Col R Hariharan
[This article contains excerpts from a media interview given
by the author on August 16, 2014.]
Time has come for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a
relook at Sri Lanka affairs under the leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
He has continued for too long to bash on regardless of his unkept promises to
India on implementing the 13th Constitutional Amendment in full. It
was to be part of the resumption of the stalled political dialogue process with
Tamil leaders which he promised to undertake.
Modi’s elevation as Prime Minister initially caused some
concern to Rajapaksa as the BJP electoral partners in Tamil Nadu were well
known for their strong anti-Rajapa and decidedly pro-Tamil separatist stand.
But seeing the dynamic new Indian prime minister’s keenness to build better
relations with India’s neighbours, Rajapaksa seems to have decided that it
would be business as usual for Sri Lanka while dealing with India.
Just one example will suffice to explain Rajapaksa’s
intransigent attitude to the dialogue process with Tamil leaders. Recently, the
President had a wonderful opportunity to build bridges with Tamil polity when
the 5-year tenure of Northern Province Governor Chandrasiri ended. The Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) which is in power in the Province had for long been
demanding replacing Chandrasiri a former General, with an experienced and well
respected civilian, for which there is no dearth in Sri Lanka. The TNA felt
such a move would provide a better equation in dealing with Colombo as the
population was recovering from post war trauma. The President could have acceded to their
request now without any loss of face for anyone (except probably the
President’s brother Gotabaya who has a different view on the subject) by appointing
a civilian as the governor for Northern Province. Such a gesture would have
helped to create good will not only among Tamils but also among large sections
of Sri Lanka civil society who feel President Rajapaksa has not done enough to bringing
the Tamils back into national mainstream and put an end to ethnic
confrontation.
But the President chose to reappoint the outgoing
Governor Chandrasiri for yet another term in the same job. It was a gesture in
articulating the President’s power; the announcement came like a slap in the
face of the Dr Wigneswaran, the TNA chief minister of the Province, because he had
been demanding Chandrasiri’s replacement from day one in office. With it
Rajapaksa has sent a clear signal to Tamils that there would be no
rapprochement with them except on his terms.
This comes as no surprise if we see the evolution of Sri
Lanka’s policy in the last five post war years. Its core contents appear to be
1.
Marginalise India’s role on behalf of the Tamil
constituency; of course, on all other aspects Colombo welcomes India’s initiatives
in trade, defence, and other matters, naturally on terms favourable to Sri
Lanka.
2.
International NGOs should lay off Sri Lanka on issues
like war crimes, human rights, governance, minority rights and rule of law. To
be ‘fair’ to small countries they should go after big powers which seem to get
away with much bigger crimes. Already Ministry of Defence which seems to have
hand in the policy making pie, has already proposed restrictions on NGOs access
to public media. Of course, the NGOs are welcome to associate with
government-sponsored programmes to improve the well being of the people.
3.
International bodies like the UN Human Rights Commission
(UNHRC) are manipulated by Western powers and the US. So Sri Lanka should not
facilitate any role for them in its internal affairs (forget the UN conventions
say because everyone flouts them). While Sri Lanka cannot stop their “meddling,”
it can network with like-minded countries (eg., Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea
etc) and make a lot of noise about the intrusive nature of UN commissions’ work
because it echoes the view of many nations.
4.
The Tamil issue has been solved with the elimination of
Prabhakaran and the Tamil Tigers. But Sri Lanka would attend to Tamil
grievances, if any, on its own terms without any external intervention. And the
13th constitutional amendment was created to satisfy India and at
best it is a benevolent gesture to Tamils. Tamils should be happy with its present
form of incomplete implementation.
5.
The army has an important role to play in keeping the Northern
and Eastern provinces “sanitized” to prevent any ‘resurrection’ of Tamil
terrorism abetted by Tamil Diaspora and their pals in TNA and the remnants
of LTTE abroad (and in Tamil Nadu). So regardless of what the government says,
the army will continue to keep a watch on the activity of Tamils everywhere
including the North and East. As it is in the interest of national security,
army’s intrusive role, if any, has to be tolerated by civilians and condoned by
the government. As a corollary the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) would
continue to be in force.
As far as India’s role on Tamils in Sri Lanka is
concerned, in a nutshell, Rajapaksa is telling India “forget about full
implementation of 13th Amendment, or its Plus version I spoke about.
It is for TNA to negotiate what it wants because basically it is our internal
issue.”
Did Modi’s cordial meeting with Rajapaksa and the absence
of any representative from his Tamil Nadu political partners in the cabinet
influence Rajapaksa’s attitude? It is time
to shake up Colombo’s “business as usual” mindset at least a wee bit.
From this point of view I welcome the initiative taken by
Civil Society Coalition for Justice and Peace delegation from Tamil Nadu which
met with the Minister of External Affairs Mrs Sushma Swaraj to articulate the
concerns of Tamils. The delegation led by the UPA coalition partner PMK’s leader
Anbumani included civil society activist and former IAS officer MG Devasahyam,
former Dharmapuri MP R Senthil and advocate R Balu. This is a welcome move
because civil society has to be involved in articulating Tamil Nadu’s concerns
on Sri Lanka Tamil issue, which has been used for too long by political parties
only to score political brownie points.
I do not agree with the delegation’s view that China,
Pakistan, and Burma were ganging up with Sri Lanka against India because it is
too simplistic. India’s Sri Lanka policy cannot be changed overnight because it
is not exclusively Tamil-centric but includes other issues of national interest
like trade, maritime and security concerns as well.
But I fully agree with them on two other points they
made:
·
India should prevail upon Rajapaksa for a course
correction in keeping with his promises to India on resuming the political
process with the Tamil representatives.
·
Rajapaksa should be made to address concerns of India and
international community on Sri Lanka’s accountability for alleged human rights
violations and war crimes articulated in the UNHRC resolutions.
As a first step in this process, India can tell Sri Lanka
that it would reconsider its stand on the UN resolution adopted last March when
it comes for review in the next UNHRC meeting.
In March 2014 India had abstained from voting for the
resolution because it considered operative paragraph 10 calling for sending an
international investigation team to Sri Lanka as intrusive. But Sri Lanka should
be an exception to this because Rajapaksa has not fulfilled his promises to
India. And Rajapaksa will not realise it unless India takes a hard stand on
this count.
Lastly, I agree with the delegation on the need for a
special officer at the MEA to handle Sri Lanka.
I wrote on this issue in an article the Indian Foreign Affairs
Journal April-June 2012 issue; “India-Sri Lanka relations need a more
integrated political-diplomatic-strategic-trade strategy evolved by national
leadership. The resources at the Ministry of External Affairs are totally
inadequate to execute such a strategy, even if it is devised. Perhaps creating
a special task force with its element in Chennai would be the answer. Then only
India can show Sri Lanka South that it
is serious about strengthening its relationship as equal partner.” I stand by
it.
[Col Hariharan is a retired MI officer who served as the head
of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 90.
E-mail: colhari@yahoo.com Blogs: http://col.hariharan.info & http://hariharansintblog.blogspot.in ]
Courtesy: South
Asia Analysis group Note No 721 dated 17 July 2014 URL http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1567
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