State of Emergency declared in Sri Lanka...

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacks government ministers and suspends parliament, and now declares a state of emergency. Ostensibly it is because she thinks her Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has gone to far in making concessions to the suicide-bombing LTTE.

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Or maybe she thinks she may meet the fate of her father, at the hands of some Sinhalese/Buddhist fanatic?

Bombings forged ruthless leader

PRESIDENT Chandrika Kumaratunga was barely out of childhood when the looming conflict with the oppressed Tamil minority first brought tragedy into her life. At the age of 14 she lost her father, then Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, at the hands of a Buddhist monk who assassinated him in the belief that he was giving too much leeway to the Tamils. His death propelled her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike into politics, becoming the world’s first female prime minister when she was elected three years later. Her premiership pushed the country towards civil war when she drove through Sinhalese nationalist legislation that inflamed ethnic Tamils and set the rebellion in motion. With a pedigree as the daughter of two prime ministers, Mrs Kumaratunga’s own political future was almost inescapable. However, it took another tragedy for her to take to politics in earnest, after she saw her film star-turned opposition politician husband shot by a political opponent in front of her and their two children.

Perhaps it was unsurprising, then, that when she herself ran for the presidency in 1994, she did so on a peace platform, extending the hand of friendship to the Tamil Tigers and ending the bloodshed that had dogged her life and that of her young country. Wary of the same Sinhalese nationalist sentiments that had led to her father’s death but aware also of the growing war-weariness in the country, she embarked on numerous rounds of peace talks with rebel representatives. When the efforts broke down, however, and the rebels redoubled their military campaign, her policies took a hardline turn. Soon she found herself enemy No 1, living as a virtual prisoner in her elegant Colombo home, ringed by steel barriers and bodyguards to protect her from the rebels’ notorious suicide squad, the Black Tigers. It was on her last day of campaigning for the presidential elections in 1999 that a Tiger bomber found his mark. As he blew himself up beside her, she escaped with shrapnel wounds that were to rob her of sight in one eye. Two dozen others beside her were killed. It did nothing to soften her attitude towards the rebels.

It was an attitude that was soon to fall out of favour with a population now exhausted by war. In 2001, her party was defeated in the parliamentary elections, bringing her arch-rival Ranil Wickremesinghe to power as Prime Minister with a mandate to bring peace. Since then she has not flagged in her opposition to any concessions made to the Tigers in the search for a peace settlement, despite the efforts all those years ago of her father to do the same. It is a battle that now seems more personal than political, and one that risks dragging the whole country back into war. Her presidency is due to end in 2005 but her battle with the Tigers is one she expects to continue for the rest of her life. “The Tigers are out to get me, in or out of politics,” she told The Times last year. “Sometimes they wait 10 to 15 years. I don’t fear for my life. Assassination happens to people in my position. You forget thinking about yourself, otherwise you would die of fear.”

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I thought they were on their way to resolve the issue with LTTE, or so I had read. This appears to be a new twist, or has this been brewing for a while. Maybe their attempts to block the funding sources of LTTE were not successful.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
I thought they were on their way to resolve the issue with LTTE, or so I had read. This appears to be a new twist, or has this been brewing for a while. Maybe their attempts to block the funding sources of LTTE were not successful.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, there have ongoing talks between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE for nearly two years. But although the LTTE has in principle given up the idea of a fully independent "Tamil-Ealam" state, what they have proposed is in effect is a fully self-governing Tamil state within Sri Lanka, with it's own army/police, courts, control of the ports etc, with the centre having very little say in it's affairs. To the Sinhalese-Buddhist's who make up nearly 70-75% of the population this seems like accepting everything the LTTE has won in the bloody war, and without any real disarmament of the LTTE.

The President's moves seem to be a reassertion of the Sinhalese-Buddhist extremist position which refuses to accept any concrete moves to conceding self-governing rights to the Sri Lankan Tamils. Similarly it seems that extremist forces amongst the Tamil Tigers are not prepared to concede anything they have won by their suicide bombings and war against the Sri Lankan state. It will be interesting to see if the Norwegian mediators can get extremists on both sides to make tangible concessions, and bring this horrible conflict to a final end?

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i didn't know anything much about what was going on there. Really interesting and informative thread i must say. Thanks, Malik.

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Political crisis in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumartunga fired three ministers and declared emergency when her PM was visiting Washington. Looks like a coup in this island country in Indian subcontinent. This will have political implications far beyond Sri Lanka.

The political economy of the Sri Lankan “peace process”

Part 2
By Nick Beams
14 November 2003
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This is the concluding section of a two-part article. The first part was published on November 13.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) endorsement of Wickremesinghe’s so-called Poverty Reduction Strategy Program earlier this year opened the way for the next stage of Sri Lanka’s integration into the circuit of global finance—at the Sri Lanka Donors’ Conference, convened in Tokyo last June. With the active political backing of the US and considerable financial input from Japan, the conference participants, representing some 50 countries and more than 20 international financial institutions, pledged $4.5 billion over the next four years towards Sri Lanka’s reconstruction.

The provision of this aid, however, was conditional on the country’s protracted civil war being brought to a conclusive end. So far as the dominant sections of international capital are concerned, Colombo’s conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) constitutes an obstacle to their plans for the region. Their motivation in providing aid is not a desire to bring stability to the lives of ordinary Sri Lankans or improve their living standards. The US wants Sri Lanka as a hub for its financial—and possibly military—operations in South Asia.

For almost 20 years, the US showed no interest in the civil war or its impact on the Sri Lankan population. But in the past two years, as its intervention in South Asia has escalated, Washington has become an active participant in the “peace process.” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage spelled out the issues in an interview earlier this month.

After the obligatory declaration that “the overwhelming interest we have is one of humanity”, Armitage continued: “We want this island—this nation of over 20 million—to be a full, complete partner in the economic life not only of South Asia, but of the globe. We see no reason why Sri Lanka can’t be an engine of growth in South Asia and I look forward to the day when it will be.”

To further its interests in the region, the US has been pushing for closer ties between the Vajpayee regime in New Delhi and the Wickremesinghe government. A Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, based on a statement already prepared by a joint committee, is due to be signed in March 2004.

As an article by Ramtanu Maitra entitled “India pulls Sri Lankan strings”, published in the November 10 edition of Asia Times, noted: “The CEPA replaces the existing trade agreement, which was restricted to a list of goods for trade between the two countries and covers a wide spectrum of trade and economic areas such as service, aviation, transport, tourism and investment. In fact, the agreement in general allows the two countries to enter into broad negotiations covering all service sectors and modes of supply within the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) framework. Besides, it facilitates greater investment flows by addressing identified regulatory and operational constraints, helps implement measures to enhance economic cooperation, and paves the way for trade and investment liberalisation.”

US plans to turn Sri Lanka into an “engine of growth” are part of a broad program aimed at the closer economic integration of the entire South Asian region, in order to facilitate increased domination by international, and above all, US finance capital.

This integration extends to the military sphere as well. Last month, after discussions in New Delhi, Wickremesinghe and Vajpayee announced that they would formalise defence ties between their respective countries. According to their joint declaration: “India will maintain an abiding interest in the security of Sri Lanka and remains committed to its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Like the closer economic arrangements, the growing defence ties are being undertaken in line with US strategic interests. According to Maitra’s Asia Times article: “India’s priority on resolving the Tamil-Sinhala conflict reflects the international convergence on security issues. Recent reports from the US embassy in Colombo indicate that about 30 US Air Force experts have begun a joint survey of Sri Lanka’s airfields to assist their local counterparts with their security, medical and engineering needs. For the past eight years or so, the Tigers have claimed that Sri Lankan troops were being afforded extensive combat training in the southern Wirawila district, where US Special Forces have set up a sophisticated military training camp. The Colombo government, while maintaining a diplomatic silence on the issue of foreign intervention, has not denied any of the rebel allegations.”

A new imperialism

Significantly, Wickremesinghe has openly endorsed the US invasion of Iraq and made clear he will back any future military interventions. As he told the UN General Assembly last month “the US and its allies had no choice but to intervene.” The “failure” of the United Nations, he went on, had created the need for a “world policeman.”

These remarks serve to underscore the fact that the so-called “peace process” involves much more than a settlement between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. It is part of a much broader agenda, orchestrated by the US and its regional allies, as well as the IMF and other global financial institutions, for the reshaping of economic and political relationships across the entire sub-continent.

The struggle against imperialist re-colonisation—the essential content of the IMF-dictated “free market” agenda—can only go forward if it is grounded on a fight to unite all workers against racism and communalism. Such a struggle will find a powerful response from the urban and rural masses in Sri Lanka, in the Indian sub-continent as a whole and internationally. That is the basis of the program that the Socialist Equality Party advances, as the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

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As President Kumarantanga's reassertion of her authority over the peace talks, the Tamil Tigers are now voicing serius concern for the viability of the process. One wonders if they will go back to their vicious suicide-bombing campaign against the Sri Lankan state, and the civil war will restart?