‘Prabakaran closed the door on me. I wanted peace’
Inderjit Badhwar
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In an interview, President Mahinda
Rajapaksa is combative towards the West and conciliatory towards India.
This year’s stunning and decisive military annihilation of the LTTE by
the Forces has created, in its wake, a humanitarian crisis of colossal
dimensions. Some 300,000 displaced persons, most of them Tamils who were
forced to flee their homes, are living in government welfare camps
awaiting rehabilitation.
The architect of this victory, President
Mahinda Rajapaksa, is hailed as a national hero at home, but
international human rights groups and many European countries have been
vociferous in criticizing him for war-related excesses, questioning his
commitment to giving his country’s minority population a fair shake, and
expressing suspicion about his growing closeness to China and Pakistan.
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Q:Was India’s
ambivalent attitude towards you while you were fighting the war a source
of irritation? Has it strained relations?
A: India and Sri Lanka are actually each other’s heart and
soul. Our people, our cultures, our languages, our spiritual values come
from ancient India. Modern India has always been my inspiration. Not
only us, the world has a lot to learn from India. Let me congratulate
your country and your Prime Minister for once again proving to the world
that you are a vibrant democracy with a leadership role not only in our
region but in the world. We can all benefit from the way you have
managed your economy.
Q:Has there been international
pressure on you - from your big neighbour India and the West - regarding
your forging ties with China and Pakistan for military assistance to win
your battle against the separatists?
A: There has never been pressure from India. Only a desire for
more understanding. If any pressure has come on me, it has been from the
West. But my people did not elect me to succumb to pressure and give
into terrorist blackmail.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa |
I am sensitive to India’s feelings because India is my elder brother,
and I have said this openly to Western powers.
But all countries must realize that even if I call them friends, I am
nobody’s stooge and never will be. I am a Sri Lankan nationalist.
Yet let me reassure you that so long as I am in charge I will never
allow Sri Lanka to become a platform for anti-Indian activities by any
country.
Q: What about arms shipments from
China and concessions you have given them in the Hambantota Port in the
South? Will this not upset the geopolitical balance in the region?
A: These are commercial arrangements and strategic deals.
India has joint naval exercises with China and the US. We welcome such
things if they enhance our regional security. At no time did I keep
secret from the Indian Government the sources of my arms purchases. In
fact, we gave your security establishment regular briefings.
Q:There is increasing concern in the
world, particularly Europe, that after your decisive victory over the
LTTE you will no longer be concerned about the rights and grievances of
Sri Lanka’s Tamils.
A: I do not need lectures from outsiders on Tamils. They are
my people and our country is proud of them. I will tolerate no injustice
towards them as I would not tolerate injustice to any Sri Lankan. My
family is intermarried with Tamils. My Cabinet has Tamils. Seventy
percent of our Tamils have always lived in peace and harmony and
prosperity in the south and west, which were outside LTTE control. Let
me ask you one question: Would these Western nations who were calling
for a ceasefire when the LTTE was about to be defeated be willing to
give safe refuge to all the LTTE cadres in their own countries?
Q:Does this mean you are committed to
sharing more power with the Tamil minority in the North?
A: I have always believed in grass root-level administration
and I have respect for the Tamil language. I know how strongly people
feel about their Mother tongue. There is a saying in Tamil that even God
forgives those who abuse him in Tamil! The political solution was
delayed not by me but by the LTTE who held everyone seeking a political
solution hostage to their gun or assassination or mass murder. I have
openly spoken about the 13th Amendment as a starting point. It is
acceptable to India and it has been accepted in Sri Lanka.
Q:You must be aware that Tamil groups
have accused you of genocide and that many European countries like
France have tried to bring UN sanctions against your Government for the
killing of civilians and for human rights violations.
A:Those who live in glass houses cannot afford to throw stones
and act ‘holier than thou’. Just because I did not suit the Western
media prototype and defied their predictions and refused to be coerced
or be their puppet, they choose to use loose terms. Genocide is the
systematic elimination of one community by another.
First, no community has been systematically destroyed in my country
and no Sri Lankan Government would stand such brutality. We are not Pol
Pot or Idi Amin regimes.
And we do not bomb civilian targets thousands of miles away from our
homeland. Second, if my Government wanted to destroy any one community,
why should we have rescued more than three hundred thousand civilians
from the war zone and from LTTE guns? People who commit genocide don’t
save the people they are supposed to be destroying. Our people are peace
loving and gentle.
I come from the south, from a rural background. I believe in the
Buddha, Dharma, in the middle path. But when the Middle Path is closed
on me by force then I must fight to regain that ground.
Q: How do you react
when your critics call you a dictator?
A: I could have chosen the easy path and brought in draconian
legislation in fighting the LTTE after all the assassinations and
bombings they carried out, well after the Norwegian-brokered Cease Fire
Agreement in 2002. I did not.
I went in for local and Provincial Elections. Do dictators hold
elections in the middle of a war? Also, the criticisms you hear about
dictatorship appear in our own press. Would a dictator not censor the
press? The article from a Sri Lankan journalist implicating my
Government appeared posthumously in the Sri Lankan press.
Would a dictator have allowed this? Would a dictator answer
embarrassing questions like this interview with you? Yes, there have
been wartime restrictions. They have been imposed by all counties,
including the US in Iraq and (the then British PM) Margaret Thatcher in
the Falklands.
Q: In what way were
you different from past Sri Lankan leaders in dealing with the LTTE?
Were you always seeking only a military solution?
A: Earlier, there was a confused wishy-washy approach that
played into the hands of Prabakaran and the terrorists. It was a
two-pronged approach: one, try and contain terrorism while still
maintaining the status quo and keeping the door open for a negotiated
peace.
In the first two years after I was elected I too followed this
course. I continued to hold out my hand to Prabakaran, even though he
was a wanted terrorist, and said openly that I would prefer to talk to
him man to man. I said he was a Sri Lankan.
The only condition I imposed was that he should declare that he
believed in a united Sri Lanka.
Q:What changed so
suddenly?
A:That door was closed on me when the response was more
terrorism, bombings, and the building up of the LTTE’s armed strength,
including an Air Force and Navy.
After the LTTE tried to close the annicut at Mavil Aru about two
years ago and deprive farmers in the East of water, I decided that he
wanted all-out war. And we gave it to him. There was no hesitation after
that. My mind was clear. The priority was to eliminate terrorism and the
LTTE first and only then start the reconciliation process.
We accomplished goal one, and now we will accomplish goal two, no
matter what others may think. There will be peace, prosperity and
democracy for the first time in the North and the East, and freedom from
terror. And for this, our people will owe forever a debt of gratitude to
our soldiers who died fighting the kind of war that nobody has ever won
in this kind of situation.
Q:Did India’s domestic politics,
given the pressures from India’s 60 million strong Tamil community,
create problems for you? And do you accept that Sri Lankan Tamils had
legitimate grievances?
A: I will not criticize anybody who expresses his view
peacefully and stands up for the rights of their community. As a human
rights lawyer I am the first to admit that the grievances that sparked
Tamil animosity towards Sri Lanka in certain regions had a basis. And we
will make sure we do not repeat those mistakes. As far as Indian
compulsions are concerned, well, politics is the art of the possible and
we have to deal with the fallout of ethnic and linguistic tensions with
skill and maturity.
I agree that today no war is a ‘national’ war. They all have
international consequences because of human rights issues, civilian
populations and ethnic identities.
No one can deny that Tamils all over the world feel for each other as
a group as all others do. If India’s students get assaulted in some
Western nation, India rightfully lodges strong protests. Similarly, I
had my own domestic compulsions when I came to power.
I would have liked to move faster on devolution but I only had a slim
majority in the Government and had to create a wider consensus.
But even if I were able to move faster on a devolution formula, it
would not have worked because Prabakaran’s only goal was to cut my
country in half and create an independent state through terrorism. That
would have created a civil war of the kind that President Lincoln had to
fight to keep his country together.
Q:Was the concept of Eelam always
far-fetched?
A: Just for theory’s sake, suppose Prabakaran had succeeded in
creating an independent Eelam. How would India react to an independent
state within Sri Lanka, headed by a terrorist military dictatorship
under a tyrant who had murdered an Indian Prime Minister as well as all
his Tamil political rivals, with a Navy and Air Force capable of
threatening India’s sea lanes, funded by foreign money and actively
interfering in India’s domestic politics? I do not believe any Indian
Government could live with such a situation.
Q:Which country do you expect should
play the major role in reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation
in Sri Lanka?
A: I had always urged India to play an active role and to get
actively involved in the peace process during the past three years.
I again invite India and the world to participate in the
reconstruction of the war areas, in the rehabilitation of people and to
participate in developing industry and to help create jobs for the
youth, who have far more opportunities now than they had under the LTTE
terror.
I know the big challenge before me now is to demonstrate to our Tamil
brothers and sisters and sons and daughters in the North and East that
they are and will be far better off and safer now than they were in the
past.
The writer an author and journalist, is currently editor-in-chief of
Gfiles
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 30, Dated August 01, 2009 |