N. Sathiya Moorthy 2 February 2021
In a departure from the past, the Rajapaksa leadership has kept its options yet open on the UNHRC resolution that would be taken up for vote in the upcoming session, commencing this month and going past mid-next. Going by Media interviews of Foreign Secretary, Jayanath Colombage, the Government will wait for the draft that the core group of the West, led by the UK and identifies with the US, which is no more an UNHRC member, are working on, before taking a decision.
One option available to Sri Lanka is to continue with the predecessor-set tradition of a consensus resolution. The victimised Tamils could cry foul, but they should be doing so at their friends in the West, and their own Diaspora intermediaries. Between them, the two had convinced the Tamils nearer home to run down the Rajapaksas not long after the war, and vote against them, not once but twice. Of the two that they voted, Lt-Gen Sarath Fonseka, now Field Marshal (Elections-2010) was the army chief at the time of the war. The other, Maithripala Sirisena (Elections-2015) was the Acting Defence Minister, during the closing days of the war.
The Tamils, having acquiesced themselves to what the Diaspora told them on both occasions, and also now in the Elections-2019 that the Rajapaksas won and Gotabaya Rajapaksa became President, have little choice. They had accepted the earlier consensus resolutions, put forth by the West in their name, through the years of the predecessor’s regime. That included a two-year-old ‘accountability holiday’ that the West gave the Nation – the previous Government, to be precise – through a resolution in 2019.
It is this resolution that has attained its maturity now. Passing a new resolution, unilaterally but with the same effect, would make the West a laughing stock. Punishing Sri Lanka on the lines the top three anti-Government political coalitions in the country now want through a common memorandum to the UNHRC Council, too, seems to be froth with not-so-favourable possibilities, too. In a way, yes, the Tamils, too, should support a consensus resolution, though they are not a party to the negotiations and are neither a voting power at the UNHRC, nor a veto power in the more powerful UNSC.
Writing in the LTTE
According to Secretary Colombage, the Government wants the LTTE atrocities listed in any resolution draft for Colombo to consider the consensus route. He has told the local Media that the Government has since handed over the long list of LTTE atrocities to the core group of western nations. The Government would then consider the draft before deciding on the next course. Needless to say, there will be nuanced negotiations at Colombo, Geneva and possibly, elsewhere, too.
The present Rajapaksa Government approach is a welcome change from that of President Mahinda’s post-war approach to the UNHRC. Within a fortnight of the successful annihilation of the LTTE, the Government had unlikely allies in India and China together ensuring the defeated an EU resolution on accountability issues as was known at the time. But later on, when the US stepped in, for its own reasons, the Government took a simple line: ‘Sri Lanka is not a party to it.’ It stuck to that position, refused to respond to UNHRC’s entreaties, and even refused to work with and through intermediaries of any kind.
Today, instead, the Government has not only kept an open mind on the consensus approach thus far. At the scheduled Joint Commission meeting with the EU, Colombo has also reportedly confirmed its intent to revisiting the provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), and come up with appropriate amendments. According to a joint statement issued at the end of a virtual meeting of the Joint Commission, the EU delegation EU stressed the importance of applying international human rights standards in the fight against terrorism. “Sri Lanka looks forward to continuing the Counter-Terrorism Dialogue and Security Cooperation,” said the joint statement.
More time for the Govt
What does it mean for the ethnic issue in the country, and the Tamils in particular? Yet another consensus resolution in the UNHRC could well mean that the Government in Colombo will get more time to address the concerns mentioned in the UNHRC resolution, to which the Rajapaksas too have agreed upon along with the western sponsors. There is of course a dichotomy here, as the core group includes the UK, which is not a member of the EU any more, but also has others who are members. Of course, the core group is not an EU creation, but that of the US, which can now be expected to return to the UNHRC, after predecessor President Donald Trump had walked out of it.
With President Gotabaya having appointed a committee to come up with recommendations for a new draft Constitution, it could well imply that Tamil expectations on a political solution could well be met – if not wholly but more than half-way, in terms of power-devolution. It may then not be just 13A, from which successive Governments deviated and departed over the past decades. Instead, it could well go beyond what 13A had promised. More importantly, whatever the Tamils are able to get in power-devolution, the Sinhala Provinces too may get, even without asking.
It is safe to conclude that if there is a consensus, it could well give the Government around two more years to meet with the new western measures. It has to be what is achievable on the ground, and not what all is the intention of the Tamil Diaspora. Note that the EU at the Joint Commission did not ask for repealing the PTA but has only sought to introduce ‘international standards’ to Sri Lanka’s anti-terrorism law, and the picture should be complete.
Thinking independent
It is here that the Tamil parties and the society in the country need to think independent of the Diaspora and also of the West. Any UNHRC resolution now that abides by the Tamil party memorandum to member-nations cannot be the road to a negotiated settlement nearer home. Instead, it could well be a hidden path to an unmentioned plot for demanding separation, and consequent suppression.
It is anybody’s guess how and why all Tamil parties agreed to such a common draft without consulting their constituents? Are the Tamils in the country ready for a course that the memorandum imply but for a consensus resolution, if not today but definitely tomorrow or the day after?
The Tamils can safely conclude that re-merger of the North and the East cannot be a point for negotiations from the Government’s side, for more reasons than one. Unlike what they claim the East is not as much an exclusive Tamil Province as the North. Instead, it is multi-ethnic and they too know it well. If serious about finding their voices registered in a new Constitution, they need to ponder over the past, near and distant. So should the Sinhala-Buddhist hard-liners on the other side of the ethnic spectrum.
Failing themselves
The Tamils should acknowledge how they failed themselves on the negotiations front, very many times through the war years. At least, two of them require specific mention. One of course was the ‘Oslo Accord’, facilitated by the Norwegian peace facilitator. The earlier one was the ‘Chandrika Package’. The latter provided for a re-imagined ‘North-East’, which comprised the Tamil-majority North, or ‘Tamil North’ as the LTTE wanted it after driving out the Sinhala and Muslims, and contiguous Tamil ethnic areas in the East.
Today’s Tamil politicos and self-appointed civil society leaders cannot blame it either on the LTTE or their own predecessors. Many, if not, most of them were there, witness to it, or participants to it. Nor can they blame it all on the LTTE, which derived its so-called strength only from them. If anything, to the TNA should go the blame for torpedoing the post-war political negotiations with the Mahinda Government, where a way was being laid for all issues, keeping the re-merger out of it – at least for the time being.
They took their cue/advice from the Diaspora and got encouragement from the international community (read: West). Ultimately, they did not get anything through the past years. Not even the so-called Tamil-friendly predecessor Government that they (alone) had voted to office got them anything, in return. All they got was a draft position paper, which did not even mature into a draft Constitution. Not that anyone from the then Government side had at any time was anyway serious about it, or sincere about it, to be precise.
Rolling back…
Truth be acknowledged, the Sinhala and the Tamils, especially their hard-liner sections, should look back honestly to where they place their mutual fear, suspicion and hatred. It all began, so to say, with the youthful Sinhala king Dutugemunu defeating the aging Tamil ruler, King Elara, in a duel, after their armies had tired out each other, for years, without a result.
The Tamils saw a Tamil Chola King from South India vanquishing Sinhala rulers of the day, centuries later. This was ‘followed’ by the LTTE adopting the Cholas’ Tiger standard as their symbol, just a thousand years down the line. The Sinhala felt belittled and humiliated just as the Tamils had felt when Elara was gone.
The Sinhala need to go back farther in history, to see where it all began. It did begin when King Vijaya ditched his local consort Kuveni and married a Tamil Pandya princess from south India. It continued through the centuries later, when successive Sinhala rulers in Sri Lanka would sent troops to fight along side the Pandyas in the latter’s fight for supremacy against the Cholas, in south India.
Rather, it all may have begun with the Sinhala taking sides in wars that were not really theirs in the first place, and in a region, which was also not theirs. But then, the Tamils too need to acknowledge that the Jaffna kingdom that they are talking about it is at best a few centuries old – unless they too want to go back to Elara as the Sinhala keep citing Vijaya – until the colonial masters merged them all to form the full Nation that Sri Lanka is today. And that they all need to give up living in the past for good, and learn to read the present, is what is at the bottom of any political solution in the future!
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(The writer is Distinguished Fellow and Head-Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam54@