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Sri Lanka and state terrorism

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Terrorism and political violence
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Main cities in Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan state has been accused of state terrorism against the Tamil minority as well as the Sinhalese majority, during the two Marxist–Leninist insurrections.[1][2][3][4][5] The Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been charged with massacres, indiscriminate shelling and bombing, extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, disappearance, arbitrary detention, forced displacement and economic blockade.[1][6][7][8] According to Amnesty International state terror was institutionalized into Sri Lanka's laws, government and society.[6]

History

20th century

See also: Sri Lankan riots of 1958, Burning of Jaffna library, and Black July

Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948 as the Dominion of Ceylon, although the British Royal Navy retained a base there until 1956. In 1972, the country became a republic, adopting the name Sri Lanka. Since this time, the country has experienced several major conflicts – a civil war, Marxist uprisings, also several other conflicts.

Marxist-Leninist insurrections

See also: 1987-89 JVP Insurrection (Sri Lanka), Sooriyakanda mass grave, and 1971 JVP insurrection

From 1985 to 1989, Sri Lanka responded to violent insurrection with equal violence against the Sinhalese majority as part of the counterinsurgency measures against the uprising by the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party.[9] In order to subdue those supporting the JVP uprising, a wide range of acts of cruelty were recorded as having been carried out by the state, including the torture and mass murder of school children.[10][11] This repression peaked among the Sinhala population during 1989–90. Approximately 90,000 casualties occurred during the 1971-1990 period, most of whom were Sinhalese male youths[12]

Civil war

The Sri Lankan Civil War lasted from 1983 to 2009. In 1986 an American-Tamil social anthropologist at Harvard University stated that acts of "terrorism" had been committed by all sides during the war,[13] but although all parties in the conflict had resorted to the use of these tactics, in terms of scale, duration, and sheer numbers of victims, the Sri Lankan state was particularly culpable.[14][15][16] This was echoed by the Secretary of the Movement for Development and Democratic Rights, a Non-governmental organisation (NGO), which further claimed that the Sri Lankan state viewed killing as an essential political tool.[17] This had originally prompted the demand for a separate state for minority Tamils called Tamil Eelam in the north of the country,[14][18][19] an idea first articulated by S.J.V. Chelvanayagam in 1976.[20]

Assaults on Tamils for ethnic reasons have been alleged,[10] and the experience of state terrorism by the people of Jaffna has been alleged to have been instrumental in persuading the United National Party to increase their hostilities there.[21]

Chandrika Kumaratunga was the President of Sri Lanka from 1994 to 2005. In an interview with the British television presenter and news critic David Frost, she has stated that at the time that her husband Vijaya Kumaranatunga was assassinated, "Sri Lanka had a killing fields, there was a lot of terror perpetrated by the government itself, state terrorism."[22] This statement has been supported by a report released by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a Non-governmental organization based in Hong Kong and associated with the United Nations, which has also claimed that there was widespread terrorism by the state during this period.[23]

21st century

Following the collapse of peace talks in 2006, human rights agencies such as the Asian Center of Human Rights (ACHR), the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), and pro-LTTE political parties such as the Tamil National Alliance, claimed that the government of Sri Lanka had unleashed state terrorism as part of its counterinsurgency measures against the rebel LTTE movement.[24][25][26] The Sri Lankan government responded by claiming that these allegations by the LTTE were an attempt by the LTTE to justify their own acts of terrorism.[27]

The ACHR has also stated that following the collapse of the Geneva talks of February 2006, the government of Sri Lanka perpetrated a campaign of state terrorism by targeting alleged LTTE sympathizers and Tamil civilians.[28] A spokesman for Human Rights Watch was of the opinion that: "The Sri Lankan government has apparently given its security forces a green light to use dirty war tactics."[29] International intervention in Sri Lanka was requested by Tamil sources to protect civilians from state terror.[30][31]

The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was implemented to fight against the freedom fighting organisation LTTE but even after declaring a victory over this organisation, The Sri Lankan government continues to implement it on civilians and journalists. Human rights organisations and activists have a hard time agreeing with this law and consider it a human rights violation since it justifies arbitrary arrests without trials. The law has been regulated to send all people who cause "religious, racial or communal disharmony" to be sent to rehabilitation centres. They were kept censored and refrained from expressing themselves in any way or form. While PTA is a violation itself, the more disturbing fact is that it is usually implemented on minorities and reinforces their identities to be erased. Muslims living on the island are sent off to militarized rehabilitation centres to unlearn their radical views and Tamils are sent to distance themselves from any form of resistance against the state. However, all this law does is stereotyping minority groups of being radical and extremist by only targeting them and erasing their identity as Muslims or Tamils by vilifying everything that is related to these two identities. Muslims cannot act out their religious freedoms without being radicalized and Tamil are infringed of their self-determination or else they are considered as rebels or terrorists. PTA laws have another dreadful consequence: The disappearance of thousands. PTA allows arbitrary arrests which are permanently made lawful. White vans abductions have also made their arrivals into playing a significant role as a human rights violation under PTA. Suspects are kidnapped by unidentified members and brought back dead or detained LTTE members disappeared forever, leaving their families with many unanswered questions. These unanswered questions lead to many legal issues and collisions: A disappeared person's death or life cannot be determined which means the families won't get a death certificate. Without a death certificate the families face problems in inheritance and other legal affairs.

State terrorist groups

Sri Lankan government have been accused of the usage state-sponsored paramilitaries to commit war crimes. Most of them were created at the height of the second JVP uprising. During the civil war, the main state sponsored paramilitary was the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, which was led by Karuna Amman.

Anti-separatist paramilitaries

Anti-communist paramilitaries

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Bandarage, Asoka (2009). The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism, Ethnicity, Political Economy. Routledge. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-415-77678-3.
  2. ^ Hughes, Dhana (31 July 2013). Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life After Terror. Routledge. p. 109. ISBN 978-1135038151.
  3. ^ Mukarji, Apratim (2005). Sri Lanka: A Dangerous Interlude. New Dawn Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-1845575304.
  4. ^ Grant, Trevor (2014). Sri Lanka's Secrets: How the Rajapaksa Regime Gets Away with Murder. Monash University Publishing. p. 191. ISBN 978-1922235534.
  5. ^ Gunaratna, R. (1990). Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution?: The Inside Story of the JVP. Institute of fundamental studies.
  6. ^ a b Somasundaram, Daya (2012). "Short and Long Term Effects on the Victims of Terror in Sri Lanka". In Danieli, Yael; Brom, Danny; Sills, Joe (eds.). The Trauma of Terrorism: Sharing Knowledge and Shared Care, An International Handbook. Routledge. p. 216. ISBN 978-1136747045.
  7. ^ Kleinfeld, Margo (2004). "Strategic Trooping in Sri Lanka: September Eleventh and the Consolidation of Political Position". In Brunn, Stanley D. (ed.). 11 September and Its Aftermath: The Geopolitics of Terror. Routledge. p. 106. ISBN 978-1135756024.
  8. ^ Dwivedi, Manan (2009). South Asia Security. Kalpaz Publications. p. 170. ISBN 978-81-7835-759-1.
  9. ^ Gananath Obeyesekere, Narratives of the self: Chevalier Peter Dillon's Fijian cannibal adventures, in Barbara Creed, Jeanette Hoorn, Body Taade: captivity, cannibalism and colonialism in the Pacific, Routledge, 2001, p. 100. ISBN 0-415-93884-8. "The 'time of dread' was roughly 1985-89, when ethnic Sinhala youth took over vast areas of the country and practiced enormous atrocities; they were only eliminated by equally dreadful state terrorism." Gananath Obeyesekere
  10. ^ a b Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation, and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1996, p. 55. ISBN 1-85567-578-1.
  11. ^ "JVP: Lessons for the Genuine Left". Imayavaramban. Archived from the original on 13 October 2007. Retrieved 17 January 2008.
  12. ^ Handelman, Don (2006). The Manchester School: Practice and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology. Berghahn Books. p. 142.
  13. ^ Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy, p 116. Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
  14. ^ a b Hattotuwa, From violence to peace: Terrorism and Human Rights in Sri Lanka, pp 11–13
  15. ^ Danieli, Yael, Brom, D and Sills, Joe. The trauma of terrorism: sharing knowledge and shared care, p 216
  16. ^ Somasundaram, D. (2002). "Child soldiers: Understanding the context" (PDF). Daya Somasundaram. 324 (7348): 1268–1271. doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7348.1268. PMC 1123221. PMID 12028985. Retrieved 17 January 2008.
  17. ^ ACHR, Sri Lanka: Disappearances and the Collapse of the Police System,ACHR, pp 34–42
  18. ^ Kumar Rupesinghe, Ethnic Conflict in South Asia: The Case of Sri Lanka and the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF), pp.337
  19. ^ "Sri Lanka: testimony to state terror". Race & Class. 26 (4). Institute of Race Relations: 71–84. 1985. doi:10.1177/030639688502600405. S2CID 220917010.
  20. ^ "S.J.V.Chelvanayagam Q.C". Tamil Nation. Tamil Nation. 15 November 2006. Retrieved 18 January 2008. [dead link‍]
  21. ^ W. A. Wiswa Warnapala, L. Dias Hewagama, Recent Politics in Sri Lanka: The Presidential Election and the Referendum, Navrang (Original from the University of Michigan), 1983, p. 29. ASIN: B000II886W.
  22. ^ "BBC Breakfast with Frost Interview: President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka". David Frost. 28 October 2001. Retrieved 17 January 2008.
  23. ^ "Tell the truth or you will be killed". Archived from the original on 15 November 2004. Retrieved 11 August 2007.
  24. ^ "Sri Lanka: Terror Vs State Terror". Archived from the original on 21 July 2008. Retrieved 11 August 2007.
  25. ^ University Teachers for Human Rights , UTHR, 28 October 2001.
  26. ^ "Claims of state terror and genocide by LTTE attempts at justifying terrorism". Retrieved 11 August 2007.
  27. ^ "Claims of state terror and genocide by LTTE attempts at justifying terrorism". Archived from the original on 14 August 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2007.
  28. ^ "Sri Lanka: Terror Vs State Terror". ACHR Weekly Review. Asian Human Rights Commission. 15 November 2006. Archived from the original on 21 July 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2007.
  29. ^ "Sri Lanka: Government Abuses Intensify". Human Rights Watch. Archived from the original on 9 November 2008. Retrieved 18 January 2008. Quotation by Brad Adams, Asia Director.
  30. ^ "Tamils 'entitled to' international help". BBC. Retrieved 16 January 2008.
  31. ^ "Sri Lanka Trauma: International Community Revisits its Response". V S Subramaniam. Archived from the original on 13 December 2010. Retrieved 17 January 2008.
  32. ^ CartoonistsRights. Sri Lanka Archived September 19, 2012, at the Wayback Machine

References

Further reading

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