by Jude Fernando
Part I
“Dangerous pride, hatred, and selfishness are
enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of
nameless cavalries; and men do reverence before false gods of
nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom
will come, not through complacent adjustment of the conforming majority,
but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.” Martin Luther King Jr.
The enthusiastic celebration of the Sri Lankan
government’s determination to withstand international pressures to
investigate the human rights abuses during the last phase of war is
misplaced, and its refusal to implement the recommendations of the
Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) is sadly
self-destructive. The controversy over the UNHCR exposed the failure and
limitations of both the government and the global human rights
community to effectively address human rights issues and to bring those
responsible for human rights abuses to justice.
The government performance, in particular, casts serious doubts about
its political will and ability to create inclusive sovereignty
meaningful to all Sri Lankans and protect it from those seek to
destabilize it. The government seeks to hide its proactive complicity
with the international forces it claims are neocolonial and imperialist
under a cascade of flags and banners. Government may be reinforcing the
very structures of domination that it ostensibly claims to defeat. But
it is imperative that those interested in post-war reconciliation in
Sri Lanka stand apart from the celebration and take a critical look at
implications of government’s actions for country’s sovereignty,
development and diplomatic relations from a perspective that places
justice and responsibility at its center.
The government’s case against the UNHCR resolution relied on its
interpretation of rather fuzzy operative clauses found in the UN General
Assembly Resolution A/60/251, adopted on 15th March 2006. Devoid of
substance, diplomatic sophistication, and focus, the Sri Lankan
performance at the Assembly amounted to a semantic war with the UN. The
government took great pains to interpret certain terms found in
Operative Clause 5 as biased (e.g. “alleged” “address” “encourages”
“calls upon” etc.) and claimed that the UNHCR has coercive intent,
alleging that the clause undermines the country’s sovereignty. Sri
Lanka claimed that the UNHCR has ignored, and is endangering, the
progress the government has so far made in development, peace and
reconciliation. The government seeks popular legitimacy by associating
its claims with resistance to the neocolonial, imperial and separatist
agendas of the Western nations. But this lacks substance as a defense,
and serves only to draw attention away from the lack of diplomatic
acumen in Sri Lanka’s sad attempt to influence the international
conversation on human rights.
A moral issue lies at the core of the current controversy over the
UNHCR resolution. The controversy is over justice and responsibility,
implicit in international human rights and humanitarian laws. Justice
and responsibility are above politics. By this, I do not mean to claim
that justice is apolitical, or we can think about it outside the context
of politics. Rather, I posit that the moral complacency, and mindless
materialism and nationalism that seem to be indispensable to the
consolidation of public opinion cannot suppress justice for ever.
Justice stands alone and it derives its power from morality; justice and
morality are inseparable. Denial of justice inevitably politicizes a
situation. But justice and responsibility are elusive goals if one is
unwilling to take risks, and if a nation does not have the humility to
learn from failures as well as successes. When a generation ignores or
suppresses justice, or exploits the law to serve unjust ends, it
abrogates essential responsibilities, and shifts the burden to
subsequent generations, with unpredictable consequences.
This is the danger that Sri Lanka now faces. Effective responses to
this danger are a multifaceted and multilayer process that need to begin
with developing a ‘radical consciousness’ about the status quo. We
need to reexamine and challenge the notions of sovereignty, development,
reconciliation, peace, neo-colonialism, and imperialism that inform the
popular understanding of and the government’s interpretation of the UN
resolution, as well as its conduct at the United Nations. Without a
historically informed, critical understanding of these notions, we
cannot explain or work to relieve the tensions between the Sri Lankan
government and the UN over the LLRC. We must not forget that the
government are elected and maintained by society’s conscious of social,
political and economic realities!
Without critical perspective we are blind to the devices the state
uses to mobilize and manufacture public opinion in support of its
defense, and to encroach on our objectivity. It is intellectually and
morally irresponsible to relinquish critical inquiry under the pressure
of inherited knowledge. It is only our ‘will’ to develop an alternative
conscious will give us “hope of making a difference.” For Gary Haugen
it is the lack of hope that explains Edmund Burke’s fundamental issue of
human history: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for
good men to do nothing.” An approach centered on justice and
responsibility is a fruitful way of framing an alternate conscious.
Despite all our past frustrations to have hope is reasonable because
although “the arc of history is too long, it bends towards justice.”
The search for a good definition of justice will plunge us deep into a
hornet’s nest of controversy. Yet to say we are helpless because
justice lacks a simple formula is self-destructive and dishonest. It
is also an insult to human agency because this excuse does not
acknowledge the history of remarkable achievements in the realm of law,
including some successes in Sri Lanka.
Justice is a form of power and authority that protects life, dignity,
liberty and the fruits of the love and labor of all of humanity.
Injustice is abuse of power, and authority that is forcefully imposed,
which extends to misinformation and subtle control of our thought
processes so that we think and act according to the wishes of outside
forces, rather than of our own conscience. Oppressors acquire power by
isolating “the weaker individuals from the protection of law or from
those who might be able to bring power to bear on the victim’s behalf.”
Justice requires that authority be exercised according to “standards
of moral purity”; in fact, in many religious texts, justice and
righteousness are interchangeable. The justice to which I refer is not
equivalent to “rights” in the liberal sense. It is a freedom to enjoy
rights with responsibility. The assumption of responsibility is based
on this fundamental principal: love your neighbor as you love yourself.
The underlying principle here is equality. It invites us not to think
of ourselves as sovereign individuals, “encouraged by the possessive
atomism of the capitalist economy and the liberal polity,” (Nicholas
Wolterstorff, 2008) but as relational beings caring for others as they
would like to be cared for themselves. It is not a product of the
highly individualist and possessive notion of rights that is so commonly
promoted by one branch of post-Enlightenment thought.
I am suggesting a notion of justice based on cooperation and the
principle of equality, in which responsibility for equality is shared,
rather than leaving everyone to look out for them. Justice is political
intervention as it involves exercise of power and authority on behalf
of the powerless. Justice is not the same as compassion and charity,
though both are also important. But, for example, no amount of
humanitarian and development assistance by well-meaning people is
sufficient to end the political disenfranchisement and economic
subordination of the Palestinian people. Something more, something
greater, is required.
The core issue at the heart of the UNHCR resolution is the abuse of
power and authority by both majority and minority political parties in
the areas of sovereignty, development and diplomacy since independence.
Right now, Sri Lanka has an historic opportunity to forge inclusive
and equitable models of sovereignty, development, and diplomacy. This
is a responsibility that no civilized human being can ignore. Adam
Taylor, in his Mobilizing Hope, argues that “in responsibility we refuse
to scapegoat the “other” or the “outcaste” in order to exonerate
ourselves from responsibility.” It is about moving beyond the
unproductive debates about culpability and blame. Such debates only
increase the public visibility and accountability of those who neglect
justice and accountability.
Sovereignty: For Whom?
The UNHCR resolution demonstrated Sri Lankan government’s failure
since independence to create conditions for inclusive sovereignty with
equality and justice for all communities, or to protect sovereignty of
the country, which has been manipulated by neocolonial and imperialist
forces. Now public anxiety is growing over the complicity of the state
with the very forces from which the state claims to protect us.
‘Internationalization’ of concerns over Sri Lankas’ sovereignty and
domestic contests over its ‘nationalization’ since independence is two
sides of the same coin. The international community questions and
interferes with the practices and consequences of sovereignty though
internationalization. The citizens of Sri Lanka compete to frame and
resist these practices by contesting them with nationalization. This
paradox cannot be resolved by altering only the practices of the state.
Tensions between ‘nationalization’ and ‘internationalization’ are the
products of this neoliberal moment of global capitalism, and the United
Nations is a participant.
Sovereignty is a nebulous concept. It is vulnerable to manipulations
and exploits. But we often take for granted the meaning of sovereignty
and the state’s apparent monopoly on protecting it. We seldom ask whose
sovereignty we are talking about. Who is protecting what, and for whom?
What are the costs and benefits of this protection, and who bears them?
What are the limits of sovereignty? Can it create conditions for
reconciliation with justice and equality? Our failure to constructively
engage with these questions will make us complicit with protecting a
type of sovereignty that do more harm than good.
While the UN is obliged to uphold the sovereignty of the state, the
moral basis of its obligations does not lie protecting sovereignty per
se, but emanates from the imperative to secure justice and equality for
human beings. When the state’s legitimacy is predicated on political and
economic inequality, its sovereignty cannot be claimed on a moral
basis. Trying to separate sovereignty from concerns for justice and
equality (in short, to nationalize it) turns the justice system into a
political battleground on which those with power and authority set the
rules. Whether a country is a signatory to the United Nations or not,
its citizens will always finds ways to protest injustice, and justice
will always refuse to be colonized by sovereignty.
The so-called sovereignty that we claim to safeguard today is a
colonial imposition. It has been contested since its inception and will
continue to be as long as it remains meaningless to the people. In a
rapidly globalizing world like ours, the substantive attributes of
sovereignty are frequently negotiated to the extent making its formal
attributes meaningless. Despite these contestations and negotiations,
sovereignty endows the nation state with the monopoly over legitimate
use of force. Even as economic and political equality prolong could
make a given form of sovereignty stable, the identity politics could
easily override such. The bipolar division of the world in the Cold War
appeared to allow nations far more autonomous sovereignty than they
enjoy in today’s multipolar world.
During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union disagreed on issues
of economic equality and on non-alignment. Many post-colonial states
showed greater openness to debate and to enact policies to address
social, economic and political equality. The legitimacy of the
post-colonial state’s opposition to oppressive colonial states depended
upon them. Even at that time, however, some states pursued a policy of
simultaneously working towards equality and encouraging forces that
worked against it—a contradiction that continued to widen after
independence. In particular state formation in multiethnic society’s
state took conscious efforts to foster ethnic inequality.
By the end of the Cold War, the autonomy of the state was under
stress. It was challenged by those who viewed sovereignty in terms of
justice and equality, rather than as a simple judicial exercise. State
autonomy has been subverted by capitalist economic forces, which
obstruct its imperial mission. Many states signed international
treaties relating to human rights and free trade because formal
commitment to these conventions, though not binding, became an important
part of proving their legitimacy to the world.
State sovereignty did not entirely lose its central place in the
global political economy and UN system. Washington consensus-based
neoliberal economic policies pressured states to become more autonomous
so that they could more effectively manage and discipline their
respective citizens to serve global capital. But the UN system also
holds states, rather than the global capital accountable for
inequalities arising from an economy dominated by the dictates of
developed countries. There has been an increase in demands on the state
to secure economic and political equality, but at the same time
neoliberal economic policies have deprived states of resources and
capacity to grant those equalities.
In the wake of events in Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, and Sudan, the
usefulness of the Westphalian idea of sovereignty is in doubt. Rising
popular interest in the individual rights enshrined in the charter of
the UN, and subsequent international treaties have encouraged various
parties to attempt to override the sovereignty of states. People have
become less willing to accept human rights abuses for the sake of
national sovereignty. When sovereignty is imagined in terms of rights,
equality and justice, it improve the wellbeing of citizens, rather than
reduce them to mere supporters of the state. The demand for inclusive
sovereignty has gained momentum, and has resulted in initiatives like
Responsibility to Protect, which transgresses the conventional
boundaries of sovereignty.
Electoral and military power no longer enables governments to escape
accountability for their conduct or gain immunity from international
law. Global citizens think it is their fundamental right to take
refuge under The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that proclaims
“everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the
rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully
realized,” granting the people moral entitlement to human rights
uncompromised by the powers acquired in the name of sovereignty.
The foundation of inclusive sovereignty is justice, not merely
jurisdiction. Professor Lepart writes that in human rights and
humanitarian law, the “preeminent ethical principle is the unity of all
human beings as equally dignified members of one human family, who in
turn can, within a framework of unity, develop and take pride in
individual, national, ethnic, or religious identities.” Governments that
seek to nationalize sovereignty at the expense of justice and equality
violate the expectations embodied in these laws.
Post-independence Sri Lanka, a home of many nationalities, has a long
record of missing opportunities to become a model state for inclusive
sovereignty—one that can withstand the tests of the international
treaties that it has signed. All successive governments since
independence have recognized that the colonial ideal of sovereignty—a
mutually beneficial collaborative project of colonial powers and local
elites—is undemocratic and unfair to the Tamil minority. All have argued
that devolution of political power will open the way for inclusive
sovereignty (e.g., Federalism demanded the Kandyans (1920s) and Tamils
(1950s), the pacts of Bandaranaike, Dudley Senanayake, and
Chelvanayagam, Kumaranathuga’s package and the notion of Union of
regions, , 17th Amendment, 13th Amendment and 13 Amendment plus, and
many Conferences and Committees, lately the ‘home grown solution’).
But all have failed to such an extent that few trust any political party to make a difference.
None of the documents relating to devolution efforts were translated
into all languages accessible to the majority of the population nor did
the authorities made any conscious effort to educate the population
about their contents. Attributing the failure of these proposals to
public protests against them, made the majority of the Sri Lankans looks
like nationalists and racists, although these protests were
manufactured by selective reading and interpretations of these documents
by those who sought to exploit them to serve their parochial interests.
Support for and opposition to devolution has been motivated more by
political expediency than by the political will to create conditions for
inclusive sovereignty. Interest in a political solution lasts only for
a short time, until the government stabilizes its power, or
international pressure subsides. The extent and quality of the
devolution that governments offered progressively declined. The state
has been complicit in creating conditions that increased rioting and
hardships among the minority Tamils, and it has ignored its
accountability. Instead it has embraced the idea of success through
military means as the only viable option. Despite many warnings, the
state failed to create an institutional environment (e.g. education,
national history, national symbols, and language policy) conducive to an
inclusive sovereignty. The state has been complicit with or encouraged
parochial nationalism, bigoted religious extremism, and partisan
politics–creating an institutional environment that makes justice and
equality irrelevant to Sri Lanka’s imagined sovereignty.
The Tamil militants themselves violated principals of justice and
equality, and committed the same crimes of which they accused the
government. Militancy took on a life of its own, counter to the
interests of community it claimed to represent. The government
justified the war at international forums by pointing to LTTE abuses,
and claimed that ending the war was a necessary precondition for a
political solution. The LTTE drew legitimacy for its demand for Elam
based on the government’s fifty years miserable failure to create
inclusive sovereignty. But the LTTE’s own behavior (e.g. massacre of the
civilians, politicians, and expulsion of Muslims from Jaffna) cast
doubt on its ability to create inclusive sovereignty within a separate
state. The widening gap between government and LTTE rhetoric and their
actions at home clearly demonstrated that pleasing the ‘international
community’ was far more important to either of them than addressing the
interests of Sri Lankans. (Ironically, now both parties feel betrayed
by the international community!)
The conduct of the LTTE does not serve as an excuse for the
government’s failures. Throughout the war, the government tried to
equate the demand for devolution with the LTTE’s demand for a separate
state. But the international community resisted that connection and
continued to pressurize the Sri Lankan government to agree to a
political settlement. Although the government did not reject
international demands outright, it procrastinated while demanding an end
to LTTE terrorism. Cynically, however, the government collaborated with
the LTTE whenever it was politically expedient
After 9/11, the government mustered considerable international
support for the war by capitalizing on the preoccupation of
international states with the “war against terrorism”. Using the human
rights abuses of the LTTE as an excuse, it suppressed activist NGOs and
alternative media by aligning them with the LTTE, and maintained
hard-line nationalist control over political processes. At this time,
the government oversaw a historically unprecedented centralization of
state power with the backing of the transnational capital. Exclusive
sovereignty was not the issue at the heart of the conflict, which was
framed entirely in terms of terrorism: elimination of terrorism was
widely accepted as a precondition for justice.
When the government sensed immanent victory over the LTTE, its
interest in devolution declined even further. Differences over a
political solution to the ethnic conflict, within the ruling party,
intensified and some went so far as to insist than an “ethnic problem”
didn’t even exist. Instead, they claimed they faced a “terrorist
problem” sustained by foreign governments, diaspora and NGOs. The state
tolerated extreme nationalist claims by its own ministers, leading
citizens and military officials, who made inflammatory public statements
like this: ‘Sri Lanka as a country belongs to the majority Sinhalese
and others as foreigners!’ The opponents of devolution embraced both
the modern and colonial ideal of ‘national sovereignty,’ and asserted
that Sri Lanka, from Vijaya’s time until today, has been able to
maintain its territorial integrity. These nationalists equate any form
of devolution with separatism. The government neither attempted to
counter these claims, nor convince its citizens that devolution should
take place within a unitary state. Instead, it penalized anyone who
looked for a middle path.
By the time the war ended, the government had abandoned the
recommendations of the All Party Representative Committee. After the
defeat of the LTTE, government policy reframed “peace” and “justice,”
twisting them until they became synonyms of development, integration,
rehabilitation, and resettlement, collectively known as ‘nation-building
efforts.’ The government was preoccupied with building a ‘Sri Lankan
identity’ and bypassed or procrastinated on the issue of devolution. The
complex relationships between ‘peace-making,’ ‘peace-building,’
‘development, and other humanitarian interventions and devolution were
ignored, despite the fact that they were—and are—matters of great
interest to the people.
Even the international community shifted its focus from devolution to
human rights issues and accountability during the final phase of war.
The government won the first battle by rejecting calls from the UN and
the international community for war crimes investigations, stating that
it was capable of addressing human rights issues domestically.
The LLRC report was celebrated as a ‘home grown’ solution and a step
forward in nation building. Tamil parties and human rights groups,
however, saw the LLRC as far less aggressive than the first resolution
demanding war crimes investigations. The second UNHCR resolution was
made in response to the government’s failure to implement the LLRC. It
was an attempt to stem the rising tide of human rights abuses and media
restrictions in Sri Lanka. The government rejected that resolution as
well, claiming that its sinister agenda was to destabilize the country
and undermine nation building efforts.
The government’s weak line of defence at the UNHCR Assembly—its
failures, procrastination, contradictions, and failed promises that it
would create conditions for inclusive sovereignty—became even more
strident, despite the fact that they could no longer be defended in the
name of the war against terrorism. The international community was
coming to understand that “national security” was not limited to
physical security; its definition needed to be expanded to include
‘human security,’ including that of material needs and freedoms, and
they were insisting that Sri Lanka embrace the new definition. But it
refused, and instead embraced the tactic of bashing “the West.”
The economy of post-war Sri Lanka is outward-looking. The nation has
welcomed Western economic and cultural forces. In fact, the preferred
lifestyles and the destinations of many Sri Lankans is not India, China
and Russia, but the West. At the same time, politically, Sri Lanka is
still looking very inward. Nationalism, allied with anti-Western and
anti-foreign ideologies, has gained historically unprecedented force in
mobilizing rejection of national and international calls for
investigations into war crimes and human rights abuses. The apparent
distinction between outward-looking economic policies and inward-looking
politics is deceptive because they both serve the function of securing
the legitimacy of the state.
But the critical interests of the neoliberal economy and the
particularistic interests of the regime are served by creating a false
distinction.
In Sri Lanka, everything from the West is welcome and assimilated,
except pressures to be accountable for human rights abuses. The
contest between Western and non-Western is ideological and a critical
look easily reveals the double standards and lack of sincere political
will of many Western and non-Western countries to support inclusive
sovereignty. Foreign countries (both Western and non-Western), the IMF,
and the World Bank are bank-rolling our outward-looking economy.
But, strangely, only Western countries are vilified as imperialist,
neo-colonialist and supporters of separatists. Non-Western countries are
treated as friends even when they intrude with far more vigour into the
domestic affairs of the country.
Anti-Western rhetoric is bought and paid for by India, China, and
other non-Western countries, and Sri Lanka favours them when, in return,
they provide political support for the Sri Lankan government at the UN.
And anti-Western rhetoric is easy to generate because, since 9/11,
Western countries have followed a dual policy of demanding protection
for human rights on the one hand, and supporting the war against terror
on the other. The government of Sri Lanka has taken advantage of that.
It publicly underplayed, or outright denied Western support for its war
against the LTTE, and in funding reconstruction. At the same time, the
government wails aloud that the Western demand for human rights
investigations will undermine its nation building efforts.
The government faces a dilemma as it struggles to resolve the
contradiction between ‘inward looking politics’ and ‘outward looking
economic policies’. Inward looking policies ostensibly intended to
safeguard the country’s sovereignty, but in fact they have resulted in
drastic restructuring of the country’s social, cultural and political
landscapes. Jingoistic nationalism and xenophobia, revisionist
‘national’ history, nationalist interpretations of archaeology, have all
been institutionalized. These policies lend support to the forces that
militate against devolution of power and reduce the possibilities of
inclusive sovereignty.
They have made it impossible to discuss peace and reconciliation
without acknowledging their connections to development. When religion,
history and education are colonized in such a fashion, society is
deprived of its moral base, and it become difficult to imagine an
alternative sovereignty that is not at odds with justice and
accountability.
When protest against the West became a propaganda tool in support of
policy, it resulted in the rapid compromise of sovereignty with
non-Western powers and increased the country’s vulnerability to
geopolitical struggles between Western and non-Western powers.
India’s support for the UN resolution makes it clear that Sri Lanka
cannot rely on the support of its non-Western “friends” even when their
good-will has been bought and paid for. The Indian government served
its own political interests, but it was able to claim the moral high
ground since the Sri Lankan government has so obviously failed to honour
its promises to respect human rights. That failure placed India in an
embarrassing position since India was the chief architect of the
anti-apartheid resolutions (1965), and India has consistently voted in
favour of pro-Palestinian resolutions. India did what was good for
India. Perhaps India’s support for the Resolution is a warning it cannot
be bullied with the ‘China card.’ And Sri Lanka now finds itself in
the position of rapidly losing the support of even non-Western allies.
The sad truth is that the more Sri Lanka opposes the resolution, the
more dependent it will be on its decreasing number of allies.
Dependence, in turn, reduces the autonomy of the state and its ability
to safeguard sovereignty vis-à-vis external powers. This places any
future Sri Lankan government in a highly vulnerable position. The irony
of this is bitter: the state resists ceding even the smallest amount of
sovereignty when the Tamils demand any autonomy. But it willingly
sacrifices a large portion of its autonomy to external powers in order
to deny a pittance to the minority
The same forces the state mobilizes to deny Western requests for
human rights investigations are also employed to effect the historically
unprecedented concentration of political power, nepotism, and the
legitimation of extensive security and surveillance systems, which were
developed to fight terrorism but have been extended to suppress any form
of defiance.
The politicization and securitization of human rights watchdogs
(justice system, religion, education, intelligentsia, media, and law
enforcement) leaves no path by which dissenting groups may seek to
address their grievances. These watchdogs are coming to understand that
they have betrayed their own principals and integrity in service of a
regime that considers them easily dispensable.
As the international media and organizations like WikiLeaks expose
Sri Lankan human rights abuses and the contradictory policies of the
government, civilian discontent increases. The economic crisis undercuts
the popular legitimacy of the government, and the population is less
likely to react favourably to fear-mongering about external threats.
In the face of broadening domestic and international dissent, the
government’s line of defence against fulfilling its human rights
obligations is ineffective. In the eyes of the public, the ability of
the state to defend sovereignty is in doubt, no matter whether they
define that sovereignty as exclusive or inclusive
Resident Sri Lankans have joined the expanding human rights community
(diaspora, exile journalists and academics) and are successfully
mobilizing international forces against the government. Even those
states with a history of human rights abuses and imperialism are now
under pressure by their own citizens, and domestic activism forces them
to critique human rights abuses in other countries. Former friends of
the government have turned into whistleblowers and enemies, and the
entire system of governance is beginning to give way to chaos. As the
state loses the battle for control over the forces that oppose it, the
winter of discontent bloom into the spring of hope.
LLRC and the UN resolution place sovereignty on trial in a global
court of justice. It is a court without a specific geographic location:
its jurisdiction is wherever human rights are violated. The verdict
of the court is that justice requires the political will to negotiate
sovereignty when it infringes human rights. That the government appears
to lack this political will insults Sri Lanka’s rich religious
traditions and their moral teachings. In the final analysis, we are
human beings before we become citizens of a sovereign state. Moral
citizenship will always take precedence over political citizenship.
Whatever governments might think, morality is not a prisoner of
sovereignty: sovereignty is subject of morality.
The LLRC and UN resolutions are the result of government failure to
promote inclusive sovereignty. A prudent government would realize that
implementing LLRC would, in the long run, protect Sri Lanka’s status as
a sovereign nation. The friends and true patriots of the nation (and of
the regime) are not who those invoke nationalism, xenophobia and
external conspiracy theories to avoid facing the past, but those who
demand justice with accountability. An honest inquiry would restore the
belief of Sri Lanka’s citizens, and the world’s citizens, in the
national government, and win their trust. And trust is a necessary
precondition for inclusive sovereignty.
Part II
Development and Reconciliation
The defeat of the LTTE and government’s extensive development
projects in the north and east failed to convince the majority of the
nations that supported the UN resolution because development projects do
not automatically create the conditions for peace with justice and
accountability. The government was viewed as depoliticizing and
marginalizing the root cause of the conflict, and its avowed development
“successes” entrenched the forces that stand against a political
solution and meaningful reconciliation. This display of Cold war-style
theoretical sophistry at the UN demonstrated the gap between the way Sri
Lanka and much of the rest of the world has come to view the
relationship between development and reconciliation.
But the resolution also illustrated the contradictions between the
international community’s rights-based approach to development, and its
relationship with reconciliation. On the one hand, the international
community demands the Sri Lankan state investigate human rights abuses
and take measures to redress and prevent them. On the other hand, the
international community provides almost uniform support for neoliberal
development in collaboration with transnational capitalist forces.
While they claim development must respect human rights, they avoid
confronting the overwhelming evidence of conflict and human rights
abuses that are produced by development. They maintain a clear
distinction between civic rights and economic rights/equality, and wish
to punish Sri Lanka for the former, while patronizing and rewarding the
country for promoting development policies that produce economic
inequality. Both the government and the UN are committed to this
artificial separation because it is essential for the expansion of
development: a commitment that maintains the stability of the UN system.
From a social justice perspective, development should create
opportunities to expand human capabilities and freedoms, and it should
reduce vulnerability and inequality.
As Amartya Sen argues:
Development requires the removal of major sources of freedom: poverty
as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic
social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance
or overcapacity of repressive state what people can positively achieve
is influenced by economic opportunities, political liberties, social
powers and the enabling conditions of good health, basic education, and
the encouragement and cultivation of initiatives.
Sen defines development as freedom, meaning that the goal of
development is freedom and that without freedom meaningful development
cannot be undertaken. Peace is a means towards such freedom, and
therefore the goals of peace building and development are intertwined.
The UNHCR resolution should be seen as an opportunity to create these
freedoms.
In post-war Sri Lanka, peace is widely accepted as the absence of war
and there’s belief in the idea that development with “trickle down” to
create peace. The war might be over, but Sri Lanka is far from
‘post-conflict’, and ignoring continuing conflict is counterproductive
for both peace and development. Conflicts do not always involve war;
in fact, they predate the war and will persist until their root causes
are addressed. Lack of development is not the only root cause of
conflict, and so far “successful” development has done little to bring
peace and reconciliation. This raises two questions: Can
peace-building begin with development? And what type of development will
bring peace?
The mere absence of war creates what we call “negative peace”—no one
is shooting anymore. In a “positive peace,” we see an end, also, to
structural violence based on economic, cultural, and political
deprivations. A meaningful reconciliation requires both negative and
positive peace. Negative peace does not necessarily lead to positive
peace, especially when the conditions of the peace favor and entrench
the forces responsible for the conflict. Positive peace is difficult to
attain, especially when those in power refuse to address the root causes
of inequality and injustice, and marginalize those who seek positive
change.
After thirty years of war, addressing the root cause is impossible if
there is no trust between the stakeholders. Trust is the basis for
reconciliation, and the path to building trust is mutual acknowledgement
of truth and accountability. Behavioral changes that would make
reconciliation sustainable must be observed. Mutuality leads to
accountability, and then to forgiveness, in which restorative justice
overrides retributive justice. Reconciliation must be considered
separately from development, to the extent that it requires mutual
acknowledgment of responsibility—a prerequisite for changing attitudes
and behaviors, and finding a balance between retributive and restorative
justice, without which the negative past is become immortalized and
vulnerable to political exploits.
Peace as trickle down-reconciliation is the worst sort of moral
economics. It is as offensive as it is ineffective. Reconciliation
exposes past wounds so they can heal, acknowledges broken promises, and
is primarily a psychological process that cannot be reduced to the
economics of development. Without psychological reconciliation the
population cannot build the positive social capital required for
sustainable development. The forces that resist truth and accountability
traumatize a population that needs psychological healing and do not
provide an incentive for the people to meaningfully participate in the
development process.
After eight episodes of ethnic riots and long water, it is tragic
that Sri Lankan authorities have not even half-heartedly set about
pursuing the truth behind these events, let alone seeking restorative
and retributive justice. Instead, they have followed a policy of
neglect, voluntary and opportunistic amnesia, and manipulation of the
international judicial process for reasons other than finding truth and
justice. This refusal to confront the past has also presented
opportunities for external forces to interfere in the internal affairs
of the country.
At no point has the government acknowledged or issued a public
apology for the systemic violence and injustices perpetrated against
Tamils. Demands for truth and justice are presented to the public as
foreign conspiracies against reconciliation, even when these demands are
made by its own citizens. While the government berates the
international community for intervening, they are far quicker to invest
resources and energy in response to international pressures, than in
response to domestic demands.
Nor has the Diaspora ever issued a public apology for the crimes
committed by the LTTE. Some simply refer to these crimes simply as
“mistakes.” Yet the failure of the Diaspora is no excuse for the
government to reject its own accountability, because conflict the
conflict long predates the emergence of the LTTE, and their
participation in crimes against humanity. The injustices experienced by
the Tamils cannot be explained away by the crimes of the LTTE. The
government is not responsible for the failings of the Diaspora, but it
is accountable to the people. If the government hadn’t neglected justice
and accountability, the Diaspora wouldn’t have been able to muster so
much political power.
The government’s interest in the pursuit of truth and accountability
is selective, manipulative and filled with contradictions. It wasted no
time to pursuing “justice” in the cases of General Fonseka and the
journalists imprisoned on trumped-up charges of creating ethnic tensions
and communal disharmony. Yet it failed to act against those who should
have been charged for the crime of making racist statements threatening
to the harmony of the community, instead, it rewarded with ministerial
positions those who spewed racial hatred.
The government also loses credibility when its ministers contradict
its own claims about the war and, when media exposes those
contradictions. Without justice and accountability there can be no trust
between the security forces and the Tamil population. If that trust was
gained, there would be far fewer threats to peaceful development, and
subsequently the nation could finally begin to demilitarize, instead of
constantly increasing the number and presence of security forces.
The government’s refusal of accountability also misleads the world
community into thinking that everyone in Sri Lanka is as unprepared to
know and accept the truth, or to hold those responsible for injustice
accountable. The various communities have shown remarkable restraint and
not being vindictive, despite fact they all have experienced violence
perpetrated by members of other groups. Everyone experienced the
excesses of the security forces and paramilitary groups. The government
owes it to the people to recognize or give tribute to the potential and
willingness of the people and their religious traditions to recognize
injustices and pursue justice.
Accountability is an issue of justice required by people who are
victimized even if they are too frightened or disaffected to demand it.
To neglect justice is to discredit the entire justice system. One does
not call off a murder trial just because the family of the victim is not
demanding the punishment of the perpetrator. The absence of animosity
does not imply that they have overcome the prejudices that obstruct
meaningful reconciliation. Similarly, successful development projects do
not mean prejudices will disappear. It is easier for the victors to
reject accountability than for the victims. But in the long run,
absence of accountability wounds both victor and victims when society
stagnates for lack of meaningful reconciliation
The demand for justice emerged first from Sri Lanka’s own resident
citizens, rather than from some shadowy external source. Politicians
have chosen to avoid justice and accountability, not the public. They
have chosen to confuse and frustrate the public rather than to address
issues in a straightforward manner, and have also manipulated the public
to serve the multiple interests of the regime. Resistance to truth and
accountability is used as a justification to vilify critics of human
rights abuses as collaborators with external powers. These actions
reinforce the divisions within the society and destabilize the country.
When truth and accountability are represented as defenses of
neocolonialism and imperialism, this serves the ideological interest of
the regime and bolsters those who obstruct a political settlement to the
conflict. This ideology is separatist: it does not foster conditions
for integration and makes future relations between the two communities
highly uncertain.
It attempts to bury the suspicion, anger and animosity between the
two communities instead of addressing them directly. It allows
resentments to build and fester, and imprisons the victims in permanent
state of trauma without giving them opportunity for closure. The
government has the naïve hope that these abscesses will never surface or
will be somehow “cured” by development. Such a belief is an insult to
the victims whose demand for accountability is rarely driven by
materialistic goals.
Political solutions—an important aspect of reconciliation—should not
be pushed off to some future point of development. Delaying political
devolution for the sake of development is anti-democratic. People should
participate in development by exercising their political voice, and the
goal of development should be freedom, rather its denial. The
government’s delay will only reinforces the impression that it is not
serious about a political settlement, and encourage those feel
victimized to look for external assistance to address their grievances.
When the government fails to anchor its legitimacy in public trust
and support, it resorts to militarism and compromises with external and
internal forces that have no regard for human rights and justice. This
not only forces locals to address their grievances internationally, but
makes the country vulnerable to exploits of external forces. When the
reasons for the neglect of government’s accountability is driven more by
its particularistic interests than protecting the country from very
forces, the stability of the regime is threatened. And the situation is
made worse when the forces threatening sovereignty are the very forces
that bankrolled the stability of the government.
Just as these forces would like, the post-war development project in
Sri Lanka is proceeding at a historically unprecedented pace. During
the past thirty years, terrorism was given as the main reason for both
the failure of development and for human rights violations. Now that
the war is over, the government has still treats development as if it
were a prerequisite for peace building and reconciliation, and as if the
latter were merely a derivative of the latter. Protection of
sovereignty is linked to development and both are projects of the state.
From this perspective, international demands for accountability in
human rights enforcement are a threat to the development. Locals who
demand accountability are automatically derogated as allies of
international powers and anti-development forces.
Does the current model of development promise to create opportunities
to expand human capacity and freedom, and reduce vulnerability and
inequality? Is the state free and flexible enough to navigate
development while maintaining its focus on the interests of the people?
Are the people stakeholders in development process? What is the link
between development, state sovereignty, and dominant culture?
How does the cultural framing of development affect the
reconciliation process? Does it create social and economic conditions
for a political settlement, or does it entrench those forces against it?
Does development alter the demographic and social space, increase the
vulnerability of the population, and make political freedoms
meaningless? What is the basis and what are the implications of the
government’s claim that international demands for justice are a foreign
conspiracy against postwar national development?
From Welfare state to Neoliberal State
During the Cold War, goals and outcomes of development in Sri Lanka
made it more a ‘national’ project because it focused on social welfare
across the ethnic groups of the country. But since inception,
development has always been a ‘foreign project,’ to the extent that its
theoretical underpinnings and policy support came from outside Sri
Lanka. In those years, the state embraced the idea that the well-being
of citizens was the primary source of its popular legitimacy.
The state was more respectful of people’s entitlement to well-being
without regard to their economic and social status. The socialist ethic
of equality in development, and an embrace of welfare-driven equality
were widespread, and even capitalist countries accepted a version of
this because they feared that otherwise they would “lose” countries that
became members of the socialist camp.
During this period, development policies neglected the north and
eastern regions. Development was framed mainly in terms of the
interests of dominant culture. Politicians found this frame was useful
for capturing political power. It allowed them to distract the masses,
who might otherwise have held the elites responsible for the
inequalities inherent in the development. But these inequalities lead
to youth uprisings in 1971 and 1988, and has encouraged Tamil militancy
since late 1980s. Those who still embrace this frame are obstructing the
post-war reconciliation process.
After the Cold war, the rapid blurring of differences between
development and capitalism began eroding any semblance of ‘national
character’ in development. Capitalism represents development as
“humanizing” in order to depolarize and distance it from its detractors.
The neo-liberal development project is highly intrusive, and does not
consider any aspect of social, political or cultural life and
institutions to be outside its disciplinary and surveillance boundaries.
All must follow the logic of the markets. At the same time, the state
also takes extraordinary measures to represent development in terms of
local culture, traditions, religion, national security, and so on.
The entire project is bankrolled by transnational capital and guided
by neoliberal institutions: the World Bank; IMF; and, the World Trade
Organization. Under the tight control of these foreign institutions,
mainstream neoclassical economic provides the intellectual and
ideological backbone for development. They monopolize knowledge
production and strategies for development and leave no room for
alternatives.
The academic discipline of economics in Sri Lanka has been completely
and deliberately purged of welfare- and political economy-minded
thinkers, who have been replaced by number-crunching neoclassical
economists whose abstract methodologies do not disguise their servitude
to capitalist economy. To them, justice and human rights are
derivatives of capitalist economics. These neoliberal institutions and
their ideologies are the allies of neocolonialism and imperialism, but
those who demand international human rights investigations never brand
them so.
The neoliberal project ended social welfare. Social services and
social safety networks are privatized, or neglected when privatization
is politically unpopular. Only transnational capitalists enjoy
entitlements from the state. The people’s welfare is supposed to simply
trickle-down from capitalist development—an economic model that has time
and time again been proven a failure in providing opportunity and
fairness, but a huge success in transferring and concentrating wealth in
the hands of the few. Inequalities are blamed on “bad governance,”
while “good governance” is that which does not lead to ‘market
failures.’
Neoliberal development weakens the fiscal capacity of the state. The
capitalist project is designed to strengthen the hold of the state over
its own citizens, and has endowed it with historically unprecedented
powers to prepare the wealth and people of the nation for capitalist
expansion. But the post-Cold War state is an instrument of
transnational capital, and its “sovereignty” is not evident in its
economic dealings with the international powers that can undermine its
stability
The success of neoliberal development is also predicated on the
transformation of the individual behavior according to capitalist
rationality. Neoliberalism views human beings as individualistic and
competitive consumers, tempting them with the promise of material
betterment. Individuals internalize capitalist rationality and
philosophy, but they are often blind to the ways capitalism undermines
their freedom and well-being. In its most extreme cases they
uncritically embrace xenophobic conspiracy theories, jingoistic
nationalism and the war against terror as explanations for the failures
of development. Neoliberal development transforms the social relations
in many ways detrimental to reconciliation with justice. We see this in
the political landscape of Sri Lanka, today.
Sri Lankan economy is showing signs of profound multiple economic crises.
An increase in GDP and the visibility of infrastructure mega-projects
are highly misleading indicators of success in development. These
megaprojects are rarely owned by nationals. Instead they are controlled
by the transnational capitalist class and the benefits they produce are
unlikely to trickle down to locals in the foreseeable future. These
projects are funded with borrowed money, frequently taken from social
welfare and social safety nets. Farmers are not paid their pensions for
months.
Many future generations will carry the debt burden from an economy
that they do not control from which they do not benefit. Most are simply
laborers of translational capitalist enterprises, who are paid far less
than the value of their works. When the debt-driven economy fails to
produce equitable growth, it is inevitably followed by inflation. Prices
increases adversely impact majority of the people who are fixed
earners, who now are faced with insecurities of relating to food, water,
health care etc. Yet colossal amounts of public funds are waster on
public events that bring ad nothing to the economy, but only provide
superficial legitimacy for the regime, which is important for the
neoliberal project to distract public dissent against it. At this
point, as we have seen even in the highly developed EU, the solution
prescribed by the transnational capitalists is only greater austerity
for the people, and greater concentration of wealth among the elites.
Neoliberal institutions accept ‘regime change’ as an option when the
government becomes unpopular.
The economistic analysis of economic crises often fails to recognize
the broader sociological, political and cultural implications that
matters for ‘human security.’ The tensions between different member
states of the United Nations regarding the UNHCR resolution are
indicative of the difficulties that the Sri Lankan government faces in
terms safeguarding broad goals of human security.
Dispossession and Vulnerability
Human security combines the protection of physical life and social,
economic and political aspects of people’s wellbeing together. The
Ramesh Thakur of the United Nations University defines human security as
“quality of human life of the people of a society or polity.
Anything which degrades their quality of life-demographic pressures,
diminished access to or stock or resources, and so on-is a security
threat. Conversely anything which can upgrade their quality of
life-economic growth, improved access to resources, social and political
empowerment, and son on-is an enhancement of human activity.” Here the
noteworthy elements in this definition are dispossession and
vulnerability resulting from economic development.
In the post-war period, non-Western capitalist countries are more
aggressively competing for Sri Lanka’s resources and markets than
Western countries did. They support or complicity with merging security
with development, and also traded their support for the Sri Lankan
government’s defiance of international demands to investigate human
rights abuses. These countries see opportunities lucrative investments
and extending their geopolitical influence in Sri Lanka’s endemic
corruption and in the fiscal bankruptcy of the state. The state, in
turn, finds them appealing partners because they offer development
packages without restrictive human rights conditions.
Those radical who employ Cold War style theoretical sophistry to
defend the Sri Lanka see transnational capitalism exclusively as a
Western phenomenon, rather than as an expansionary economic system, fail
to grasp the economic basis of imperialism, which is, in fact,
transnational. The popular representation of capitalist expansion
spearheaded by the Western countries masks the fact that non-Western
nations are as capable of rapacious capitalist behavior as the West.
It also makes the public oblivious to the fact that these non-western
countries produce for the Western markets. The popular claims about the
geopolitical contest between India and China do not recognize the fact
that India is fast becoming an important trading partner of China. The
primary motive of both Western and non-Western countries is to win the
competition for economic and political power, rather than safeguarding
the national interests of countries where they fund development
projects. The Western and non-Western binary completely mystifies Sri
Lankan governments collaboration between Western and non-Western
capital.
Large scale commercial agriculture, mineral extraction and fishing
deprive local populations of their livelihoods and turn them into wage
laborers on their own land. The gains realized do not compensate those
who have lost their livelihoods and who suffer from drastic state cuts
in social welfare. Security of basic needs (food, water, and
sanitation) is all at the mercy of the markets.
Neoliberal institutions rationalize the inevitable
development-induced displacement and deprivation of citizens in the name
of economic efficiency and national sovereignty, using the same
terminology they employ in the war against terror. But not all citizens
will suffer equally— the experiences of displacement and deprivation
are unevenly distributed across the nation and between ethnic groups.
Dispossession of land and livelihood are intimately related to issues
of identity and to political power. In the context of Sri Lanka,
minority Tamils may not realize gains from development that sufficient
to compensate them for loss of political power vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan
state
The political and cultural vulnerabilities that result from
deprivation and displacement place more obstacles in the way of a
genuine political solution. They disrupt the people’s symbiotic
relations with the land, impinge on their identities, and limit their
freedoms. Perhaps this is the reason that anti-government Eelamist
media and Diaspora portray development as yet another form of
colonization aimed at sabotaging a political solution to the crisis.
The colonial governments once produced material and social
advancements in the colonies, but they disenfranchised colonial subjects
by denying them land rights and inclusive citizenship. The heart of
colonialism is the political subjugation of the colonial subject. But
liberation from colonialism and postcolonial economic nationalism may
stop short of the solving the problem, distributing the experience of
subjugation unevenly across social groups. It is not surprising that
those who remain subjugated even after “freedom” would perceive the
systems which oppress them as internal colonialism.
Post-war development is a complex project that is also aggressively
restructuring the nation’s social and cultural landscapes, just as it is
changing Sri Lanka’s physical landscape. It is justified by a
government that appeals to the logic of national security. Only when
the cloak of indigenous culture is applied to militarism in the service
of transnational capitalism, can development be sold to Sri Lankans as a
‘national project,’ devoid of ethnic or class favoritism. But that is
an illusion, and not the truth.
The development process in Sri Lanka continues to face manifold
obstacles, many of which are beyond the control of the government.
Developing countries, like Sri Lanka does, not enjoy the freedom to
navigate country’s development process. Despite all constraints, we
must recognize country’s remarkable achievement of development. These
achievements, however, are no excuse to be complacent with the
militarization of development in post-war Sri Lanka not only threatens
to erode our gains but also has serious implications the human rights
and freedoms, in general, and post-war reconciliation, political
settlement to the ethnic conflict and safeguarding of the country’s
sovereignty, in particular. The opposition to and international
politics of the UNHCR resolution are mostly about preserving this
militarization of development, which is now a global phenomenon.
Militarization of Development
It is simplistic and misleading to explain the allegations of human
rights abuses committed by the Sri Lankan military purely in terms of
its conduct during the final phase of the war. These allegations and
the Sri Lankan governments’ opposition to the UNHCR declaration need to
be understood in relation to the militarization of development.
Blaming the Sri Lankan government and its military for human rights
abuses as if they represent a special case distracts our attention from
the role played by all militarized development in human rights abuses,
and the international community’s complicity militarism. Instead,
should examine the implications of development for reconciliation with
justice in relation to the rationale and consequences of militarized
development.
A country is militarized when military participation is routinized
and institutionalized in development thinking and practices and
legitimized through social, economic, and cultural forces and in daily
life. Militarism is not a direct product of the military establishment;
it’s a socially produced strategy to gain and hold power. “National
security” opened the space for militarism when it was is invoked to
combat existential threats. National security is a rationale for
implementing emergency measures and justifying actions outside the
civilian bounds of rules and regulations. “Development” is used as a
similar excuse. Militarism depoliticizes questions about the social,
political and environmental consequences of development.
Parliamentary democracy exists only for name sake, as the freedom in
the parliament is subject to disciplinary mechanisms of the national
security
The “emergency measures” demanded for development also transform and
discipline social, economic, and cultural relations according to the
dictates of the capitalism. This discipline manages both threats
external to capitalism and responds to demands to redress the
inequalities and dispossession that inevitably result from concentration
of wealth, drastic cuts in social expenditure, gutting social safety
regulations, income inequality and the corresponding increase in crime
and violence. It would be wrong to say that militarism in Sri Lanka is
simply an extension of the same military apparatus that was used during
the war against the LTTE.
Militarism began with post-1977 neoliberal economic policies and was
independent of the war against the LTTE. The progress of militarization
after the war is also independent of the government’s claims about
alleged threats to national security.
In post-conflict societies, the relationship between security and
reconciliation is complex and must be approached pragmatically.
Security is important for development and peace in post-conflict
societies. Without security neither development not peace initiatives
can be carried out. The official convergence of development and
defense in Sri Lanka, however, cannot be entirely explained purely in
terms of indispensable security imperatives. The goals of the
transnational capitalist class, the ruling regime, and a variety of
cultural forces frame these interests.
The post-LTTE development project is not a civilian project carried
out according to either the rule of democracy or the formal rules of the
market: it is a top-down militarized project. The society experiences
these impacts of militarized development on their economic, political
and cultural well being and freedoms in many different ways.
The role of the military has been transformed in development, from
providing security and stability to becoming an active buyer of military
goods and services and a player in post-war economic development.
These new roles normalize the continuation of military presence in
post-conflict areas. The mobilization of military services to suppress
dissent is now justified in terms of national development.
This is of critical importance for aid agencies, which are reducing
humanitarian aid and increasing development aid. This is why none of
the neoliberal development agencies protested against the official
convergence of the Ministry of Defense and Development. In fact, the
same countries that that supported the UNHCR resolution against Sri
Lanka continues to provide military assistance. Militarism creates the
value system and provides the stability to carry out neoliberal economic
policies. The true intellectual arm of militarism is not the military
or the state, but neoclassical economics. These institutions and
economists escape from their responsibility for militarization by
presenting it simply as a result of bad governance and blaming it on the
state or militant non-state actors.
Neoliberal development strengthens the military capabilities of the
state and ensures that no other institution has the authority to use
force. Political sovereignty of the state is critical, because the
alone is responsible for managing the inequalities of transnational
capital. Military capabilities are critical because the neoliberalism
bankrupt the capacity of the state to address economic inequalities.
As we have seen in the case of Libya, when the state has become
unpopular and unable to maintain the conditions for capitalist
expansion, capitalist nations will provide military support for
paramilitary and militant groups. This is not typical of Sri Lanka.
Capitalism is incomprehensible without militarism. The claims about
militarism free capitalism or withering away of militarism under
capitalism are a liberal fantasy.
The implications of militarization are economic, ideological,
cultural, and political. Militarization constrains the resources
available for development because the military budget increases even in
the post-war period. In militarized development, resources are
misallocated when they are utilized for economically non-contributive
activity. Even if the resources allocated to the military increase the
overall GDP because they result in production of goods and services for
the military, they still may not contribute to overall economic
wellbeing. From an economic point of view, non-contributive economic
activity is resource sink, absorbing economic resources while creating
nothing of value. The real cost of these allocations is in opportunity,
measured by the growth that the same investments in education, health,
water and sanitation would have spurred.
In militarized development military directly controls economic
enterprises which the government viewed in terms of national security
and fiscal self-sufficiency of the military establishment. Retired
military officers are portioned with access to these economic ventures.
This directly displaces people from their livelihoods and makes them
less competitive in the market place because the military has many
advantages to reduce their costs of production and gain access to
markets. This militarized displacement does not leave much room for
people to question the links between displacement and their security and
political and cultural aspirations.
Economic and political dominance in the current global economy rests
on speedy access to and control of natural resources and markets.
Militarism in neoliberal model of development is about rapid
commodification of natural resources and social relations.
Militarism facilitates forceful acquisition of resources and quick
displacement of people from their livelihoods and cultural habitat. It
speeds up investment decisions by allowing them to bypass established
bureaucratic rules, and social and environmental constraints. It
reduces economic and political transaction costs associate with property
acquisition. From a neoliberal economy perspective, all of a countries
country’s physical and material wealth should be transferred to the
market forces, and the majority of the population is transferred
transformed into wage earning as now they are depriveders—stripped of
wealth that they owned for generations.
Economic well-being and justice now depends on market forces. The
security of basic needs is also at the mercy of a market controlled by
shifting capitalist interests whose whims are protected by the state and
the security establishment.
Particularly in post-conflict societies militarized and speedy
acquisition of property provides less time and flexibility for displaced
population to make claims of their property and find capital to develop
them. People’s mobility severely restricted and they have less
incentive to start their livelihoods, particularly when their lands are
in close proximity to military establishments.
The success of militarism requires obedient, law, and disciplined
individual as opposed one who think freely and critically, willing to
disobey laws and break disciplinary code of conduct when they are
unjust. This new citizenship military thrives to develop in many ways
in identical or serves the interests of self-interested and autonomous
‘self’ that the neoliberal economic policies and their intellectual the
neoclassical economics aspire to create. Here in lies in the reason
for mandatory leadership for university students in military camps
(which might be followed with mandatory military training for all) and
absence direct opposition to training by the World Bank that spends
millions to improve country’s higher education system. Militarized and
autonomous neoliberal self is incapable of functioning within or
contributing to a culture of peace, but a culture of security.
Although from fiscal and political points of view militarization of
development appear as an attractive means of managing an oversized
military, the social reality it creates has far reaching consequences.
The top down decision making of militarized development constrains the
space available for institutions of democracy in decision-making about
development. Civilian institutions have to operate within the
authoritarian structures of military and paramilitary organizations.
The civil service in Sri Lanka today has lost its autonomy, and in
preferred credentials for development administration are military
credentials rather than conventional training of civil servants.
Neoliberal institutions accommodate historically unprecedented
blurring of boundaries between defense and politics as it promises to
overcome so called ‘government failures’ and the transnational
capitalist class exploit the same to fight competition between them for
resources and markets.
Complete control over knowledge production and information flows are
critical to the stability of information It takes extensive measures to
prevent the explosion of information (symetrification of information)
from instigating dissent against neoliberalism. Under militarism the
flow of information and freedom to express alternate viewpoints is
severely constrained because they are filtered by state security
apparatus in accordance with the interests of transnational
corporations. The constraints on economic freedom are in turn exploited
by transnational economic powers which acquire property and resources
at below-market prices and hide illegal compensation.
The official convergence of the security establishment and
development, where development is bankrolled by transnational
corporations, can easily transform the military’s mission from providing
national security to serving transnational interests.
Uniting national security and national development permits the state
to speed up the process of making land and resources available for
transnational capital. If this maneuver was above-board, the nation’s
citizens would object the transfer of national wealth to foreign agents,
so the state takes extraordinary measures to cloak the foreign
character of development, cloaking it with the trapping of indigenous
culture and framing it to appeal to both ethnonationalists and those
preoccupied with national security.
The military becomes proactive in restructuring archeological,
religious and social sites, enforcing the meaning of cultural and
religious symbols according to the aspirations of the dominant culture
and the revisionist history that undergirds it.
Today religious and cultural symbolisms are an important part of
military establishment. This military-culture-religious convergence
threatens to undermine the inclusive national identity of the military.
The convergence normalizes the militarization of development and even
makes it appear as a humanitarian and sacred mission, makes people
oblivious or desensitized to how impacts of development discriminate
across the ethnic divide and entrenched the very forces that are
obstruct peace with justice.
Religion and culture become complicit with militarization and
deprives the society of peaceful means of conflict resolution available
in culture and religion. When the convergence is an important source
of legitimacy of the state, it becomes indifferent or complicit with the
involvement of religious and security forces in violence against
marginalized cultural groups. For minorities trends are evidence of
exclusive nationalism and alienation from national culture and reasons
to become anxious about the possibility of a political settlement to the
conflict.
Militarization thrives on the culture of fear and breeds mistrust,
which in turn leads to further militarization and concentration of power
in the hands of a like-minded and trusted few. The concentration of
economic and political power leaves little space for social forces to
organize and counter the concentration of economic and political power.
This is not only because military personnel prevent it, but also
because the cultural logic of militarization brands such forces as
inherently destructive. While the Western countries accuse the Sri
Lankan government of the suppression of these social forces, as
violation of human’s rights, they avoid acknowledging the economic basis
of the suppression, which they patronize. When will global human
rights industries focus on the connection between the capitalist
rationality of development and systematic violations of human rights?
The paramilitary activities intensify when the international pressure
mounts on the military to address the human rights abuses. Now they
are increasingly interfering with administration of justice at all
levels of the society and stealing our national treasures. The ‘culture
of fear’ resulting from the direct presence of the military in civilian
institutions of justice further deprives human rights victims means for
the affected people to address their grievances. The fiscal and
political vulnerability of the state makes it indifferent or incapable
of responding to the people and the underworld taking justice into their
own hands.
Militarized societies are never stable because stability requires
frequent reconfiguration and legitimization of military and political
establishment, and most militarized states are stagnant. In the long
run, militarization is a drain on a country’s resources and a recipe for
fiscal and economic bankruptcy. Discontent within the military grows
when the distribution of benefits of militarized development within the
military is uneven and unsustainable.
Sri Lanka is not a post-Conflict society in any meaningful sense. It
shows all symptoms of profound economic, political and social crises.
The very notion of the post-conflict is misleading and normalizes the
neoliberal development project development project that is
fundamentally responsible for these crises. In the long run the project
is betrayed by the very forces (e.g. military, nationalism, nepotism
etc.) that safeguarded its legitimacy.
We need to assess the tensions between the Sri Lankan government and
the United Nations in the light how the Sri Lankan government manage
these multiple economic crises and therein the role of international
community.
Enter the UN
The neoliberal response to economic failures is even more austerity
and introduction of even more pro-neoliberal economic policies. The
political response to the crisis is to represent the development as an
essential prerequisite for reconciliation, increase the role of the
military to discipline the society to function in compliance of the
market forces, and to justify the role of the militarization of
development in terms of protecting the country’s sovereignty.
The response to social crises is to continue to transform the social
relations according to imperatives of the neoliberal economic
institutions and legitimacy of the ruling regime. The transnational
capitalist class avoids responsibility for human rights abuses stemming
from militarized development because it separates economic rights and
equality from political rights and equality and attributes abuses
exclusively to the political failure of bad governance or the military.
As the public realizes the injustices and anti-national character of
militarized development, the state takes even stronger measures to
represent the military as indigenous and give civilian look to
development projects by appealing to dominant cultural forces and making
compromises even with so-called enemies. The culture of fear and
increasing episodes of abductions and disappearances leaves no option
for dissenting voices except to seek international assistance to address
their grievances.
Internationalization of human rights issues directly results from the
militarization of development, which creates the conditions for the
expansion of transitional capital within the bounds of the nation state.
Although, the United Nations by its very structure could deliberate
these issues only as ‘abstractions’ independent of their links with the
transnational capital interests, it gain wide support because these
issues has to do with fundamental universal freedoms that have to
guarded irrespective of their economic determinants, because these
freedoms are prerequisites even to against the economic injustices
The UNHCR overstepped its mandate and bowed to pressure from the
anti-Sri Lankan Western countries to pass the resolution demanding the
implementation of the LLRC, argued the Sri Lankan government. But this
provides us with a limited perspective of the resolution and the
protests against it. Implicit in this perspective is the misleading
assumption that the actions of the UN and the Sri Lankan government were
determined by their opposing interests and agendas. The politics that
transpired from this assumption is counterproductive to safeguarding of
human rights.
The debate over the UNHCR resolution was not primarily about human
rights. It was also a response to structural crises in UN system brought
about by this particular neoliberal moment of capitalist development.
The UN was not created to prevent human rights abuses or to create peace
with justice, but to prevent wars between major powers and to maintain
the stability of the world system of nation states.
Since its inception, the UN systems has developed elaborate
mechanisms to safeguard human rights and even seeks to sometimes bypass
the sovereignty of the state, when the state is responsible for human
rights abuses.
The UN system, however, was built on a culture of security, not a
culture of peace. United Nations continue to ignore the action plan on
‘Culture of Peace’ (David Adams), despite the fact that it was endorsed
by millions of people and endorsed by the General Assembly The reason is
that the culture of peace requires direct formal and substantive
engagement with injustices and inequalities at many different levels of
the society and non-violent means of resolving them. The current UN
system is incapable for creating conditions for such a culture of peace
because it is now subsumed by the war against terror and neoliberal
‘human security paradigm’ of development, which is primarily
operationalized within the system of sovereign states. The capacity of
international organizations (e.g. the United Nations) to provide
effective response is limited, because their ideological and operational
underpinnings are not radically different from those they critique.
The UN’s role in human rights protection is under severe stress
because accumulation and legitimization crises of transitional capital
continues to undermine the logic of inter-state system, and at the same
time seeks UN assistance to mobilize the same system to create resources
and institutional conditions for transnationalization of capital.
States too are under stress as crises generated by transnational capital
limits their control over the local and domestic institutions that they
use to maintain their dominant role and to prevent internationalization
of the dissent against the against the state and demands for their
resolution.
The attempts by the UN to hold states accountable for human rights
abuses, and protest by those states against those attempts, are a cycle
that will continue until the UN and its member states officially
recognize the historically-proven impossibility of transnational capital
to create environments in which human rights take priority.
The neoliberal moment of global capitalism continues to erode the
ability of the United Nations to hold governments accountable for human
rights abuses.
The UN and many of human rights groups avoid this quandary by
separating of political equality and freedom from economic equality and
freedom. The assumption is that political (formal) equalities will
automatically translate into economic equalities (substantive
equalities), if the former contributes to the development of efficient
markets. The UN and its member states punish governments for abuses of
political rather than economic rights.
At the same time, violations of political rights are tolerated when
they are necessary for the survival of the capitalist system and for an
individual state’s quest for economic dominance. If the UN took on the
global capitalist system it would undermine its own existence. In fact,
the United Nations; exclusive focus on political sovereignty and its
hesitancy to challenge the principal of sovereignty are both a result of
its commitment to maintain the power of the nation state to guard the
global capitalist system. Putting capitalism at the center in its
dialogues would undermine the economic basis of modern states and the
entire UN system. We cannot look to the UN to resolve this problem.
An individual state’s service to the capitalist system relies on its
ability to deflect dissent against about the inequality that capitalism
requires. To this end the state invokes culture, territoriality, and
national security. The UN plays its part by ignoring human rights
violations that result from development so that it can protect the
state’s role in mobilizing culturally determined exclusive nationalism
to further capitalist development.
Sri Lanka denies the UNHCR resolution because the state must be the
sole guardian of the global capitalist project. If Sri Lanka complies
with the UNHCR resolution, the state will have to admit its
responsibility for human rights abuses in the name of development. The
people will see that the state has allied itself with development in a
gross abuse of power, and will question its complicity with capital.
The government would rather the nation suffer a political implosion,
than reveal the truth of its dealings. The capitalist class changes
political regimes as a temporary solution for dissent against
inequalities and injustices, and the government of Sri Lanka knows this
very well.
From the perspective of social justice, the opposition to the UNHCR
resolution is about protecting transnational capital from the
consequences of development, which have harmed the entire nation. Sri
Lanka’s opposition pushes back against the declining economic and
political power of the state due to the colonization development by
neocolonial and imperialist forces.
Western governments support for, and the Sri Lankan government’s
opposition to the resolution are two sides of the same coin. Both
support the extension of capitalist development by deflecting dissent.
The UN’s respect for state sovereignty protects the capitalist economies
of the states that constitute its membership. The extent to which the
UN effectively responds to human rights violations by its member states
depends on the how well the transnational capitalist class negotiates
the sovereignty of a given country to further its interests.
Whether this generation will push back hard enough to shake the hold
of transnational capital on Sri Lanka is in question. The moral
imperative, however, is certain. In, the end, and despite the forces
ranged against it, the LLRC must be implemented because it promises to
contribute to broader social movements committed to inclusive
sovereignty and justice with equality.
