POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Peace Train Carries Peace Hopes, Doubts

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, May 22 2002 (IPS) - Children waved, and women washing clothes on stones alongside village streams looked up with amusement, while rice farmers with sarongs tucked at their waists raised their heads as Sri Lanka’s first peace train chugged toward the north of this island nation.

To many residents, the train, colourfully painted with peace signs and symbols hoping to raise Sri Lanka’s peace process to higher levels, reflected little more than curiosity.

But in weeks, perhaps months, according to the organisers, the diesel-powered train to the northern town of Vavuniya, 250 km north of the capital Colombo, would mean much more.

“People on the railroad and at railway stations would hopefully recognise this as Sri Lanka’s peace train and what it symbolises,” says Sujeevan Perera, programme director of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust (NTT), which organised the project with financial assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

It is an encouraging step in the government’s efforts to end the ethnic conflict, which has raged for nearly 20 years and cost some 64,000 lives since 1983.

Since that year, Tamil Tigers guerrillas have been fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils, who have accused majority Sinhalese-led governments of depriving minority communities of equality in education, land use and jobs.

The rebels have said they are prepared to drop their demand for an independent homeland if the government is ready to provide the Tamils sufficient powers to run the country’s northern and eastern regions, where most of the Tamils live.

A ceasefire has been on since December between the government and the rebels and both sides are now getting ready for peace talks due to begin next month in Thailand.

While there has been growing concern about the five-month delay in peace talks, there is also relief particularly in the capital and the countryside where most of the recruits for the country’s armed forces come from.

“Many villagers are thankful for the tranquility in village homes as there are fewer sons and daughters coming in body bags. There is relief all around,” explains Sunil Shantha, a railway employee and leader of a railway union, who was travelling on the peace train.

Jehan Perera, political columnist and an activist attached to the National Peace Council, a privately-funded peace promoter, says that some 1,500 lives have been saved during the last five months of relative calm – since Dec. 24, 2001 when the rebels declared a unilateral ceasefire.

“We normally have an average of 10 people dying as a result of the war. This is a tremendous saving in terms of human life due to the ceasefire,” he says.

Residents in Colombo, while doubtful about whether the truce would last, are however relieved to be able to walk the streets without fear of suicide bombers or rebel attacks.

Roadblocks have been lifted and checkpoints reduced. The last rebel attack here was the pre-dawn raid last year on an air force base adjoining the country’s international airport.

Trading has also perked up as Sri Lanka’s once-indifferent business community raises the stakes for peace by playing a leading role. Unilever, the multinational home and personal care company which is now Sri Lanka’s biggest firm, told a business meeting Tuesday that turnover – after a disappointing 2001 – in the first quarter this year had risen sharply by 40 percent.

The business community, led by the chambers of commerce and SriLankaFirst, a group of chambers and business association promoting peace, have been a driving force in the current peace process.

Unlike in the past when the businesses fought shy of involvement in the peace process and said they had no role in politics, the private sector has, since the July rebel attack on the airport, reversed its role and led the charge for peace.

It is widely believed to be responsible — in a big way — in helping and funding the business-friendly United National Party-led coalition to a sweeping win at parliamentary polls in December.

In the past few months, delegations of businesspersons have been visiting the war-torn town of Jaffna and discussing plans to set up supermarkets, hotels and revive trade with the once-shut north. Business sentiment has never seen such a boom in the north.

But the lack of a wider civil society movement – apart from smaller initiatives like the peace train – in promoting peace is seen as a serious drawback in the current process.

“We need to create a civil movement toward peace, and that is absent unlike in previous occasions when there was a peace process,” notes Rev Baddegama Samitha, a moderate Buddhist monk from a temple at Baddegama in southern Sri Lanka.

He said that due to the peace process being shrouded in secrecy, people were unaware of what was happening and showed little interest. “There is a public vacuum and that’s not a good thing. People’s participation is essential if the peace process is to succeed,” the monk, who is also an opposition parliamentarian, said while travelling on the peace train.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe’s strategy has been to clear the bottlenecks before resorting to peace talks with the rebels.

Since coming to office, the government has lifted an economic embargo, allowed enough food and medicines in rebel-controlled territory, opened – with rebel consent – the main highway to Jaffna that had been closed for years.

Most of these issues have in the past come as demands from the rebels while talks were on and often bogged down the discussions.

Filmmaker Vasantha Obeysekera, also on the peace train, said of the conflict: “This is a futile war. Sinhalese youth are getting killed. Tamil youth are getting killed. No one benefits.”

The well-known filmmaker, who has produced some films and documentaries on peace and conflict often on the futility of war, noted that the younger generation was far less communal minded than older folk. “The older generation is imprisoned by caste, creed and race conflicts and they find it hard to alter their views.”

He blamed Colombo’s intelligentsia for “being cowards and without a backbone” for failing to put pressure on politicians to end the conflict. “Except for some artistes like us and some intellectuals, few people in Colombo are ready to stand up and say enough is enough.”

The bulk of the country’s armed forces come from poor, rural homes while the children of middle and upper class urban homes rarely join the military and even if they do so, it is at a higher rank and are unlikely to be in the line of fire.

Somasunderam Sriskandarajah, a 60-year Tamil government pensioner, said the peace train gave some hope but he doubts on whether the peace would last. “It has never worked in the past,” he said, looking out of a window of one of the carriages.

Another Tamil woman passenger, who declined to be named, was also not too optimistic. “I can’t see this (peace process) getting us anywhere. I hope I am wrong.”