The LTTE: Talking peace and preparing for war

Rohini Hensman

Human Rights: Recent revelations by Human Rights Watch, that the LTTE has stepped up its campaign of extortion from Tamils living abroad in order to launch a final war, put additional pressure on the Government to take measures that will avert the threat of war. It has to walk a thin line between giving in to illegitimate demands by the LTTE on one side, and appearing to provoke a war on the other.

The farcical dispute over the question of whether the CFA was or was not amended at the February talks between the Government and LTTE in Geneva demonstrates one thing very clearly: the Government needs a negotiating strategy.

Not just in talks with the LTTE, but also in talks with its allies. It is clear that the CFA was not amended; why, then, did a Government spokesperson say that it was? The only reason, apparently, was that the President had promised the JVP and JHU that it would be amended. If the same farce is not to be repeated in April, this matter needs to be sorted out.

The Government's dilemma

The dilemma of the Government can be illustrated by an analogy. Suppose armed robbers break into your house, hold guns to the heads of your three children, and demand that you hand over your valuables and one of your children: what should you do? If you love your children, you are not likely to refuse point blank, even though what they are doing is unlawful.

The LTTE are holding the gun of war to the heads of the people of Sri Lanka, and demanding control over the Northeast and all the people who live there. The Government, which is in a position of trusteeship like the parents of the children, cannot simply respond by saying that the CFA - which in effect gives control over parts of the Northeast to the LTTE - is unconstitutional.

In fact, it is worse than unconstitutional: it has allowed the LTTE to harass and kill hundreds of people and kidnap thousands of children with impunity. But that is beside the point. The allies and their supporters must be made to understand that while the Government must do its best to secure a better CFA, it cannot risk plunging the country into war by simply repudiating the CFA of 2002.

Now suppose one of your neighbours steps in, sees what is happening, and offers to mediate, as the Norwegians have done. They know that you have treated the child whom the robbers are threatening to take away quite badly in the past - that you used to beat her, and never gave her the same privileges that you gave her brothers. So they suggest that you agree to the demands of the robbers, and thus secure the release of your two sons, which in effect is what the Norwegians have done.

Of course the hostage-takers welcome this mediator, and agree to talk so long as he is present at the negotiations, because he supports their case. This puts you in another dilemma. You have been trying to make amends to your daughter, and the last thing you want to do at this point is to sell her into slavery, so you cannot agree to do what your neighbour proposes.

On the other hand, if you tell him to get lost, you risk losing all three of your children. The Government must explain this to the allies too: that however unsatisfactory the performance of the Norwegian mediators, at least they have kept the LTTE talking.

So, for the moment at least, the Government is stuck with the 2002 CFA and the Norwegian mediators. But this doesn't mean that it has to give in to all the demands made by the LTTE. In fact, it can use the old CFA to bargain for a new one. It is obvious that Prabhakaran is bothered by the fact that he didn't succeed in wiping out Karuna and his forces, and wants the Government to help him to do so by disarming them.

This is something the Government can use.

It can argue that Karuna was part of the LTTE in 2002 when the old CFA was signed, and therefore does not fall into the category of 'paramilitary' as defined by that agreement. It can and should ensure that crimes committed in the territory it controls - whether by the LTTE or anyone else - do not go unpunished, and are in fact prevented as far as possible.

But if the LTTE and Norwegian mediators wish to end the internecine warfare between Prabhakaran and Karuna - which would certainly be desirable - the way to do it is not by slaughtering one party but by having a new CFA, with water-tight human rights guarantees, signed by the government, Prabhakaran and Karuna.

In other words, the LTTE can be offered the choice of keeping the old CFA and dealing with the problem of Karuna themselves, or negotiating a new one. This will give them (and their Norwegian backers) a stake in a new and better CFA.

In fact, the Government should go further, and point out that the LTTE has used the label of 'paramilitary' to murder their opponents, including those who had earlier been disarmed according to the terms of the CFA, as well as other unarmed civilians.

This is a war crime according to international law, and international law is a higher authority than any CFA. Whatever the CFA says, the Government has every right to refuse to aid and abet this crime by defining opponents of the LTTE as 'paramilitaries' and disarming them so that the LTTE can massacre them.

The Norwegian Government knows this very well, since it is a signatory to the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court, Article 8, paragraphs 2(c) and 2(e) of which defines these acts as war crimes.

It also knows that other actions of the LTTE, such as hostage-taking, attacks on mosques, and child recruitment (whether forced or voluntary), are likewise defined as war crimes in the Rome Treaty, and that it is itself guilty of aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes by its support for the LTTE.

If the Norwegian mediators cannot be dumped, they can certainly be neutralised by citing international law against them.

Child conscription

What about the LTTE's persistent practice of conscripting children? Events both before and after the February talks show that they do not intend to give that up, no matter what they say. So it would be foolish to rely on any CFA, old or new, to stop them. There are two alternative courses of action, and they are not mutually exclusive.

The first is to publicise the issue widely, as human rights activists have been doing for a long time, and the Government has also begun to do. The recent report by Amnesty International pointed out that organisations like the SLMM, UNICEF and the ICRC do more harm than good when cases of child conscription are reported to them, because they raise these cases with the LTTE but do nothing to protect the children.

The LTTE responds by threatening the families that they will never see their children again if they report such cases to international organisations, and the terrified families are blackmailed into silence.

This means that the figure of 1358 child soldiers given by UNICEF is certainly an underestimate. Amnesty has suggested independent international human rights monitors to investigate and take action on such reports, and the Government should take up and reiterate this demand, while giving wide publicity to each and every case of child conscription.

There is also a role for civil society in publicising such violations. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo played a key role in bringing down the Argentinian dictatorship, by demonstrating with placards showing pictures of their missing children; and it was not the Good Friday Peace Agreement which forced the IRA to lay down its arms, but a campaign by six women: the sisters and fiancee of Robert McCartney, who was murdered by the IRA.

If the names and faces of children who have been abducted are publicised widely instead of being hushed up, their families would have a better chance of getting them back and keeping them, because there would be far greater revulsion against the LTTE if those children were killed.

The demonstration against child conscription at the Geneva talks in February, and protests by schoolchildren in Kiran and Valaichchenai against the abduction of their schoolmates, are a good beginning, but a great deal more could be done to publicise this issue nationally and internationally.

Recruiting children, a war crime

The second and complementary course of action is to take up the matter legally. Recruiting children is a war crime according to international law, and the Secretary-General of the UN has already proposed measures that should be taken against the LTTE so long as it has children in its armed forces - namely, a ban on international travel by leaders of the LTTE, an arms embargo, and a ban on any funding being channelled to them from abroad until they comply with the requirement to free all child soldiers and demonstrate that they are not recruiting any more.

Pressure should be mounted on the UN to implement these measures, as well as on governments of countries which turn a blind eye to extortion by the LTTE, and allow them to send money to an organisation which is engaged in war crimes. If families of the abducted children add their voices to the appeal, the pressure on the international community to ensure the safety of these children will be greater.

If the LTTE faces enough negative publicity and punitive action, it will eventually be forced to give up this vile and repulsive practice.

What kind of state?

Going into negotiations with the position that your goal is a unitary state is like throwing away your trump card at the beginning of a card game, or sacking your best player just before a cricket match: it more or less guarantees that you are not going to win.

This is another issue on which the Government and its allies will have to do some homework before the next round of negotiations in April. Why are they so strongly in favour of a unitary state? Because they think federalism is simply a stepping-stone to a separate state. This displays abysmal ignorance of the history of our subcontinent.

An examination of debates prior to Independence in India suggests very strongly that if greater autonomy had been granted to Muslim-majority provinces, partition might have been avoided. Later, East Pakistan split off to form Bangladesh, again, because there was not enough devolution.

Even in Sri Lanka, it is the unitary state as practised by Sinhala chauvinists that has resulted in a de facto separate state of Eelam in parts of the North and East which are no-go areas for the Government.

Conversely, if India had not been a federal state, it is likely that there would have been more splits. In other words, federalism can keep a country united, over-centralisation leads to division. Given the trauma suffered by so many Tamils in a unitary Sri Lanka, it is not surprising that many of them want a federal state.

In these circumstances, rigid adherence to the goal of a unitary state - even with some degree of devolution - is calculated to perpetuate the de facto existence of a separate state in the Northeast. It is not just negotiators who need to learn what is meant by a federal state; party leaders and the general public too need to understand that it does not mean anything like separation.

The armed forces, foreign policy, legal system and Supreme Court could all be centralised in a federal state, and guarantees of democratic rights which protect Tamils in Sinhala-majority areas would also protect Sinhalese and Muslims in Tamil-majority areas.

The statement by a leading politburo member of the JVP that he supports an Indian-style federal state in Sri Lanka is an important breakthrough in the peace process, and should be followed up by attempts to persuade others in the Government and allied parties to follow suit.

The proposal of a federal state in an overall democratic framework, perhaps implemented in a phased manner, would, if accepted by the LTTE, oblige them to lay down their arms and respect human and democratic rights.

If rejected by them, it would demonstrate their contempt for democracy and rejection of peace, thus alienating many of their supporters. Either way, it would be a step towards peace and a united Sri Lanka, and would win friends for the Government where today there is indifference or hostility.

The need to communicate

Given that the Government faces a ruthless opponent preparing to resort to bloodshed, it is crucially important to get positive international publicity in order to win support for its position. Here it has an uphill task, for two reasons.

First, previous Governments of Sri Lanka have treated Tamil people atrociously, and they have to convince the international community that they are not going to do the same. And second, most foreign reporters know little or nothing about Sri Lanka, and are therefore prone to accept the version purveyed by the LTTE and those NGOs which propagate the view that the LTTE is the sole representative of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. Publicity for alternative points of view is hard to get, and that is why the Government should make maximum use of the one time when the whole world is listening - the peace negotiations - and pack a punch into its opening statement in April.

For this, it would be necessary to start by acknowledging the violations of human and democratic rights that took place in the past - disenfranchisement and denial of citizenship to the upcountry Tamils, legislation making Sinhala the only official language, discrimination against Tamils in employment and education, brutal pogroms, and so on - and then go on to summarise what remedial action has been taken over the last twelve years.

Secondly, the Government must say that the reason why it opposes a separate Tamil state is that from time immemorial, people from different ethnic, linguistic and religious communities have lived alongside each other in peace and friendship in Sri Lanka, and still do so in places like Colombo.

Therefore the only way in which an ethnically homogeneous state can be formed is by large-scale ethnic cleansing - such as the expulsion of the Muslims from the North by the LTTE in 1990 - which has been defined by international law as a crime against humanity.

The Government must make it clear that this is why it opposes both a Sinhala and a Tamil state; otherwise many people will assume that it is opposed to a Tamil state from a Sinhala nationalist point of view. Here the Government's position would be much stronger if it could say that the solution it proposes is a federal state within an overall democratic framework, which is what the majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka want.

There is still time before the April talks for the Government to ensure that it negotiates from a position of strength because it supports, and is seen to support, justice and democracy for all the people of Sri Lanka. But it will need to work hard in the interim to achieve such a position.