Human rights and national security: Complementary concepts

Daya GAMAGE

The most important question asked at CNN sponsored November 15 Democratic Party debate in Las Vegas, Nevada cut to the heart of how the party’s presidential candidates see the world and America’s place in it.

CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer asked simply, “Is human rights more important than American national security?”

One of the contenders for Democratic Party nominations Senator Hillary Clinton, who is currently leading in national polls, indicated that she would give national security primacy. Another Democratic contender Governor Bill Richardson asserted that human rights were more important.

But, Senator Barack Obama, who is close behind Mrs. Clinton in every national poll to secure Democratic nominations, gave the most significant and interesting explanation. His explanation was more clear and effective. He said “The concepts are not contradictory. They are complementary.”

What we can draw from the national debate right now in the United States, and else where in the world especially in the developing Third World nations is a commitment to human rights and a commitment to national security are mutually exclusive, or at least in constant tension with each other.

We see this scenario in Sri Lanka where the Government headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who completed two years in office this November, is walking on a very tight rope to strike a balance between human rights and national security. As Senator Obama interpreted “the concepts are not contradictory.

They are complementary”, and Rajapaksa, who championed human rights for decades, endeavours to adhere to the ‘Obama Concept’ while facing a serious battle to protect his nation’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and democracy from Tiger terrorists.

Accusing the Sri Lankan State of practicing discrimination against the 12% ethnic Tamil minority, the Tigers commenced its military offensive proclaiming itself the ‘sole representative of the Tamil people’ to win an independent State in the North and East of the country. North is predominantly Tamil and the East equally divided among the Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils.

The area claimed as ‘Tamil Homeland’ by the Tigers is 1/3 of the country’s land area and 2/3rd of the coastal belt. But strangely, the Tigers are currently unable to convince one third of the total Tamil population in the country to support this utopian concept of ‘Tamil Homeland’.

Since 1985 successive governments entered into dialogues with the Tigers under international pressure to find a political solution but it has been recorded that the Tigers at every occasion withdrew from talks to replenish their military arsenal to launch fresh offensive against the Sri Lankan State.

The Sri Lanka Ambassador to the United States Bernard Goonetilleke explains that those who have followed the fortunes of Sri Lanka are aware, that successive Sri Lankan governments have been trying to negotiate peace with the LTTE since 1985, and that the Tigers have always come to the negotiating table to buy time to regroup and build up their fighting capability.

Successive Sri Lanka governments engaged in peace talks with the Tigers in 1985, 1987, 1989/90, 1994, 2002 and 2006. In April 2003, the Tigers abandoned negotiations that saw six rounds of talks facilitated by countries such as Thailand, Norway, Germany and Japan.

Goonetilleke further states, in June 2006, having gone to Oslo together with the Government delegation, the Tigers refused to participate in negotiations on spurious grounds that that the Government’s representatives were not on a par with the seniority of the leader of their delegation. In October 2006, the Tigers walked out mid way during negotiations.

Since Rajapaksa took over the Government in November 2005 the scenario significantly changed. The President was prepared to enter into talks with the Tamil Tigers but a month into the formation of his administration the Tigers commenced their fresh offensive.

The U.S. State Department in one statement acknowledged that the Rajapaksa administration acted with severe restraint amid the Tamil Tiger military offensive and provocations when the government had to militarily act after the Tamil Tigers made assassination attempts on Army Commander and the Defense Secretary in April 2006.

The Tigers were fast losing their grip on their prized possession ‘sole representative of the Tamil people’ when ethnic Tamil minority started moving away from the predominantly Tamil districts in the North to domicile in the Sinhalese majority districts in the rest of the country.

It has been estimated that 54% of Tamil are now residing outside the North and East. Some of the ethnic Tamil minority in the Tamil Tiger controlled areas in the Northern Districts is in fact captive people.

After months of restraint amid Tiger offensive and provocations, in June/July this year the government unleashed a major offensive against the Tiger military strongholds in the Eastern Province ridding the entire province of Tigers.

The Rajapaksa administration has stepped up its security, military and intelligence operations to successfully combat Tiger arms flow into the country, thwarting infiltration of Tiger intelligence and suicide cadre to other parts of the country and continuing its military offensive in the North to break the back bone of the terrorist movement.

It is interesting to note here that Rajapaksa was the first head of State in Sri Lanka, since Government-Tiger talks in Thimphu 1985, to declare that ‘federalism’ is not the solution to the country’s problems.

Previously, other leaders of the Lankan State were reluctant to make statements to that effect because of the internal and external pressure.

While expressing his commitment to devolve political and administrative power to the periphery, Rajapaksa has affirmed that the arrangement has to be a ‘home-grown’ one and that no outside power could interfere in that decision.

Expressing his obligation to defeat ‘Tiger terrorism’, President Rajapaksa told this writer in an exclusive interview to Asian Tribune in Los Angeles in late September this year that ‘fear that Tamil grievances would not be addressed after a military defeat of the Tamil Tigers is unfounded and baseless’.

In fact, his was the first administration in Sri Lanka since the eighties to declare that not only the Tamil ethnic community but also the Sinhalese, Muslims and plantation Tamils of Indian Origin face severe socio-economic hardships.

His administration’s continuous reiteration of the fact that all ethnic communities have unsolved socio-economic problems led to the United States Department of State to state in one of its public statements in September this year that the U.S. expect the Government to enter into talks to “strengthen the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims moderates.” The statement did not mention the Tigers.

It is to the credit of the Rajapaksa administration that these moderate movements, especially moderate Tamil voices, were brought to the surface domestically and in its international deliberations.

Amid a slow and steady political process to find a political solution that will address the dire socio-economic disability of a significant portion of the Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and plantation Tamils, the Rajapaksa administration has committed to eradicate the Tiger menace once and for all to safeguard the territorial integrity, sovereignty and the democratic institutions using its military power that no other previous governments had undertaken.

The administration is fully aware that a micro group like the LTTE possesses a macro effect when it undertook the offensive against the most ruthless terrorist group next to al Qaeda.

In doing so, the Rajapaksa administration is walking on a very thin rope to strike a balance between human rights and national security. After all, human rights and national security concepts are not contradictory but complementary.

Obviously the administration knows the pitfalls if it gives more emphasis to national security over human rights.

Here is a regime that endeavours to secure the nation from domestic terror group that has international funding and arms procurements. The Tamil Tiger voice is given sympathetic hearing in international forums.

Most of them have not been able to move away from the ‘state of mind’ that the LTTE is in fact fighting for the legitimate rights and grievances of the Tamils in Sri Lanka discriminated against by the ‘Sinhalese-dominated chauvinist government’.

Eighteen months ago Asian Tribune detected that the official United States Web Portal USINFO of the State Department used the term, in one of its background papers, ‘Sinhalese-dominated Government’.

The term was immediately dropped when Asian Tribune carried a news item pointing the State Department’s bias when describing the Sri Lankan domestic situation.

They are also in a psychological situation that the eradication of the Tigers is in fact the suppression of Tamil grievances.

The Tiger international professionals have seen that the major players of the international community hold such a view.

The failure of Sri Lanka’s overseas public diplomacy is largely responsible for the plight to which the administration has fallen in. President Rajapaksa publicly admitted in Los Angeles when he addressed the Sri Lankan expatriates in late September this year that Sri Lanka has lost the battle to Tamil Tigers in the area of international public diplomacy and global lobbying.

The Rajapaksa administration is now faced with a domestic situation which is similar to the one the Sirimavo Bandarnaike government faced in December 1964: a parliamentary conspiracy, if successful on December 14 at the Third Reading of the Budget defeating the government, will undoubtedly turn the tide in favour of the Tigers.

It is in the above described scenario that the concerted effort to defeat the Government on December 14 at the Third Reading of the Budget is considered as an attempt to put the Tigers or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) back in the driver’s seat to defeat the Rajapaksa administration’s final assault on this ruthless terrorist organisation to take control of the destiny of Sri Lanka.

At least the past two decades the Tamil Tigers have been very successfull in setting the agenda for Sri Lanka knowing or unknowingly aided and abetted by the principal players of the international community.

A re-enaction of the 1964 ‘Flat Tyre Democracy’ that defeated the centre-left government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in the Parliament is definitely seen in December 14 vote to reverse the trend which the Rajapaksa administration created, internally and internationally, unfavourable to the Tigers.

Asian Tribune