President Kumaratunga has just proved in New York why the country is luckier to have her than Ranil Wickremesinghe as its leader, and why she is the best leader that Sri Lanka could have given the available choices at this moment in history. Her address to the UN General Assembly was the best by a Sri Lankan head of state or government, barring – and bettered only by - her father’s brilliant peroration in 1956 on the twin crises, Suez and Hungary.
Chandrika returned to the path in international politics, of SWRD and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, charting an appropriately contemporary version of a non-aligned middle path in the contentious issues of world politics today. Referring to the Beslan massacre she took exactly the right stand on the issue of terrorism. She coupled a call to search for and address the root causes with an unequivocal denunciation of terrorism and a call for resolute global counteraction. This is indeed the correct policy synthesis, and needed to be articulated before an audience of world leaders. She finessed the Iraq issue most ably, avoiding the triple traps of spineless silence, endorsement of the US war or the alienation by denunciation, of Washington.
Her resounding reaffirmation of the UN was a subtle critique of unilateralist militarism, her pitch for the democratisation of the Security Council and the discreetly camouflaged but discernible plug for India, was a combination of laudable reformist ideal and Realpolitik. She did her bit for Buddhism by criticising its vulgar commercialisation, and above all she criticised the LTTE for pulling out of talks 18 months ago and obstreperously ducking a return to the negotiating table. With an admirable sense of diplomacy and realism, she commended the facilitation by Norway. In short, by adopting a centrist course, she also took the moral high ground.
President Kumaratunga gets an A from me for her UN General assembly address and A- (that’s A minus) for her Asia Society speeches. The latter was not only infinitely superior to (then) Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s on the most comparable occasion, at the Woodrow Wilson Centre two years back (his and hers should be published side by side), it was the best speech on Sri Lanka’s interrelated ethnic and terrorist problem I have read by a Sri Lankan President or Prime Minister since Independence, making an explicit critique of the "monolithic unitary state" (as she put it), and demonstrating that she is the top Lankan leader who came closest to intellectually comprehending the ethno-national question, possibly the only one to understand it. Her speech also cuts across the ‘root causes versus terrorism’ debate, striving for a balanced synthesis, making it one of the better speeches I’ve read on terrorism and conflict resolution by any head of state or government after 9/11.
Though she probably had the good sense to obtain inputs from both Lakshman Kadirgamar and Jayantha Dhanapala, I know that for the most part she has a tendency to write her own speeches for better or worse (sometimes for worse, as at the LSE and in Delhi in 2001); and she writes well, better in English than in Sinhala. So almost all of the credit must go to her, as all of the blame if she messed it up. But it is still an A minus, because she didn’t quite pull off the part about the current situation, and produced a bit a souffl`E9, giving the Tigers an undeserved plus for agreeing to federalism, when in fact their departure - through the ISGA - from that agreement is our (and her) problem. She didn’t do herself or us any favours by that bit. Taking the two speeches together, I’m impressed.
Washington Report
Sometimes a single fact illuminates the entire situation. Barely a fortnight after the US State Department’s counter-terrorism chief J. Cofer Black helped us by cuffing the Tigers so hard that the TNA’s Mr. Sambandan remonstrated hysterically, there should be two protest demonstrations outside the US Embassy by Sinhala ‘patriots’? And that nobody wrote how surrealistic and insanely self-defeating it is? (I really miss old Kautilya at times like this.) Is it any wonder then that the US and the West don’t do more for us and against the Tigers?
When I rang the alarm bell about the international costs of the upsurge in majoritarian religious extremism and the attacks on Christian churches, there were some who felt it was a bit over the top. Well, on September 15, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the release of the US State Department’s 2004 Report on International Religious Freedoms. Punctiliously researched and documented, soberly written, it contains a section several pages long and quite critical of the situation in Sri Lanka. Significantly it is also sharply critical of the LTTE, and thus quite consistent and objective. The State Department has always been the more moderate and enlightened wing of the US Government whichever the administration.
It is the height of civic irresponsibility for the Sri Lankan mass media not to carry the full text, in Sinhala and Tamil translation as well, given its source, its implications as an early warning, given the possibility that our more myopic politicians and baser drives may take us into a minefield.
A Rap on Religion
In the report’s Executive Summary, the reference to Sri Lanka come in ‘Part I: Barriers to International Religious Freedom’, in the section ‘State Neglect of Societal Discrimination Against, or Persecution of, Religious Minorities’, and reads as follows:
"There was an overall deterioration of religious freedom due to the actions of extremists. In late 2003 and early 2004, Buddhist extremists destroyed Christian churches and harassed and abused pastors and congregants. There were over 100 accounts of attacks on Christian church buildings and members, several dozen of which were confirmed by diplomatic observers. NGOs have reported that in the majority of cases the police failed to protect churches and citizens from attack. In May an MP of the Jathika Hela Urumaya party presented a draft anti-conversion bill to Parliament. In June the Minister of Buddhist affairs presented a separate draft anti-conversion bill to the cabinet. It was not formally approved; however it was sent to the Attorney General for a review that was ongoing at the end of the period covered by the report. There has been considerable public discussion of the bills, and many government officials expressed their concern about such legislation".
The website of the US Embassy in Japan carries in its section ‘US Policy and Issues’, a story by David Shelby, Washington staff writer, on the 2004 International Religious Freedoms Report. The story is posted on the State Dept’s other more general websites as well. The pertinent quote reads:
"Sri Lanka’s constitution permits the free practice of religion as well, but according to the report, actions of religious extremists have resulted in a deterioration of religious freedom. In particular, the report raised concerns about attacks on Christian churches by Buddhist groups. While the government condemned such attacks, it has apparently done little to prevent them from continuing".
Just two sample quotes from the international press will provide a glimpse of the damage our extremists and those who pander to them, have inflicted on the image of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese and the Buddhists. ‘In `85 Sri Lanka there was "state neglect of societal discrimination against or persecution of minority religions".’ (AFP, Washington, in ‘The Australian’, Sept. 17, p.12) " Sri Lanka’s Constitution permits the free practice of religion as well, but according to the report, actions of religious extremists have resulted in a deterioration of religious freedom. In particular the report pointed out instances of attacks on Christian churches by Buddhist groups." (Indo-Asian News Service, Washington, Sept. 16)
Most important is the statement in the Report of the US Government’s conduct, which implicitly indicates a cost if Sri Lanka resumes its journey on this path:
"Embassy representatives met repeatedly with Government officials at the highest level, including with President Kumaratunga, to express the US Government’s concern about the attacks on Christian churches and to discuss the anti-conversion issue. On several occasions the Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, Democracy, Labour and the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom discussed the anti-conversion issue with the country’s ambassador to the United States".
A clear signal: don’t cross the tripwire by turning either Bill into law; don’t attack churches; and if they are attacked, don’t let the perpetrators to go unpunished.
Burning Bridges
In military science, bridges are either of tactical or strategic value, and sometimes both. So it is in societies. Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious minorities are the country’s cultural and psychological bridges to the world. They are also our bridges to one another. But we have been burning our bridges (sometimes literally).
The Hill country Tamils are the bridge between the largely Tamil Northeast and the largely Sinhalese South. The Muslims, as Tamil speakers but not Tamils, have affinities with both Sinhalese and Tamils. The Christians are the only social group that embraces both Sinhalese and Tamils; indeed three of our four main ethnic groups were represented in Christian community: the Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers.
The photographs of the Madhu feast this year provide a unique example of community which a quarter century of deadly conflict and intractable crisis have been unable to efface: Sinhala and Tamil clergy sharing the same altar, Sinhala and Tamil people of all ages at prayer together, and a temporary demilitarisation in the immediate vicinity by both armies. (In Brisbane Australia, Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers join annually in replicating the Madhu procession and are bringing over a statue from Mannar to be placed in the shrine they are building in the picturesque Marian Valley).
The Tolerance of Intolerance
After the Supreme Court decision on the JHU draft bill and before the release of the International Religious Freedoms report, the State Department hosted a delegation from the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, an interfaith, international public interest law firm whose clients range from Buddhists to Zoroastrians. The Beckett Fund’s tightly argued briefing to the State Department said that in a sequel to ‘Sinhala Only’ in ’56, the current bills and social mood constitute one of ‘Buddhism Only’. In a still more recent exposition, the Deputy Head of the Beckett Fund argued that the US must use its leverage on the garments issue, and link progress in that area to greater religious liberty in Sri Lanka. (See the online Asian Tribune for this documentation).
We can always say, as we did in July ’83, that it was a handful of extremists who dunnit, and the image of the whole nation shouldn’t be discredited. That never cuts any ice - not in ’83, not now: if it is a mere handful of extremists and "unscrupulous elements", why didn’t the vast majority stop them? And if that were dangerous at that confusing moment, why weren’t the perpetrators brought to justice later?
Soul Superpower?
The basic demographic fact that the Tamils had 50 million co-ethnics in neighbouring India, the region’s superpower, imposed a heavy punishment on the Sri Lankan state and its majority for having been myopically discriminatory. This time it isn’t the Injuns it’s the cowboys: the country with the world’s largest number of Christians is the USA, sole superpower and mightiest power in history. It is also the country that pretty much owns the World Bank and the IMF, and therefore on which our economy, our external resources, jobs and material living standards are dependent, and a powerful, indispensable ally given the threat from the Tigers. The report will not go away with the Bush administration, which I fear, doesn’t look like its going away (damn those Chechen terrorists). If it’s a Bush presidency, the rightwing Evangelicals carry weight; if it’s Kerry, it’s the liberal Catholics. And if the 1505 retro-probe takes the form of a religious hit list, we’ll have the EU on our case as well.
What could be the costs of continuing to pick on the Christian minority that has two billion co-religionists (I got it wrong in my review of ‘The Passion’: the one billion figure is for the Catholics alone), 1/3rd of humanity? If the majority in Sri Lanka were Muslims or Hindus, with access to the sheer numbers, wealth, natural resources, market, self-sacrificial militancy and dispersed global presence of those communities, then the costs of religious confrontation may be affordable. But that just ain’t the case here.
