Like many countries which have come un der the scrutiny of international human rights watchdogs, Sri Lanka too has now and then been chastised for perceived human rights infractions.
Such public criticisms have often led to counter charges by govemments which have accused international bodies of microscopically examining the human rights performance of developing countries while largely ignoring violations in the Western world where most of these organisations are based.
The most recent criticism of Sri Lanka came from Amnesty International and some Sri Lankan organisations which deplored the government’s decision to dismantle the country’s Human Rights Task Force.
This task force was especially active in the country’s north and east where government security forces were engaging the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), popularly known as the Tigers in a long drawn-out conflict.
Some justification
The basic criticism was that President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government had been premature in dismantling the task force on June 30 as the newly formed Human Rights Commission was not fully in place.
While there is some justification for the current criticism that the dismantling of the functioning task force, with its shortcomings and even some doubtful practices, was ill-conceived in the prevailing circumstances, the government claims that its record shows a determination to clean up its act and take punitive action against those violating the rights of others.
Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was in Hong Kong for the handover celebrations, was keen to dispel the belief that the government was acquiescing in these violations by turning a blind eye.
That a Human Rights Commission, envisaged as the supreme body on human rights, took two years of discussion to conceive and be put into shape, is testimony to the government’s good intentions.
A large number of amendments proposed by the parliamentary opposition were accepted and the bill was finally passed unanimously.
‘’This was a perfect example of consensual politics,” the foreign minister said, adding that the five commissioners were guaranteed their tenure of office and could not be removed except by parliament.
Moreover, the law states that of the five commissioners, one would be a Tamil and another a Muslim.
‘’The task force was an ad hoc body. When the commission comes into force all ad hoc bodies had to go,” he said.
Mr. Kadirgamar dismissed the claim by some international bodies and Sri Lankan critics, that the high-powered commission with wide powers to summon, investigate and mediate, was set up in response to criticisms by the United Nations Human Rights Commission or other organisations.
He said during the election campaign and in the subsequent manifesto of the People’s Alliance Government headed by President Kumaratunga, the alliance had pledged to protect human rights and examine their violations.
Among the promises was to appoint a commission to investigate the disappearances of a large number of persons during the tenure of the previous government, particularly of majority Sinhala people in the country’s south.
This has not only been done, but even indictments have been filed against several persons including the head of the army in that area.
“If the government wasn’t serious on this issue, would we have done this, especially when the high ranking army officer is considered to be something of a war hero?”, he asked.
Mr Kadirgamar said that when the government moves to act against those believed to have violated human rights, it is then accused of not moving fast enough.
He said the prosecution of this particular case took one year. Now the defence has been called.
‘’This I think is remarkably fast for a developing country which has to face resource problems.”
In a recent case of alleged rape and murder of a Tamil woman by security personnel in the northern Jaffna peninsula which has been retaken from the Tamil Tigers by the army, the Attorney-General applied to have the case transferred out of Jaffna to ensure a fair trial .
Trial-at-bar
The Attorney-General felt that witnesses and others might be overawed by the military presence in Jaffna and could affect a fair trial.
The Chief Justice decided to hold a trial-at-bar consisting of three High Court judges instead of trial by jury.
The foreign minister said this was to ensure that a trial-at-bar would be conducted free from prejudice, fear, overbearing or being overawed and was only the fourth trial at bar in the country’s 175-year legal history.
The acid test of the validity of a human rights policy is a government’s willingness to investigate, detain and punish members of the security forces against whom there is prima facie evidence of commission of serious criminal offences against civilians.”
This is the real test, not whether it took two years, three years or four years to conclude a trial which depends entirely on the working of the judicial system itself.
“Is this a government running away from that kind of situation. This is the question on which the government should be judged.” he emphasised.
He said that where there was an adversarial system as Sri Lanka, one had to allow the judicial process to take its course.
The country’s legal history records instances where witnesses have been cross-examined for 50 days.
The government has also taken steps to sign the UN convention outlawing torture and the optional protocols to the two UN covenants dealing with civil, political and economic rights.
Judged by this record, it would be wrong to even suggest the government acts with impunity and would not take action against violators.
Military offensive
Asked whether the on-going military offensive against the Tigers was intended to strengthen the government’s position in the event of negotiations, Mr Kadirgamar denied this was the objective.
The Tigers have temporarily acquired control over parts of the territory of Sri Lanka belonging to the entire nation. The government cannot allow part of the territory of the country to be under the exclusive control of some people fighting the state. Therefore all other constitutional arrangements such as power sharing and regional autonomy must be subservient to the principle of national territorial integrity.”
The purpose of the military objective is precisely to achieve national territorial integrity.
Asked whether the government would accept a third party, such as a foreign government or an international organisation, to mediate in the on-going conflict, the foreign minister was quite clear.
“We don’t accept third party mediation at the moment. But it has not been ruled out. It is possible but a lot depends on the circumstances, particularly the attitude of the Tigers”.
He said mediation had judgmental elements and this was an internal matter of Sri Lanka.
If some offer their good offices to bring the parties together it must be under agreed circumstances such as a clear indication by the Tigers of a renunciation of violence which is best indicated by laying down arms substantially.
Moreover the Tigers must renounce their demand for a separate state and any negotiations must be time-bound so that they are concluded within an agreed timeframe.
Those conditions are paramount if the government is to enter into negotiations to end the 15-year old conflict.
- The writer is the assistant editor of Hong Kong Standards
Those who sweated blood and tears to bring peace to Cambodia six years ago can be forgiven if they now say they see very little causal relationship between the magnitude of their efforts and the result now at hand - the coup d’etat by Hun Sen and the effective suspension of civil liberties.
The Cambodian veterans and the rest of those who labour wearily in the vineyard of peacemaking are manifestly at a loss what to do next.
It is somewhat of a cruel irony that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has deployed as his envoy to Cambodia Thomas Hammarberg who for years, as a brilliantly effective secretary-general of Amnesty International, did much to focus the spotlight of global attention on the gruesome details of the Cambodian genocide. Now it is if, in a perverse retribution for those days, he has to pay personal penance and go back and watch, perhaps, a new round of the ‘’killing fields’’, this time only to wring his hands on behalf of an impotent international community.
But Mr. Hammarberg, like most of those in the peacemaking industry, is of patient disposition. He knows well that the relationship between external intervention and the outcome of a conflict is an uncertain science. What we do know, alas, is that negotiated settlements have led to renewed warfare within five years in about 50% of cases. Most civil wars in history have ended with the outright military victory of one side over another. And the most stable peace settlements in civil wars have been those achieved by military victory, rather than by negotiations. If it weren’t for the fact that these military victories usually come with widespread human rights abuses, atrocities, genocide and environmental degradation, then we should probably just let nature run its course. Indeed, this was effectively the outside world’s attitude during the recent crisis in Zaire, as it was not so long ago in Uganda and, more recently, in Ethiopia, both now, as it happens, very successful economic recovery stories.
Nevertheless, in eight out of ten cases the results of military victory are not as in Uganda or Ethiopia. It is on-going murder and mayhem, as it is right now in Zaire, Rwanda and Afghanistan and, as it shows all the signs of being, in Cambodia.
If peacemaking is an infant industry, all the more reason to try and fashion some new tools - what Georgetown University professor, Charles King, calls antidotes to ‘’the array of incentives to continue the violence’’. While outsiders have little leverage over the central elements of irrationality, contested values and indentities that propel the conflict, they can work at the margins to build incentives that will dampen the violence. In this way it is possible to influence the calculations of belligerents on the pluses of a negotiated settlement.
Of course, as Clausewitz wrote, everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult. Applying the above approach to a situation as complex and bloody as Cambodia is never going to be straightforward. But, to paraphrase Clausewitz again, war is not just an act of senseless passion. Belligerents often calculate the relative costs of continuing the conflict versus reaching some kind of compromise settlement. This certainly seems to fit the case of Hun Sen who was ready to live with the compromise of the last elections, as long as he got more than his 50% share out of it.
This is why outsiders must stay engaged with Cambodia. Already the threat of a cut-off of foreign aid has seemed to have had a sobering effect on Hun Sen, despite all his bluster. He has now promised new elections.
The post-Cold War international community should take heart not just from this new commitment by Hun Sen but from its recent string of negotiating successes. Since 1988 major civil wars in Namibia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Guatemala and South Africa, have been wound up, all, apart from South Africa, because of direct outside assistance. The actual number of hot wars - both inter-state and intra state - has decreased considerably since 1989.
Without a shadow of doubt the new environment of international cooperation has produced a more benign world than existed in the dark days of the Cold War. No superpower is there to stir things up, to throw mud in its rival’s eyes. According to a 1996 U.S. government report the number of persons threatened by on-going wars is now down to 42 million. Despite Rwanda, despite Zaire, Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and all the other places that grabbed the headlines, only around 0.7% of humanity is being hurt by war at the present time, the lowest figure in its recorded history.
This suggests that this is not the moment to give up on Cambodia.
The most intractable of all the civil wars now in process, it may well be. Hun Sen’s military victory may be indeed the quickest road to peace, as the thin science of peacemaking suggests. But the international community has leverage to demand more than peace as the absence of war. Democracy and human rights must be allowed to flourish in Cambodia once again.
We must keep muscling in on that until we get it.
Conscious of the full significance of the moment for his country and its people, Jawaharlal Nehru chose his words with utmost care. As India prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence, no newspaper, no political leader, no preacher fails to recall Nehru’s words...’’ tryst with destiny’’.
But how? What form should the celebrations take? John F.Burns, the NYK TIMES Delhi-based South Asia correspondent interviewed the man who knew best, Yogesh Bawaja. Yes, what has he in mind for August 14?
“Mr. Bawaja conducts business in the cacophony of workers hammering and sawing in his New Delhi office. With little furniture, files are on the floor, along with a water pitcher to help cope with the 110 degree heat. But the spokesman of the government body organising the celebrations, allows himself a fleeting moment of pleasure as he lifts his telephone.
“You see it works’’ he said, holding the handset aloft to the buzzing of a dial tone, “We are making progress’’.
Are we really? I mean India at 50?
Political Crisis Hits India’s Ruling Coalition was the headline to an AFP. report in a Sri Lankan daily. Yes, parliamentary democracy thrives in the most populous of former British colonies, the world’s second largest nation, divided by race, religion, caste and class. That is India’s greatest achievement, the fundamental right to choose their rulers at regular intervals.
But is democracy enough? Listen to Mr. Yogesh Bawaja’s answer to the question about the evident indifference.
“It is difficult to persuade people to forget their everyday problems and celebrate. So what we’ve been telling them is: OK. 50 years have passed ... what’s happened, has happened, let’s just start now from a clean slate and see if we can’t rekindle the spirit of the freedom struggle...’’
Is Mr. Bawaja thinking of another country in another country where Mahatma Gandhi and his ideas received worldwide publicity... South Africa? If so where is the ‘’new’’ Indian Mandela?
For reasons too obvious to state, the Sri Lankan focus is as much on Madras as on what’s going on in Delhi? And in Tamilnadu, the Dravidian Progressive Party (DMK.) led by veteran Madras politician, M. K. Karunanidhi has walked out of Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral’s United Front. Why? The reason offered by party chief Karunanidhi deserves to be recorded:
“The D.M.K. is not willing to go along with parties which are functioning with minimal plans and with persons trying to fulfil their personal ambitions’’.
One notes that the usually outspoken D.M.K. chief has taken care not to name names... thus leaving the Indian people, and India’s neighbours, to guess whom he had it mind. What is clear in the first place however is that Prime Minister Gujral’s ‘’grand coalition’’ is not too well-knit an alliance. The immediate outcome was the resignation of four D.M.K. ministers from the 43 member, yes 43 member, Gujral cabinet. And this is a Cabinet which had already lost three Janata Dal ministers and 14 MPs, that is from the party of Prime Minister Gujral. A corruption scandal had led to the break-up. The rebels have now formed a faction that remains a major threat to the Gujral administration which seems to have introduced to India’s parliamentary politics a process quite familiar to French parliamentary politics. But powerful Presidency gives France a source of strength that is absent in the Indian system.
Right now however Prime Minister Gujral and his Janata Dal do have a source of comfort in the complicated arithmetic of the Lok Sabha when a vote on critical issue is taken. That explains the remark of a CPI. (M) member, ‘’The latest crisis will blow over and the coalition will survive.’’.
The numbers game cannot however conceal the gravity of the crisis, a national political crisis, a systemic dislocation and therefore a threat to the Indian parliamentary politics we have known before. Mainstream, a journal founded by India’s most respected editor, Nikhil Chakravarty, had an editorial that posed the question: Should Laloo hold U.F.to Ransom?
“The shameless manner in which Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal supremo is clinging on to office... even after the C.B.I. has made its submission to the State governor for his consent to frame charges against Laloo in the multi-crore fodder scam... speaks volumes on the depths to which politics have sunk of late, and thereby debased not only themselves but the entire political system in their lust for power and patronage’’.
In the view of the sub-continent’s foreign policy establishment, K.Subramaniam was India’s hawk of hawks. The authentic architect of Non-alignment at the height of the Cold War was Nehru rather than Tito, though the Yugoslav leader was most useful to a ‘’third world’’ community striving to protect its new independence in a bipolar world. Tito, a Marxist on the frontline, divided Europe, was extremely useful. But in its own obvious sphere of influence, South Asia, Nehru and more so Indira Gandhi, were conscious of its ‘’special status’’ in NAM, and its right to a regional hegemony. India and Pakistan the major South Asian states were ‘’at war’’ over Kashmir, with each tied to a superpower by a ‘’special relationship’’. The region’s geo-politics were shaped by Pakistan’s ties with the US and after Ms. Gandhi signed the Indo-Soviet treaty, Delhi’s pro-Soviet stance. The war in Afghanistan exposed these political realities, in as much as the war assumed the character of a superpower proxy war.
K.Subramaniam, regarded by foreign policy and strategic studies pundits in the region as Delhi’s superhawk, has recently re-examined NAM in a post-Cold War context. “Nonalignment was not an ideology but a tactical policy of weak nations made possible by the bipolar system and inherent limitations on superpowers which countervailed each other. It was a very valid and effective strategy for its time... the era of bipolarity.’’
While his concluding remarks are correctly addressed to the Indian political establishment (it is accused of failing to reach proper assesments of the international situation) Mr.Subramaniam pays little attention to the consequences of the prevailing confusion in national politics and the main parties.
Uzhavoor, near Ettumanoor, about 30 km from Kottayam in Kerala, is not even a speck on the map. In August 1992, when former diplomat and Union Minister K.R. Narayanan became vice-president, his ancestral home, House No.456 in Ward 5 of Uzhavoor panchayat, was a crudely-built hut on a hill. About 10 minutes’ drive from Uzhavoor, a mud road led to the foot of the hill along small plots of rubber. From there, a narrow path led up to the unoccupied hut.
The hut had two small rooms and a tiny kitchen. There was hardly any furniture inside. There was no electricity or telephone connection, no water supply and no toilet. The roof, which till few years earlier had been thatched with palm fronds, was of tiles and asbestos. The unplastered walls, made of unbaked bricks, had streaks of water marks. A rudimentary sort of door opened out from an enclosed verandah to a hill-side of tapioca, banana and coconut palms.
Nearly five years later, in February 1997, when Narayanan visited Uzhavoor, little had changed in his ancestral home and its surroundings. A water tank had been installed by the State Public Works Department for the visit. Electricity had finally come to the hut. The walls were plastered with cement. The mud road had been cleared further for a car to travel up to the hill. Otherwise things were the same. Narayanan’s visit - which he has made every year since he became vice-president - was as emotional and nostalgic as ever. By then the hut on the hill, called ‘Kocheri Veedu’ at Purakkad, had become a symbol for the entire nation.
Four months later, Uzhavoor has come alive again. Kocheri Veedu is in the spotlight, with television crews, some with interpreters, descending on the village. About two kilometres away, in a similar but bigger house, Narayanan’s eldest sister, 80-year-old Gowri, and his only surviving brother, 65-year-old K.R. Bhaskaran, patiently answer telephone calls and respond to questions from media persons. They are now used to all the attention. Their brother, Uzhavoor’s Narayanan, son of Kocheri Veettil Raman Vaidyan and Paappi Amma of Punnathura Veedu of Ettumanoor, is to be India’s next President.
Narayanan was born into extreme hardship on October 27,1920 as the fourth of seven children of Raman Vaidyan, a Dalit traditional medical practitioner. Uzhavoor was a predominantly Christian locality, little different from other villages of central Kerala. Most of its inhabitants were small farmers who grew paddy, coconut, tapioca, banana and other such crops in their small plots. The profile of the village has changed little, except - as Narayanan pointed out in a recent speech - that most of the farmers have abandoned their traditional crops for the more lucrative rubber. Medical facilities are more freely available, and there are a larger number of educational institutions.
Narayanan’s family experienced extreme social and economic hardship. The father could never make enough money for his large family but Narayanan’s uneducated mother, sister ( Gouri and brother Neelakantan were keen on ensuring the best possible education for him. From the age of four, Narayanan was sent to the nearest primary school at a place called Kurichittanam; the young Narayanan’s educational interest may have been helped along by regular offerings of a pinch of jaggery and half a ‘chakram’ which got him a dosa during lunch hour.
Penury placed extreme limitations on his educational pursuits. It compelled Narayanan to walk 10-15 km every day to schools nearby, at Uzhavoor, Koodhattukulam and Kuravilangadu, and later, for his intermediate course, to the C.M.S. College in Kottayam. “Never did I get so much exercise,” he would recall decades later. Unable to attend classes regularly because his father could not afford to pay the fees before the 10th of every month, he was frequently punished. “A diplomat,” Narayanan says, “should have a thick skin. I got mine through experiences such as standing on the bench in front of the whole class. “Unable to buy books, he would devour any book or newspaper he could lay his hands on. Bhaskaran recalls: “Narayanan would read, read and read and take notes.”
Despite the drawbacks (“The teacher said: ‘Imagine his is a test tube”’), Narayanan would say years later, he had the best of education in the erstwhile princely state of Travancore. He studied on merit scholarships from the intermediate level (11th standard) and in 1943 passed the B.A. (Literature) Honours examination from the Maharaja’s College in Thiruvanandhapuram, winning the first rank in the University of Travancore (which later became the University of Kerala).
As striking as the childhood poverty is the context in which he completed his studies with distinction and then faced one of the worst humiliations in his life. Ironically, the first public reception Narayanan addressed on his first visit to Kerala as vice-president was organised at the Senate Hall of Kerala University, whose B.A. Honours degree he had refused to accept because he had been denied the job he had then sought - a lecturer at the Maharaja’s College. Narayanan, who secured the first rank, would have got the job had he belonged to a higher caste. But he did not. Instead, the then Chancellor, Dewan of Travancore C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, offered him a clerical post in the University and a book worth Rs. 100. Narayanan did not go to the convocation.
Fifty years later, when he returned to the Senate Hall as vice-president, University officials begged him to accept the degree. “He had the grace to say yes,” (Acting) Vice-Chancellor Dr. D. Babu Paul told Frontline. “I think he was very pleased.”
Narayanan was born at a critical period in the history of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore, towards the end of the rule of Moolam Tirunal (1885 to 1924). An oppressive social structure was in place in Kerala; the ruling elite with close interconnections with the ruling families, Brahmins who were high in the ritual hierarchy, and landed sections of the Nairs were at the apex of the social pyramid. In feudal Travancore, these were also the major landowning groups, and, therefore, among the most affluent.
Among the worst forms of untouchability were practised in Kerala; the rules of the caste system also included complex rules regarding “unapproachibility” or “distance-pollution”.
But, as has been said in another famous historical context, the greater the oppression, the greater the revolt. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social reform organisations of people of the oppressed castes emerged as pioneers of anti-caste social reform and as the first organisers of democratic sociopolitical movements among rural working people. By the 1920s, there had been an awakening among the oppressed people of Kerala. The public mission of Sree Narayana Guru, who preached a transformational “intellectual religion” of one people, struck at the roots of social and religious exclusion. Organised efforts to remove social disabilities were also evolving. Government schools and government service were opened to the oppressed castes.
Travancore also witnessed mass movements by members of the oppressed castes for entry into government service and for greater democratic rights. By the time Narayanan was reading Victor Hugo and writing poetry (the first of which was published in Malayala Manorama when he was in the ninth standard), public opinion had gathered only enough strength to enable the ruler of Travancore to issue the Temple Entry Proclamation (on November 12, 1936) throwing open temples to all people. It was in the same year that a system of community-based reservation (based on numerical strength) was first introduced in Kerala.
More than vestiges of the harsh caste system still existed in Kerala when Narayanan passed his B.A. After unsuccessful attempts to become a full-time teacher (he worked for a while as a teacher in a tutorial and filled a lecturer-on-leave vacancy at the Maharajah’s College), Narayan left for Delhi, to try become a journalist.
After a month of being an assistant at the Indian Overseas Department in Delhi, a government job which earned him Rs. 250 Narayanan quit and joined the Economic Weekly for Commerce and Industry (edited by Lanka Sundaram) as a journalist on a salary of Rs. 100". Journalism was a passion, then,” he would say later.
It was when working in the Weekly that Narayanan wrote a letter to J.R.D. Tata seeking the scholarship that eventually took him to the London School of Economics and Political Science after brief intervening stints with The Hindu and, later with The Times of India, Bombay (when he sought and got a cherished interview with Gandhi).
Uzhavoor is getting ready to celebrate the day on which Narayanan becomes President. Celebration committees have been formed, sweets have been distributed. The entire village knows he will soon visit them and that his sister will be ready with appam, puttu and curry, Kadala curry valsan and payasam - and is grumbling that the delicacies will first have to be tasted by his security personnel. But even as they celebrate, the significance of the occasion is not lost any more. Narayanan himself drew attention to it on his first visit to the State as Vice-President.
The Senate Hall of the University that once denied him his honour erupted into applause when he described his visit as a deeply emotional experience”. He said “my elevation to high office should not be seen as a personal achievement but as an instance in history where a person becomes a symbol of the hope and aspirations of thousands of people in the country.
It does not mean that the needs of ordinary people, especially the downtrodden, have been satisfied. The need for sustained efforts to provide equality for all and welfare measures for the downtrodden still continues.”
-Frontline
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