There is a humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority in the island's north and east are facing annihilation at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated government.
This article will deal with the current crisis, with the more fundamental problem of the legacy left by colonial British rule (1796-1948) dealt with in later articles. These colonial administrative structures will need to be reversed of there is ever to be peace or prosperity in Sri Lanka.
I am a Sinhalese, from the majority community, not from the brutalised Tamil minority. I quit Sri Lanka in 1976.
Who runs that country is of no concern to me, as long as it is run without serious violations of human rights. Sri Lanka was tossed out of the UN Human Rights Council in May last year due to its human rights record, and the drift of a democracy to a fascist politico-military dictatorship, none of which have been publicised internationally.
Current problem
The ethno-religious mix of Sri Lanka, with 20 million people, consists of ethnic Sinhalese (74%), Tamils (18%) in two groups (ethnic Tamils, 12.5%, and the plantation, or Indian, Tamils, 5.5%) and Moors (6.5%).
The ethnic Sinhalese and the ethnic Tamils have been in the country for at least 2500 years — the Tamils for probably much longer, given the proximity of Sri Lanka to south India from where the ethnic Tamils came.
The plantation Tamils are descendants of indentured labourers brought to the country by the British in the mid-1850s to work in the tea plantations in the central hills. The Moors are descendants of Arab traders from the 13th-15th century.
The ethnic conflict is between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the ethnic Tamils. The Sinhalese speak an Indoaryan language, Sinhalese, while the Tamils a Dravidian language, Tamil. The Moors are mainly Tamil-speaking but many are bilingual.
To add a religious dimension to an already existing ethno-linguistic one, the Sinhalese are Buddhist (70%) and the Tamils are Hindus. About 7% of each group have been converted to Christianity by Westerners. The Moors are mostly Muslims.
Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multireligious, multilingual and multicultural country. Despite this, the Sinhala-Buddhist majority claim that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist country.
The main proponents of this ethno-religious chauvinism are, firstly, the Buddhist monks who claim that Buddha on his death bed nominated Sri Lanka to be the custodian of his teaching, and secondly Sinhalese politicians across the entire political spectrum who have done so to gain the political support of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority to get into or remain in power.
The major Sinhalese political parties have competed with each other to discriminate against the Tamils in language, education and employment with the clear intention of getting the Sinhalese vote.
A third proponent is the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese). The head of the SLA stated in an interview in September last year: "I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese ..."
The real danger is that while the ethno-religious bigots among the Buddhist clergy and the Sinhalese political opportunists are not in a position to deliver an exclusively Sinhala-Buddhist nation, the SLA — equipped and supported by countries such as the US, China, India, Pakistan, Britain and Israel, for their own geopolitical/economic gains — do have that capacity.
If this means committing genocide against the Tamil people, the politico-military junta, which has the temerity to call itself the "Government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri lanka", is more than willing to do so.
Problem of ethnic cleansing
There are four options to achieve an exclusively Sinaha-Buddhist Sri Lanka.
1. Drive them out of the country. Although 1.3 million have already been driven out, there are still 2 million left.
2. Make them "non-people", ie: internal refugees. Currently, there are 500,000 Tamil civilians living in refugee camps in the Tamil north and east or have fled into the jungles in the north to escape SLA bombing. There are also 200,000 Tamil refugees in south India.
On November 19, Amnesty International USA, in a publication titled Sri Lanka government must act now to protect 300,000 displaced persons, stated: "In September 2008, the Sri Lankan government ordered the United Nations (UN) and non-government aid-workers to leave the region (the Tamil North). The government then assumed total responsibility for ensuring the needs of the civilian population affected by the hostilities are met."
On December 23, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) came out with a detailed 49-page report entitled Besieged, Displaced, and Detained. The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka's Vanni Region of the Sri Lankan government's responsibility for the plight of 230,000 to 300,000 displaced people in the Vanni (northern) conflict zone.
It documents that thousands of Tamils fleeing the fighting in the north are trapped by the government and are being denied basic provisions.
Brad Adams, HRW Asia Director, one of the people who wrote this report, said: "To add insult to injury, people who manage to flee the fighting end up being held indefinitely in army-run prison camps."
He went on to make the situation abundantly clear: "The government's 'welfare centers' for civilians fleeing the Wanni are just badly disguised prisons."
3. Make them "disappear". Today, Sri Lanka leads the world in "involuntary disappearances".
On November 24, HRW published report entitled Sri Lanka: Human Rights Situation Deteriorating in the East in which Adams stated: "The Sri Lankan government says that the 'liberated' East is an example of democracy in action and a model for areas recaptured from the LTTE. But killings and abductions are rife, and there is total impunity for horrific acts."
4. Kill them — i.e. commit genocide. "Genocide" is defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as "an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group".
Genocide has nothing to do with numbers killed, it is the intention and the act(s) to achieve this intention that defines it.
Bombing, shelling and shooting are not the only ways to kill. One could starve them, withhold essential medicines, prevent survival activity (e.g. fishing and agriculture), destroy businesses, markets, homes, hospitals and schools. Once the intention is there, the ways to achieve genocide are endless.
There are also different types of genocide. I have called these, "educational genocide", "cultural genocide", "economic genocide" and "religious genocide" — defined as the intention, backed by the act, of destroying in whole or part the education, culture or economy and religion of an ethnic group.
The Sri Lankan government is guilty of all of these.
[Part two of this article will be published in the following issue. Brian Senewiratne is a member of the Socialist Alliance in Brisbane. Many of his articles on the Tamil question can be found at http://www.tamilcanadian.com.]