Over 500,000 people gathered at the Madhu Shrine in Sri Lanka’s former conflict zone to hear Pope Francis talk of national reconciliation and healing after two-and-a-half decades of sectarian bloodshed. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
MADHU, Sri Lanka, Jan 15 2015 (IPS)

Jessi Jogeswaran, a 20-year-old woman from Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna district, waited over six hours with 18 friends in the sweltering heat just to get a glimpse of Pope Francis on Jan. 14.

The much-anticipated Papal visit brought well over a million people out into the streets to hear the pontiff’s sermons, first in the capital Colombo and later on in Madhu, a village in Sri Lanka’s northwestern Mannar District.

“If we know what happened to all those who went missing, or what will happen to all those still in prison after the war, we will know that things have changed." -- Ramsiyah Pachchanlam, community empowerment officer with the Vanni Rehabilitation Organisation for the Differently Abled (VAROD)
Young and old alike congregated at designated sites, including those like Jogeswaran who traveled miles to be present for the historic occasion.

The young woman with a disarming smile hides a terrible tale: as an 11-year-old, she endured three years of death and mayhem in her native village of Addankulam in Mannar, caught between advancing government forces and military units of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who at the time controlled a vast swath of land in the north of Sri Lanka.

The six-member family’s flight began in 2007, at the tail-end of the country’s civil conflict, and would last almost two years before, in tattered clothes, they escaped the final bouts of fighting in April 2009.

“The nightmare has not ended, it has become less intense,” Jogeswaran told IPS, sitting in the compound of the Madhu Shrine, a church nestled in the jungle that is home to a statue of the Virgin Mary, which millions around the country believe to be miraculous.

Jogeswaran said that despite the war’s end, thousands of people in the north were still fighting to escape the crutches of abject poverty, recover from the traumatic events of the last days of the war and reunite with relatives lost in the chaos of prolonged battles over a period of 26 years.

“We need peace, both within and without,” she added.

Delivering a short sermon at the shrine, Pope Francis echoed her sentiments.

“No Sri Lankan can forget the tragic events associated with this very place,” he said, referring to the attacks on the church and its use by local residents as a place of refuge during extreme bouts of fighting.

He also acknowledged that the healing process would be hard, and that sustained effort would be required “to forgive, and find peace.”

For scores of people here, however, the wounds are too many to forget. The over 225,000 who were displaced during the war have now returned to a region where some parts boast poverty rates over four times the national average of six percent.

There is an urgent need for some 138,000 houses, amidst a funding shortfall of 300 million dollars. Nearly six years after the war’s end there could be as many as 40,000 missing people, although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has records of little above 16,000 dating back over two decades.

While the completion of several large infrastructure projects suggested rapid development of the former war zone – including reconstruction of the 252-km-long rail-line connecting the north and south at a cost of 800 million dollars – few can enjoy the perks, with 5.2 percent unemployment in the Northern Province.

A lack of job opportunities is particularly hard on war widows and female-headed households – estimated at between 40,000 and 55,000 – and the nearly 12,000 rehabilitated LTTE combatants, among whom unemployment is a soaring 11 percent.

Untreated trauma, coupled with a lifting of the LTTE’s long-standing ban on the sale and production of liquor, has pushed alcohol dependency to new heights.

With scores of people seeking solace in the bottle, the northern Mullaitivu District recently recorded the second-highest rate of alcohol consumption in the island: some 34.4 percent of the population identify as ‘habitual users of alcohol’.

Finally, despite the war’s end, there has been no progress on power devolution to the Tamil-majority Northern Province, a root cause of the war.

A new political era: A bright future for the North?

The week before the Papal visit, Sri Lanka underwent a seismic change in its political landscape, when long-time President Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated by Maithripala Sirisena, who campaigned with the support of a wide array of political parties including those representing Sinhala extremists and others representing the minority Tamil and Muslim populations.

Jogeswaran, who voted to elect a national leader for the first time at the Jan. 8 poll, told IPS that she felt nervously optimistic that things would change.

“We have a new president, who has promised change, now it is up to him to not deceive the voters,” she said.

Ramsiyah Pachchanlam, community empowerment officer with the Vanni Rehabilitation Organisation for the Differently Abled (VAROD), told IPS the northern population was desperate for things to improve.

“There are new roads, new electricity stations and a new train line, but no new jobs,” Pachchanlam said, commenting on the over three billion dollars worth of infrastructure investments made under the former Rajapaksa administration that has not trickled down to the people.

The Sirisena government has shown some signs that it was much more amenable to the needs of minority Tamils than its predecessor.

In his first week in office, Sirisena replaced the long-standing governor of the Northern Province, G. A. Chandrasiri – a former military officer – with G. S. Pallihakara, a career diplomat.

The appointment of a civilian officer to the post was a key demand of the Northern Provincial Council controlled by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which had previously accused the former governor of stifling the council’s independence by carrying out instructions received directly from Colombo.

Many hope that greater political autonomy will pave the way to resolution of the most burning issues plaguing the people.

“If we know what happened to all those who went missing, or what will happen to all those still in prison after the war, we will know that things have changed,” social worker Pachchanlam said.

It remains to be seen if change will happen on the ground, but for a brief moment, in that jungle shrine, thousands came together in hope and expectation of a brighter future.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Violence in the lead-up to the Jan. 8 presidential election in Sri Lanka has poll monitors on edge. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Jan 6 2015 (IPS)

As 14.5 million Sri Lankans prepare to select their next leader, there is growing fear that violence could mar the Jan. 8 elections, billed as the closest electoral contest in the island’s history.

Election monitors were worried that as incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his rival Maithripala Sirisena wound down their campaigns on Jan. 5, violence would scare off voters.

Keerthi Tennakoon, executive director of the national election monitoring body Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), observed that a worrying precedent has been set by police who have by and large remained inactive against violations of election laws, especially those perpetrated by government supporters including at least two parliamentarians.

“The last 48 hours before the election are crucial; ordinary voters will not want to risk being assaulted, or worse, if they feel that there is such a risk." -- Keerthi Tennakoon, executive director of the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE)
“The police always appear to be late on the uptake when decisive action by law enforcement can be the most effective deterrent [to violence],” he told IPS.

He pointed to recent clashes in Kahawatta, a town in the central Ratnapura District, as an example. In the early hours of the morning on Jan. 5, while a group of opposition supporters were busy setting up the stage for a rally by common opposition candidate Sirisena in the town’s public grounds, a band of government supporters arrived in eight vehicles and began attacking them.

Rather than running away, the opposition group retaliated. The situation escalated, and shots were fired. Three opposition supporters were injured, and one was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

Enraged, the opposition supporters launched a retaliatory attack on election offices set up by government followers. The main roads of the town were blocked for at least four hours while the mayhem unfolded.

“Police [did not] take any action until two hours after the initial incident,” CaFFE noted in an update. “They only reacted when the [opposition] United National Party (UNP) supporters started attacking [Deputy Minister Premalal] Jayasekara’s offices,” the monitoring body added.

A couple of hours earlier, another group of government supporters loyal to a deputy minister assaulted officials from the election commissioner’s department in the eastern town of Trincomalee after they had gone to investigate a digital screen in a public space relaying election propaganda.

The attack took place despite the officials being provided security by nine policemen.

“The last 48 hours before the election are crucial; ordinary voters will not want to risk being assaulted, or worse, if they feel that there is such a risk,” Tennakoon said.

Voting for equality?

The elections have been billed as one of closet in recent history. President Rajapaksa, who called elections two years before they were due, is facing a stiff challenge in the form of his one-time health minister Sirisena.

The run-up to the election has been dominated by personal attacks against the top contenders, and has remained largely empty of policy discussions.

Despite robust growth, Sri Lanka still faces vast economic disparities. The richest 20 percent of the population enjoys half of all national income, while the poorest 20 percent has access to just five percent of the country’s wealth.

According to the latest Household Income Survey by the government’s Department of Census and Statistics, the monthly income of the poorest 20 percent of the population was 10, 245 rupees (about 78 dollars), while the richest 20 percent earned a monthly income of 121,368 rupees (about 933 dollars).

Furthermore, the war-ravaged North is mired in poverty despite the civil war ending in May 2009.

Anushka Wijesinha, an economist and policy advisor, observed that the election manifestos are full of promises relating to public spending and low on strategic policies that would ensure long-term stability.

“Unsurprisingly, both manifestos are populist and full of public spending goodies – from welfare handouts to public sector salary hikes. These will boost short-term consumption, and are unlikely to be inflationary as recent inflation has been low. But the spending will hurt the fiscal consolidation efforts of the past few years and public finances may come under increased pressure,” he said.

The elections are likely to create economic uncertainty at least in the short term and will in all likelihood be followed by parliamentary elections. A day after elections were announced on Nov. 20, the Colombo Stock Market recorded its worst slide in over 15 months, and has remained sluggish ever since.

“Both [leading candidates] have a heavy emphasis on state-led initiatives and taxpayer-funded programmes, which in the past have been notoriously inefficient. Instead, focus of policies should be on making it easier for private sector entrepreneurship and innovation to thrive,” Wijesinha asserted.

The election has also seen a crumbling of the broad-based support President Rajapaksa enjoyed in Sri Lanka’s parliament since the war’s end.

Since late 2010, the President has had a two-thirds majority in the 225-member parliament. But a little over a month after elections were called on Nov. 20, 26 members from the government’s camp have crossed over to the opposition.

The Sirisena campaign has also gained the support of parties representing Muslim and Tamil minorities, who together comprise some 15 percent of the country’s population of 21 million.

There has been some attention paid to issues of importance to the minorities, especially development in the Northern Province.

President Rajapaksa campaigned in the North twice and pledged to revitalise the economy and create jobs.

Still, the unemployment rate in the Northern Province is stubbornly high at 5.2 percent, well above the national rate of 4.4 percent and the third highest in the country.

The island’s highest unemployment rate of 7.9 percent was recorded in the Kilinochchi District last year, according to government statistics. Poverty is also rampant in the North, with four of the five districts that make up the province registering rates higher than the national poverty rate of 6.7 percent.

But Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who heads the Point Pedro Institute of Development based in northern Jaffna, told IPS that if the Northern economy is to regain momentum, more private investment needed to be channeled in.

“I would argue that more private capital investment that could generate a large number of [jobs] is the critical need, rather than foreign aid,” he said, pointing out that policies needed to be formulated with long-term stability in mind.

He also feels that decentralising power could help address political as well as economic grievances. “Fiscal devolution to the provinces should be undertaken immediately to provide the necessary financial resources for the provinces (including the Eastern and Northern Provinces) to operate independently and effectively without interference from the national government,” he stated.

Power devolution has been a critical demand of minority Tamil groups throughout the island’s post-independence history. In fact, the lack of political power was a major catalyst for the growth of separatism and the rise of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which waged a protracted battle for an independent ‘homeland’ for the Tamil people from 1983 until 2009.

However, Ponnadurai Balasundarampillai, former Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna University, told IPS that power devolution would be a tricky subject for any administration.

“If it is a new president, he will have to take stock of the situation. The incumbent presidency has already shown that it favours a more centralised form of governance and administration,” he said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa (right) with Ravinatha Ariyasinha, Sri Lanka’s top diplomat at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Sri Lanka faces a tough resolution at the ongoing council sessions. Credit: Presidential Media Unit.

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Mar 24 2014 (IPS)

As Sri Lanka steadfastly refuses any external inquiry into human rights abuses allegedly committed when the government pushed a military victory over Tamil rebels in its decades-long sectarian conflict, right groups say the global community is left with no option but to push for an international investigation.

The South Asian island nation faces a critical U.S.-backed resolution this week at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).“It’s likely just another delaying tactic on the government’s part, trying to give the impression that it is doing the right thing." -- Polly Truscott, deputy Asia Pacific director at Amnesty International

This will be the third such resolution at the UNHRC since 2012, but the first that is widely expected to call for an international probe into abuses committed during the last stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka that ended in May 2009.

The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa views any external intervention as undermining the sovereignty of the country.

“We have reached the point where it is too late to hope that Sri Lanka will actually investigate its own alleged human rights violations,” Polly Truscott, deputy Asia Pacific director at Amnesty International (AI), told IPS.

“After years of empty promises by the government, it is now up to the international community to establish an independent war crimes investigation into the Sri Lankan conflict,” she said.

Other groups that have called for an international probe include Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group and the International Commission of Jurists.

“We believe there is a strong chance that the UNHRC will institute an international inquiry at this session,” Sheila Varadan, international legal advisor with the South Asia programme at the International Commission of Jurists, told IPS.

“It may not immediately affect the behaviour of the Sri Lankan government, but it will send a strong message that the international community is not willing to give up on accountability.”

The country’s sectarian war, which began in the early 1980s, saw the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fight government forces for over two-and-a-half decades. The LTTE was demanding a separate state for minority Tamils in the north. The war ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the LTTE, but not before more than 70,000 people had been killed.

Ahead of the UNHRC sessions, Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the Sri Lankan President, said countries critical of Sri Lanka preferred to turn a blind eye to the good work done by the government in the north.

Talking to a select group of correspondents at the President’s Colombo residence, he said the government had spent over 4.5 billion dollars on development work in the north, building highways and large infrastructure projects. He said over 94 percent of mined areas had been cleared in less than five years.

“Where on earth would you get this kind of work?” Weeratunga asked, arguing that the government needed more time on delicate issues like power-sharing and reconciliation.

The government has begun working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on surveying the needs of missing people’s families, ICRC officials in Colombo told IPS. Weeratunga said the government was awaiting the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on missing persons later this year.

Critics of the Rajapaksa administration, however, say such action is too little too late, and merely cosmetic.

Truscott said, “It is difficult not to conclude that the commission on disappearances is little more than window dressing for the international community. Sri Lanka has a long history of setting up similar commissions at politically opportune moments, only to accomplish very little.

“It’s likely just another delaying tactic on the government’s part, trying to give the impression that it is doing the right thing, while actually just attempting to avoid genuine accountability.”

Varadan spoke along similar lines. “National processes cannot be relied upon to produce any credible investigations. Independence of the judiciary has been significantly undermined.

“The only real option for fact-finding is international investigations,” she said.

The government says such opinions are the creation of pressure groups and aggressive lobbying by international supporters of the LTTE.

Rajapaksa said earlier this month that domestic pressures had influenced the anti-Sri Lanka stance taken by the United Kingdom and Canada. “It is because of the Tamil diaspora voters. They have to satisfy their voters,” he said.

He said the government in neighbouring India, which is facing a general election, could also be swayed to support the resolution due to pressure from its southern state Tamil Nadu.

There is also fear that due to an impending trip by U.S. President Barack Obama later in April, Sri Lanka could lose the support of another traditional backer, Japan.

Weeratunga said some of those who were aggressively criticising Sri Lanka could not even locate the island on a map. “If they move a resolution on a country which they do not know, that is unfair,” he said.

Sri Lanka is assured of at least some heavyweight support at the UNHRC – that of China and Russia – and government diplomats tell IPS that a large bloc of African and Latin American countries are also likely to come out in support.

When the American Centre in Colombo held a memorial event honouring the late South African President Nelson Mandela, the first few questions at the question and answer session had nothing to do with the great freedom fighter.

The questions raised at the meeting Dec. 20 were about how South Africa could assist Sri Lanka set up its own national healing process. During the Commonwealth Heads of State summit (CHOGM) in Colombo in November, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government had approached the African state to explore the possibility of assistance in setting up something akin to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

According to the South African envoy in Colombo, Geoff Doidge, the request was made to South African President Jacob Zuma at the summit. “The past will haunt you as a country, even if you go forward, without a TRC-like process in Sri Lanka,” Zuma had told the meeting.

The questions on the TRC were symbolic of the kind of focus Sri Lanka’s rights record, and government efforts to correct it, have received since a bloody civil war ended almost five years back.

The Commonwealth meeting turned the spotlight on that rights record yet again. While attending the summit, British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the former war zone in the north with a retinue of reporters and journalists. During his whistle-stop tour, Cameron was quick to stress that Sri Lanka lagged behind in its efforts to address international concerns over rights violations.

Cameron said that the UK would back stricter international strictures against the Rajapaksa government if it does not redress the situation.

“The spotlight will be on Sri Lanka to demonstrate it is committed to Commonwealth (values),” British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka John Rankin said before the Commonwealth meet.

Cameron’s comments resulted in a barrage of criticism against him locally, but international advocates pushing for a credible investigation into rights violations welcomed it.

“It has reinforced the need for an international inquiry,” Steve Crashaw, director for the Office of the Secretary General at Amnesty International who was in Sri Lanka during the Commonwealth meeting told IPS.

Crashaw said Cameron’s actions should be followed by other international players. “It should not be limited to a one-off media event.”

It is unlikely to be. The U.S. has expressed similar sentiments that Colombo needs to do more to investigate wartime allegations, especially about the thousands of civilians who have gone missing. The New Year is now likely to see more pressure on the Sri Lankan government.

The U.S. Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal is expected in Sri Lanka in mid-January. During her first visit to the island Biswal is expected to discuss issue pertaining to investigations into disappearances and deaths.

Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa set up a new commission in late November to tabulate wartime deaths. The new census is being conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics.

A similar effort by the same department in 2011 found after looking at vital events in the North and East that 4,156 persons were untraceable in the two provinces since 2005. International organisations including an advisory panel to the UN Secretary General have put figures of civilian disappearances close to ten times that.

The newly formed Northern Provincial Council, controlled by the opposition Tamil National Alliance, has already said it would launch its own census of the disappeared since it did not trust the numbers produced by government surveys.

National rights activists told IPS that pressure by the likes of the UK, the U.S. and next-door neighbour India, whose prime minister stayed away from the Commonwealth confab, is leading the government at least to take note of uncomfortable issues.

“At the very least, it strengthens the determination and courage of victims, their families, a few journalists, lawyers, the clergy and activists who continue to struggle for truth and justice,” Rukshan Fernando, board member of the national advocacy group Rights Now told IPS.

Fernando observed that if the government continues to drag its heels, it could face a tough reception at the upcoming March sessions of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council. Over the past two years the council has adopted resolutions calling on the Sri Lankan government to address lingering allegations of rights violations.

However, neither resolution has included any mention of the possibility of an international rights inquiry.

“The members of the Council have toughened the position on Sri Lanka from 2009 to 2012 and 2013, and the Indian PM’s boycott of CHOGM indicates that India is ready to be tougher on Sri Lanka,” Fernando said.

India’s role has changed considerably in the last five years. In mid-2009 when the war was in its final stages, India was instrumental in stalling a resolution brought on by European nations condemning Sri Lankan government actions.

In 2014, domestic political exigencies may push New Delhi to come full circle, according to Ramani Hariharan, a political commentator from India who served as intelligence officer with the Indian Peace Keeping Force that was stationed in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990.

“The UNHCR meet will be held in March 2014 when the Indian parliamentary poll campaign will be in full steam. The Congress (government’s) fortunes are at stake and it is likely to oblige the Dravida Munnetra K’azhagam [DMK] party’s demand to keep it in the coalition.” The DMK is a dominant party in India’s Tamil Nadu.

It was due to pressure from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu with its Tamil majority population, that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stayed away from Colombo in November.

“The UN Human Rights Council sessions can create significant pressure on Sri Lanka,” Amnesty International’s Crashaw said.

Visvanathan Rudrakumaran, an attorney and prime minister in exile of the Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, in his New York City office. Credit: Samuel Oakford/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
NEW YORK, Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

Seated at a desk piled high with court documents and yellowed newspapers, Visvanathan Rudrakumaran remembers leaving Sri Lanka and coming to New York for the first time, three decades ago.

“My friends and everyone else, they went to the UK,” Rudrakumaran told IPS. “But I chose to come here because I was interested in the Bill of Rights and I wanted to go and practice constitutional law in Sri Lanka."[The Tigers'] strength was always that they were the only ones that were capable of standing up to the government. This mythology gave them legitimacy." -- Gordon Weiss

“That was my goal when I left the country. But then the ‘83 riots changed everything.”

Today, when he isn’t representing clients in court, Rudrakumaran is the prime minister in exile of the Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). By his window overlooking the Garment District is a small plastic plaque depicting the group’s logo, a wish-bone outline of what was, for a brief period in the 2000s, a de-facto state – “Tamil Eelam” – at peace in northern Sri Lanka.

Until their sudden and overwhelming defeat by government forces in May 2009, Rudrakumaran served as legal advisor to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the group’s supreme commander, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The conflict’s roots were deeply embedded in the historical treatment of Tamils by the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community.

From independence in 1948, Tamils and other minority groups were persecuted and deprived of linguistic and political rights by successive Sinhalese governments. The 1956 Sinhala Only Act came to represent Sinhalese dominance in all Sri Lankan affairs.

For the hundreds of thousands of Tamils who fled Sri Lanka after murderous anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 transformed simmering ethnic tensions into full-blown civil war, the erasure of Tamil Eelam and the LTTE left an existential void.

The ground the diaspora had stood on for three decades – the promise of return, and a guarantee of political rights and self-determination – was unceremoniously pulled out from under it.

“People are disillusioned and don’t have a clear direction,” admits Rudrakumaran.

Tamils in Sri Lanka and their supporters abroad have had to reimagine non-violent alternatives for achieving political and economic freedom on the island.

Yet the LTTE’s legacy can have a crippling effect on post-war reconciliation among fractious Tamil groups, let alone with the government itself.

Protesting Rajapaksa’s September speech to the General Assembly, Tamils gathered outside the U.N. held pictures of Prabhakaran, one telling IPS “Prabhakaran is still our leader.”

“The Tigers maintained an iron grip on diaspora politics,” said Gordon Weiss, spokesperson for the U.N. in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war.

“It was dangerous to be associated with anyone else. The Tigers were relentless with anyone who didn’t agree. Their strength was always that they were the only ones that were capable of standing up to the government,” Weiss told IPS. “This mythology gave them legitimacy. That disappeared.”

Funding the war from abroad

Part of the current dilemma Tamils both inside and outside Sri Lanka face stems from the outsized influence the diaspora maintained during the war. The LTTE was funded mostly not by sympathetic governments but instead by individuals living abroad, in countries like Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the UK.

Supporters established vast networks of clandestine and legitimate businesses and instituted informal but in effect mandatory taxes on many Tamil refugee communities in those countries, funneling money back into the war zone through shell companies and official charities.

By 2000, the LTTE could rely on wealthy members of the diaspora to donate millions of dollars through front organisations. The most prolific of their supporters was Raj Rajaratnam, the wealthiest Sri Lankan in the world and founder of the Galleon Group, a New York hedge fund firm.

Before he was arrested on insider trading charges in 2009, Rajaratnam gave more than 3.5 million dollars to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a charity whose assets were later frozen by U.S. authorities for ties with the LTTE.

While Tamils outside Sri Lanka were willing to finance the war, it was those still inside the country that bore its terrible physical burden.

The LTTE could uproot residents as it fit their military strategy, one that was notorious for the use of child soldiers and suicide bombings. The constant suffering and political uncertainty experienced by Tamils on the island contrasted starkly with the often comfortable lives of LTTE’s funders.

“Some would say that those who were able to leave Sri Lanka and go abroad and establish themselves tended to be better off and better educated and those from higher casts,” said Weiss.

The Sri Lankan permanent representative to the U.N., Palitha Kohona, himself accused of war crimes by Tamil groups in the U.S. and Switzerland, stressed this point in an interview with IPS.

“The word diaspora is a misnomer,” he said. “The vast majority [of Tamils] left voluntarily and many were economic refugees.”

Time and distance moved the diaspora in a more radical direction.

“A lot of Tamils in Sri Lanka are less nationalist than those in the diaspora,” said Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka Analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“If you look at diasporas around the world, they almost always end up being more radical in their demands than the home communities,” Keenan told IPS.

After 9/11, the LTTE found itself lumped into the global war on terror and Western governments began cracking down on its funding network. U.S. authorities classified the group as a terrorist organisation and froze their assets as various fronts were uncovered. The financial decline of the LTTE would presage their ultimate military defeat.

Engagement or resistance?

Central to the current plans of all Tamil diaspora groups is focusing international attention on alleged war crimes committed by the forces of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa in the final months of the conflict when, according to U.N. estimates, at least 40,000 civilians were killed.

The TGTE, though it recognises a military solution may be untenable, maintains that a separate state is the only outcome that can ensure a lasting peace and guarantee rights for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) scored a significant victory when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that in light of human rights concerns, he would not attend the November Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo.

The CTC, which represents the largest national group of diaspora Tamils, has spoken in favour of engagement in the post-war political process in Sri Lanka.

Despite reports of widespread voter intimidation, Sept. 21 Northern Council Provincial elections, the first in 25 years, saw the moderate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) win an overwhelming majority of the vote in Tamil-dominated areas.

In a press release published just before the vote, the Global Tamil Forum, of which the CTC is a member, stated it was “important that an administration run by the elected representatives from the region could play a significant role in restoring the confidence and dignity of our people.”

Immediately following the elections, a fight broke out over how the results should be interpreted.

In a September editorial, the Tamil Guardian, an influential British publication, called the council election “a vote for liberation” and sought to “dispel the often propagated notion of a dichotomy existing between the political aspirations of Tamils in the homeland versus those in the diaspora.”

“This was not a vote for the TNA. It was a vote for resistance,” the editorial concluded.

Part Two of this series can be found here.

Excerpt:

A woman walks to a polling centre in northern Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
DHARMAPURAM, Sri Lanka , Oct 14 2013 (IPS)

True democracy at last or a toothless tiger propped up to appease unfavourable international opinion? As Sri Lanka’s Northern Province got its first council after an election last month, many in this South Asian island nation were mulling this conundrum.

For Tamil people long demanding a say in their affairs and emerging from a bitter and bloody 26-year war where the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fought the government, the victory of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is an encouraging start. The five-party combine won an overwhelming 30 seats in the 38-member Northern Provincial Council (NPC) in the Sep. 21 election.

“We need to live with our rights,” Christine, a voter from Dharmapuram in Kilinochchi district told IPS. “That was the only thing on my mind when I went to cast my vote.”
How desperate the people are for democracy and normalcy was reflected in the 68 percent turnout among the 719,000 registered voters in the area. But will the NPC live up to Tamil expectations?

Sri Lanka’s existing councils are widely considered to be a drain on its national resources. The government spent 17 percent or about 1.03 billion dollars of its GDP of 5.9 billion dollars on the maintenance of provincial councils in 2012, according to central bank figures.

“Provincial councils have not achieved anything anywhere in this country,” Subramanium Sudhaharan, a voter from Dharmapuram, told IPS as he walked out of the polling booth. “To me all this voting is symbolic.”

“It is no secret that most become provincial council members to use their position as a stepping stone to enter parliament and hence they hardly get involved in development activities,” an editorial in the journal of the Organisation of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka stated.

The NPC could turn out to be different, as it is the only council which is held by the opposition. “For the Tamils, the election means the full implementation of the 13th Amendment,” declared Abraham Sumanthiran, a TNA parliamentarian.

Sri Lanka’s provincial councils were a result of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan accord which led to the 13th Amendment to the constitution providing for devolution of power to provincial councils. While they came into existence in seven of Sri Lanka’s other provinces, the Northeastern council for the merged Eastern and the predominantly Tamil Northern Province proved to be a short-lived experiment.

On their part, the TNA leaders have said they will seek maximum devolution of powers, among them control over land and the police. Though included in the 13th Amendment, the Centre has never really parted with these functions. And President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government has maintained it is unwilling to do so now.

“Security and land powers must remain with the Centre given the delicate political situation in the NPC,” defeated government candidate Sinnathurai Thavarajah told IPS.

The office of the governor is another curb on the council’s powers. Appointed by the president and the only official with executive powers, the governor can exercise his power through the council’s ministers, but can sidestep them and act through “officers subordinate to him” if he so wishes.

Without the governor’s approval, the council will be ineffective. Kumaravadivel Guruparan, a lecturer at the department of law in the University of Jaffna, told IPS, “The new chief minister has no significant fiscal powers to initiate any resettlement or livelihood programmes of his own. He will not even have control over the provincial public service which is legally firmly under the governor.”

The TNA’s avowed desire to go beyond the 13th Amendment is also likely to be opposed by India, which faces an election in 2014. Any compromise on the issue, Ramani Hariharan, a former intelligence head with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka told IPS, will be perceived there as a sign of weakness. The IPKF was stationed in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1991.

In any case, Hariharan asks, “What is the guarantee that [a new amendment] will be more liberal than the 13th Amendment? Logically, the TNA should play down devolution beyond the 13th Amendment.”

Sudhaharan too feels that the TNA is unlikely to get anywhere with its demand for more devolution, and should focus instead on trying to improve living conditions in the province.

The Northern Province remains one of the poorest, despite four years of peace and massive development projects estimated by the central bank to be worth over three billion dollars.

An evaluation of the province carried out by the office of the U.N. Refugee Agency in July this year found that over 40 percent of the 917 households surveyed in the province’s five districts had a monthly household income of 9,010 rupees (70 dollars), only about a quarter of the national average monthly income of 36,000 rupees (275 dollars).

“Even with its limited financial resources, the NPC can do quite a lot in terms of economic and social development, governance, establishing institutions that promote equal opportunities,” Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who heads the Point Pedro Institute of Development based in northern Jaffna, told IPS.

The councils collectively received 1.1 billion dollars as funds from the central government in 2012, according to central bank data.

TNA stalwarts like Rajavarotiam Sampanthan have indicated that they will try to raise funds from the global Tamil diaspora. But even if they manage to do so, it is unclear how the TNA can spend such money bypassing the central government which controls all development and reconstruction work here through a special presidential task force set up in 2009.

All that the people of the province now want is for the council to help develop traditional income sources like agriculture, build new houses, and create new jobs. “We have suffered so long and got so little,” Janoshini Kadrigamapillai, a young woman from Kilinochchi, told IPS. “First let’s get the people to live a better life, and then we can talk of other things like devolution. We deserve to live better.”