Interference by other means
By N Sathiya Moorthy
Speaking as chief guest at the Sri Lanka Military Academy, Diyatalawa, the other day, President Ranil Wickremesinghe emphasised the profound responsibility of the army in safeguarding the sovereignty of the country. He asserted that this duty should remain unquestionable and impervious to any attempts to restrict or compromise it.
Simultaneously, the President underscored the importance of protecting the people’s sovereignty and preserving the unique identity of Sri Lanka. He warned against any actions or attempts to fracture the national identity on the basis of racism or religion and underscored the potential harm such endeavours could inflict on the essence of Sri Lanka.
You pick up the past speeches of past chief guests, especially past Presidents who were also de jure Supreme Commander of the armed forces and also the defence minister in their times, almost each one of those words would have found their place in those documents, too. And like incumbent Ranil now, none of them had sought to explain where from did any threat to the nation’s sovereignty emanated from in their respective times.
Of course, the LTTE era was one real threat as it wanted to split the country and create a separate state. Can the same be said of the two JVP insurgencies? Technically, it’s still an yes-and-no. Prima facie ‘no’ should be the answer as the JVP did not challenge the nation’s sovereignty or territorial integrity as the LTTE did. Instead, it simply wanted a change of government system, what they euphemistically used to call a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ scheme.
It would still be an ‘yes’ if you considered the nation’s democratic scheme since the birth of Independence in 1948 constituted a key and critical element of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. Territorial integrity stood on a different plane. Both would have been threatened and/or compromised, if even for a day if the JVP had practical control of any part of the country for a considerable length of time.
The LTTE did it in the North and the East, and even ran a ‘parallel administration’, with a separate police and judiciary, post office and bank – at least on paper. Of course, the LTTE militia was anyway fighting the armed forces throughout that period, as if they were a stand-alone army of a stand-alone nation. If none of these things happened, it was not for want of trying, but because the Colombo Government and its friends in the international community ensured that not even a ‘banana republic’ conferred the mandatory recognition on the LTTE-administered areas, its flag and claims to being/becoming a sovereign entity.
Democratic credentials
The question is if President Ranil had just stopped equating sovereignty mostly with territorial integrity or did he imply more. At the Military Academy, he also said that no external interference or restrictions should be tolerated. Was he saying these words to the armed forces or the army cadets who were mostly his audience on the occasion, or to himself and his government? Or, was he saying these to send out an incomprehensible and un-decoded message to the army commanders in that building and the rest of the nation outside?
Successive Presidents have made such declarations on every occasion (made) available to him during his tenure. For the incumbent, the next best occasion will be the National Day celebrations and parade on 4 February, if none else is slated earlier. If so, what have they meant in the past, what does Ranil mean at present? Were they earlier and the incumbent at present anticipating even the remotest of threats from outside or an insurgency of the JVP/LTTE kind?
Many people sitting in their homes and watching it all only on the 247 TV news that last year’s Aragalaya came close to being one. There were enough indications of what started off as a peaceful protest denigrating into an urban violence, bordering on urban insurgency / guerrilla activity. Thankfully, it all paused first and passed later, demonstrating the inherent strengths of the nation’s democratic credentials and deep roots. It is another matter that this aspect of the Aragalaya protests has not been acknowledged, leave aside adequately.
Robust institutions
At Diyatalawa, President Wickremesinghe spoke about ‘interference and restrictions’, which in most cases in the past decade and more has referred to the international community (read: West) and the latter’s knack at giving a rap on Sri Lanka’s knuckle at regular period intervals. This is when a parliamentary caucus on human rights in the country has evolved in Colombo.
But what a bipartisan US Senate group has done is in the news here. They have begun the process of seeking to make the administration of President Joe Biden responsible for holding the Sri Lankan government accountable in human rights affairs. Otherwise, the US has despatched the administration’s Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, Desirée Cormier Smith, to hear out the country’s efforts to advance equity and justice for all ethnic groups.
In continental Europe, the outgoing Sri Lankan Ambassador Grace Asirwatham briefed the EU Court of Justice on moves to address post-conflict issues in the country. In London, the human rights group, International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) has urged the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to impose sanctions on war-time Sri Lanka Army field commanders Shavendra Silva and Jagath Jayasuriya on allegations of rights abuses. Eight such HR groups in the country also want Foreign Secretary David Cameron, a former Prime Minister, to recuse himself from the decision-making authority on imposing such sanctions on the Sri Lankan two.
Are some of these initiatives in the US and the UK also tend qualify as attempts at interfering with the sovereign rights of Sri Lanka – by other means — and most EU members too are with them in it, why is it that the government continue to have its envoys, including diplomats brief foreign governments and institutions such as the EU Court of Justice? After all, they are all members of the UNHRC, where Sri Lanka was first accused of war-crimes, and on perceptions and allegations of continual violation of human rights.
It is not about the government being accused of rights violations. Instead, it is about the idea of having other nations judge it in forums like the UNHRC and even the ICJ, where judges represent nations and blocs, not Justice as a tenet and fair-play as a concept.
If so, why is it that successive governments have gone about defending the Sri Lankan State and its institutions, and explaining their functions to others? That was (mainly) because no one is definite that there were no violations, but no one is also sure if there are robust institutions that could address the domestic situation in an equally convincing way.
It is doubtful if even those in the government now, or were there when it happened remember the promise of the post-war government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to set up a military inquiry to address complaints of war-time excesses and rights violations. Then there was the civilian inquiry by the Justice Paranagama Commission.
If the first one did any work, no one, at least among the citizenry, was wiser to it. Some months later, newspapers carried brief reports, if they were any, about the military panel submitting its report or initiating action or some such thing. The multi-member Paranagama Commission did submit its report, but nothing much seemed to have flowed out of it.
But the unspoken part is about western countries that too endorsed the complaints about ‘missing persons’ made by the Tamil community and polity, not responding to the commission’s repeated requests to provide with facts about Sri Lankans who might be living in their midst with aliases – at time provided by host governments, in the name of protecting their identity from Colombo government’s sleuths that were supposedly after them.
Worse still, as if by prior consultation, not one of those governments even acknowledged the communication from the commission, appointed under the seal of the elected President of Sri Lanka. Some sovereignty, this!
(The writer is a Policy Analyst & Political Commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
