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A 50,000 strong human shield to 
prevent war

by Kushani Ratnayake

Multi-religious prayer session at Nallur Kovil, Jaffna, with members of Inter-Religious Peace Foundation

Some religious leaders of this country are determined to organise a human shield if war breaks out again between the Government and the LTTE. They are trying to pressurise both parties to refrain from reverting to war over the recent road bumps in the peace process.

"Thirty peace organisations have got together and have expressed their solidarity. We have made a decision to stop the war if it breaks out again, we will not allow war to flare up again in this country. If the war breaks out we will have a human shield of fifty thousand people, together with the people from Jaffna and volunteer services from North and East.

Through conferences and meetings we are going to make the public aware of this situation, we also have district coordinators in twenty four regions", the co-president of the Inter-Religious Peace Foundation Ven. Madampagama Assaji Nayaka Thera said. Each and everyone of us has enjoyed the fruits of peace during the year long ceasefire agreement.

The benefits reaped are immense and the credit must go to both parties, the Government and the LTTE, for their flexible and tolerant approach.

"Religious leaders have a duty to consolidate and strengthen the peace process. Religion has a role to play in promoting peace that cannot be left to politicians alone.

"We are ready to face any obstacle, we are ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of peace and if the Government and the LTTE prepare for a war for any reason, we would like to make it very clear to them that all religious leaders and people's organisations will get together and will launch anti-war programs on an unprecedented scale", Nayaka thera said.

Inter-religious peace march in Jaffna

"The unfortunate incidents that have occurred recently rekindled fear in the whole country that war might break out once again. If the war breaks out by any chance people should get together and voice their opinions since it is our responsibility to safeguard peace. Steadfast dedication of both parties with the Norwegian government should establish clear signs of honesty and genuine effort to over come all obstacles placed and clear the path for peace", he said.

"In this country people have experienced war and they must now get together to stop it, we do not want war any more, our leaders should understand that we are against war.

"We must all get together and fight for peace, it is very essential for our country, we should have positive thoughts towards the peace process. This country belongs to all communities and therefore all of us should co-exist in harmony, and we do not want to pester ourselves to start a war", he said.

The recent unwanted and malicious acts should not be a hindrance or a stumbling block to foster national unity and lasting peace. After all we have had enough experience of vast devastation of people and materials during this agonizing war. It is only through peace that one can gain liberation and salvation.

Peace cannot be achieved overnight, tangible peace is not only a ceasefire or laying down of arms. Peace will take root only when justice and fairplay are provided and when equality among all peoples is ensured. Let us all hope that this one year of serenity will lead to everlasting peace.

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Journey to Jaffna

by Guy Amirthanayagam

Though I spent the first years of my life in a small town called Namunukula in the Uva province of Sri Lanka, I was born in Jaffna. My mother having lost her own mother as an infant followed her usual practice of going for her confinements to my aunts house in Jaffna. My aunt who treated my mother as her own daughter was gifted by nature as an expert midwife. So Jaffna is the town of my birth.

Because my father who was a medical doctor in the service of Government and was transferable from place to place within the country, he first rented and then bought a house where we grew up as children. He also had to go overseas for three years for further studies and he wanted to ensure continuity in our schooling.

When I reached University Entrance level I was sent to Colombo for my higher education. Of course I visited Jaffna frequently since then particularly after my father was posted as Judicial Medical Officer there. He continued to work in Jaffna and after some more years in private practice, he settled down permanently in Colombo where he lived a semi-retired life.

I have mentioned the above facts because I want to show that I was very familiar with Jaffna. Even during my career in the Ceylon Civil Service I was at one time the Chairman of two State Industrial Corporations, the National Salt Corporation which had one of its salterns in Elephant Pass and the Chemicals Corporation which had its plant in Paranthan. Since 1969 I have lived and worked in England and the United States and from these countries I visited Colombo often but did not go to Jaffna for 34 years, of which for 20 years travel to the North was practically impossible because of the civil war.

This year, because of the peace, travel had become feasible and I decided to pay a short visit to the place of my birth to see for myself what had happened to it and its environs. Everybody advised me against travelling by road because the roads were in a deplorable condition. Nevertheless, I rented an air-conditioned van for my journey.

The roads were badly rutted made even worse if that were possible by the North-East monsoon. The problems for the driver were which potholes to avoid and which to brave among the many which appeared every few feet on the road from Vavuniya to the Jaffna peninsula. The enemies seemed to have battled bitterly and ruthlessly for every inch of roadway with the government troops being largely responsible with their heavy vehicles and equipment. Wars are wanton in their destruction but this kind of devastation seemed sadistic in the extreme.

The bombardment both by land and sea, the lopping off of the crowns of palmyra palms and coconut trees in order to facilitate carpet bombing drastically altered the landscape. What staggered my memory was the change in fauna and flora; I did not see a single monkey where in days gone by there were many, I could not find anybody who remembered the old Tamil name for the berries which had been such a treat for us on our previous trips.

Buildings seemed to have been pitted, pocked or even destroyed for no military reason, some towns were unrecognisable. My own grief at the disappearance of the salt works in Elephant Pass and the absence of any trace of the chemical plant in Paranthan paled in comparison when it was clear that this period was the most shameful, most God-forsaken era in the two thousand year old history of Sri Lanka.

And now there is peace. It is a peace which is still holding.

Much of the credit for this hopeful state of affairs should go to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who has approached this problem with a far-sighted vision and an honest determination to negotiate with the L.T.T.E. on a basis of fairness and equality. Of course major difficulties remain. The country is still infested with soldiers and Tamil cadres whose only purpose seems to be to hang about at check-points asking questions which have little relevance and making the journey about four hours longer. There are still disaffected elements; the opposition buttressed by the J.V.P., which among other qualifications is a racist party.

The President herself is at best ambivalent towards the peace process. Instead of taking the credit for first proposing a devolution of power, in her own words along a federalist or Indian model within a united Sri Lanka and for the original invitation to the Norwegians to mediate, she has indulged in contradictory statements which have, to put it mildly, not been at all helpful.

There is some opposition among the Tamils as well, both from the local residents whose battle-cry had been the thirst of the Tigers is Tamil Eelam and among expatriates who had substantially helped fund the struggle, yearning for a geographically defined land which had always belonged to them and their ancestors, just as the Jews scattered in many countries all over the world craved for many centuries for their own Zion, a gathering of the dispersed, a homeland they could call their very own.

It is natural that a movement for which a people had fought and suffered for so long would develop some kind of momentum of its own, despite the authoritarian nature of its leadership and its ruthless elimination of all other contenders for the throne.

At the present stage of the negotiations the parties in the words of the Norwegian mediators or facilitators as they are called agreed to explore a solution founded on the principle of internal self-determination of the Tamil speaking people based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka.

This formulation avoids the confusion between unitary and united which seems to bedevil some of the learned contributors to this discussion. Essentially unitary means non-federal and is therefore opposed to united. It is indeed ironic that federalism which was first mooted by the Federal party headed by S.J.V. Chelvanayakam over 50 years ago became a dirty word in Sri Lankan political and constitutional discourse while it is merely a neutral term intended to describe a system of government found in many multi-ethnic countries.

After the debacle of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact, all major Sinhala parties used the word to signify separation and thus won the Sinhala masses with blatantly racist appeal and propaganda. It has taken a protracted war to restore a harmless, benign word to a kind of normal respectability. There are other major hurdles which the peacemakers have to clear.

The opposition party in Parliament seems to scorn the peace process and has made no effort to make a positive contribution. Without this opposition's participation a permanent peace cannot be ensured. There is also a de facto separation into two countries in all but name in Sri Lanka. When you cross into the land controlled by the Tigers, the official language is Tamil. There is absolutely no use of Sinhala.

The notices are all in Tamil except for the use of English in some of the billboards warning the people against the dangers from mines and explosives which were probably installed by a concerned N.G.O. or by humanitarian agencies.

You feel that you are visiting a foreign country except that you do not need a passport or a visa. But you have to pay a tax to enter and customs dues where applicable. The rebels have their own police force whose uniforms are light blue in colour unlike the khaki worn by government police.

The Tamils have set up their own judiciary and even their own law school, radio station, bank, some health projects, education services and so on.

The emphasis on differentiation has gone so far as the extent of a time difference of half an hour; when it is 12 o'clock in Sri Lanka, it is 11.30 am in the Tamil areas. The existence of two time zones in a small country is a telling reminder of separatism. The Tigers have opened their own political offices in areas under Government control. To integrate into a united country is not just a daunting task; it is more like a labour of Hercules.

To change to a federal system of government would need a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which the governing party does not now have. Of course, there are several ways of overcoming this problem but I do not want to go into them fully here. There could be an all parties conference, a constituent assembly, a referendum to the entire electorate and so on.

Let me conclude by praying that the goodwill shown so far will continue to flourish till peace returns permanently to our native land. Let it not be said of our generation that

We have become inured to the grisly sight
Of disembowelled children, lost our sense
Of love, a lovely child-borne light
Have let the devil take the upper hand
Left him with impunity to stalk our land.

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Idea Forum : A summit to form rules

The peace process has thus far gone rather well despite violations of the MoU and arrogant talk by LTTE spokesmen. It may be that the LTTE has a vast overseas and local audience to satisfy and that is why inflammatory statements are being made by them. It may also be that the LTTE is not the monolithic organisation that we tend to believe it is and so there are violations downstream.

The possibility that they are playing Jekyll and Hyde games is also very real. While the huge majority of peace-loving Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka and overseas are mindful of the above considerations, I think it is fair to state that the government is not communicating well enough to sell their effort to the people. Fears and anxiety arising out of this deficiency would form a fertile ground for slandering and for senseless and uninformed protests.

The JVP (which once stood for Eelam) is obviously trying to get life out of this situation. Rohan Gunaratne, in an article that appeared in the local press some months ago, once said that the ethnic issue has become political football to struggling parties.

Indeed all current political parties have at some stage or another used it as political football. It is clear that such a game spells disaster.

Those who are currently playing football in the guise of being patriotic, are really traitors to Sri Lanka. It is suggested that the Government should organise a summit of all political parties and interest groups in Sri Lanka and try to arrive at a code of conduct not to transgress responsible demarcation lines in the ongoing domain of dialogue.

Shyamon Jayasinghe, Melbourne, 
Australia.

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