of the ‘Sinhalese’ friends except for a handful of few friends were to use the popular term of their generation ‘communal minded’ when it came to politics and discussions that centred around how to resolve the conflict in Sri Lanka – that they never understood the problems of the Tamils. Now this is what academics who research on peace building and conflict resolution call a ‘protracted social conflict’- a type of conflict very very difficult to remedy.

The other side of the problem is this. For some Sinhalese there is no ethnic conflict because they all enjoy within their friendships many a Tamil. We all drink together have fun etc etc. For all those who think we don’t have an ethnic conflict because of your friendships my answer is: the test of friendships whether they are effected by politics or not is when the worst of your ‘suspicions’, unconsciously situated in you, are threatened. The foregoing paragraph where I narrate a conversation with my uncle and aunt is a dedication to them.

For me I wonder what would take to alleviate this distrust that has been built over centuries of reading history, passing down oral history and personal experiences. It will take a sea changing turn in our history (now what do these academics call it? ..hmmm..yes .. paradigm shift..!!) for us to push back our distrust of each other. There seems to be no indication of this happening in the near future.

‘Majoritarianism wins with the acquiescence of the Minorities’ ?

-Guruparan Kumaravadivel-

The following extract is from Prof Jayadeva Uyangoda’s October article to the EPW (Economic and Political Weekly) dated 25 October 2008. A full version of the article is available from tamilnation here.

“I believed for quite some time that ethnic majoritarianism is a political condition that the political leaders of the majority community impose by means of coercion on the ethnic minorities. It accords an unequal, at best second class, status to the minorities. Minorities do not accept majoritarianism and they resist it. That is why ethnic conflicts flare up. Observing how the Tamil and Muslim political parties in Sri Lanka have come to accept the second class and unequal status with great pleasure, I changed, realising that my understanding of majoritarianism was an incomplete one.

I now know that ethnic majoritarianism is not necessarily coercive. It has a strong element of consent of the minorities, or at least their political leaders. Majoritarianism is completed when the political representatives of the minorities accept, with happiness and even in intense competition with each other, the condition of inequality. They do so in exchange of other benefits which are usually couched in the respectable language of “development assistance to our community”.

That is what the 25 years of civil war has done to the minority rights project in Sri Lanka.”

The part italicised is my own emphasis from the original. It is a very short article and the excerpt above comes at the tail end of the article.

I am unable to agree with the professor’s analysis (which is not detailed possibly because he was constrained by space) and hence my disagreement with his ‘new conclusion’ about majoritarianism. Prof Uyangoda’s reference to the minorities accepting a second class status is possibly a conclusion resulting from his analysis of Karuna’s, Douglas’s and possibly Thondaman’s politics.

I do not think the minority ever willingly gives into majoritarianism.  I do not think that they give it up with ‘great pleasure’. The fact that the minorities ‘give up’ is essentially related and directly linked to coercive majoritarianism. The Prof seems to tag this ‘giving up’ as unconnected with coercive majoritarianism. Its a victory of one over the other, where the victorious picks the new leaders of the minority. I would say Thondaman,  Karuna and Douglas are all examples of this. The fact that these political parties have given up does not mean that the entire community has given up. These political parties have ‘given up’ because they were unable to survive in their attempts to resist  coercive majoritarianism. The petty agendas of these political parties and their leaders cannot be taken as a give up by a minority. I can understand a war weary population seeking out developmental assistance – an assistance which is reliant on the resources the majority has almost exclusive control over. Hence destruction, starvation and hunger is a tool of coercive majoritarianism. War wearediness can also result because of the leaders of the minority struggle lacking startegic political vision as in the case of LTTE. The dillema of minority politics in Sri Lanka is not because it has given it up with ‘great pleasure’ as Prof Uyangoda calls it. It is because 1) coercive majoritarianism having been able to cleverly stick to the fundamentals of majoritarian democracy (having periodic elections) has succeeded or appears to have succeeded in winning over minority politics both by the use of tools associated with majoritarian democracy (again elections and numbers) and through the use of arms and 2) because minority politics lacks imagination and flexibility.

Are We Ready for Change?

Mobilizing people and inspiring youth activism to bring about change and a solution for the ongoing ethnic conflict, should it be done at a more individual level? or do we need to go one step further and gather in a team to bring about change? Was what a group of youth activist discussed yesterday (11 December) evening at a study circle session held in Colombo.

One of the activists who came up with the proposal that, we need to create a alternative direction for the youth to unit to bring about change in this country and to begin with this to have a group of like-minded people getting together working on a course of action to achieve change. The activist claimed that combating a wide range of challenges to bring about change should be done more in a coalition rather than tackling it individually.

Now there must be loads of questions bothering you, yes, you are right the activists were also talking about the risks, in other words one’s own weaknesses when being an activist of bringing about change no matter what you are fighting for. It can be treats to one’s own life, family and close friends, loved ones or even property, but how do we draw the line being a moderate person trying to combat all these challenges and still wanting to bring about change? Can we really do this?

The argument was that one of the advantages in having a group of people rather than your own self can be that, there would be the others to stand by any person of the group facing a particular treat. Say you organize a huge protest at the Lipton circus asking the government to stop war and go for peace talks, it catch the attention of the media and you make a huge voice, the next day you are been abducted by a white van and questioned for hours about your involvement with the so called terrorist and other extremist. At a situation like this you will feel very depressed, uneasy and etc, but if you know that there are another 10 to 15 people around you supporting you to continue to fight the cause, you know it will make you much comfortable than before right?

However is it going to be another revolutionary story like in the movie “Rang De Basanti”? for the people who have not heard about “Rang De Basanti”, it is a story about youth of India today – in the film both the 1930’s British India and the India today run parallel and intersect with each other at crucial points. As the film reaches its resolution the line between past and present blurs, as they become one in spirit. For those who haven’t seen this, you need to find it somehow and watch it. I was almost tearing when I first saw it and well I am not going to tell anything more about the film.

So is it going to be another revolutionary story like “Rang De Basanti”? The answer for this question is totally up to you to decide. Of all the things I have heard, seen and learnt so far is that you have to sacrifice certain things to achieve goals in life and in fact in the process of trying to bring about change, you might have to sacrifice lot of the things you like, love and want.

Take Mahatma Gandhi’s story for example, he was a non-violent person who brought about change in non-violent form of activism. However even he had to sacrifice lot of his likes, comforts, had to face lot of hardships, had to face violent reactions, etc. in his philosophy, which he openly proclaimed in 1906 he said “one should never respond to violence with violence” however he and his followers had to face violent responses by the British in their (India’s) struggle for a free nation. India lost a lot of lives in their fight against a free liberal nation and that was a sacrifice they had to make to make the Brits understand, that they were masters of another country, but not theirs. Despite all those sacrifices, Gandhi was not able to achieve what he wanted – one independent state, but instead two states, the Indian Union (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslims).

Getting back to the topic, I would say that, we have seen different stories of which some had great endings and some didn’t, it’s time for us to make sure that the people of this country need to stand as one to what they believe is right and not what the political leaders want. Remember lot of people saying, if you want someone to be elected, whom you believe will do his/ her best, you vote that person and send the person to the parliament, but in case that he/she doesn’t meet the expectations of the voters; is there any system to pull him out from the parliament? This is something most of us have not thought of and have not lobbied for.

One government will come and say that we can win this war and don’t need to go for peace talks with the terrorist, and when the war goes for some time, celebrate victory and then another government comes in to power they say there is no point of a war lets have negotiations and then they go for a ceasefire. Whatever said and done MR’s Government is not the first government who said that the LTTE needs to be wiped out, even CBK’s Government said the same and they also did a bloody war for some time and its only after that when RW’s Government came in to power the country went in to a CFA. So you will never know whether the next Government, whoever it is going to be will go for a CFA? This is just a cycle rotating or rather being rotated to achieve personal gains.

One reason for this to happen is that the people of this country are very short-sighted. They think they can be satisfied in life if they can earn for the day, but not look at saving for their own future. So they support one Government to fight a war and the other to strike a CFA.

My generation, from the day we were born has never seen a Sri Lanka without a conflict. We have been living for more than 20 long years or rather two decades with this bloody war. So now we really do not care when a bomb in Wallawaya or Galle for that matter goes off, because now it has been a part of our lives. Who do we blame all this for? The Government in power? The opposition? Or our own selves? It’s time to find a solution for our own selves now before it is too late.

We need to mobilize our selves, be much more organized, find the third alternative if both the others (war and CFA) doesn’t work! We need to sacrifice some element of our lives in order to achieve what we want. Start the change from you, try to change the perception of the people whom you meet, work with and most importantly get together to fight for what we need and if we don’t act today, it will be too late to act tomorrow!

– Nooranie.

Nooranie is a fellow mutineer, a BB-ite and many other things. He blogs about similar themes in his personal blog. The views expressed here are his own.

Integrating Karuna into the democratic process is it the right thing to do?

Integrating Karuna into the democratic process is the largest distortion of the judicial process I have ever seen. Hello this man is responsible for the killings of tens and thousands of Sri Lankan soldiers and civilians, where is the justice? The Rajapakse government who has drowned the Sri Lankan public in war rhetoric has forgotten the latest MP in their party was responsible for the killings of thousands of our fellow soldiers, can the Rajapakse regime get more hypocritical than this. For god’s sake where is the justice for the family members of those soldiers who died at the hands of this man(Karuna)!

Timor – university graduate

Should there be an Eelam?

Listen if you are to ask any sinhalese person today whether its acceptable for a part of our country to be acceded to the LTTE, they would immediately blast you for even aksing such a thing. My point is if there is a significant movement in the international coomunity towards recognizing kosovo as a country (already the US, EU and several other nations have) why can’t they recognize tamil Elam as a country. How different were the chauvinistic sinhala regimes of the Bandaranaika’s and the Rajapakse’s different from the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. It is aboslutely absurd, the sinhalese majority government lost their right to govern over us ever since the 1960’s with the passing of the one language bill. As long as there is a sinhala majority in this country, the Sri Lankan regime will continue to pass dicriminatory measures all in the name of defeating terrorism and the sinhalese majority is sure to turn a blind eye. I am appealing to the inetrnational community what makes us different from Kosovo.

Anonymous

Is the younger generation more supportive of the war?

As far as I am concerned, I belive that in some parts of the country that such as in urbanized cities like Colombo and Kandy the youth don’t support the war one of the possible reasons why the youth in these regions don’t support the war is because they receive a far more liberal education. As a student pursuing the London A level stream, what I have realized is that studying subjects such as History and Geography, I have managed to receive a broader understanding of this conflict in relation to other events around the world in the past. While having also been part of the local curriculum stream, I believe that the local syllabus should broaden its scope and try to integrate a wider scope of views in line with the globalizing world of today. On the other hand I believe that the youth of the rural areas are far more likely to be supportive of the war and far more likely to be racist due to the lack of ethnic diversity in such areas. I also have witnessed a clear pattern, in terms of those families that uphold traditional views also tend to be die hard supporters of the war.

Rana – Sinhalese student

War and Business?

As a businessmen, I believe that the civil conflict does not really help us in any way. From a businessman’s point of view, the war is merely a waste of resources. It would be far more prudent to give precedence to economic development of the country rather than a wasteful war. One thing that the Rajapakse regime should realize is that you need a strong economy to fight a war. During the past few years number of tourists who are an important source of foreign currency, coming to this country has sharply declined due to the unfavourable media reports aired on tv channels such as BBC highlighting the violence in the country.  I mean seriously just sit down and actually think what someone gets in fighting this, seriously what do u get eventhough your valuable tax money is directed at the war effort. As far as I can see the only thing we have got back is a tightening of security measures which has been a further ste back to the business community whose tax money is what funds this war. The cost to econmic developnment because of this war is unbelieveable, Sri Lanka must have lost like 20 years of econmic growth because of this conflict.

Sunil-businessmen

Define a teacher’s role at this perod of time in relation to the conflict?

Right now in the current environment I believ that not only teachers but the entire education system itself has a key role to play in solving this ethnic conflict in the long run. I strongly believe that new subejects whould be introduced into the curriculum such as conflict resolution and more initiatives to be taken to foster cross cultural communication. What we have realized in the past few years is that students studying sciences or maths do not have a full grasp at to the different  dynamics of this conglicts while students who are pursuiting arts courses are far mopre open minded and are able to view an entity from different perspectives. In thjis climate of war its of paramount importance that we understand each other better and especially eradicate this notion of all tamils being supporters of the L.T.T.E. I myself believes that the L.T.T.E. should be defeated however i have also realized the tamil community has been receiving a great deal of second class treatment by the authorities which consists of some narrow-minded Sinhalese. Its imperative that we promote tolerance in this nation since as long as the tamil community feel that they are not welcomed in this country, the L.T.T.E. has a mandate to operate.

– A Student, 20.